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 BM 560 .D53 1833 
 Disraeli, Isaac, 1766-1848 
 The genius of Judaism 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 

 THE 
 
 GENIUS 
 
 OF 
 
 JUDAISM 
 
 BY 
 
 I.D'ISRAELI, ESQ., 
 
 D.C.L., F.A.S. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET. 
 
 1833. 
 
LONDON : 
 PRINTED BT BRADBURY 
 WHITEFRIARS. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter I. — with the Israelite every thing is 
 
 ANCIENT, AND NOTHING IS OBSOLETE . I 
 
 Chapter II. — a more intimate knowledge of 
 
 THE JEWISH FEELINGS, AND THEIR HISTORY, 
 REQUIRED . . . . 9 
 
 Chapter III. — the laws of the Jewish people 
 
 CONSTITUTE THEIR RELIGION . . . 16 
 
 Chapter IV. — the theocracy . . , • . 28 
 
 Chapter V. — the decline of the theocracy . 49 
 
 Chapter VI. — a human supersedes the divine 
 
 code . . . . 77 
 
 Chapter VII. — the first great cause of the se- 
 paration OF THE HEBREWS.— THEIR WRITTEN 
 LAW RECEIVED AS OF DIVINE INSTITUTION . 114 
 
 Chapter VIII. — the second great cause of the 
 
 SEPARATION OF THE HEBREWS FROM EVERY OTHER 
 PEOPLE, IS THE SABBATIC INSTITUTION . . 126 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Chapter IX. — the third great cause which sepa- 
 rated THE JEWISH PEOPLE FROM THEIR NEIGH- 
 BOURS, WAS THE MULTITUDE OF THEIR RITES 
 AND THEIR CEREMONIAL LAW . . .135 
 
 Chapter X. — the fourth great cause which se- 
 parated THE HEBREWS FROM ANY INTERCOURSE 
 
 WITH THE PEOPLE WITH WHOM THEY LIVED, THE 
 
 PROHIBITION OF PARTAKING OF THE FOOD OF 
 WHOEVER WAS NOT AN ISRAELITE . . 146 
 
 Chapter XI. — history of jewish conversions . 178 
 Chapter XII. — of the causes of the universal 
 
 HATRED OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE . . '213 
 
 Chapter XIII. — the English jews . . . 239 
 
 Chapter XIV. — conclusion .... 25G 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WITH THE ISRAELITE EVERY THING IS ANCIENT, 
 AND NOTHING IS OBSOLETE. 
 
 The existence of the " peculiar people " 
 professing the ancient Jewish faith has long 
 been an object of religious conviction, and of 
 philosophical curiosity. The Hebrew sepa- 
 rated from the Christian, at a period of the 
 highest civilisation holds an anomalous posi- 
 tion in society ; and with some truth it may 
 be said, that he exists in a supernatural state. 
 The Genius of Judaism remains immutable, 
 requiring every concession, but yielding none; 
 
 B 
 
2 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 perpetuating human institutions, which, from 
 their very nature, passed away, and still che- 
 rishing the prejudices of barbarous aeras. 
 But that the Christian of the nineteenth 
 century should remain for the Hebrew the 
 Christian of the ninth, is a moral ana- 
 chronism. 
 
 It will not be by taking a popular view of 
 the manners of this singular people that 
 we shall allay the fanaticism of Jew or 
 Christian. We must learn to feel like Jews 
 when we tell of their calamities, and to 
 reason like Christians when we detect their 
 fatuity. 
 
 The history of the Hebrews developes 
 those permanent principles which are still 
 operating on their insulated race, and which, 
 through a long series of ages, by separating 
 the Israelite from the Christian, have occa- 
 sioned a reciprocal ignorance of their modes 
 of thinking, their motives of conduct, their 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. D 
 
 dissimilar customs, and their irreconcilable 
 differences. Fewer misconceptions and less 
 erroneous opinions are formed of the castes 
 of the Hindoos, than of the actual condition, 
 and of the feelings, and the conduct of a 
 whole people domiciliated among the nations 
 of Europe, and now far more numerous than 
 they were in their land of Palestine. 
 
 Christians, who have written on Jewish 
 affairs, frequently describe customs and 
 opinions as if they solely related to the for- 
 mer state of the Hebrews ; not aware that 
 customs and rites which are perfectly ori- 
 ental, are still exhibiting in the domestic 
 ■ day of the Jewish citizen, whether a native 
 of Berlin or Amsterdam, of Paris or of Lon- 
 don. The close of the Jewish history is 
 imagined to be the final destruction of their 
 holy city ; but this people have survived their 
 metropolis, their kingdom, and their code : 
 and a terrible interval of more than fifteen 
 b 2 
 
* THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 centuries of merciless persecutions, of heroic 
 struggles, of blasting calumnies, of martyr- 
 doms, and of expulsions, constitute the 
 modern history of the Hebrews. 
 
 Sects, and even nations, have had their 
 dates prescribed, and, in their weakness, at 
 length dissolving into others, they lose their 
 very name. But this obdurate and anoma- 
 lous people are found in every state extinct 
 as a body politic, yet unchanged, and perhaps 
 unchangeable, as a community. Exiles even 
 in their birth-place ; struck out of the num- 
 ber of nations, yet still a nation ; the chosen 
 of God, and the persecuted of man ; looked 
 on as. sacred, and held as contemptible. For 
 these dispersed hordes, toleration or persecu- 
 tion have proved equally fatal. Toleration, 
 in a war of insult, permits but an ignomini- 
 ous existence ; and Persecution, in a war of 
 extermination, immolates its victims. Stig- 
 matised or proscribed, their very name has 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. O 
 
 entailed on them a proverbial odium, and 
 they are still enduring the anathema of their 
 immortal legislator, that " they should be- 
 come an astonishment, a proverb, and a by- 
 word among all nations whither the Lord 
 should send them." 
 
 Look at the Jewish year as it is traced in 
 their own calendar*. For the Israelite, its 
 penitential fasts and its melancholy comme- 
 morations perpetuate the sad annals of his 
 nation, far more than its festivals remind him 
 
 * The Jews anciently had calendars, which com- 
 memorated the great events of their nation, which are 
 occasionally referred to in the Talmud. The Meglllot 
 Taanich, i. e. the volume of affliction or fasting-, 
 which Calmet has noticed, but probably had never con- 
 sulted, and, judging by the title, imagined it to be one 
 of these ancient calendars, contains only the Jewish fes- 
 tivals and fasts. In the preface and notes of the learned 
 Meyer de Jejunis may be seen the controversy respect- 
 ing the inconsistency of the title with the work. Leo 
 of Modena, however, informs us, that from the 17th of 
 Tamuz, or June, till the 9th of Ab, or July, some Jews 
 abstain from flesh and wine. In this fast of three weeks, 
 
O THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 of its departed glory. The virtues of adver- 
 sity, at least, are theirs. 
 
 The Hebrews are the only people in 
 Europe whose present history and whose 
 existing character are influenced by an ori- 
 gin which does not enter into the annals of 
 mankind, and by causes recorded in the most 
 primeval period of society. To comprehend 
 what is passing, even in the scope of our own 
 experience, w T e must consult a code of legis- 
 lation and a ritual which governed them in 
 
 all those days had been calamitous to the Jewish people. 
 (Historia degli Riti Hebraici, c. 8.) Every month of 
 the Jewish year is marked by these melancholy comme- 
 morations. Besides these, there are particular fasts 
 instituted by Jews residing- in different countries, for 
 their local afflictions, among- the Turkish, the Italian, 
 and the Polish nations. Such have preserved, traditi- 
 onally, certain epochs of misery which did not enter 
 into their general history. 
 
 The learned Benedictine Genebrard, among other 
 translations of rabbinical works, has furnished a Latin 
 version of the Hebraic calendar. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 7 
 
 a very different state of society, and in an 
 oriental climate. Their code, their creed, 
 and themselves as a people, are now existing 
 as they always existed. With the Israelite 
 every thing is ancient, but nothing is 
 obsolete. 
 
 The Hebrew, a vagrant or a captive amidst 
 the famed cities of Greece or Rome, could 
 hardly, even in the luxuriant hope of the 
 Israelitish faith, have imagined that, when 
 their pomp and glories should be covered 
 with sand and grass, the laws of Moses should 
 govern races unborn, and in climates un- 
 known. In the vision of their own Ezekiel, 
 the Israelites had witnessed, or imagined 
 they had witnessed, the subversion of em- 
 pires, the apparition of the winged ministers 
 of four great dominions moving amidst their 
 wreath of fire, each by his terrible wheel, 
 "turning not when they went, for every one 
 went straight forwards," but "the living 
 
8 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 spirit was in the wheels," like "a wheel in the 
 middle of a wheel." One monarchy crushed 
 another. The Babylonians had been struck 
 down by the Persians, the Persians had fallen 
 to the Greeks, and the Greeks had bowed to 
 the Romans. And now two thousand years 
 have passed away, and " wheels " not sha- 
 dowed forth in the mystical vision of Ezekiel 
 have also " been lifted up 'from the earth," 
 yet the lone house of Jacob endureth, as the 
 kindled bush where God lay, contemplated 
 by the inspired legislator, "burning with 
 fire, but not consumed." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 A MORE INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE OF THE JEWISH 
 FEELINGS, AND THEIR HISTORY, REQUIRED. 
 
 The revolutions of the House of Israel 
 have been too often unrecorded by the incuri- 
 ous fugitives themselves, busied in transplant- 
 ing themselves on foreign soils : they were 
 negligent, perhaps too indignant, to dwell on 
 their own history. At an early period of 
 modern Judaism, when their Rabbins, whose 
 minds had never strayed from their Me- 
 drassehs, presumed to become historians, 
 they were wholly incompetent to the task. 
 A thousand years had been suffered to elapse 
 without the appearance of a single Jewish 
 historian : but when the Rabbins saw that the 
 b 3 
 
10 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 antiquity, that is, the authenticity of their 
 traditions, ever more cherished by them than 
 their holy Pentateuch, became doubtful, and 
 were disputed by the anti-traditionists, they 
 attempted to demonstrate their antiquity by a 
 meagre catalogue of generations, always open- 
 ing with the year of the creation, by which 
 they pretended they had preserved an un- 
 broken line of traditions. In parallel situa- 
 tions mankind have always acted alike. The 
 same scene now opened among the Jews, as 
 afterwards among the modern Christians, in 
 their efforts to reject the pretended traditions 
 of papal tyranny. Jewish Reformers or Pro- 
 testants, as the Caraites may be distinguished, 
 often arose to relieve themselves from the 
 degrading servitudes, and the bewitching 
 superstitions of rabbinical Judaism. These 
 Rabbins, in attempting to become their own 
 annalists, relied on the ignorance of their 
 own people, while they held in contempt the 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 11 
 
 authentic records of those Christian nations, 
 whom, not unjustly, they held as idolatrous ; 
 but the forgeries of the Talmudical genius 
 often correct themselves by a tissue of absurd 
 anachronisms and narratives of imaginary 
 persons.* 
 
 It is only since the discovery of that won- 
 drous art which conveys to distant ages the 
 sighs of the oppressed, that we find some me- 
 morials of themselves, left among the unhappy 
 
 * The Sepher Juchasin of Zacuto, or " Book of 
 Genealogies," is the most important of the Jewish his- 
 tories ; but it has not met with the luck of a translator, 
 from the circumstance of having some antichristian pas- 
 sages, which might be easily expunged. We have the 
 meagre Semach David, or the Seed of David, by Ganz, 
 ill translated by Vorstius. Gentius has given a better 
 version of Solomon-ben- Verga's Scevet Jehudah, or the 
 Rod of Judah. Verga was a Spanish physician, who 
 collected sixty-four afflictions of his people, among 
 which he classes " public disputations with Christians," 
 and " the number of false Messiahs ;" but he regales his 
 fancy with the pomp and magnificence of the proces- 
 sional entrance into the temple on the day of expiation. 
 
12 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 of mankind, by which alone we can become 
 intimate with their secret feelings. The 
 modern Jews, after their frequent flights from 
 Spain and Portugal, when they settled into 
 communities in different parts of Europe, but 
 more particularly in Holland, seem to have 
 wantoned in the freedom of the press. After 
 the suppression of their hidden feelings for a 
 long series of years, joyfully they poured out 
 their wounded spirits in volumes, which invi- 
 gorated their faith, or avenged the Autos 
 da Fe performing on their relatives who had 
 not participated in the good fortune of aban- 
 doning their homes. These rare works, com- 
 posed in the native languages of the emigrants, 
 are not always written by mere rabbins, but by 
 
 These rabbinical histories do not reach lower than the 
 middle of the sixteenth century. It is to be regretted 
 that the learned Menasseh ben Israel, the celebrated 
 Jewish deputy to Cromwell, did not complete his design 
 of an Historia Judaica. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 13 
 
 learned men, physicians, military men, mer- 
 chants, and nobles ; who, from their birth 
 having been taught to persevere in the dissi- 
 mulation of their Catholicism, flew from their 
 fathers' land to embrace Judaism, at once to 
 allay the torture of their conscience, and elude 
 the fires of the inquisition. Unacquainted 
 with these effusions of the Jewish feelings 
 since their dispersion, and confined as these 
 works were doubtless to the circle to whom 
 they were addressed, the genius of Judaism 
 has remained veiled to the Christian, as if the 
 shekinah still was resting in " the holy of 
 holies." 
 
 The commiseration due to the miserable, 
 the protection claimed by the oppressed, and 
 the vindication of the calumniated, were only 
 accorded by reformed Christianity. It is 
 evident that it will not be by taking a vulgar 
 view of the manners of the Hebrews in their 
 abject state — and much less by keeping alive 
 
14 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 the rancour of our barbarous and Gothic 
 ancestors, who decided on the true faith by 
 the ordeal of Duel — that the Christian could 
 collect any real information, or form any 
 rational conception of this insulated people, 
 with whose fate Christianity still deeply sym- 
 pathises ; for in Judaism we trace our Chris- 
 tianity, and in Christianity we are reminded 
 of our Judaism. But those who seal their 
 faith on the Pentateuch, and those who rejoice 
 in a new dispensation by the Gospel, the adhe- 
 rents to the first or the second Testament, 
 must equally endure the correction which 
 truth must sometimes inflict, till that day shall 
 arrive when the union of philosophy with 
 Christianity, already advanced, may, at some 
 far distant time reform even rabbinical Juda- 
 ism itself. Unquestionably, in the revolu- 
 tions of human opinions, the sympathy of 
 learned Christians have enlarged the nar- 
 row and insulated genius of Judaism ; and it 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 15 
 
 was then, and only then, that the Israelites 
 have found writers, who, as they became more 
 conversant with this people themselves, have 
 dropped balm on their ulcerated feelings ; 
 for the hearts of such historians, indeed, were 
 soon deeply engaged with their sad story. 
 
 If it be permitted by human sagacity to 
 discover the causes which have influenced the 
 singular fate of the Jewish people, it must be 
 sought by a more intimate knowledge of their 
 feelings and their history, than has fallen to 
 the share of ridiculing Polytheists, of hostile 
 Christians, and of doting Rabbins. * 
 
16 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE LAWS OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE CONSTITUTE 
 THEIR RELIGION. 
 
 The first miracle of Judaism was the 
 divine institution of the religion. 
 
 To promulgate the sublime dogma of the 
 unity of Jehovah, the Creator embracing 
 all nature, the first government of the Israel- 
 ites was Theocracy. 
 
 " The earth shook and the heavens also 
 dropped in the presence of God *." The 
 devouring fires of Sinai proclaimed the de- 
 
 * Psalm lxviii. 8. The awful vision is first described 
 in Exodus, xix. 16, and further in Deut. iv. 10. Another 
 still more beatific, was subsequently granted to the elders 
 of Israel, when invited by Moses to ascend with him, 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. IJ 
 
 liverance of the law of Moses. The appari- 
 tion of the Deity— an apparition without simi- 
 litude — rested before the eye of mortal man. 
 Three millions of human witnesses attested 
 and trembled *. From amidst the dense cloud 
 
 before this servant of the Eternal passed into the midst 
 of the cloud. It has all the indistinctness of whatever 
 is superhuman, when the mortal becomes a spectator of 
 an object of which he is unacquainted with a prototype. 
 The Deity appeared, as if his feet were resting- on a paved 
 way, inlaid with stars, amidst the azure of the sapphire, 
 the aerial substance of the Heavens, lucid and serene. — 
 Aboab, Parafrasis Comentadas, p. 259. 
 
 * Cardoso, a zealous Hebrew, calculates the number. 
 The six hundred thousand mentioned in Scripture, con- 
 sisted only of the warriors of Israel, between the age of 
 twenty to sixty. The aged, the children, the women, 
 the domestics, would authorise the number of the mil- 
 lions, and less than millions would not satisfy the eager 
 imaginations of the Jews as the witnesses of the 
 authentic mission. It is curious to add that Count Las 
 Casas in replying to an enquiry of Napoleon, after he 
 had made a calculation of the Israelites, confirmed the 
 Mosaic account, which some infidel speculators had 
 suspected to have been greatly exaggerated. 
 
18 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 hanging on the mountain, " the voice of the 
 words" sanctified and established Judaism for 
 eternity. 
 
 On this awful revelation to a whole people, 
 rests the foundation of the Jewish faith in 
 the law of Moses. The Pharisees exultingly 
 replied to the blind man, miraculously re- 
 covered to sight by Jesus, " We know that 
 God spake unto Moses." Maimonides has 
 this curious remark, " that Israel did not 
 believe in Moses merely from the miracles 
 which he operated, for prodigies are no cer- 
 tain evidence of a divine mission, since the 
 magicians of Egypt practised with spurious 
 ones. It is the character of the Mosaic 
 miracles which stamps their authority. All 
 those in the desert were the simple operations 
 of the divine will to supply their immediate 
 necessities ; when the people were famished 
 the manna fell ; when perishing with thirst 
 the rock flowed. " Yet not," Maimonides 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 19 
 
 proceeds, " from miracles only do we believe 
 in the servant of God. It was at the foot of 
 the holy mountain that our ancestors beheld, 
 and not by the intermediate sight of others, 
 
 * the devouring fires of heaven,' and listened 
 to the cry of the voice from the cloud, 
 
 * Moses ! Moses ! go thou and speak to the 
 people ! ' " For the closing argument to 
 demonstrate the authenticity of the Mosaic 
 mission, Maimonides appeals to the appari- 
 tion of mount Sinai — a miracle manifest to 
 the assembled nation at its feet. " The 
 spirit of the law was itself the greatest pro- 
 digy," observes the German Midler. 
 
 The most ancient legislators, to enforce 
 their codes by irrefragable authority, have 
 indeed pretended to deliver them as of divine 
 origin. The Cretan Minos received his code 
 from Jupiter, and Solon from Minerva ; 
 Lycurgus ascribed to Apollo the laws de- 
 livered to the Lacedemonians, and Numa in 
 
20 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 his cavern sought for a nymph in the solitude. 
 Such were the elegant fictions of an allegori- 
 cal religion, or the political inventions of 
 statesmen who consecrated, by the name of 
 a deity, laws which else had nothing in 
 themselves but what human wisdom and a 
 reverence for natural justice were adequate 
 to provide for Commonwealths ; but these, 
 like all other human institutions, have 
 decayed and perished. The fabulous deities 
 of Polytheism never manifested themselves 
 by a prodigality of miracles ; but the sub- 
 lime Hebrew appeals to " the many great 
 and terrible things their eyes had seen from 
 the God of Israel." The laws of other 
 legislators have passed away, for their views 
 were transient as the glory of the people to 
 whom they were administered — there was no 
 holy principle in them of enduring potency 
 to carry them beyond the state they governed. 
 But the laws of Moses — unaltered as they 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 21 
 
 were first delivered to his race, breathing the 
 inspiration in which they originated, and 
 binding together the spirit of religion with 
 the spirit of polity — after countless ages are 
 now operating on their unchangeable people, 
 still ancient and still our contemporaries ! 
 
 By this miraculous interposition of Provi- 
 dence the laws of this people constitute their 
 religion ; a legal ordinance became a moral 
 duty; the civil order from that moment 
 was bound up with the ecclesiastical 5 and 
 " the alliance between Church and State" 
 was never so indissolubly built up together 
 as among the religious Hebrews. A count- 
 less series of ages has passed away, and " the 
 fewest of people" are still a nation, standing 
 singular in the universe. The inheritance of 
 a divine code kindled amid their persecutions 
 the inspiration of their faith, as hereafter 
 we shall show. 
 
 The divine origin of their laws, their immu- 
 tability, their duration, and their supernatural 
 
22 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 influence imbued the spirit of this sacerdotal 
 people. Everywhere, and at all hours, was 
 their law, or some symbol of their law, like 
 the works of the Deity, kept in their sight. 
 It was variously worn on their persons ; it 
 was nailed to the door-posts of their habita- 
 tions ; it formed their daily occupations in the 
 morning, the noon, and the evening sacrifice. 
 All Nature was consecrated to Religion ; for 
 the first fruits, a portion of the harvests and 
 certain animals, were dedicated to its service. 
 " The land is my own ! " was the decree of 
 the Lord. Judaism was in their fields, in 
 the unmixed seed, and the ungrafted fruit ; 
 in the uncircumcised tree; in the ablution 
 of the stream, and in the separation of the 
 pure from the impure*. Their great festi- 
 vals were connected with the productions of 
 
 * The distinctions which prohibited the use of cer- 
 tain animals was an admirable precept of the great legis- 
 lator, though it was subsequently abused, and even 
 rendered ridiculous, by the Rabbinists. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. c 23 
 
 every season. The Passover could not be 
 kept till their flocks furnished the paschal 
 lamb ; the Pentecost till the wheat had 
 ripened for the fresh loaves of propitiation ; 
 and the thick boughs and branches could not 
 cover their tabernacles till they had gathered 
 in their vineyards and their olive grounds. 
 The Israelites were reminded of their reli- 
 gious festivals by the living commemorations 
 of nature. The whole earth became one 
 vast synagogue. 
 
 Such they were in their Holy Land, and 
 such they remain. The Hebrews are still ac- 
 customed to mark the seasons of the year and 
 the dates of events by religious feasts and 
 fasts. Still they are watching the sunset 
 which brings their own sabbath to all their 
 habitations ; the new moon to hold its solemn 
 celebration, and the earliest star, that calls 
 them back to life, to break their penitential 
 fast. The thunder or the rainbow receive 
 
24 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 the grace they equally give for their bread 
 and their wine. The God of Israel is the 
 God of Nature, and they adore the Creator 
 in his creation. 
 
 The historian of the Jewish people, in the 
 curious apology of his nation, delivered their 
 opinion, and described the enthusiasm of 
 these subjects of a Theocracy, for their divine 
 law. " We consider the books of our law as 
 divine ; and so we term them. We profess to 
 observe them inviolably : and, if it be neces- 
 sary, to maintain them we joyfully die. This 
 has caused such a number of the captives of 
 our nation voluntarily to endure such tor- 
 ments and face such a variety of deaths, with- 
 out a murmur at the laws and the traditions 
 of our fathers. Who of the Greeks," exclaims 
 the heroic Hebrew, " have suffered as these 
 men?" A Greek writer has expressed his 
 admiration at the unconquerable spirit of the 
 Hebrews; the polytheist is astonished that 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 25 
 
 neither ruin, nor ignominy, nor persecution, 
 nor death in its most formidable shape, have 
 forced them to renounce the faith of their 
 fathers ; insensible to fear, incredible is their 
 unbroken constancy in the strictest observ- 
 ance of their laws." 
 
 To educate a nation by their laws, was a 
 political institution peculiar to the Jewish 
 people. Other legislators in their ordinances 
 have not taught the people to practise them, 
 but Moses with the precept never ceases to en- 
 force the obedience; for the prescribed duty, 
 if unperformed, incurs a specific punish- 
 ment. The sublime legislator led his people 
 like children ; and the immortal historian of 
 the Hebrews was struck by this great singu- 
 larity. Thus speaks Josephus : — " We live 
 under our law as under the care of the father 
 of a family; and that we may not fail in 
 them on the plea of ignorance, our legislator, 
 not satisfied that we should hear them once 
 c 
 
26 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISMS 
 
 or twice, has obliged us to abstain from all 
 labours one day in the week, that we may 
 apply ourselves to hear and to learn them ; 
 a circumstance which all other legislators 
 seem to have neglected." Josephus reproaches 
 other nations for not living according to their 
 laws ; for it is only when they are violated, 
 that men are taught their transgressions by 
 others ; so ignorant of their own laws are 
 other nations, that they have been compelled 
 to have recourse to a profession in society 
 who make the laws their whole study. Ex- 
 ultingly adds the historian : " With us there 
 is no one who is not as familiar with the laws 
 as with his own name. We learn them from 
 our childhood ; they are engraven on our 
 hearts, and rarely can be transgressed, or the 
 transgression incurs its punishment. Hence 
 that admirable conformity in our minds and 
 our customs so prevalent among us, for 
 wherever we are we believe in the omnipre- 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. Tj 
 
 sence of our Maker. From the lips of our 
 women and our servants, who all share in the 
 same conviction, may be learnt the rules of 
 moral conduct." 
 
 c Q 
 
28 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE THEOCRACY. 
 
 The first government of the Israelites was 
 a Theocracy ; a government unexampled 
 in the annals of mankind. The classical his- 
 torian of his nation, who composed his work 
 in the Greek language, was so perplexed to 
 describe the spiritual and mysterious govern- 
 ment of the Jewish people, that Josephus for 
 this purpose combined two Greek words in 
 the term eeoKpana, Theocracy, or God's rule ; 
 a government administered by men, but the 
 sovereignty was held by the Divinity.* 
 
 The Jewish history, therefore, resembles 
 
 * Spencer, whose erudition and piety combine with 
 philosophical sagacity, in his De Legibus Hebrceorum, 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 29 
 
 that of no other people, for it combines 
 divine with human events ; a law received 
 from Heaven more closely connects the hu- 
 man being with the Creator, and this people 
 are therefore distinguished as " the chosen." 
 But, however favoured in this respect, the 
 Hebrews have ever participated in the com- 
 mon fate of the sons of Adam, subjected to 
 the infirmities of their kind, stubborn, or 
 vacillating, driven to and fro by the passions 
 of the multitude. 
 
 has observed how other nations at length came to prefer 
 the Jewish Theocracy to any form of government, and, 
 emulous of such happiness, seem to have instituted a 
 Diocracy. What the scholiast in Aristophanes mentions, 
 is an instance. Among the Athenians the notion was 
 attempted to be promulgated by the advice of the oracle 
 of Apollo, which declared that, " They should get rid of 
 their kings, and make Jupiter king." Ad. Nub. init. 
 p. 122. Spencer, Be Leg. Heb. p. 188. 
 
 It is probable that the Athenians spread that oracle 
 abroad, that they, under the show of religion, might 
 free themselves from the regal power, which they found 
 oppressive. 
 
30 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 Montesquieu has developed the vital, or 
 actuating principle of the three species of 
 governments ; if, then, it be the nature of the 
 Republican government to be maintained by 
 Virtue *, of the Monarchical by Honour, and 
 of the Despotic by Fear, the operative prin- 
 ciple of the Theocratic is Religion. 
 
 The development of this solitary principle 
 gives an unity to the whole history of the 
 Jews, from their first period to their latest. 
 The Israelites were the most religious of all 
 the nations of the earth ; and their story is 
 that of a religion, instituted by the Deity, 
 and of its decline amid the corruptions, the 
 pride, and the fatuity of man. 
 
 The Israelitish, or Theocratic government, 
 
 * Virtue is a terra so abstract, so ambiguous, and 
 always so relative, that our philosopher was compelled, 
 after the publication of his great work, to explain his 
 meaning- with more precision. In his " Defence " he 
 declared that by Virtue, in a republic, he only under- 
 stood Patriotism, or public virtue. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 31 
 
 has been classed among republics, being a 
 government without a king. But it was a 
 model of society beyond all human con- 
 trivance ; it was a government of tutelage, 
 and no form of government approached its 
 simplicity and its magnificence. Had men 
 been more perfect, it was a state which 
 would have everlastingly endured. 
 
 During the theocracy, this agrestic and 
 military people preserved that political 
 equality which human institutions have 
 vainly attempted to realise under the forms 
 of popular government. The laws of nature, 
 and the laws of God, the Earth and the Crea- 
 tor, were the objects which incessantly occu- 
 pied the thoughts of the hebrew citizen — 
 the field, the vineyard, and the altar! The 
 cultivator at the evening-hour returning 
 homewards, beheld the elders seated at the 
 gates of his city, holding a court of judica- 
 ture. 
 
3% THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 Among the Hebrews there were no pri- 
 vileged orders ; the only rank in society was 
 age ; the only title, the paternal ; and all 
 the races were included under the affectionate 
 term of " The Children of Israel." The 
 sublime legislator was not unmindful of the 
 humblest member of the community ; slavery 
 had its limited term, and the poor man ha'd 
 his " year of release." The unequal distri- 
 bution of property, that unavoidable evil 
 among other people, was prevented in the 
 Mosaic code by an agrarian law, but unac- 
 companied by its injustice, or by the danger 
 of its sudden violence. " The land was the 
 Lord's," and in Israel the prodigal could not 
 alienate for ever the patrimony of his de- 
 scendants, since, though he might deprive 
 himself of his possessions, the land reverted 
 to his indigent race, in the great sabbatic 
 years. 
 
 The Eternal designed for the Hebrews a 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 33 
 
 religion which combined with its worship a 
 doctrinal morality ; unlike those fabulous 
 religions which allured and excited their 
 votaries by impure rites. The Hebrews 
 were to be separated from those surrounding 
 " seven nations, greater and mightier than 
 themselves." The beatitude of their religion 
 was to be inviolate. Their laws were 
 their religion ; and their Religion, descend- 
 ing from heaven, sent forth a mightier im- 
 pulse than that uncertain Patriotism, which 
 is its imperfect substitute among other na- 
 tions. 
 
 In the election of a privileged race, as far 
 as we are permitted to judge, the Deity de- 
 signed his Hebrews as a human instrument to 
 recover the knowledge of the Creator ; a know- 
 ledge which had been lost by the worshippers 
 of the heavenly bodies or of statues, the rude 
 symbols of the divinity ; by sensual corrup- 
 tions, which had disguised the celestial origin 
 c 3 
 
34 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 of religion *. But Israel, however " chosen," 
 still remained but a fragment of human nature. 
 
 Two things therefore required prevention 
 in this religious and sublime government ; 
 first, the proneness of the people to return 
 to the allurements of idolatry ; and secondly, 
 their national vanity, which prompted them 
 to imitate their neighbours in the pomp of a 
 monarchy. 
 
 We may observe the manner in which both 
 these violations of the Theocracy were pro- 
 vided against. 
 
 * Maimonides, De Idolol. lib. i. Selden, De Diis 
 Syriis. Jurieu, Hist, des Dogmes, part iii. c. ii. Dio- 
 dorus Siculus, Bib. lib. i., tells us that idolatry origi- 
 nated in men who mistook the stars for immortal gods, 
 and worshipped the sun and moon under the names of 
 Osiris and Isis. The Egyptians deified the elements by 
 names ; yet even in this degraded state there was al- 
 ways a Father of intelligent beings, or, as Homer de- 
 scribes Jupiter, " Father and king of men and gods." 
 Varro confessed there were at least thirty thousand gods 
 of the Greeks and Romans. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 35 
 
 The Deity proclaimed himself " the God of 
 Israel," and " a jealous God -" for the Israel- 
 ites were surrounded by people who offered 
 all the seductions of Pagan rites. The Deity 
 commanded that a sanctuary should be raised 
 wherein he might dwell among them * ; and 
 it was ordained that Israel should be " a 
 kingdom of priests, and a holy nation ;" and 
 long afterwards, the apostle, reminding them 
 of their greatness, told them, " Ye are a royal 
 priesthood and a peculiar people t." 
 
 The Deity manifested himself in the double 
 character of a celestial and a terrestrial sove- 
 reign. Wherever the Israelite turned he was 
 reminded of the presence of his God and of 
 his King. His King was in heaven : his God 
 was on earth. 
 
 The Israelite among idolaters, as David 
 himself complained in his exile, was often 
 
 * Exodus, xix. 6. + 1 Peter, ix. 
 
36 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 tauntingly asked "where was his God*?" 
 As the Hebrew cast his eyes frequently 
 towards heaven in the fervour of prayer, the 
 Pagan, even as late as the Roman period, 
 imagined that the Jew worshipped the ma- 
 terial sky. The ancients conceived nothing 
 but what was visible and palpable ; even the 
 mysteries of polytheism were scenical, and 
 every divinity was an actor in a romance. 
 Painters and sculptors have been the great 
 corrupters of all divine conceptions, and are 
 so to this day ; the Deity is still represented 
 in the imbecility of old age, and the Virgin 
 and the Child are oftener worshipped than 
 the God of nature. In the humiliating the- 
 ology of Homer, we discover no trace of a 
 spiritual and incorporeal nature. The fre- 
 quent lapses into idolatry of the Israelite 
 evinced his susceptibility of sensual impres- 
 
 * Psalm xlii. 3. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. SJ 
 
 sions — the stealth into dark and voluptuous 
 rites ; nor had these criminal lapses been 
 quelled but by the terrors of "the jealous 
 God-ruler," when the celestial Sovereign 
 manifested his dominion by his miracles. 
 
 To fix their vacillating faith, and to ap- 
 proach to their material conceptions, the 
 Deity gratified his people by the appear- 
 ance of a human sovereignty, and issued his 
 edicts as a legislative and a military sove- 
 reign. Moses was even permitted to adopt 
 into the exterior of his religion many of the 
 rites, the ceremonies, and the customs of the 
 Egyptians, and of the neighbouring nations. 
 But the gross idolatry was abolished when 
 the Legislator directed their practice to the 
 worship of " the God of Israel," and the re- 
 vealed doctrine of his solitary omnipotence. 
 
 The Theocracy therefore admitted into 
 the Mosaic institution the gorgeous magni- 
 ficence of a regal government. The Israelite 
 
38 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 in the Tabernacle of his God stood in the 
 palace of his Sovereign ; the altar was the 
 throne, and on the altar of the covenant lay 
 the code of inspiration, the great charter of 
 Israel. The first minister of the Deity, to 
 whom his sacred will was confided, announced, 
 by the amazing splendour of the pontifical 
 robes and the mystical pectoral, his exalted 
 station*; while the Levites, like the nume- 
 rous attendants of royalty, stood arrayed in an 
 uniform livery, but their hallowed symbols and 
 instruments marked their respective offices. 
 The furniture and the utensils displayed the 
 
 * Even so late as the fall of the Jewish dominion, 
 when the nation had become a tributary people to the 
 Romans, the pontifical robe of the chief sacrifices to 
 which was attached the pectoral, was deposited by the 
 Romans in the citadel, where there was a Roman garri- 
 son, as a pledge of the fidelity of the Jews, who could 
 not perform their great ceremonies without this sacred 
 vestment. It was only when the Romans felt no dread 
 of the Jews that its use was permitted. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 39 
 
 rich pomp and the beautiful ornaments in 
 which earthly monarchs and their subjects 
 equally delight — the embroidered tapestry, 
 the draperies of fine linen, the variegated 
 needlework, the transparent curtains to mark 
 out the divisions, the golden branched lights, 
 the altar fuming with incense, and the columns 
 raised on brazen bases. There too, were 
 viewed the dedicated loaves, arranged on a 
 table of gold ; the golden vases holding " the 
 strong wine to be poured unto the Lord ; " 
 the ewers " to wash with water that they die 
 not;" and the flesh daily provided on the sa- 
 crificial altar. All these seemed to indicate the 
 banquet of a mortal monarch, but they beheld 
 the banquet inviolable, for ever renewed, and 
 for ever untouched. The veil which never was 
 to be lifted, the cherubims spreading their 
 mystical wings, the Propitiatory where the 
 cloud of glory hung over " the Holy of 
 Holies ; " every object around, combined 
 
40 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 the perpetual recollection that the Israelite 
 found the palace of his Sovereign to be the 
 temple of his God. 
 
 The Jews had early become a military, as 
 well as a sacerdotal people, and their conquests 
 were proclaimed in the name of the Lord of 
 Hosts. Jehovah Sebuot, their god and their 
 chief, was borne amid the four great standards 
 of Israel ; and in their military march the 
 ark of alliance, covered by a veil of celestial 
 blue, was guarded by an escort of Levites. 
 To lay the hand on the Ark was incurring 
 the penalty of death*. That " glory of Israel" 
 was the visible sign of the presence of the 
 Deity. The eye of every man in that great 
 army was ever turned towards it, and 
 marching as it moved, they took their re- 
 spective stations as it rested. The army of 
 
 * Once when the ark appeared to be leaning- on one 
 side, a Levite was condemned to die, only for attempting 
 to hold it up. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 41 
 
 Israel was " the camp of the Eternal," and, 
 what occurred to no other people but this 
 sacerdotal race, the Levite alone was privi- 
 ieged to blow the silver trumpet which 
 sounded to the charge. Even to this day 
 the solemn response of a Jewish congregation 
 on the Sabbath, is the loud cry of " Holy ! 
 holy! holy! is the Lord of Hosts." 
 
 In the Theocracy idolatry was treason ; 
 only to sit in the shadow of a tree, where a 
 deity of stone was placed, was criminal in an 
 Israelite. The slightest gesture, which indi- 
 cated idolatry, was " an iniquity to be pu- 
 nished by the judge*." The law against 
 
 * Dent. xvii. " If there be found among you man or 
 woman who hath served other gods, thou shalt bring that 
 man or that woman which have committed that wicked 
 thing into thy gates, and shalt stone them with stones till 
 they die." Job, the antiquity of whose sublime poem is 
 undoubted, anxious of clearing himself of all imputation, 
 declared, tfc If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the 
 moon walking in brightness, and my heart hath been 
 
42 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 idolatrous Jews is that of open insurrection. 
 Even the imputation was fatal. The Lord 
 had announced himself to be "a jealous 
 God." A religious apostacy, under any 
 other government, was no political offence, 
 but with the Jews it was a state crime. 
 
 It does surprise us to discover that this 
 people, to whom the singleness of the Su- 
 preme Being had been so undoubtedly mani- 
 fested, were perpetually lapsing into the 
 vilest rites of their neighbours. Blessed by 
 a revealed religion, and educated by such a 
 multiplicity of ceremonial laws, still was the 
 Israelite's a heart of flesh, sensual and carnal. 
 Had the Hebrews not indeed been like other 
 men, the purity and conviction of the faithful 
 
 secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand, this 
 also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge, for 
 I should have denied the God that is above." To kiss 
 the hand was an act of adoration among the Pagans. The 
 custom is oriental ; and to this day the religious Jew, 
 when he touches the Pentateuch, practises it. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 43 
 
 had otherwise not obtained their triumph. We 
 must not imagine that idolatry simply con- 
 sisted of the worship of those " dead things 
 called gods of gold and silver," or "some vile 
 beast laid over with vermilion set fast in a 
 wall." Idolatry was a superstition which 
 touched all the infirmities of the human 
 heart — the darker passions were at work 
 with the sensual seductions, and the splendid 
 festival of the idolater often veiled terrific 
 rites, or initiated into infamous mysteries. 
 This was the idolatry of those " strange gods" 
 which offered a ready aliment for the secret 
 and wavering passions of the rebellious Is- 
 raelites. 
 
 In the Theocracy it was foreseen, that, like 
 other people, its subjects would become weary 
 of that paternal and sublime government; and 
 we discover that a human royalty was early 
 contemplated. It was promised — in kindness 
 it was delayed — afterwards the Israelites 
 
44 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 were warned, when the people clamoured to 
 be governed by the will of one man. 
 
 Despotism seems to be the native growth 
 of the East. Man, cradled in servitude, 
 becomes fitted to listen to his fate in the 
 irrevocable mandates of a tyrant. The cli- 
 mate which dissolves the energy of the heart, 
 and the indolence which loves to gaze, have 
 rendered the Orientals the children of 
 political institutions, and they have always 
 been prone to look on an earthly king with 
 a sort of idolatry. An eastern sovereign 
 seems to be a personification of their own 
 weak passions ; his pomp is their vanity, and 
 his power their pride. A sovereign, subject 
 to the laws of his people, a constitutional 
 king, could not exist in the minds of those 
 who have never formed any notion of popular 
 freedom. 
 
 In Egypt, Moses had indignantly wit- 
 nessed the abuse of the Regal power ; and 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 45 
 
 not less had the sage observed the petty 
 despots of the neighbouring nations of Israel. 
 The inspired foresight of this awful legis- 
 lator contemplated the future existence of 
 a constitutional monarch, 
 
 Moses perceived that even his perfect go- 
 vernment would weary the inconstancy of 
 man, and that mortal passions would corrupt 
 even a divine institution. Moses, with pre- 
 scient wisdom, limited the power intrusted 
 into the hands of royalty, and even pre- 
 scribed a daily task to the future sovereign. 
 The legislator rendered the Jewish king the 
 most guileless man in his dominions. 
 
 The sovereign was to be elected from 
 among their own brethren ; no stranger was 
 to sit on the throne of Israel. A foreigner 
 might change the constitution, or raise up a 
 faction in direct opposition to the national 
 interest. The king was not to multiply 
 
46 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 horses ; a force of cavalry, in a land where 
 horses are scarce, might become a standing 
 army endangering their liberties, or might 
 transfer the seat of dominion. It is parti- 
 ticularly specified that the Jewish monarch 
 shall never return with his people into 
 Egypt : " Ye shall henceforth return no 
 more that way." Egypt, for the Israelites 
 at the Mosaic period, was their Father-land ; 
 unwilling exiles, their human hearts, at each 
 remove in the lone desert, but dragged a 
 lengthening chain, while they hankered after 
 their home delights, " the fat onions and 
 the flesh pots." Judaism could only exist 
 in a constant triumph over idolatry. The 
 Jewish monarch was not to have many wives, 
 nor was he to accumulate great treasure ; so 
 early were women and wealth dreaded as 
 the corrupters of royalty. The life of the 
 monarch was not to pass away in the list- 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 47 
 
 lessness of satiety ; for, seated on his throne, 
 daily with his own hand he was to transcribe 
 the laws into a volume from the roll which 
 was kept before the priests, " that his heart 
 be not lifted up among his brethren, and 
 that he turn not aside from the command- 
 ment to the right hand or to the left." 
 There is no instance of a Jewish king 
 making a new law ; " the statutes and the 
 judgments," unlike those of other nations, 
 were not laid up in the dusty archives of a 
 court of judicature, or subjected to the ca- 
 price of the executive power; they were 
 deposited in the memories of the priests and 
 in the hearts of the people ; the laws were 
 supreme. Had the constitutional king of 
 Israel struck into the road of arbitrary 
 power, he would have been arrested by the 
 written voice of heaven ; — the text placed 
 before his eyes ; for the divine institution of 
 the Mosaic law is the fundamental principle 
 
48 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 of Judaism. A tyrant would have been an 
 atheist.* 
 
 * Deut. xvii. 14. Several extraordinary particulars 
 relating to the priests and kings of that part of Ethiopia 
 which borders on Egypt, are preserved by Diodorus 
 Sieulus, in his Bib. lib. iii. There seem to have 
 been other sacerdotal nations besides the Israelites ; 
 perhaps a spurious imitation. 
 
 The priests of Meroe, whenever they deemed it 
 necessary, despatched a messenger to the king- to order 
 him to die : they announced to him the will of the 
 gods, and the crime of disobedience. " This was an 
 ancient custom," observes that curious collector of our 
 remotest antiquities, " and no king had ever resisted 
 this fatal ordinance." It resembles the custom practised 
 even in our days, when a Dey of Algiers was to resign 
 his reign, that is, his life, by the mute avenger, who 
 entered with the bowstring in his hand ; and we are 
 informed that no resistance was made on these occasions. 
 
 To return to the story of Diodorus. The magic of 
 the sacerdotal ordinance was in one day dissolved. 
 Ergamenes, who had been educated in the Grecian 
 philosophy, was the first monarch who dared to reject 
 the yoke, at once so fatal and ridiculous. He led his 
 army to attack the fortress of the golden temple of the 
 Ethiopians, and having massacred every priest, the 
 rebellious king instituted a new religion. Whether 
 this be a fable or a history of remote antiquity, it is 
 perfectly oriental. 
 
49 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE DECLINE OF THE THEOCRACY. 
 
 No human government ever existed which 
 has not opened a source of popular discon- 
 tents ; for every human institution is accom- 
 panied by its silent corruption, and the me- 
 ridian of its excellence is only touching the 
 first gradations of its decline. Models of 
 ideal governments which have flattered the 
 imagination, and that political equality, 
 which in itself must include so much real 
 inequality, have alike found their moral 
 force too weak to reach to the secret pas- 
 sions of Man. The three great functions 
 of a commonwealth, are the proposing — 
 the debating — and the resolving of the 
 
 D 
 
50 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 laws ; functions which, in all the govern- 
 ments which man ever planned, are divided 
 among different orders of society, but whose 
 clashing interests no human wisdom can 
 ever adjust*. 
 
 If men could imagine "that they were not 
 in a good state when they were in the best," 
 as Secker has happily described the divine 
 government of the Hebrews, the numberless 
 expedients of human ingenuity must no 
 longer be allowed to seduce our hopes. It 
 is not strange that the Platos, the Mores, the 
 Harringtons, and so many modellers of ideal 
 republics, should have failed, when the most 
 sublime of all legislators could not render his 
 commonwealth so perfect as to endure for 
 many ages. 
 
 * In Harrington's Oceana this idea is developed with 
 great ingenuity, and this truth is illustrated by a refe- 
 rence to those different states whore these functions 
 were diversely practised. — Oceana, p. 18, edit. 1656. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 51 
 
 The Theocracy existed in all its myste- 
 rious and miraculous state, while the Eternal 
 was holding an immediate communication 
 with his servant Moses ; but even under the 
 tranquil uniformity of that state, and while 
 the people were protected by the paternal 
 code, as the members of one great family, 
 they were still wavering and indocile, 
 passing with inconceivable facility from the 
 fervour of obedience to sullen contumacy. 
 Moses more than once hesitated to address 
 the turbulent multitude ; and so constantly 
 were they incurring the upbraidings and 
 menaces of the Lord, that in the Targum, 
 or Jewish exposition of the Scriptures, the 
 Book of Deuteronomy is called " the Book 
 of Reproaches.'' 
 
 The mightiest of legislators, preparatory 
 
 to his death, invoked Heaven and Earth to 
 
 record that he had placed before his people 
 
 life and death, and had sent forth his bene- 
 
 d 2 
 
52 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 dictions and his curses to his children of 
 Israel ; he had warned them, that by the strict 
 observance of this law, without addition or 
 diminution, their existence depended as " a 
 holy" and " a peculiar people." Never more 
 than on that solemn farewell were this people 
 of children stricken by terror and prophecy. 
 The last appearance of Moses among his 
 people, is an incident at once awful and 
 pathetic ; and the prescient imprecations, 
 eloquent and terrible, present altogether a 
 scene without a parallel in profane history. 
 
 Yet when Joshua, the minister and suc- 
 cessor of Moses, partaking of the inspiration 
 of his master, was " going the way of all 
 earth," and desirous of fixing the last settle- 
 ment of his government, the chief deemed 
 it necessary to offer a choice to the people 
 — " Whom they would serve? Whether the 
 gods on the other side of the flood " — in 
 which flood they had miraculously found 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 58 
 
 a path in the waters, — or "the gods of the 
 Ammorites?" a people whose lands they now 
 possessed. The veteran general delivered 
 his own decision ; "As for me and my 
 house, we will serve the Lord." This option 
 accorded to the people evidently indicates 
 that these blind and sensual Israelites were 
 disposed to divide their religion with the 
 polluted rites, and the local gods of their 
 neighbours; and that this " stiff-necked" race, 
 though they had been favoured with the re- 
 velations of miracles and of their law — were 
 yet in a state of doubt and indecision even 
 during the Theocracy. 
 
 The Theocracy, however, still subsisted 
 throughout the heroic era of the Judges. The 
 voice of the Eternal was still heard, but the 
 people remained volatile and vain ; ambitious 
 to vie with their neighbours, their eyes 
 dwelt with longing on the pomp of mortal 
 monarchs, the petty princes around them. In 
 
54 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 their foolish pride they supplicated the heroic 
 Gideon to be their king. The constitutional 
 patriot indignantly rejected for himself and 
 for his family, the spurious royalty. 
 
 But the Lord was " hiding his face from 
 them.' 1 " They have moved me to jealousy 
 with that which is not God" — is the Divine 
 style allusive to the fabulous Deities of other 
 nations, and for the punishment of this vain 
 and restless people the Theocracy at length 
 was suffered to share the fate even of ordi- 
 nary human institutions. Samuel had become 
 ancient, and his own degenerate race stood 
 among the corrupters and the corrupted. 
 The crisis had arrived when the Judges 
 were themselves to be judged. The people 
 were aggrieved ; the Philistines were pressing 
 upon them ; and in tumult they hurried on to 
 the retirement of the aged seer. They broke 
 the slumbers of the old man ; and the pro- 
 phet, through a long and disturbed night, 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 55 
 
 revolved all that they had declared — all that 
 he had meditated on in sadness. Indignant, 
 the seer of other days perceived that the 
 invisible majesty of the God of Israel was 
 outraged by the substitution of a frail mortal : 
 but the Lord consoled his last ancient 
 servant : " Samuel, the people have not re- 
 jected thee, but they have rejected me, that 
 I should not reign over them." The Israelites 
 deposed their God, for God was their Sove- 
 reign. The menace of Heaven was the 
 future silence of the Lord, when hereafter 
 they should call on him. Samuel, in com- 
 municating the decree of Heaven, closed 
 the direful denouncement by an invective 
 against monarchical despotism, which the 
 most elaborate declamations of republicans 
 could only amplify. Inspiration itself no 
 longer checked the virulence of the people, 
 clamorous to have " a king to reign over 
 them.' 1 Samuel, devoted to an aristocracy of 
 
56 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 which he himself formed a part, judged of 
 the sovereignty of a single person, by the 
 petty despots who surrounded his holy com- 
 monwealth. 
 
 To have introduced into the Mosaic con- 
 stitution as its chief, a human Sovereign, was 
 a violation of its fundamental principle ; it 
 was an open revolt of the people against the 
 Theocracy. The profound legislator had 
 foreseen this calamity in the change of the 
 Hebrew Republic ; such inspiration was in 
 his knowledge of the hidden workings of the 
 human passions. Moses had anticipated this 
 inevitable termination of the divine govern- 
 ment. We have shown that an elective 
 Monarchy had been contemplated, limited 
 among " the royal Priesthood," and how 
 the violence, or the capriciousness of regal 
 power was to be over-ruled in the person of 
 a constitutional Monarch, who, as Moses 
 planned, was to have been at once a student, 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 57 
 
 a protector, and an administrator of the laws 
 of Israel. 
 
 The Theocracy was now interrupted — it 
 was only occasional under David, whose fre- 
 quent cries attest its uncertain visitations. It 
 is said to have ceased when Solomon, the first 
 hereditary monarch, ascended the throne. 
 The spirit from Heaven, obscure and uncer- 
 tain, descended among that extraordinary race 
 of Jewish Reformers called Prophets; of these 
 there were Schools. Many were but pretenders, 
 and few, inspired Sages. All now seemed but 
 as the dim shadow of the past ; and their infe- 
 rior genius expounded dreams, and interpreted 
 mystical allegories of portents and visions. 
 
 The Theocracy finally departed from 
 Israel under the second Temple, and the 
 mystical and miraculous appendages were no 
 longer possessed by the Sovereign Pontiff. 
 The oracle of the Urim and Thummim, whose 
 alphabet, engraven on the pectoral, started 
 d3 
 
58 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 upwards instinct with inspiration, as it re- 
 vealed the will of the Deity ; the Ark — the 
 celestial fire, the cloud of glory, were for 
 ever absent ; even the voice of Prophecy had 
 ceased. From this period, we find no lon- 
 ger any circumstance supernatural in the 
 Hebrew annals. 
 
 The Theocratic government had indeed 
 left them its sublime and eternal principle of 
 Religion, in the worship and the obedience of 
 the Supreme Being. Its invisible chain still 
 connected earth with heaven, and still holy 
 were those immutable laws which bind man 
 with man. But when the Lord forsook his 
 people, and abandoned them to their own 
 imaginations, we are taught a lesson un- 
 paralleled in the annals of any other people. 
 In the pride of their madness we discover 
 their human contrivances to maintain a spuri- 
 ous Theocracy ; and the history of this people 
 attests that even the principle of the purest 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 59 
 
 religion in the forsaken of God, may dege- 
 nerate into a mere system of the minutest 
 superstitions, and be superseded by casuis- 
 tical disputations and doctrinal divisions ; 
 the abuse of the human understanding. We 
 shall see, in the rabbinical ages, how man was 
 enslaved by passive obedience, and the daily 
 acts of life seemed a sort of witchcraft. This 
 arbitrary pharisaical tyranny they substituted 
 for the theocracy of their happier times, and 
 talked among themselves of the miraculous 
 Bath KoU or " a voice from heaven ;" or, in 
 its more literal signification, and termed with 
 oriental fancy, " the daughter of the voice." 
 Lightfoot translates it, " the daughter of thun- 
 der." But as all human impostures and super- 
 stitions are doomed to become obsolete, this 
 celestial interposition of a visionary voice 
 became the ridicule of later ages. 
 
 We have seen the idea which Josephus 
 has transmitted to us at a time when the 
 
60 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 Christian aera had hardly commenced, of the 
 more than human conviction of the divine 
 origin of the law of Moses. After sixteen 
 centuries of not inferior persecutions, their 
 national faith, amid their flights and their 
 exiles, in the last age, was still fortified by 
 the same awful devotion. The inspiration of 
 a divine code has been hereditary, and its 
 influence over the Hebrews seems to be 
 as supernatural as its origin, — resisting all 
 human arguments, and immutable even in 
 its impossibilities. 
 
 One of the great calamities of the Israel- 
 ites at all times, has been too sanguine an 
 application to themselves of that paternal 
 style which the Creator addressed to his way- 
 ward children. Too often have these infants 
 of society been forgetful of the menaces, the 
 provocations, and the chastisements of the 
 God of Israel, which surely have not been 
 less in number than those benedictions which 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 6l 
 
 they have so often forfeited, and those pro- 
 mises which they have so often delayed ; and 
 although it cannot be denied that they consti- 
 tute the most religious people in the universe, 
 yet no other nation has been so frequently 
 reprobated as a stiff-necked generation. 
 
 For simple evidence of this overweening 
 fondness of themselves, we must have recourse 
 to the Jewish writers. I take one of modern 
 times. 
 
 Cardoso, among his Excellencias de los 
 Hebreos*, discovers the first excellence in the 
 endearing expressions with which the Supreme 
 Being has favoured his " especial people." The 
 Jew has dexterously applied a passage in 
 
 * A rare and elaborate volume ; I preserve the title, 
 Los Excellencias de los Hebreos por el Doctor Ishac 
 Cardoso. Amsterdam, 1679 : 4to. The author was a 
 learned physician, who, having- practised with great repu- 
 tation at Madrid, at length flew to Italy openly to 
 profess his long-concealed Judaism. The second part, 
 consisting of the calumnies, is, perhaps, less disputable 
 than the excellencies. 
 
62 
 
 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 Deuteronomy*. The Lord distinguished the 
 great Patriarch by the most eminent title of 
 " friend." Israel was called his " son," his 
 " first-born," his " heir," his " servant." Who- 
 ever "touches his people touches the pupil of 
 his eye." God distinguishes them as his " be- 
 loved," and "the espousal of the Divinity 
 with his people Israel,' ' a frequent allusion in 
 the Scriptures, is dwelt on by Cardoso with 
 all the orientalism of rabbinical fancy. He 
 runs through the ceremonies of a Jewish 
 marriage, unfolding the mystical analogies, 
 always insisting that " this espousal " was 
 neither temporary nor conditional, but abso- 
 lute and perpetual ; for otherwise, he adds, 
 the Deity would be subjected to the incon- 
 stant humours of a mortal sovereign ; it would 
 be as if the Omniscient could be wanting 
 in prescience. He acknowledges that this 
 
 * Deut. vii. G. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 63 
 
 partiality of the Universal Parent for a peo- 
 ple inconsiderable in number, and who by 
 their conduct could never urge any pre- 
 eminent claims to his divine favour, had 
 occasioned the learned to vacillate in their 
 opinions, and, in despair, to leave as inscru- 
 table the will and the purpose of the Divinity. 
 The descendants of Abraham, who had sacrific- 
 ed to the Great First Cause, might be deemed 
 not unworthy of this voluntary grace ; but 
 Cardoso adds nothing to his argument when 
 he illustrates the pleasure which the Creator 
 takes in this particular creature by the trivial 
 image of a gardener, who, without neglecting 
 the other flowers of his raising, watchfully 
 cultivates the favourite plant in his garden. 
 Theologians, like painters, too frequently de- 
 grade the conception of the Divinity by pol- 
 luting the sovereignty of nature with their 
 own human and inadequate notions. On this 
 topic, if Cardoso be much too florid, South 
 
64 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 is far too witty, who, as a Christian divine, 
 has this remarkable passage on the Jewish 
 apologist's vaunted " espousal of God's peo- 
 ple." — " The truth is, they (the Jews) were all 
 along a cross, odd, untoward sort of people, 
 and such as God seemed to have espoused 
 to himself, upon the very same account that 
 Socrates espoused Xantippe, only for her 
 extreme ill condition above all that he could 
 possibly find or pick out of that sex, and so 
 the fittest argument both to exercise and de- 
 clare his admirable patience to the world." 
 
 The enthusiastic apologist for his people 
 asserts that their present state is an evidence 
 of their everlasting duration. Sion, though 
 in her mournful widowhood, is not disconso- 
 late. She suffers, but she knows how to suffer 
 a temporary state of penitence ; for in every 
 chapter of the Jewish calamities as denounced 
 by the prophets, by the side of the destruc- 
 tion of the people is placed their preservation ; 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 65 
 
 menaces are tempered by promises, and al- 
 though the malady is inevitable the medicine 
 has not been denied. Even in the most ignomi- 
 nious suffering of his brothers, in those Ghettos 
 or Jewish quarters to which they are nightly 
 driven as a herd in many European cities, and 
 in those badges of their tribes which they are 
 compelled to bear about them, the red or the 
 yellow hat, or the mark sewed on their dress, 
 even these are, with this fervent Hebrew, a 
 signal grace of Providence. Cardoso, in Italy 
 or Germany, exclaimed, " We are distinct not 
 only in our habitations but in our habits ; a cir- 
 cumstance indicative not so much of the con- 
 tempt of other nations, as of the particular 
 Providence which separated us from them for 
 ever, and spared us their vices, which we are 
 prone to acquire, when incurring the com- 
 plaint of the Lord of the iniquity of Ephraim, 
 when he mixed himself among the people ; 
 ' Ephraim is a cake not turned,' that is, half 
 
66 
 
 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM, 
 
 an Israelite and half a heathen, half dough 
 and half baked." 
 
 Such was the fanatical spirit of the Jews, 
 on their first flights from Spain and Portugal. 
 The miraculous result of a law " perfect and 
 perpetual," as Cardoso exclaims, in the aw- 
 ful conviction of its divine origin, has been 
 exemplified among its followers ; the effect 
 is mighty and peculiar as the cause. 
 
 The Law of Moses can never fall into 
 neglect while the principle of Judaism acts 
 on its people ; for it possesses a self-regene- 
 rating power. This law is not locked up in 
 a clasped volume, to be consulted only by the 
 administrators of the law, but is thrown open 
 among the people, who themselves deliver it 
 one to another. It is one of the " Thoughts" 
 of Pascal, to show the distinction between 
 a false and a true revelation, that Mahomet, 
 in order that his own code might subsist, 
 prohibited the reading, but Moses, that his 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 67 
 
 own should subsist, ordered that all the world 
 should read it. It is decreed in the Laws of 
 Moses that children shall be taught it ; and 
 to this day, the child's first accents are almost 
 formed by " the holy language," as the He- 
 brews emphatically distinguish their's, till 
 they acquire the holy language itself, at least 
 by rote*. The Law of Moses inculcates 
 that it should form the subject of their con- 
 versations, walking or sitting ; and so fami- 
 liar is this knowledge to the Jewish ear, 
 that whenever their law is quoted in conver- 
 sation, which it frequently is, it is usual with 
 an auditor to chime in with the close of the 
 passage, like a chant often repeated. The 
 Pentateuch is delivered by sections corres- 
 ponding with the sabbaths of the year, while 
 each weekly section is further subdivided into 
 two portions, delivered on two days weekly. 
 
 * Cardoso, Excellencias de los Hebreos ; part i. 134. 
 
68 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 At the close of the year " the Holy Law" 
 has thus been twice repeated, and the mighty 
 scroll is again joyfully unrolled to begin the 
 new year. On this solemn occasion occurs the 
 ceremony of a mystical nuptial of " The 
 Bride and Bridegroom of the Law," in the 
 persons of " two sons of the Covenant," 
 elected to this temporary honour. When one 
 of these has read the concluding sentence of 
 the law, the other eagerly continues with its 
 commencement, amidst the acclamations of 
 the synagogue ; thus the end and the begin- 
 ning never separate ; the circle of eternity 
 has no division. The day on which this 
 spiritual union is performed is hailed as " the 
 joy of the Law," and is enlivened by the 
 pomp of an oriental banquet. 
 
 Never have human efforts, mere human 
 efforts, been so marvellously directed to obtain 
 a perpetuity, as have been exemplified in the 
 preservation of their Code ; an immaculate 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 69 
 
 condition was designed to equal the sanctity 
 which it inspired. The verses, the words, and 
 the letters have been counted by the Masorites 
 in a martyrdom of learned and religious dili- 
 gence. A redundant or a deficient letter, 
 or the space between each distinct letter, not 
 duly preserved, or the quality of the skin on 
 which it is written, or the strings which bind 
 it, would render the scroll corrupt and the 
 scribe infamous. No word must be written 
 by heart, or without having been first orally 
 pronounced by the writer. The caligraphy of 
 the Sepher Torah, that is the Book of the 
 Law, is unparalleled for the beauty of its cha- 
 racters ; and the Hebrews still testify their 
 veneration for their Code in a manner which 
 might be considered, by any but an Israelite, 
 as partaking largely of the most superstitious 
 idolatry. A silken bandage protects the Roll 
 of the Law from any polluting touch ; the 
 transit of a mouse across the holy text, or any 
 
70 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 crumbs found in a Sepher Torah, require a 
 public act of expiation, and that the polluted 
 roll should be condemned to the flames. 
 The public reader of the Pentateuch holds 
 the holy code, a little unrolled, suspended 
 over the heads of the people, turning it to 
 the four quarters of the universe. Amid 
 their acclamations, they proclaim that this 
 is the law, which God himself delivered to 
 Moses. On its return to the ark, a gorgeous 
 embroidered mantle covers the sacred roll, 
 and the silver bells in its golden diadem are 
 joyfully rung by the honoured Israelite, who 
 on that day has been called to bear it in his 
 arms. The mantled Law scatters a bene- 
 diction in its passage, though viewed by 
 distant eyes, but happier are those near it, 
 who can kiss the finger which has touched 
 the Holy Code. 
 
 It is remarkable, that with all this rabbin- 
 ical idolatry, with human precautions which 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. Jl 
 
 no other ancient manuscript has ever re- 
 ceived, the text of the Pentateuch has not 
 been exempt from critical new readings. 
 The labours of Ezra may have been great to 
 recover the inspired text of a code which 
 had been long neglected and forgotten, but 
 Ezra was but a scribe. The Hebrews 
 have testified their devotion to the manu- 
 script ; they have counted how often a 
 letter should appear in an uncorrupt copy, 
 that " one hair of that sacred head be not 
 perished ; " the verses, and the half verses 
 in every book are reckoned. Yet the in- 
 tegrity of the Masoretic copies has been 
 proved to admit of various readings. The 
 Rabbins boldly asserted, and the Christians 
 implicitly credited, that the inspired text 
 was immaculate. The erudite Buxtorf, in 
 his Tiberias, asserts that in all parts of 
 the world, the word of God is read alike, 
 without any discrepancies whatever : this 
 
72 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 is a mortifying instance of credulity, even 
 among the learned, who condescend to echo 
 traditional prejudices, without a critical ex- 
 amination*. Since the days of Buxtorf, 
 Kennicott collated about six hundred manu- 
 scripts ; and since Kennicott, the learned 
 De Rossi has published four quarto volumes 
 of various readings, from more than four 
 hundred manuscripts. We are assured that 
 this matter is by no means exhausted. 
 
 The nature of the divine inspiration of 
 the Scriptures has been a topic of contro- 
 versy among divines ; and in modern Judaic 
 history it has led to a very important distinc- 
 tion, and given rise to two parties, whom it 
 is not, perhaps, possible to reconcile. Is the 
 Pentateuch the law of God, or the law of 
 Moses? The fervent Hebrew, Cardoso, 
 inculcates the dogma of Judaism — " It is 
 
 * Butler's Horce Biblicce, p. 97. Lightfoot describes 
 the labours of the Masorites, i. 999, folio ed. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. JS 
 
 called the law of Moses," not that he intro- 
 duced a word, or placed a tittle of his own, 
 for all of it, from the first to the last, was 
 dictated by the Divine Spirit, but is so called 
 to honour the ambassador, or rather the 
 secretary of the Divine Majesty." 
 
 Those who have attempted to burst 
 through the enchanted circle where the living 
 are transformed into immovable statues, and 
 to accommodate themselves to the adverse 
 circumstances of the times, by considering the 
 law only as the law of the Hebrew legislator, 
 and therefore susceptible of alteration, have 
 been always forced back into the spell of or- 
 thodoxy by the overwhelming majority of the 
 Rabbinical Jews ; the excommunicating Pha- 
 risees of Jesus. This strikingly occurred on 
 the memorable occasion of the Parisian San- 
 hedrim, which the empirical genius of Napo- 
 leon assembled in our own days. " The law 
 of Moses" became a favourite phrase with 
 
 E 
 
74 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 the revolutionary Jews, " men of the age," 
 Ephraimites, compared, as we have seen, to 
 " cakes not turned," half Christian half Jew 
 anxious to obtain their projected ameliora- 
 tion in the body politic, and to enter into 
 the brotherhood of mankind. An orthodox 
 member sternly rising exclaimed, that he was 
 amazed at the perpetual use of that vague 
 expression; that the appropriate one was 
 " the law of God ;" for God, he added, is our 
 legislator!" An innovator replied, u My 
 parents were as orthodox as the last member 
 who has spoken can possibly be, yet I well 
 remember to have heard them always say, 
 Tor ah Most, " the law of Moses." The 
 Rabbins, however, entirely sided with the 
 orthodox Hebrew. A mediator rose, observing 
 that the law of Moses is always understood 
 to mean the law of God transmitted to the 
 Jews by Moses. To reconcile these different 
 opinions, this explanation was ordered to be 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. J5 
 
 inserted in the minutes of the sitting. It is 
 not surprising that the Parisian Sanhedrim 
 was not only a mockery, but a failure of the 
 mocker. Even despotism shrinks into the 
 weakness of infancy, when heaven itself seems 
 to place an impassable barrier to its design ; 
 and it encounters minds immutable as the 
 laws which govern them. 
 
 The solitary attachment of the Israelites 
 to their sacred code, has perpetuated their 
 immutable faith. As members of a political 
 institution they were to be made entirely 
 different from every other people, and what no 
 other nation had imagined, their governing 
 principle was to be that of a religious repub- 
 lic. They were withdrawn from the rest of 
 their fellow-beings by isolating them amidst 
 a multitude of rites and ceremonies, to oc^ 
 cupy their unsteady spirits ; these were gor- 
 geous, to indulge them in their sensual tastes 
 for Paganism, without violating the adoration 
 e 2 
 
7^ THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 of the Creator ; and the people were hostile 
 to all their neighbours, that they might never 
 be seduced to blend with them. The same 
 miraculous uniformity was produced in their 
 national manners as in the very constitution 
 of their minds. 
 
77 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A HUMAN SUPERSEDES THE DIVINE CODE. 
 
 The institutes of Moses are not in reality 
 the laws of the Jews. Two human codes 
 have superseded the code delivered from 
 heaven ; the one originates in imposture — 
 that of their traditions ; and the other is 
 founded on tyranny — that of their customs. 
 
 Twelve folios of the Babylonish Talmud, 
 or " the Doctrinal," form this portentous 
 monument in the intellectual history of man. 
 Built up with all the strength and the subtilty, 
 but with all the abuse of the human under- 
 standing ; founded on the infirmities of our 
 nature, a system of superstitions has immersed 
 the Hebrews in a mass of ritual ordinances, 
 
78 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 casuistical glosses, and arbitrary decisions, 
 hardly equalled by their subsequent mimics 
 of the papistry. 
 
 The religious Judaism of the Theocracy de- 
 generated into Rabbinical Judaism, by fabulous 
 traditions and enslaving customs. Dictators 
 of the human intellect, the Rabbins, like 
 their successors, the papal Christians, attempt- 
 ed to raise a spurious Theocracy of their own. 
 A race of dreaming schoolmen contrived to 
 place an avowed collection of mere human 
 decisions among the hallowed verities and 
 the duties of devotion ; to graft opinions of 
 men on the scion of divine institution ; nay, 
 even to prefer the gloss in direct opposition 
 to the divine precept, whenever, as they ex- 
 press it, " the tradition is not favoured" 
 that is, when the oral tradition absolutely 
 contradicts the written law. The Jews live 
 according to their laws, and according to 
 their traditions and their customs ; for their 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 79 
 
 oral traditions have become an integral part 
 of their written law, and their customs have 
 been converted into rites. The Judaic su- 
 perstitions have been substituted for the 
 Code of Revelation. We may ask by 
 what perverse ingenuity, by what enthral- 
 ling witchcraft, has such a revolution been 
 brought about? 
 
 An artifice, or rather the marvellous im- 
 posture of a bold and obscure fiction, one 
 which admitted of no evidence and which 
 allowed of no denial, whose airy nature 
 eluded the grasp while it charmed the eye, 
 was the legend of the Rabbins, by which they 
 assumed that their supplement to the Law 
 of Moses was co-existent with the Law 
 itself. They maintained the existence of 
 " a chain of traditions," which had never 
 been broken from the foundation of Judaism . 
 Whenever they refer to a Talmudical autho- 
 rity, they exultingly exclaim, " This comes 
 from Moses and Mount Sinai !" 
 
80 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 Their tale is circumstantial. Moses, after 
 his frequent retirements to the Sacred Mount, 
 on returning to his tent delivered the written 
 law and its interpretation to Aaron ; but the 
 interpretation, not being written, became 
 their Oral Law. The sons of Aaron were 
 then called in, and at the feet of the holy 
 mediator received the same instruction from 
 their father. The seventy elders were then 
 admitted, and finally any of the people. Four 
 times was the Oral Law thus repeated, and, 
 for the tale has not yet closed, when the 
 inspired legislator was preparing to withdraw 
 from this life, he invited whoever had for- 
 gotten what they had heard from his lips 
 instantly to come to him to refresh their 
 memories. The interval during the last 
 month of the appearance of Moses on earth 
 was occupied in renewing their Oral Law. 
 
 As every fable, every tradition, every 
 superstitious custom, set forth by the Rab- 
 binical school, rests on some phrase or single 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 81 
 
 word in the Scriptures, from whence the most 
 fanciful expositions and the most monstrous 
 inferences may be drawn, it may serve as an 
 instance of their prurient imagination to give 
 the origin on which rests this whole tale. 
 In Exod. xxiv. 12. " The Lord said unto 
 Moses, I will give thee tables of stones, and 
 a Law and Commandments which I have 
 written, that thou mayst teach them." And 
 in Deut. xvi. 32. " Whatsoever thing I com- 
 mand you observe to do it ; thou shalt not 
 add thereto, nor diminish from it." In these 
 passages they trace the divine origin of their 
 traditions ! The first, as to " the Law and 
 Commandment s^ seems much like a pleo- 
 nasm, which, what never pleonasm did, pro- 
 duced twelve volumes in folio ; and as for the 
 second, it is a prohibition which forbids the 
 very existence of these twelve folios, by de- 
 nouncing an addition to, or diminution of, 
 " the Law and Commandments," and which 
 e 3 
 
82 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 being declared to be written, could not re- 
 late to any oral traditions. On such airy 
 ground, it will be found that most of the 
 Rabbinical ordinances have been raised. 
 
 The Fathers of the Synagogue having 
 once put forth this narrative, the sacred origin 
 of their traditions admitted of no denial ; 
 for who dared deny, if he cared not to be 
 scourged, or stoned, or strangled, the Rab- 
 binical punishments of all infidels, that 
 Moses may not have commenced "the chain 
 of tradition ?" A legend not more authentic 
 conveyed the keys of St. Peter where they 
 are now to be found, or the consecrated 
 donations of Matilda, or Helena, of which 
 the possessions are more certain than the 
 gifts. In the twelfth century, the illustrious 
 Maimonides asserted the divine authority of 
 the Traditions ; an instance of genius par- 
 ticipating of the infirmity of its age, or of the 
 partisan spirit closed in its entrenchments 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 83 
 
 and trembling to concede a single step to its 
 opponent. But five centuries afterwards, 
 the learned Leo de Modena, in his Cus- 
 toms of the Jews, cautiously passes over 
 in silence the mysterious Talmudic origin, 
 content to declare that "this Lex per o.vis a 
 law, agreeing with the Law of Moses, long 
 floating on the lips of the wise, prcecepta sa- 
 pientium ;" yet the immutable orthodoxy of 
 the true Rabbinist, in our own times, returns 
 us back to the twelfth century, asserting that 
 the written and the ora/ law were " delivered 
 by the great Legislator in the same order he 
 received both from God in the Mount*. " 
 
 This imposture of the divine origin of 
 their traditions found such favour in the eyes 
 of the Hebrews, that to confirm the faith of 
 the sceptic it was carried on with renovated 
 vigour. They have deduced by names, a series 
 of "the receivers of the traditions " — in chro- 
 
 * David Levi, Ceremonies of the Jews, p. 224. 
 
84 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 nological order. Their oral law was perpe- 
 tuated by Joshua, the judges, the prophets, 
 and descended to the chiefs of the great Syna- 
 gogue, Ezra, Nehemiah, and others. A new 
 dynasty of " the receivers of the traditions," 
 — for with oriental luxuriance they title their 
 later Rabbins, " the Princes of the captivity," 
 — have their names and reigns recorded in the 
 Jewish annals of their divinity schools. It 
 is not amiss to study human follies, that we 
 may be taught our own weakness. Abraham 
 Zacuta, a Spanish Jew, expelled with his 
 brethren from Spain, to reanimate the droop- 
 ing spirits of his fellow emigrants, had form- 
 ed a series of Rabbins from the earliest 
 period he could fix on, and the father of the 
 human race stands in the only place he 
 could, down to the year 1500. Gedaliah con- 
 tinued the authentic series ; and had it not 
 been for their artless anachronisms, and their 
 strange confusion of localities, either at 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 85 
 
 Cordova, or Rome, or Troyes, or Narbonne, 
 or Pundabita, wherever they wandered, we 
 might refer to their historical records with 
 the same confidence as the Jewish Rabbins 
 themselves. 
 
 The truth is, that Judaism had found its 
 last asylum in its numerous academies or 
 colleges, which boasted of a race of Mish- 
 naical doctors, residing at different places. 
 A strange and wondrous spectacle was now 
 exhibited to the universe. A conquered na- 
 tion had changed their military leaders into 
 Rabbins, and their hosts into armies of stu- 
 dents ; we have accounts of these pale-cheeked 
 squadrons, covered only with the dust of the 
 schools ; but where ten and twenty thousand 
 disciples were practising their tactics under 
 some able chieftain of the traditions. 
 
 At the close of the second century of the 
 Christian era, in the reign of Antoninus Pius, 
 flourished Rabbi Judah Hakkadosh, or the 
 
86 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 Holy, who is said to have been " the for- 
 tieth receiver of the traditions from Mount 
 Sinai." The Hebrews must have computed 
 the length of human life by some tradition 
 " not favoured" by the Scripture award of 
 " the days of man." He perceived, amid the 
 ruins of the Jewish government, that the 
 memories of the Mishnaical doctors were fast 
 decaying, a circumstance which assuredly had 
 often happened ; feuds and controversies were 
 rising ; one man would not submit to another, 
 however solemnly assured by his opponent 
 that what he affirmed, "he had from tradi- 
 tion," which heretofore was a sacred and a 
 conclusive authority. 
 
 The Jewish writers, who have a deal of 
 history which no one else knows, and are de- 
 plorably ignorant of that with which all other 
 men are acquainted, have ventured to inform 
 us that this Rabbin Judah the Holy, had 
 converted the imperial polytheist to Judaism, 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 87 
 
 and that it was for this philosopher on the 
 throne that he collected in writing the oral law 
 of his nation. The secret history of this new 
 proselyte of the gate, in the person of the Ro- 
 man emperor, is not so probable as that the 
 Jewish people, having lost everything of sub- 
 stantial greatness in their own country, were 
 now disposed to care little for what is more 
 easily dispersed and lost, than any other thing 
 on earth -words, sayings, arguments, pre- 
 scribed rites and customs, and many dis- 
 tinctions without differences. 
 
 This Rabbin was unquestionably one of 
 those prescient minds which regulate the 
 genius of a people; "the Holy" saw his 
 adored Judaism in its decrepitude — his hand 
 restored it to what he deemed its pristine 
 purity. Skilful and patient of labour, his zeal 
 collected together the precepts of what is 
 called the Mishna, or " the Repetition." It 
 
88 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 was a digest of all their " customs" arranged 
 by titles and chapters. The design of this 
 eminent man in this great compilation was 
 simply to preserve the dicta of his predeces- 
 sors or his contemporaries ; pure in its style, 
 and admirable for its classification, this digest 
 maintains the highest authority, but the Aristo- 
 telian genius of the writer could not advance 
 beyond the aphoristic manner. The Mishna, 
 at first considered as the perfection of human 
 skill and industry, at length was discovered 
 to be a vast indigested heap of contradictory 
 decisions. It was a supplement to the law 
 of Moses, which itself required a supplement. 
 Composed in curt unconnected sentences, 
 such as would occur in conversation, designed 
 to be got by rote by the students from the lips 
 of their oracles, the whole was at length de- 
 clared not to be even intelligible, and served 
 only to perplex or terrify the scrupulous 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 89 
 
 Hebrew. Such is the nature of " traditions" 
 when they are fairly brought together, and 
 submitted to the eye. 
 
 The Mishna now only served as a text, 
 the law of Moses being slightly regarded, to 
 call forth interminable expositions, The 
 very sons of the founder of the Mishna set 
 the first example, by pretending that they 
 understood what their father meant. The 
 work once begun, it was found difficult to 
 get rid of the workmen. The sons of " the 
 Holy " were succeeded by a long line of 
 other rulers of their divinity schools, under 
 the title, aptly descriptive, of the Amor aim 
 or Dictators ! These were the founders of 
 the new despotism ; afterwards wanderers in 
 the labyrinth they had themselves con- 
 structed, roved the Seburaim, or Opinion- 
 is ts 9 no longer dictating, but inferring 
 opinions by keen disputations. As in the 
 decline of empire mere florid titles delight, 
 
90 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 rose the Geonim, or sublime Doctors ; 
 till at length, in the dissolution of this 
 dynasty of theologians, they sunk into the 
 familiar titular honour of Rabbi or Master! 
 The Jews had incurred the solemn reproach 
 in the days of Jesus, of having annihilated 
 the word of God by the load of their Tra- 
 ditions, The calamity became more fearful 
 when two centuries after they received the 
 fatal gift of their collected traditions called 
 Mishna, and still more fatal, when in the 
 lapse of the three subsequent centuries, the 
 epoch of the final compilation, was produced 
 the commentary graced with the title of the 
 Gemara, Completeness, or Perfection ! It 
 was imagined that the human intellect had 
 here touched its meridian. The national 
 mind was completely Rabbinised. It became 
 uniform, stable, and " peculiar." The Tal- 
 mud, or the Doctrinal, as the whole is called, 
 was the labour of nearly five hundred years. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 91 
 
 Here, then, we find a prodigious mass of 
 contradictory opinions, an infinite number 
 of casuistical cases, a logic of scholastic 
 theology, some recondite wisdom, and much 
 rambling dotage; many puerile tales and 
 oriental fancies ; ethics and sophisms, rea- 
 sonings and unreasonings, subtle solutions, 
 and maxims and riddles ; nothing in human 
 life seems to have happened which these 
 doctors have not perplexed or provided 
 against, for their observations are as minute 
 as Swift exhausted in his " Directions to 
 Servants." The children of Israel, always 
 children, were delighted as their Talmud 
 increased its volume and their hardships. 
 The Gemara was a third law to elucidate 
 the Mishna, which was a second law, and 
 which had thrown the first law, the law of 
 Moses, into obscurity. 
 
 The sole education of the Jewish youth 
 is restricted to their law and to their tri- 
 
92 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 bunal. It was early inculcated among the 
 Jews to despise all profane studies, and the 
 candid Leo de Modena acknowledges, that 
 these are held by them to be " dangerous 
 and pernicious." Learning and science, 
 according to the Rabbinical notion, should 
 only be used " as a servant is employed by a 
 master." This contempt in which they hold 
 works not composed in "the Holy Lan- 
 guage" may be detected in the Hebrew 
 Josephus, who, in writing his history in 
 Greek, which was the effort of a politician, 
 has betrayed his national pride by a remark- 
 able Jewish confession. Born in the aristo- 
 cratic tribe, the lofty Levite in closing his 
 history, condescends to inform the idolaters, 
 that he does not regret the time it has cost 
 him in learning the Greek language, al- 
 though his Jewish accent could not obtain 
 its perfect pronunciation. " The truth is, 
 we esteem not those who learn different 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 93 
 
 languages. Such profane studies are better 
 adapted for Slaves than for Freemen, And 
 we consider no one to be truly enlightened 
 who has not acquired that deep knowledge 
 of our law and our holy writings as to be 
 capable of explaining them." Such is the 
 scornful acknowledgment of Josephus, and, 
 seventeen centuries after, Cardoso, a learned 
 physician, confirms the barbarous exclusive- 
 ness. " Our Law is our Science and our 
 Understanding, and truly Israel cares not 
 for human sciences, for uncertain philoso- 
 phy, empirical medicine, dreaming chemistry. 
 Israel cares not to learn the histories of 
 other nations, nor the chronology of civil 
 events, nor the politics of princes*." This 
 holy ignorance of geography and chronology 
 in the Rabbinical histories has proved to be 
 very instructive, since it enables us to detect 
 
 * Cardoso, Ejccellencias de los Jlebreos, p. 135. 
 
94 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 their fabulous narratives and their imaginary 
 personages. Their barbarous disdain of all 
 foreign learning, the characteristic of some 
 semi-civilised races, was long the haughty 
 distinction of the Synagogue. Origen, in 
 replying to the polytheist Celsus, acknow- 
 ledges, that the Jews would never learn the 
 Greek language, and much less care for the 
 dogmas of their philosophers. 
 
 It may still afford some curiosity to learn 
 the means by which this wondrous domina- 
 tion over the genius of a whole people has 
 been effectuated, and fixed on them a volun- 
 tary bondage ; a bondage which the impatient 
 St. Peter, who was not unwilling to compro- 
 mise for many Levitical customs, could no 
 longer endure, while the apostle exclaims, 
 that it was " a yoke upon our necks, which 
 our fathers, nor we, are able to bear." 
 
 The artifice practised by Rabbinical Ju- 
 daism, which finally terminated in the Tal- 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 9<5 
 
 mudical edicts, was to treat the Sacred 
 Code as prodigal of mystic secrets, hid- 
 den in a phrase or hanging on a single 
 word, possibly on a particular letter, to be 
 applied in a sense literal, or symbolical, or 
 anagogical. Hence they tell us " There is 
 not even a letter in the law on which huge 
 mountains are not suspended." These are 
 the Alps on Alps of the Talmud ! We are 
 astonished to discover how, from a single 
 expression in the Scriptures, either obscure, 
 or metaphorical, or literal, the most extrava- 
 gant conclusions are deduced by the oriental 
 imaginations of the Rabbins. The origin of 
 ludicrous customs or the vilest superstitions, 
 nay even the illustration of some silly tale, 
 they insist, lies under the rind of a casual 
 phrase or a particular word, or rather all 
 hang on the theological cobwebs of the 
 Rabbinical school*. 
 
 * The words of a true Rabbinist are, " No hay en la 
 
96 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 St. Paul exulted that he was brought up 
 "at the feet of Gamaliel." A Rabbinical ex- 
 hortation to their humiliated students, illus- 
 trates the style of the apostle ; they are told 
 " to roll themselves in the dust of the feet of 
 the Rabbins," who sate high in their profes- 
 sorial chairs. The first Universities or Col- 
 leges of the Hebrews, after their dispersion, 
 are beautifully described by the more ancient 
 Rabbins, where the students in their ranks 
 " sate in order planted as in a vineyard." 
 These Colleges degenerated into their Yesi- 
 bots or Schools, which the zealous Cardoso 
 calls Santuarios pequenos. Their "little 
 sanctuaries," in the history of human know- 
 ledge, are nurseries for children, who are 
 never to be men. There the human mind, cast 
 into one mould, can only repeat the identi- 
 
 Ley ni aun una letra de la qua! no esten colgados 
 grandes monies" — Cardoso, Excellencias de los He- 
 ir eos, p. 135. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 97 
 
 cal form at the ten thousandth impression, 
 whatever may be the quality of the metal. 
 View the delirious wanderer among "their 
 mountains" of the Talmud — a single word 
 of the Mosaic text explodes into a com- 
 mentary — an opponent starts up, balancing- 
 texts against texts : they ejaculate, they ges- 
 ticulate, eager to contradict, and mutual 
 dilemmas entrap the wranglers. A long 
 intricate argument scares the respondent. 
 Authority is called for — authorities were 
 ready, ere the conflict began, for no opi- 
 nion must be advanced without a reference 
 to some authority— so that nothing is said 
 but what has been formerly said. An opi- 
 nion ventured on without an authority is a 
 heresy, and incurs the damnatory sentence 
 of " strangulation." 
 
 "When confusion is worse confounded, and 
 when great difficulties arise and they can 
 find no issue, dotage on one side, and subter- 
 
 F 
 
98 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 fuge on the other, some human cistern in 
 which are deposited all the waters of Talmudi- 
 cal lore, an ancient Rabbin drops out the 
 saying of some far more ancient Rabbin, or 
 alleges some tradition ; the school re-echoes 
 a shout of triumph for the wisdom which for 
 ever silences two disputants who could never 
 reply to one another. The whole process of 
 these scholastic contests — which, it is said, on 
 every Sabbath when they are practised, give 
 a supernumerary soul to the Israelite — some- 
 what resembles an amicable suit in Chancery ; 
 in their oriental style, it is said to be " mak- 
 ing a Hedge for the Law." These mock 
 logomachies tend to sharpen the faculties of 
 these students ; but their minds are tethered, 
 and they are inevitably confined to their 
 hereditary ignorance. 
 
 These assemblies of disputatious Talmud- 
 ists, however, are sometimes amusing ; and it 
 is considered that many of the ridiculous, as 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 99 
 
 well as a few ingenious tales in the Gemara, 
 were introduced by Rabbins to rouse the 
 scholars when their ears were closed with 
 their eyes. Even in the days of Leo de Mo- 
 dena, that philosophical Jew complained that 
 the pride of disputation was the sole object 
 of the modern Rabbinical schools, who, hud- 
 dled together in their brawlings, were more 
 eager to quote than to confute. 
 
 Such were the arts by which the Rabbins 
 walled in the human intellect ; the system 
 kept the national genius stationary and un- 
 changeable. Liberty of thinking, the only 
 good thing in this world— as the ardent father 
 Paul Sarpi exclaimed, in his noble contest 
 with the Church of Rome — was utterly abro- 
 gated. But all attempts, by any machinery 
 of man's invention, to force an uniformity of 
 opinions, and a conformity in indifferent 
 matters, have never stifled the latent divinity 
 within him of a better temper; the still 
 f 2 
 
iOO THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 -mall voice of truth and conscience, what arti- 
 fice of man has silenced — its cries have been 
 heard even in Spain and Italy. Did no 
 Israelite of a better nature than the Rabbi- 
 nical Pharisee mourn over the heavy calamity 
 which clouded his people ? Did no critical 
 eve detect how their "chain of tradition," 
 which they still drag so heavily, had been 
 battered and forged, and had imposed on the 
 human intellect an usurped dominion, a des- 
 potic rule ; and, under the hallowed veil of 
 religion, concealed the most vulgar supersti- 
 tion ? The dignity of human nature, even 
 anions: the Jews, was not so wholly violated. 
 
 The Rabbins could not conceal from the 
 world that a schism had broken out, between 
 the orthodox Hillel and his master, the inno- 
 vator, Schammai; the Plato and the Aristotle 
 ot the Rabbinical schools. Hillel, one of the 
 great Mishnaic doctors, ranks among the 
 chief masters of the traditions. His history 
 
THE GENIUS OE JUDAISM. 101 
 
 is that of a man of genius. He lived by his 
 manual labour in extreme poverty, but 
 
 ing frequently by the school of Schammai he 
 caught the fever of knowledge, and divided 
 his small gains of the day with the port-, 
 the academy, a^ a bribe for admission. But 
 work failed him, and the porter was obdurate. 
 One Friday Hillel, in despair, climbed at the 
 window to listen to the master, and there 
 remaining far into the night absorbed in me- 
 ditation, he was found in the morning of the 
 Sabbath, buried and nearly perished in snow. 
 •Schammai, affected by this passion for study, 
 opined that such a man merited to be restored 
 to life, and that even the Sabbath might be 
 violated by kindling a fire to chafe the frozen 
 Hebrew. This fact indicates the bold cha- 
 racter of Schammai, who was no advocate for 
 making laws incompatible with daily use ob- 
 ligatory. It is probable that Hillel was mor- 
 tified to have been re-tored to life on the Sab- 
 
102 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 bath, for his orthodoxy soon flamed when 
 admitted among the disciples of his benevo- 
 lent master. 
 
 The rational Schammai protested against 
 the indispensable sway of the traditions, and 
 sometimes impugned their authority ; the 
 orthodox Hillel, who now declared himself 
 to be one of the depositories of the law, 
 turned, away with horror from the daring 
 Reformer, and would not abate a tittle of the 
 traditions. The schism was declared. The 
 disciples of these great Rabbins held dispu- 
 tations for three years, like the Nominalists 
 and the Realists of the scholastic aera ; and, 
 like their successors too, they adopted the 
 weakest of all arguments for a minority, 
 the argumentiim baculinum. The glory 
 of "the little sanctuaries" of Judaic theo- 
 logy was clouded over to their mutual shame. 
 At length it was resqlved to hold a solemn 
 synod, wherein, as usual, the truth would 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 103 
 
 be irrevocably fixed. The question turned 
 on which had best preserved the law and the 
 traditions, and it was decided by a single 
 voice ; but that voice was not terrestrial. 
 Suddenly amidst the disputants, the myste- 
 rious Bath Kol, or " the daughter of the 
 voice," was distinctly heard declaring that 
 " both were the words of the living God, but 
 the decision is according to the school of 
 Hillel." The cunning compromising oracle 
 would not endanger the commonwealth of 
 superstition by supposing that an heretical 
 Rabbin could possibly exist. It is evident 
 that the traditionists have written their own 
 history, but they could not entirely conceal 
 from us that there were anti-traditionists. 
 
 Two centuries had hardly elapsed after 
 the completion of the Talmud, when the sect 
 of the Caraites declared for the written law 
 of Moses, and abolished the traditions as 
 human inventions and human abuses. They 
 derived their name from the word Caret, 
 
104 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 which in the Babylonian dialect signified 
 the Scriptural. The Scripturists opposed 
 the Talmudists : the most rational Jews 
 would of course constitute a very small mino- 
 rity. Dr. Clarke found them in the East, 
 and some in Poland, but no such community 
 appears in the most enlightened quarter of 
 the globe. These Jewish Protestants are 
 supposed not to exceed three or four thou- 
 sand, and they are ever blackened by the 
 orthodox with all the odium theologicum. 
 Condemned as heretics, their offspring are 
 decreed to be Mamzerim, or bastards, and 
 any intermarriage with the Talmudists 
 would be annulled. Wherever a Caraite 
 prefers the distant interests of his family to 
 his own simple creed, by degenerating into 
 a Rabbinist, it is further required that two 
 generations shall pass away ere the taint of 
 sense and piety can sufficiently be purified, 
 to mingle with the blood of daughters of 
 Talmudic dreamers. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 105 
 
 The subject of Tradition in the history 
 of religion has been a fertile topic of debate. 
 We may leave to the French Daille and to 
 the English Whitby and Chillingworth the 
 glory of the contest*. The Hebrew and 
 the Romanist rest much of their doctrines, 
 authorise many of their customs, and deduce 
 
 * Daille was among - the early French Protestants, 
 and in his able Treatise on " The Right Use of the 
 Fathers," attacked their authority in the controversy 
 between Romanists and Protestants. He reduces " Les 
 Saints Peres" to very fallible men ; which was shaking 
 the whole system of traditions in the Church of Rome. 
 Perhaps the keenest of his answerers is Thomas White, 
 the adversary of Hobbes, appended to his " Apology for 
 Rushworth's Dialogues," which involved the subject of 
 traditions. The title betrays our Catholic advocate's 
 spirit ; " Daille's Arts discovered, or his Right Use 
 proved a Downright Abuse of the Fathers." The 
 learned Whitby defended Daille, in his Treatise on 
 " Traditions," where the subject is considerably deve- 
 loped. In Chillingworth's works, as well as in Tillot- 
 son's, and other Protestant divines, it is frequently 
 investigated. 
 
106 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 some mysteries of their creed, on so suspi- 
 cious an origin as that of Tradition. 
 
 To divest all Tradition of authority would 
 be depriving human life of a necessary in- 
 strument of knowledge and of practice. 
 This, it has been observed, would be setting 
 up ourselves for the first of our race ; and 
 to refuse all commerce with our forefathers 
 would reduce us to a very inexperienced 
 state. In the arts there are many secrets 
 which have been transmitted to us solely by 
 Tradition ; and in Egypt, to this day, many 
 practices are traditionally handed down, 
 which, were many such collected, Napoleon 
 observed, might lead to the recovery of some 
 of the lost arts of antiquity. Without the 
 aid of Tradition, say the Rabbins, we should 
 not have been able to have known which 
 was the first month of the year, and which 
 the seventh day of the week. A Caraite, 
 rejecting Traditions, tauntingly interrogated 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 107 
 
 Hillel, the greatest of the Rabbins, on what 
 evidence they rested ? The sage, pausing 
 for a moment, desired the sceptic would 
 repeat the three first letters of the alphabet. 
 This done, that advocate for Traditions in 
 his turn asked, " How do you know how to 
 pronounce these letters in this way, and no 
 other? " " I learnt them from my father/' 
 replied the Caraite : " And your son shall 
 learn them from you," rejoined Hillel ; " and 
 this is Tradition ! " 
 
 Nor will the historian refuse to receive 
 Tradition as the secret witness of Time. 
 Tradition bestows the life of memory on 
 the forgotten. Tradition consigns to us 
 unwritten records of the human race. Tra- 
 dition casts a light in the deep night of the 
 world ; but in remote ages, it is like the pale 
 and uncertain moonlight, which may deceive 
 us by flitting shadows, rather than indeed 
 show the palpable forms of truth. 
 
108 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 It cannot be denied that oral traditions 
 have been preserved for many ages. The 
 Druids, the Scandinavian Scalds, the Scot- 
 tish and the Irish bards or harpers, like 
 the rhapsodists of Greece and the poets of 
 Arabia, deposited in their memories many 
 thousand verses. The methodical discipline 
 of a young Druid would occupy twenty 
 years * ; and the votaries of the Celtic school 
 still imagine that they possess some of these 
 sixty thousand verses, the result of all kinds 
 of knowledge, which they trusted to the ear 
 of their successors. The common law of 
 England was long an unwritten law ; and 
 Fortescue ardently insists that some of our 
 national customs are as old as the primitive 
 Britons. Such fragments of knowledge as 
 poetry may contain, or customs inherited by 
 a race of men, it is not difficult to conceive 
 
 * Caesar, Comment, lib. vi. c. 13. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 109 
 
 may have been perpetuated through a long 
 succession of ages. Yet that a voluminous 
 unwritten work, though a poem, could de- 
 scend entire through a thousand years may 
 startle our belief; and Homer himself, as an 
 individual, and the Iliad as a complete poem, 
 when derived from an age in which all 
 knowledge was oral, cannot escape from the 
 taunt of a suspicious origin. 
 
 It is in the nature of Traditions that they 
 are always increasing, and the older the 
 Tradition, at every remove of time, the 
 weaker is its evidence. We know when a 
 tale is told for the twentieth time, how little 
 it may resemble the first ; like copies taken 
 after copies, like rumours and reports, we 
 find one has omitted what the other has 
 added, and which a third would vainly 
 rectify ; as recollection becomes fainter, the 
 receiver of Traditions supplies by imperfect 
 suggestions, or misconceives by his own 
 
110 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 inadvertency, or bends and shapes to serve 
 a party purpose, for Tradition is a favourable 
 vehicle for human passions. What in its 
 origin sprung from the slightest grounds, 
 through a succession of interested repeti- 
 tions, becomes an established authority ; and 
 what at first was not deemed probable, in 
 length of time is received as undoubted. 
 There is this remarkable in the history of 
 man. Under the influence of imagination 
 and passion, fictions in a series of time 
 acquire the consistency of truths, while 
 truths, attenuating in their descent to us, 
 are liable to be corrupted into falsehoods. 
 Our admirable poet, old Spenser, seems to 
 have accounted for this unhappiness in our 
 fate, for he has said, " that there is not any 
 certain hold to be taken of any antiquity 
 which is received by Tradition, since all 
 men be liars, and many lye when they will*. ,, 
 
 * Spenser's View of Ireland. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. Ill 
 
 An error repeated, may in the course of 
 time become a Tradition, In the history of 
 Tradition, since the whole mass of doctrines 
 and dogmas, and customs, and legendary his- 
 tories, variable and contradictory, mysterious 
 and mystical, lie together in a state of cor- 
 ruption, the period has long arrived, when 
 the genuine are not less susceptible of being 
 contested than the doubtful and the spu- 
 rious. 
 
 An enormous body of Traditions has 
 been imposed on the Hebrew, the Romanist, 
 and their arrogant imitator the Mahometan, 
 incumbering the faith and fettering the 
 faculties of their followers in this dominion 
 of delusion. The history of the Sonnah 
 of the Mahometans, like that of the Tra- 
 ditions of the Romanists, is likewise that of 
 the Talmud of the Jews ; the true mother 
 of these children. After the death of Ma- 
 homet, and at the awful interval of two 
 
112 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 centuries, a sage of the Koran selected 7^75 
 genuine Traditions from 100,000 doubtful, 
 and 200,000 spurious. Few things have 
 generated faster than Traditions, when they 
 had proper fathers. 
 
 Mankind are gross copyists. Nature, 
 narrowed in her revolving circle, affords 
 so little novelty to the audacious temerity 
 of the disturbers of men's consciences, that 
 they have always fallen into the old footsteps. 
 The contradictor of the Talmudists, say the 
 orthodox Rabbins, should suffer a punish- 
 ment indicative of a Rabbin's delicacy and 
 his mercy, that of being stifled in boiling 
 dung ; and an orthodox Mufti excommuni- 
 cates with the same hearty malediction, for 
 the Sonnaist declares, that he who employs 
 his time in disputation, should be fixed on 
 a stake, and carried about with this procla- 
 mation : " This is the reward of him, who, 
 leaving the Koran and the Sonna, applied 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 1 13 
 
 himself to the study of Scholastic Divinity*." 
 To attack Traditions, it was urged against 
 the learned Launoy, is to attack religion ; 
 because Launoy refused to subscribe to a 
 new doctrine from an old Tradition of the 
 Jesuits, and continued to depopulate their 
 polytheistical paradise of saint after saint, in 
 detecting the ignorance of the middle ages, 
 and the fabulous traditions of his own. 
 
 * Sale's Preliminary Discourse to the Koran, p. 202. 
 
114 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE FIRST GREAT CAUSE OF THE SEPARATION OF 
 
 THE HEBREWS THEIR WRITTEN LAW RECEIVED 
 
 AS OF DIVINE INSTITUTION. 
 
 Subdued yet unvanquished, scattered yet 
 not lost, the dispersion of a people without 
 their dissolution is a phenomenon in the 
 annals of mankind ; no human power has 
 broken the solitary unity of this ancient 
 people. 
 
 This phenomenon in the annals of man- 
 kind has baffled the curiosity of even men 
 of philosophical minds, who have sometimes 
 assigned causes quite inadequate to their ef- 
 fects, or have endeavoured to cut the Gordian 
 knot by some fanciful theory. Spurzheim, 
 speculating on the influence of climate upon 
 the organisation, concludes that man, by his 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 115 
 
 intellectual faculties, opposes its influence. 
 He illustrates his position by appealing to 
 the Jewish people, who, dispersed over the 
 whole world, preserve their primitive and 
 characteristic organisation in all countries. 
 The effect, he says, of innateness and propa- 
 gation from parents to children, being much 
 stronger than that of external influence. 
 
 Whether the Hebrews, natives of all cli- 
 mates, bear through their successive genera- 
 tions a peculiar organisation from any other 
 race, we leave to the researches of the ana- 
 tomists, or, if they please, the phrenolo- 
 gists. As a moral historian I must assign 
 other causes why the Jew has preserved, in 
 all climates, his " primitive characteristic." 
 
 This curious point of investigation has 
 often perplexed the most speculative philoso- 
 phers. Toland frequently intimates, in his 
 learned paradoxical writings, a favourite 
 scheme of uniting the Jew and the Chris- 
 
116 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 tian, by convincing them that they professed 
 the same faith. According to his view, he 
 discovers that the earliest followers of Christ 
 consisted both of Jews and Gentiles ; . the 
 Jewish Christians held that the ancient law, 
 the law of heaven, was an ordinance for 
 perpetuity, "everlasting;" and consequently 
 they were bound by the Levitical rites ; but 
 the Gentiles were not subjected to the Mo- 
 saic code, which was expressly designed for 
 " the peculiar people." Toland would thus 
 have inferred, that a Jew might still remain 
 such as he is, and, notwithstanding, unite 
 with the Christian, as he would then stand 
 in the position of those primitive Judaising 
 Christians. The ancient law, Toland insists, 
 was never abrogated by the Christian dis- 
 pensation, as is vulgarly supposed. Where is 
 this abrogation to be found ? The great ad- 
 vent of Jesus, as Jesus himself announced, 
 was " not to destroy, but to fulfil " the 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 117 
 
 law. But the Christian understands the 
 term " eternity " in various passages of scrip- 
 ture, as limited to the existence of the Jew- 
 ish church ; the literal Jew rejects an eternity 
 limited to time or place. Considering Jesus, 
 as Jesus appeared on the earth, in his human 
 nature, none but a rabbinical Pharisee would 
 refuse accepting the founder of the Christian 
 religion, a Jew like themselves, as a mighty 
 reformer of his nation, one who wrestled with 
 the tyranny and the superstitions of " the tra- 
 ditionists, ,, a being excellent as Moses, and 
 who perished for his holiness. In this view 
 of a Jewish Christianity, Toland was pro- 
 bably a Socinian ; and the author of " Chris- 
 tianity not mysterious,'' who found nothing 
 in the Gospel contrary to reason, nor above 
 it, has either eluded the mystery of the divi- 
 nity of Jesus, or should have informed us 
 whether the divinity of Jesus entered into 
 the creed of these Judaising Christians ? 
 
118 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 At this period of his learned reveries, he 
 was startled by the object of our present 
 inquiry. He could not account by any 
 human means for the permanent spectacle of 
 the universal dispersion of the Jewish nation, 
 always preserving themselves as a distinct 
 people. He actually published what he calls 
 " A Problem concerning the Jewish nation 
 and religion," soliciting the learned and in- 
 genious to resolve it for him, before he pub- 
 lished a work, which, with many others, he 
 appears only to have had in his head, on the 
 " Respublica Mosaica," which, he says " He 
 admires infinitely above all forms of govern- 
 ment that ever yet existed." 
 
 I give that part of " The Problem" which 
 states our difficulties. " Can it be demon- 
 strated by the intrinsic constitution or reli- 
 gion of the Jews, how, after the total sub- 
 version of their state for almost seventeen 
 hundred years, and after the dispersion of 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 119 
 
 their nation over the whole habitable earth, 
 being neither favoured nor supported by any 
 potentate, but rather exposed to the con- 
 tempt and hatred of all the world, they have 
 nevertheless preserved themselves a distinct 
 people with all their ancient rites ? while in 
 the meantime the institutions of the Egyp- 
 tians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans, 
 nations that were much more powerful, are 
 long ago entirely abolished ? " 
 
 This is indeed a mighty inquiry ; perhaps 
 a mystery ; it is held even to be a miracle ; 
 but there are miracles which have been ope- 
 rated by those secondary causes which govern 
 human events from age to age, and if our 
 ordinary sagacity discovers these, we only 
 confirm the miracle. The miraculous ope- 
 ration is not the less for having been pro- 
 duced by the ordinary results of human 
 actions. The luminous mind of the author 
 of " The Analogy of Religion," has removed 
 
120 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 the apparent difficulty of the inquiry ; for he 
 observes that " when things come to pass 
 according to the course of nature, this does 
 not hinder them from being his doing, who 
 is the God of Nature.'' 
 
 I would ascribe to four great causes the 
 separation of the Israelites from all the gene- 
 rations of mankind. 
 
 I. The written law of Moses, received as 
 of divine institution. 
 
 II. The Institution of the Sabbath. 
 
 III. The multitude and the minuteness of 
 their rites in their ceremonial law. 
 
 IV. The prohibition of certain aliments. 
 When the Lord decreed that the intellect 
 
 of his Israelites should be uniform, stable, 
 and peculiar, the Eternal secured their very 
 thoughts from a prostration before " the Idols 
 of the mind," as Bacon has finely described 
 the vacillations of fanciful men, the feuds of 
 sectarian opinions, and those delirimenta 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 121 
 
 doctrincB which have hitherto distracted the 
 race of Adam. To obey God, was the great- 
 est virtue of this people ; and the funda- 
 mental principle of this government was the 
 obedience which children must yield to their 
 parent. 
 
 The people were told of the perfection of 
 their law. "This is your wisdom and your 
 understanding in the sight of the nations 
 which shall hear all these statutes, and say, 
 surely this great nation is a wise and under- 
 standing people *.? The restriction of the 
 education of the Jewish people to their divine 
 law, unquestionably preserved them during 
 their national independence as a great and 
 religious community. That political result 
 was realised which has so often baffled 
 the force of human governments to establish 
 
 * Deut. iv. 6. 
 
 G 
 
 <\ 
 
122 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 —universal conformity. There could be no 
 non-conformity in the land of Israel ; any 
 opposition to the code of the Theocracy from 
 a protester or a dissenter would have involved 
 them in an overt act of treason, since their 
 religion was their law \ and the citizen 
 who violated the civil precepts of the Mosaic 
 code necessarily incurred the pains of the 
 blasphemer, since their law was their 
 religion. 
 
 The influence of a constitution, received 
 from the hand of heaven itself, over the 
 national character, made the Israelites differ- 
 ent from every other nation. There was an 
 obdurate resistance in their national charac- 
 ter which refused to amalgamate with that of 
 their neighbours. The principle of a religi- 
 ous commonwealth displays its lasting opera- 
 tions throughout the unexampled government 
 of the Hebrews. "The world was created 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 123 
 
 for Man to worship," is the vital principle 
 of Judaism*. Every day is portioned out for 
 repeated orisons, and is hallowed by a multi- 
 plicity of religious acts ; the exterior forms of 
 devotion are daily habits, and mingle even 
 with their avocations — in the street or the 
 market — and morning and evening must 
 they alike confess the unity of God. 
 
 The Mosaic dispensation appears to have 
 been granted for the use of the Israelites 
 during the Theocracy. The divine code was 
 designed to make an inconsiderable people a 
 great nation, and long it conducted the Chil- 
 dren of Israel during their political tutelage. 
 But the eternal principles of their religious 
 
 * Thesoro dos Dinim que a povo de Israel he obri- 
 gado a saber e observar, p. 1. These curious observances 
 were collected by Manasseh ben Israel, the learned and 
 eminent person who negociated with Cromwell a settle- 
 ment here for the Jews. 
 
 G 2 
 
124 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 government could never be extinct in the 
 Jewish constitution. The memory of the 
 Theocracy could never depart from this anci- 
 ent people, and never have they ceased to 
 renew the claim to their pristine glory. Such 
 has been the awful source of an enthusi- 
 asm experienced by no other generation of 
 men. 
 
 The patriotism, that is, the religion, of the 
 Jewish people, when the iron had not yet 
 rusted in their hands, vouched their national 
 faith by heroic acts, not eclipsed by those 
 romantic people the Greeks and the Romans. 
 No people but the subjects of a Theocracy 
 could have invariably rejected conditional 
 terms with their enemies — but their enemies 
 they beheld as the enemies of their God. 
 What other people like these have combated 
 in the field — have rushed, in their last de- 
 spair, on suicidal immolations ; and have 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 125 
 
 bowed their heads in the silence of martyr- 
 dom for their religion, their laws, their 
 customs, their creed ? 
 
126 
 
 CHAPTER VIII, 
 
 THE SECOND GREAT CAUSE OF THE SEPARATION OF 
 THE HEBREWS FROM EVERY OTHER PEOPLE, IS 
 THE SABBATIC INSTITUTION. 
 
 An entire cessation from all the affairs of 
 life on each seventh day is a Jewish institu- 
 tion, and is not prescribed by the laws of any 
 other people. The minutest violation of its 
 rigid observance, incurred the sentence of 
 death. A man gathering faggots in a wood 
 was condemned to the punishment of lapi- 
 dation, a punishment reserved only for the 
 blasphemous, who, in mockery of the God 
 of Israel, dared to pronounce the ineffable 
 name. At a lower period of the Israelitish 
 history, Isaiah, in his sublime style, im- 
 pressed its extreme rigidity ; "If thou 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 127 
 
 restrain thy foot on the Sabbath, from 
 doing thy pleasure on the holy day, and 
 shalt call the sabbath a delight, and the holy 
 feast of Jehovah honourable, and shalt honour 
 it by refraining from thy purpose, from pur- 
 suing thy pleasure, and from speaking vain 
 words — then shalt thou delight thyself in 
 Jehovah." So inviolable was held the sanc- 
 tity of this day, that its uninterrupted course 
 was preferred to the preservation of life itself, 
 of which history has recorded some instances 
 of the most solemn nature, and some whose 
 result has been not a little ludicrous. 
 
 The reason of this peculiar institution has 
 been often inquired into. Moses, in describ- 
 ing the Creator as resting from the labours 
 of creation on the Sabbath day, and ordain- 
 ing the strictest ceremonies of the Sabbath 
 as a memorial of the divine repose, only 
 accommodated figurative expressions to the 
 sensual comprehension of his tribes — an 
 
128 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 intellectual Omnipotence, whose workman- 
 ship is not the work of hands, could not be 
 comprehended by their gross conceptions. 
 
 The great legislator of the Hebrews had, 
 also, assigned another reason for the Sabbatic 
 institution, for he told the Israelites that 
 the Sabbath commemorated their deliverance 
 from Egypt. At a late period of their his- 
 tory, the Jewish apologists of their people, 
 when they were contemned and aspersed 
 for its observance by the Greeks and the 
 Romans, assigned different motives for the 
 Sabbatical institution. Philo, after some pla- 
 tonic fancies of the mystical number seven, 
 for its quietness, floridly describes the seventh 
 day as "the universal festival of nature," 
 which ought not to be peculiar to any people ; 
 but Josephus informs us, that the Sabbath of 
 the Jew was instituted for the purpose of 
 securing a regular application to the study 
 of their law. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 129 
 
 To the ancient Polytheists, nothing seemed 
 so joyless as the austerity of a Jewish Sabbath. 
 It was a strange abandonment of all the avo- 
 cations of life. They saw the fields of the 
 Hebrew forsaken by the labourer ; the ass 
 unsaddled ; the oar laid by in the boat ; they 
 marked a dead stillness pervading the habi- 
 tation of the Israelite ; the fire extinguished, 
 the meat unprepared, the man servant and the 
 maiden leave their work, and the trafficker, 
 at least one day of the week, refusing the 
 offered coin. When the Hebrews had armies 
 of their own, they would halt in the midst 
 of victory on the eve of the Sabbath, and on 
 the Sabbath day ceased even to defend their 
 walls from the incursions of an enemy. 
 
 Sabbatarians became a term of reproach 
 for the Jews with the Polytheists, who never 
 could conceive the design of the Sabbath 
 from its singular observances. The blunders 
 of Plutarch are ludicrous ; Tacitus and 
 g3 
 
130 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 Juvenal imagined that the custom was a 
 mere indulgence of national indolence. 
 Sometimes they mistook the solemn Sabbath 
 for a penitential fast, as did Augustus when, 
 writing to Tiberius, alluding to his own ab- 
 stinence, he said, that " no Jew kept so strict 
 a fast on the Sabbath, as he did upon that 
 day." The epigrammatic Martial alludes to 
 the.windy sourness of the empty stomachs of 
 fasting Sabbatarians. The primitive Christians 
 abhorred the observances of the Jewish Sab- 
 bath, which they considered as only prac- 
 tised by the contemners of " the Lord's day." 
 Justin Martyr tells Tripho the Jew in the 
 full spirit of the times, that " they would 
 gladly endure the most horrible tortures 
 that men and devils could devise to inflict 
 on them, rather than keep your Sabbath" 
 
 The interior delights of the habitation 
 of the Hebrew were alike invisible to the 
 Polytheist and the Christian fathers. They 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 131 
 
 heard not the domestic greetings which 
 cheerfully announced " the good Sabbath," 
 nor the paternal benediction for the sons, nor 
 the blessing of the master for his pupils. 
 They could not behold the mistress of the 
 house watching the sunset, and then lighting 
 the seven wicks of the lamps of the Sabbath, 
 suspended during its consecration ; for oil to 
 fill the Sabbath-lamp, the mendicant implored 
 an alms. But the more secret illumination of 
 the law on the Sabbath, as the Rabbins ex- 
 pressed it, bestowed a supernumerary soul on 
 every Israelite. The sanctity felt through the 
 Jewish abode on that day, was an unfailing 
 renewal of the religious emotions of this pious 
 race. Thus in the busy circle of life was 
 there one immoveable point where the weary 
 rested, and the wealthy enjoyed a heavenly 
 repose. It was not without some truth that 
 Leo of Modena, a philosophical Hebrew, 
 called this day, " the festival of the Sabbath. y * 
 
132 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 It is beautiful to trace the expansion of 
 an original and vast idea in the mind of a rare 
 character who seems born to govern the 
 human race. Such an awful and severe 
 genius was the legislator of the Hebrews. 
 The Sabbatical institution he boldly extended 
 to a seventh year, equally as he had appointed 
 a seventh day. At that periodical return 
 the earth was suffered to lie fallow and at 
 rest. In this " Sabbath of the land," the 
 Hebrews were not permitted to plant, to sow, 
 or to reap ; and of the spontaneous growth 
 no proprietor at those seasons was allowed to 
 gather more than sufficed for the bare main- 
 tenance of his household. There was also re- 
 lease of debtors. The sublime genius of Moses 
 looked far into futurity when, extending this 
 great moral influence, he planned the still 
 greater Sabbatical institution for every fifty 
 years. Seven Sabbaths of years closed in 
 the Jubilee, or the great year of release. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 133 
 
 Then at the blowing of the horn in the 
 synagogue the poor man ceased to want ; the 
 slave was freed ; all pledges were returned ; 
 and all lands reverted to their original pro- 
 prietors. To prevent an excessive accu- 
 mulation of wealth, the increase of unlimited 
 debts, and the perpetuity of slavery, this cre- 
 ator of a political institution like no other, 
 decreed that nothing should be perpetual 
 but the religious republic itself. 
 
 But it has been the fate of Israel to witness 
 her inspired ordinances polluted by the in- 
 ventions and the artifices of men. What was 
 sacred they have made ridiculous. The most 
 scrupulous superstitions had long been super- 
 added to the observance of the Sabbath, and 
 practised by the Rabbinical Pharisees in the 
 days of Jesus. The female was not allowed 
 to observe herself in a mirror lest she might 
 be tempted to pluck a hair ; the Israelite might 
 not even scrape the dirt off his shoes ; he 
 
134 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 must not lift a weight, nor touch money, nor 
 ride, nor bathe, nor play on an instrument ; 
 the most trivial act of domestic life connected 
 with labour or business was a violation of the 
 Sabbath. Even the distance of a Sabbath- 
 walk was not to exceed that space which lies 
 between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives ; 
 this was the distance between the Temple and 
 the Tabernacle ; it had been nicely measured, 
 and the Hebrew in Rome on his Sabbath was 
 still counting the steps of a Sabbath-day's 
 journey. 
 
135 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE THIRD GREAT CAUSE WHICH SEPARATED THE 
 JEWISH PEOPLE FROM THEIR NEIGHBOURS, WAS 
 THE MULTITUDE OF THEIR RITES AND THEIR 
 CEREMONIAL LAW. 
 
 The pious and the enlightened Spencer, 
 in his great work on the Hebrew laws, pro- 
 found, extensive, and original in research, has 
 arranged in opposite columns the contending 
 opinions respecting the origin of the remark- 
 able custom of circumcision, and having 
 furnished whatever his reading and his medi- 
 tation could afford, he has declined deliver- 
 ing any opinion himself, as he expresses it, 
 in re tarn sacra et perplexa *. 
 
 The subject is sacred, since we are informed 
 
 * Spencer de Leg-. Heb., lib. ii. sect. iv. 
 
136 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 by scripture that circumcision as a rite was 
 instituted by the divine command to Abram ; 
 " my covenant shall be in your flesh for an 
 everlasting covenant;" and it is perplexed, 
 because the custom of circumcision has been 
 discovered to have existed among the Egyp- 
 tians, and to have been practised among other 
 nations. The physician Celsus, in reproaching 
 the Jews for attaching a religious ceremony 
 to its observance, adds that they have it 
 only in common with many other people. 
 
 The Jewish rite long excited, among theo- 
 logical inquirers, too severe a controversy. It 
 was imagined that to ascribe a Jewish rite to 
 an Egyptian custom, or to suppose that it was 
 derived from any people whatever, was a covert 
 attack on the authenticity of the Mosaic reve- 
 lation ; it was therefore assumed that the 
 Egyptians must have borrowed the custom 
 from the patriarchs, for that the rite is of 
 divine institution. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 137 
 
 Tindal, the author of " Christianity as 
 old as the Creation," asserted, as the Empe- 
 ror Julian had already done, that " this 
 institution was originally an Egyptian cus- 
 tom;" and Tindal therefore inferred that 
 Abraham had only adopted the practice to 
 render his posterity more agreeable to the 
 Egyptians. Marsham, and other profound 
 researchers into remote antiquity, have also 
 been struck by the similarity of the Jewish 
 with the Egyptian customs. The golden 
 calf in the wilderness, Selden discovered to 
 have been an Egyptian worship. We shall 
 shortly ourselves discover a very remarkable 
 one still daily practised. Le Clerc, in his 
 " Commentary on Genesis," on the present 
 subject of circumcision, is paralysed by inde- 
 cision, and in his despair appeals to the sage 
 Spencer, who, we have shown, preserves a 
 mournful silence. Shuckford, in his " Sa- 
 cred and Profane History," has recourse to 
 
138 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 a passage of the suspicious Sanchoniathon, 
 who has ascribed the origin of circumcision 
 to Bus, whom Shuckforj), in his poetical 
 discoveries on the most abstruse incidents of 
 theological curiosity, demonstrates to be 
 Abraham himself; a conclusion which would 
 at once close the dispute. 
 
 It was too long considered as derogatory 
 to the character of the inspired legislator to 
 imagine that Moses should have adopted rites 
 and customs from the Heathens ; and it was 
 insinuated that this opinion could only have 
 been designed for a covert attack on his 
 divine mission. The learned Spencer, how- 
 ever, has collected a multiplicity of facts of 
 this kind, in his great work, and since his 
 labours others remain to be added. Yet this 
 erudite divine, whose piety no one arraigns, 
 has incurred censure for his luminous disco- 
 veries. 
 
 It was not in the natural course of events 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 139 
 
 that the greater nation should have adopted 
 the rites and the customs of the lesser ; or 
 that a hierarchy should borrow those of a 
 sect, a fugitive race to whom they had 
 granted an asylum, converted into slaves, 
 and pursued as enemies. Of the truth of 
 the discoveries of Spencer, and others who 
 have followed in the same track, we have 
 recently a reluctant avowal from a cotempo- 
 rary, who, however, has always in reserve 
 some recondite fancy to substitute for posi- 
 tive facts. I shall transcribe the passage. 
 " Instead of supposing that the Pagans bor- 
 rowed from the Israelites, it has been sup- 
 posed that the Israelites borrowed from the 
 Pagans. Nor has this opinion been advanced 
 merely by infidels ; as at first glance might 
 be shrewdly suspected ; no less names than 
 those of Spencer and Warburton stand 
 pledged to advocate it. The resemblance 
 in question is indeed too palpable to be 
 
140 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 denied, but its true origin I believe to have 
 been this, that Judaism and Paganism sprung 
 from a common source." That source the 
 learned, but too theoretical writer, ascribes 
 to the patriarchal revelation, so long anterior 
 to the Mosaic*. 
 
 But circumcision, considered merely as a 
 national custom, seems of itself not to be 
 less mysterious than the divine institution of 
 the rite. The introduction of a practice 
 marked by this strange violence of nature 
 among a whole people, must first have been 
 repugnant to their feelings. The occasion, 
 or the reason which led to it, has been so 
 entirely lost in the records of mankind, that 
 the most ancient writers can only allege 
 the most fanciful and contradictory conjec- 
 tures. The origin of the circumcision, like 
 that of the slaughter of animals in sacrifice to 
 
 * Faber on the origin of the Pagan Idolatry, ii. 105. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 141 
 
 the Creator, when the blood flowed in torrents 
 around the altar, must remain among those 
 inexplicable incidents which indicate other 
 modes of feeling, and another state of society 
 than we are acquainted with. Scholars, in 
 the pride of erudition, discuss too confidently 
 events which happened before the fable of 
 Troy. The learned on these occasions think 
 by systems, which depend on the assumption 
 of arbitrary statements, often at variance, 
 and always doubtful. One party conceives, 
 that the most ancient nations drew their 
 religion and their mysteries from the Jews, 
 and that the instructors of Egypt were Abra- 
 ham and Joseph. In the deities of Egypt they 
 view only the disguised personages of the 
 Mosaic history ; Osiris is converted into 
 the Adam, the Abraham and the Moses of 
 the Scripture ; Moses himself, whom Huet, 
 indeed, discovers to be Bacchus, is, by 
 
142 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 another sage in Egyptic lore, made out to be 
 their Typhon, or the Satan to whose machi- 
 nations the Egyptians ascribed all the evils 
 which happened to them. Basnage adopts 
 the probable system, that the Egyptians had 
 a distinct theology of their own, and that 
 their ancient superstitions were not abolished 
 by their intercourse with the Israelites. The 
 indiscriminate number of their sacred ani- 
 mals, and their strange worship of Apis, 
 indicates an extraordinary religion, which 
 enters neither into Judaism nor Christianity. 
 If we cannot deny that circumcision was 
 a custom among the Egyptians, we must 
 assert that with the Jews it became a divine 
 ordinance, commanded under the pain of 
 death. In the Patriarchal dispensation it 
 was a religious sign of God to man : under 
 the Mosaic, when it had fallen into desue- 
 tude, it was revived to distinguish the He- 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 143 
 
 brew from their uncircumcised neighbours, 
 and thus became also a political sign ; 
 signum politician is the happy expression 
 of the erudite Spencer. It was a seal of 
 bloody by which all foreigners pledged their 
 fealty to the Hebrew Republic. 
 
 This wonderful combination of a religious 
 and political sign was productive of the most 
 important results. "The everlasting cove- 
 nant " is sealed on the body of every Israel- 
 itish child ; thus every man of the race enters 
 into Judaism without the interposition of his 
 own choice. If, like the anabaptists, this 
 baptism, a baptism of blood, had been left 
 for his manhood, he might have been capri- 
 cious or reluctant. The Jewish apostate is 
 haunted, or betrayed by the indelible testi- 
 mony, while the loyal Israelite who bears the 
 sign proudly calls himself " A son of the co- 
 venant." The stranger who would enter into 
 the Jewish community would not come to 
 
144 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 receive this painful and perilous mark with- 
 out the utmost resolvedness of mind. It was 
 a sign from which he never could be freed, 
 and which would ever make him the scorn 
 of his own people should the vacillator ever 
 return to them. No renegados were ever 
 found in the Jewish nation, observes Spencer. 
 The severity of the initiation into Judaism 
 banished all levity of feeling and infirmity 
 of purpose. 
 
 The practice of circumcision, consecrated 
 by the Jewish religion, had something mys- 
 tically expressive of purity ; for in the figura- 
 tive style of the apostles, who then were dis- 
 posed to get rid of the sacred sign altogether, 
 allusion is made to "the circumcision of the 
 heart ;" and the interior holiness of the mind 
 they described as " the circumcision which 
 is not made by hands." 
 
 Thus a rite apparently trivial, and to a 
 mother barbarous, in the prescience of the 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 145 
 
 divine legislator was designed for the mighty 
 end it has accomplished. The wife of Moses 
 wailing over her infant at the moment it was 
 consecrated to the God of Israel, murmured 
 at the stroke of the cutting flint in this bap- 
 tism of blood, or, as it is called, " the blood 
 of the alliance ; " but the tender mother was 
 not conscious that the piercing cry of her 
 child was the means of perpetuating an en- 
 tire race. 
 
 ii 
 
146 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE FOURTH GREAT CAUSE WHICH SEPARATED THE 
 HEBREWS FROM ANY INTERCOURSE WITH THE 
 PEOPLE WITH WHOM THEY LIVED THE PROHIBI- 
 TION OF PARTAKING OF THE FOOD OF WHOEVER 
 WAS NOT AN ISRAELITE. 
 
 The simple distinction of pure and im- 
 pure animals for food in the ritual of Moses, 
 which was followed up by innumerable Rab- 
 binical ordinances on aliments, has, more 
 than any other of their rites and customs, 
 thrown the people of Israel out of the great 
 family of mankind. 
 
 A religious denial to partake of the food 
 of another people, impedes the social func- 
 tions of civil life, and estranges man from 
 all the sympathies of fellowship. Mankind 
 have always associated a hallowed feeling with 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 147 
 
 the rites of hospitality, a feeling which has 
 been transmitted from the rudest, to the 
 most polished aeras. We find it in the 
 Indian host, who watches his guest to supply 
 his food ; in the pledge-cup of the north- 
 ern barbarian, and in the salt of the Arab ; 
 and whenever that sacred rite of hospitality 
 has been fatally violated, it has aggravated 
 even the enormous crimes of treachery or 
 assassination. 
 
 The causes which led to the prohibition 
 of certain aliments, and the distinctions 
 observed of animals pure and impure, have 
 only been partially conjectured, but never 
 satisfactorily accounted for. 
 
 These difficulties may be traced to a 
 remote period. Aristeus, the envoy of Pto- 
 lemy Philadelphus, having been sent to the 
 high priest Eliezer, to procure a copy of the 
 Greek version of the Pentateuch, inquired, 
 why Moses had prohibited certain animals 
 ii 2 
 
148 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 from being eaten, and others from being 
 sacrificed. The unexpected inquiry seems 
 to have disconcerted the High Priest as 
 much as it had puzzled the envoy, who 
 himself was, probably, a Jew. The High 
 Priest, however, proceeded to amuse the 
 Egyptian ambassador, by assigning, as a 
 reason, that the precepts concerning animals 
 were enigmatical, like the symbols of Pytha- 
 goras and the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians. 
 He described, with iEsopian fancy, how the 
 hare represents libidinousness, the swine im- 
 purity, and the fox , craftiness ; and with 
 some occult conceits, how the ostrich was the 
 representative of hypocrisy, because, though 
 it mimicked the stork in the whiteness of its 
 wings, it failed in its fleetness ; while, the 
 chameleon, like thecommon flatterer, changed 
 at will, reflecting a colour foreign to itself. 
 These mystical fancies, in those puerile days, 
 may have satisfied the too inquisitive envoy, 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 149 
 
 but certainly they never assisted him in com- 
 prehending the Law of Moses. 
 
 This opinion, that the prohibited animals 
 were symbolically expressive of moral purity 
 and impurity, was a Platonic reverie which, 
 among others, was current with the Fathers*. 
 Cardoso, when the principles of Judaism 
 are not endangered by too acute and pene- 
 trating inquiries, is no unskilful reasoner. He 
 has observed that some animals are declared 
 to be clean which offer no doubtful symbols 
 of vicious habits; as the goat for lasciviousness, 
 
 * The Gospel ascribed to Barnabas contains an ampli- 
 fication of these symbolical interpretations. See his 
 puerile but amusing chapter ix., that the commands of 
 Moses concerning clean and unclean beasts have a 
 spiritual signification. Austin, Irenaeus, Cyril, and Ter- 
 tullian adopted this absurd mode of reasoning, as they 
 did the nonsensical allegories of the Cabalists ; and yet it 
 is from these doting fathers that the church of Rome 
 would draw the pure waters of the religion of Christ. 
 
150 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 while others condemned as unclean are sym- 
 bolical of virtues, as the dog, eminent for 
 fidelity. This zealous Jew, having collected 
 all that his learning or ingenuity could dis- 
 cover, fairly spun the net in which he is him- 
 self caught, and it is only by appealing in his 
 distress to Heaven that his Rabbinical genius 
 can silence any human objection. 
 
 " It is the obligation of Jews," says the 
 ardent Hebrew, "to observe these precepts 
 as coming from God, although to us the rea- 
 son may be impenetrable ; God exacts obedi- 
 ence and not speculation. But since the 
 human understanding pants with the desire 
 of knowledge ; and is but too prone to inves- 
 tigate causes, everywhere searching for ap- 
 parent or probable reasons, although the right 
 and the certain are often hid from us, we may 
 be allowed to inquire into the causes of the 
 precepts ; but to observe them is a duty which 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 151 
 
 precedes inquiry, and obedience is more ac- 
 ceptable than investigation*." So reasons our 
 Bramin. 
 
 Of these prohibited animals and aliments 
 many have been ascertained not to be sanitive. 
 In the hot climate of the East, the swine, the 
 hare ; the fat or suet particularly enjoined to 
 be burnt in the sacrifices, and never eaten; 
 the blood corrupting in the meat ; the limb of 
 a living animal ; the meat of one which had 
 died ; the rank shell-fish, the fat oyster ; 
 birds of prey and carnivorous animals ; all 
 these would be of bad digestion, and some 
 even noxious. But the reason of forbidding 
 certain aliments to be eaten by the Israelites 
 could not be for any pernicious effects they 
 might produce on their health, for the truth 
 is that many of these forbidden aliments are 
 not unwholesome ; Pagan and Gentile ate of 
 
 * Las Excellencias de los Hebreos, p. 30. Col. ii. 
 
152 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 them, and were not more sickly than the 
 Israelite who so rigidly abstained. Among the 
 prohibited animals are the rabbit, and some 
 wild fowl, the moor-cock, and others which 
 are more salutary than the flesh of the buffalo 
 or wild ox, or the goat. The greater part of 
 the prohibited food are noxious aliments, but 
 all noxious aliments are not prohibited food. 
 If the health of the Israelite had been the sole 
 motive of these ordinances, a book of medical 
 precepts had sufficiently warned the people. 
 We are not told that these prohibited ali- 
 ments are pernicious, but that they are 
 impure ; it was not commanded to avoid 
 whatever is noxious, which would have left 
 every one to decide for himself, but the ali- 
 ments themselves are specified. Must we 
 not therefore infer, asks the Jew Cardoso, that 
 these injunctions are of divine institution for 
 divine purposes ? A learned Rabbin, at the 
 time Napoleon held the extraordinary San- 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 153 
 
 hedrim at Paris, was called on to reply to 
 those who, with political wisdom, would have 
 abolished the ritual of forbidden food. His 
 illustration of this difficult inquiry was inge- 
 nious, but the result was the argument of 
 Cardoso. " The camel is an interdicted ani- 
 mal," replied the Chevalier de Cologna,'Grand 
 Rabbin, " and as we know that its flesh yields 
 a nutritious and even delicate meat among 
 the orientalists, the great legislator must 
 have had some more important motive in pro- 
 hibiting the use of these animals as food ; and 
 therefore we must infer that the distinction 
 between clean and unclean animals must origi- 
 nate in a higher and more occult source*." 
 
 * Le Chevalier de Cologna, Grand Rabbin de Consis- 
 toire central des Israelites de France, in his observations 
 on the work entitled "Les Juifs de xix me siecle." If that 
 most useful animal of burthen, the camel, was rare during 
 the administration of Moses, it would be a reason why it 
 was wise not to kill it for food ; and when it died it 
 could not then be considered as wholesome. 
 
 H 3 
 
154 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 To this day the Jews may eat of no beast 
 which has not been slaughtered by a Jewish 
 killer. He searches the animal or the fowl for 
 any blemish, and on his approval it is called 
 hasher or lawful; a leaden seal, stamped 
 with the Hebrew word, is affixed to the meat, 
 attesting its Jewish purity. Here again we 
 discover this religious custom, as we have dis- 
 covered others, among the Egyptian priests, 
 whom Herodotus describes as minute exami- 
 ners of the victim of sacrifice, that, as he tells 
 us, it should be "free from those blemishes 
 which are specified in their sacred books." 
 The priest then applied the impression of his 
 seal. " This seal," adds the father of profane 
 history, " is of such great importance, that to 
 sacrifice a beast which bears it not is deemed 
 a capital offence*." The scape-goat of the 
 Hebrews is found among the Egyptian 
 
 * Euterpe, s. 38. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 155 
 
 priests, which Herodotus has described. The 
 priests of Egypt imprecated on the head of 
 the animal that "whatever evil threatened 
 those who sacrificed might fall upon that 
 head." The Egyptians never ate the head 
 of an animal lest it should have undergone 
 some awful malediction. But the similarity 
 of the superstition is still more striking by 
 what Herodotus further notices: — "When 
 they have cursed the animal they sell it to 
 the Grecian traders, or throw it into the 
 river." This was exactly practised by the 
 Israelites. We are struck by the similar cus- 
 toms of the Hebrews, the Egyptians, and the 
 Hindoos, and we feel that there is a link 
 wanting in the chain of ancient history which 
 possibly may one day be recovered. We 
 may even be astonished how an apparent 
 trivial custom could, for some thousand cen- 
 turies, still be operating as an inseparable 
 obstacle to the melting down of this insu- 
 
156 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 lated people with the nations among whom 
 they live. The customs of oriental nations 
 are stationary as the human mind seems to 
 remain among them. These sealed meats, 
 mean and trivial as the custom may seem, work 
 a mighty result ; for they serve to manifest 
 the local existence of Judaism to some Jewish 
 stranger. I can illustrate this fact hy a 
 curious anecdote. In a manuscript in my 
 possession, which contains the history of the 
 flight of some Spanish Jews from the inqui- 
 sition about two centuries ago, in making the 
 first port they could they landed at Embden. 
 Without friends, and with no knowledge of 
 the country, the wanderers stood lost, not 
 knowing whither to direct their steps. On 
 entering the city they met a lad carrying a 
 goose with a label annexed to it " in charac- 
 ters well known," observes the cautious me- 
 morialist. By the Hebrew word hasher they 
 instantly recognised the lad to be a Jew : a 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 157 
 
 discovery inspiring the emigrants with infi- 
 nite joy. They followed the lad home, and, 
 although their Spanish was not intelligible, 
 the sealed meat served to guide the foreigners 
 to their secret purpose, which was that of re- 
 ceiving the most solemn rite of Judaism 
 from the hand of an Israelite, which they 
 had found impracticable in catholic Spain. 
 
 Cardoso, in a weak attempt to reconcile 
 the three contending systems which assigned 
 the causes for the religious prohibition of 
 certain animals, concludes, " In this difficult 
 question we may accept all the three opinions ; 
 that the unclean animals are unwholesome ; 
 are symbols of vice ; and have some occult 
 impurity which contaminates the souls of 
 Israel." In this manner formerly men rea- 
 soned on theological points which they could 
 never resolve. 
 
 The distinction of forbidden meats in the 
 Mosaic code, was an ordinance which com- 
 
158 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 bined two great purposes. First, it abolished 
 every domestic intercourse with the sur- 
 rounding nations. The greatest of legislators 
 betrays his minute anxiety to exclude his 
 children from all communication with their 
 neighbours ; for though Heaven had granted 
 him the inspiring conviction that his waver- 
 ing multitude were designed to accomplish a 
 great end, Israel had furnished but too many 
 proofs of their partaking of our common 
 nature, liable like their fellow-beings to the 
 chances and the changes by which the Eter- 
 nal regulates the destinies of empire. Spen- 
 cer and other learned researchers on this 
 point, have made an interesting discovery ; 
 many of the prohibited aliments were used 
 among the rites of idolatry, and may be 
 classed among those which Cardoso and his 
 school imagined to have had " some occult 
 impurity which contaminated the souls of 
 Israel." The mystical conclusion of these 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 169 
 
 Rabbinists seems now cleared up, though 
 probably they were ignorant of the real occa- 
 sion. The other design of these ordinances 
 is evident, where we find that many of the 
 precepts were medicinal ; on the health of a 
 people, " the fewest of all people," and afflict- 
 ed by a severe cutaneous disease, depended 
 the public safety. We observe the inspired 
 legislator through his entire code has com- 
 bined the temporal with the religious happi- 
 ness of his people. 
 
 We have offered on this curious and ob- 
 scure subject of prohibited animals, and 
 aliments, many evident causes for the origin 
 of the Levitical precepts ; but our labours 
 must not yet close ; we have now to show the 
 monstrous extravagancies which the doctors 
 of the synagogue have grafted on the Mosaic 
 code. By a system of superstitions they 
 have cast their people into a bondage of ridi- 
 culous customs, which have been converted 
 
160 
 
 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 into solemn rites by their " Dictators," 
 their " Opinionists," and their " Sublime 
 Doctors." These have worked, by a scholas- 
 tic casuistry, an imposture on the human 
 understanding, only rivalled by the famous 
 morality of the Jesuits, so brilliantly exposed 
 by Pascal. The Rabbins shall be heard in 
 their own defence, but we must also be 
 allowed to detail the mischiefs we denounce, 
 and offer an illustration of that juggle of the 
 human understanding by which these subtle 
 masters have subjugated the will of their 
 unhappy slaves. 
 
 This simple circumstance of prohibited 
 food has reduced the Hebrew nation to the 
 state of the Hindoos ; it has proved to them 
 one of the heaviest curses which has fallen 
 on their devoted heads. Hence, in all cities, 
 they have been condemned, not always by 
 Christian intolerance so much as their own, 
 to inhabit separate and obscure quarters of a 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. l6l 
 
 city, too often become infamous by unmerited 
 calumnies, always by sordid misery. Our 
 own country reminds us of the Jewry ; 
 France of La Hue des Juifs, or La Jul- 
 verie ; Italy by // Ghetto, and Germany 
 still pens the horde every night in its odious 
 enclosures. Let us drop the curtain over 
 this disgusting picture. Yet, admire the 
 ardent Hebrew Cardoso, who, on this cir- 
 cumstance, which sinks man to the lowest 
 degree of society, with that over-weening 
 pride, the last resource of the enthusiast of 
 misery, exults, that "these Jewish inci- 
 sures have not so much originated in the con- 
 tempt of other nations, as in a particular 
 providence to preserve Israel by this separa- 
 tion from the contagion of those vices and 
 follies which are so easily caught ;" as if the 
 filthy Jewish quarters exhibited a purer 
 morality or a more enlarged intellect than a 
 city of Christians ! 
 
16 C 2 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 Some readers may smile in a dissertation 
 of this grave nature on the genius of Juda- 
 ism, when they are informed that the cala- 
 mitous fortunes of the Hebrew have greatly 
 revolved on so small a pivot as the incon- 
 siderable circumstance of this people being 
 forbidden to share in the meat of a Christian. 
 I remember the day when, to the astonish- 
 ment of all parties, Napoleon assembled a 
 Jewish Sanhedrim in the city of Paris, — Na- 
 poleon, the conqueror of the world, was at 
 that moment suspected, by some of the Rab- 
 binical Opinionists, to be their Prince march- 
 ing to universal victory — their long expected 
 Messiah. The late Abraham Goldsmid once 
 was listening intensely to the amelioration of 
 his people, and to their acknowledged political 
 equality of citizens. The restoration of the 
 Jews seemed at hand. He was a man of ge- 
 nerous sympathies, but he was " a son of the 
 covenant ;" rigid as the law which he obeyed, 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 163 
 
 and probably for which he would have suffered 
 martyrdom, ere be wanting in a tittle. At 
 the table of Royalty, this honest Hebrew 
 was allowed to convey his own hasher dish ; 
 on no other terms would he have joined in 
 an imperial banquet. Absorbed in the con- 
 templation of the moral and political reform 
 of the Jews, he was long silent, when, 
 suddenly striking his forehead, he started 
 this annihilating objection. " But what can 
 be done for their eating ? " Simple words ! 
 but the words of truth ; for as it afterwards 
 appeared, the forbidden aliments proved the 
 main cause of the breaking up of the whole 
 Sanhedrim ; notwithstanding many enlight- 
 ened philosophers were in that remarkable 
 national assembly, and that many pressed 
 concessions to obtain an important purpose, 
 the " elders and their tradition " could not 
 advance a single step out of their enchanted 
 spell. 
 
164 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 The follies of superstition, to minds not 
 preoccupied by false associations, are exposed 
 by their detail. The censure of the apostle to 
 the Jews, for the " washing of cups and pots, 
 and many other things," and the reprimand 
 of Jesus, " laying aside the commandments of 
 God, to hold the traditions of men," are as 
 true at this day, as they were in the days 
 of Christ. 
 
 A Rabbinical kitchen is a spot as awfully 
 superstitious as that where formerly was 
 held a witch's sabbath, Two spirits have 
 been conjured up in the bewitched circle 
 — there haunts Kasher, the lawful food, 
 and Treffo, the impure. Remove a pan, 
 or handle a knife, and you raise that multi- 
 form demon Treffo, which no Hebrew dare 
 touch ; and whose diabolical agency is at 
 eternal war with that benevolent spirit to 
 hungry Jews, their beloved Kasher, This 
 active diabolism of Treffo is occasioned by a 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 165 
 
 duplicate set of culinary utensils, to preserve 
 the sanctity of the Mosaic kitchen ; those 
 dedicated to butter must not touch those 
 appropriated for meat. Should a butter 
 knife be stuck into a joint, or a meat knife 
 be plunged into butter, that dread omen 
 would shake a Jewish house. The Kasher 
 vanishes for ever when the Treffo triumphs, 
 and the dinnerless family, for there is no 
 exorcism to expel this demon, With trem- 
 bling and with curses, cast away the polluted 
 food, or send it to "a stranger in the gates." 
 Moses permits an impure animal to be sold 
 to an alien*. How has this tradition of 
 these duplicate utensils come down to them, 
 and how has this panic been raised? The 
 answer is ready. Not a single superstition, 
 indeed, is practised, which is not founded on 
 some scriptural phrase ; or, if at a loss for 
 
 * Deut. xiv. 21. 
 
166 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 the highest authority, the physical prohibition 
 is educed from a metaphorical sense; the 
 manner we shall now show. Moses forbids 
 "seething a kid in its mother's milk"; as 
 no reason is assigned, the Rabbins, not sa- 
 tisfied with the literal acceptation of the 
 precept, extend it to all sorts of animals and 
 to all sorts of milk ; or, they allegorise the 
 text. The Cabalists allege for this prohibi- 
 tion, that the flesh of a kid may not be cooked 
 in its mother's milk, because milk is the 
 symbol of pity, and the flesh that of judg- 
 ment, and pity and judgment must be kept 
 distinct. An admirable maxim, degraded by 
 its ludicrous application. Why do the tribes 
 of Israel for ever regret the absence of choice 
 fillets and rumps ? Father Jacob, wrestling 
 with an angel, had the hollow of his thigh 
 put out of joint ; and this hamstringing of 
 their Patriarch still occasioning disagreeable 
 recollections, the sons and daughters of Israel 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. l6j 
 
 shall never regale on any hind quarter 
 whatever. They may " not eat of the sinew 
 which shrunk"— so many thousand years ago ! 
 But they have their subterfuges and their 
 equivocations, as well as their traditional 
 ordinances. As the Mosaic code has pro- 
 hibited the use of certain foods which in 
 Europe are medicinal, such as shellfish, we 
 find that even the Jewish bigot, like his 
 Roman Catholic brother, can have his con- 
 science accommodated by the subtlety of his 
 Rabbin, as the other has flesh in his Lent by 
 the device of his auricular confidant. A pre- 
 scription of the physician is allowed to suspend 
 the law of Moses. A Hebrew epicurean ex- 
 torts the favour from his medical friend, and 
 the palate of the Israelite eagerly relishes the 
 forbidden and novel aliment. They can relax 
 by connivance. Though stern and irresistible 
 when their " traditions" are suspected, the 
 Rabbins, like the Jesuits of the Lettres 
 
168 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 Provinciates, have their distinguo and 
 their salvo. It is a Rabbinical injunction 
 that a Jew must not drink wine that has not 
 been made by " a son of the covenant." In 
 a wine country this was found perpetually 
 inconvenient, and we find in Italy how the 
 Rabbins escape from this dilemma by a sub- 
 terfuge. They declare that "the law was 
 designed to prevent all intercourse with 
 idolaters, but did not extend to the nations 
 among whom they now reside." For their 
 casuistry I have compared the Rabbins with 
 the sons of Ignatius, but they have not usually, 
 like the Jesuits, justified crimes, or system- 
 atised immorality. 
 
 It must be confessed, however, that their 
 tyranny seems at times to have approached 
 la morale practique. The Pharisees, among 
 other cross-examinations to tempt Jesus, 
 asked " whether it was lawful for a man to 
 put away his wife for every cause ? " The 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. l6°> 
 
 fact is, that the Rabbins, by their infamous 
 glosses on a Scriptural text, and by that con- 
 tempt in which the female sex seems to be 
 held by the Orientalists, have treated Wives 
 with an utter recklessness of domestic feeling; 
 and in their morning thanksgivings there is 
 one to God, " for not having been made a 
 woman." In Deut. xxiv. 1 — 2, is this pre- 
 cept, " A wife may be put. away or divorced, 
 if she find no favour in her husband's eyes." 
 The sacred text itself is vague ; this afforded 
 an opportunity to the Rabbins to draw the 
 monstrous inference, that a man may put 
 away his wife if he think another to be 
 handsomer than her ; and it is even main- 
 tained, for they build their follies as children 
 build houses of cards, that a divorce may be 
 allowed, even when a poor creature has suf- 
 fered her husband's soup to be burnt. 
 
 That the Rabbins can teach to evade the 
 law as well as to observe it ; that on theolo- 
 i 
 
170 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 gical points and in scholastic subtilty, they are 
 not inferior to the artifices of Jesuitical casu- 
 istry ; that " the Opinionists" can establish 
 any opinion they choose, would not be diffi- 
 cult to demonstrate. If one affirms and the 
 other denies ; if this distinction binds, and 
 the other distinction looses; if one blesses and 
 the other curses ; they have their choice at 
 hand ; if Rabbi Johanan says this, and Rabbi 
 Eliezer says that, a third may contrive to be- 
 lieve both, accepting which suits for the nonce. 
 A remarkable circumstance of these Rab- 
 binical Opinionists, which came authentically 
 to my knowledge, may illustrate our subject. 
 A Jewish gentleman, well known to the scien- 
 tific world, and moreover a lover of ancient 
 romances, had often luxuriated in the descrip- 
 tions of the splendid banquet of the " Pea- 
 cock," so famed in the Romances of Chivalry. 
 In an hour of fancy he had a peacock 
 killed ; the skin was carefully taken whole 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 17 1 
 
 from the body, and when the bird was 
 roasted and richly farced with aromatic 
 spices, the skin was nicely replaced, and it 
 was served up with its gorgeous plumage. 
 A religious scruple suddenly haunted his 
 mind that the demon Trefo sat on the pea- 
 cock, and that its flesh was forbidden aliment. 
 The Israelite despatched the brilliant fowl to 
 the house of a neighbour, the Chief Rabbin, 
 for his inspection. He told his tale, the 
 Rabbin alternately looking on the gentleman 
 and on the peacock : — at length the oracle ! 
 First he solemnly observed that there were 
 some things of a doubtful nature, among 
 which was the eating of peacocks* He 
 opined that this bird was among the for- 
 bidden meats. "Be it so ! " exclaimed the 
 romantic Ritualist ; " it was the fancy of a 
 moment, and I have only lost a splendid bird ; 
 I have not transgressed. Since it is killed, 
 1 will send it as a curious dish to my neigh- 
 i2 
 
17^ THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 bour, who, being a Christian, is not perplexed 
 by so difficult a ritual as our own. He may 
 partake of the feast of the peacock." - 
 
 " I would thank you for it myself," said 
 the Rabbin. 
 
 " For what purpose ? " interrogated the 
 Ritualist. 
 
 " To eat it ! " rejoined the master of sen- 
 tences. 
 
 " How ! If forbidden meat for me ! — You 
 understand the consequence ? " 
 
 The Rabbin fixing his eyes on the Ritualist, 
 and holding his finger up, as we mark our 
 interjections in writing, to prepare the reader, 
 (here the hearer,) for the notable wisdom forth- 
 coming, and with an emphatic distinguo! 
 thus opined the Opinionist. " Eating the 
 peacock is, as I told you, among the doubt- 
 ful things. One Rabbin is of one opinion, 
 and another of another. You have required 
 my opinion as your Rabbin ; you are bound 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 173 
 
 to abide by it. I opine that it is unlawful 
 to be eaten. My father was of a different 
 opinion, and therefore it may be eaten by 
 me, because I act on my father's opinion. I 
 accept the peacock, but I must not ask you 
 to participate in it." 
 
 The bird was lost for the Ritualist, and 
 went to the Rabbin's table. Supposing that 
 this was a case of conscience on both sides, 
 as it certainly was on one, it is an instance of 
 that juggle of the human understanding, 
 which possibly was not perceived by either ; 
 for they had both submitted to the prostration 
 of their intellect before that spirit of super- 
 stition which men have engendered amidst 
 their human inventions. 
 
 Yet this bondage of customs^ which have 
 been converted into rites, and by what artifices 
 practised on the scriptural texts we have shown, 
 are all defended by the Rabbins. Leo de Mo- 
 dena observes, as he says, " in the words of a 
 
174 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 great personage," that Lex JudcRorum is 
 Lex puerorum; the great personage to whom 
 he alludes was Aben Ezra, whom the beam of 
 philosophy had reached in dark times. Leo, 
 however, asserts that the sense of these words 
 is misunderstood ; all these minute customs 
 and ceremonies have been designed to con- 
 duct the Israelites to a holier life with the 
 simplicity of children, and to put them out of 
 the possibility of falling into errors. In our 
 own times, at the Parisian Sanhedrim, we 
 find the Chevalier de Cologna, the Grand 
 Rabbin of the French Israelites, insinuating 
 that all these multiplied and minute cere- 
 monies in the most common domestic offices, 
 often too ludicrous for any grave notice, prac- 
 tised too on the most indifferent matters, 
 were only attempts of the Rabbins to pre- 
 serve their people in a more perfect holiness 
 of living. As for the ordinances themselves 
 they emanate from some precept of their 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. IJ5 
 
 great legislator. Accepting this plea to its 
 utmost extent, and reverencing any act which 
 indicates true piety, the whole system is in- 
 finitely too complicated a machine for the 
 purposes of life, but it is still more fatal, as an 
 usurpation over the reason and the faculties 
 of the Israelites. It may produce hypocrites 
 who delight in exterior acts by which they 
 impose on the world, but never was any in- 
 terior religion raised by vulgar customs hourly 
 repeated. To graft a ridiculous observance 
 on a simple precept, is to lose the remem- 
 brance of the precept and to perpetuate the 
 folly of the observance. If these customs 
 originated in the spirit of religion, and not 
 of domination, they are an evidence of the 
 vain purposes of men, who bury their religion 
 under a mass of superstitions. And the pre- 
 sent exemplification of the Jewish ritual, as 
 practised to this day, offers an unparalleled 
 chapter in the history of national fatuity. 
 
176 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 The first principle of Judaism was the wor- 
 ship of the Divine Being, and an implicit 
 obedience to the divine code ; it was a pa- 
 ternal despotism. The last decline of this 
 holy government sunk fast into a new sort 
 of idolatry of customs and ceremonies, where 
 the eye worshipped more than the heart. The 
 Law, rendered nearly impracticable by their 
 own inventions, and the genius of the "pe- 
 culiar people,'' susceptible of vain superstitions, 
 their ostentation gloried in the most complex 
 and the most puerile observances, which they 
 incorporated among their rites. Such was 
 the triumph of those " whited sepulchres" the 
 Pharisees, enemies of reform and of Christ. 
 They built a labyrinth, from whose dark intri- 
 cacies there was no issue ; they hammered out 
 a net-work of iron, from age to age, from 
 whence no captive could extricate himself. 
 
 As their religion decayed and their super- 
 stitions multiplied, the human passions had a 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 1JJ 
 
 wider stage opened whereon to perform their 
 part. The pride of domination kindled in the 
 breasts of "the Dictators," who held the fate 
 of an enslaved people in their hands. Pale 
 with vigils, but paramount in power, the Rab- 
 bins sat exalted in their chairs, while their 
 disciples were " rolled in the dust of their 
 feet," as they pompously described the sove- 
 reignty of their divinity schools. There at 
 least the prostration of the body could not be 
 as great as that of the understanding. 
 
 13 
 
178 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 HISTORY OF JEWISH CONVERSIONS. 
 
 I once might have been a prophet, who 
 am now only an historian. On the institu- 
 tion of " The London Society for promoting 
 Christianity among the Jews," I wished to have 
 told the tale I had particular opportunities 
 to know*, and to have predicted of its agent, 
 and of its inmates, all that has since occurred ; 
 
 * I shall transcribe here the note I wrote in 1823. 
 I have not heard of any improvement since. After an 
 experiment of the first six years, this society had not 
 procured more than six proselytes annually, including 
 boys and girls from the lowest classes, according' to 
 the Society's Report in " Jewish Repository," vol. ii. 
 p. 304. By the accounts of May, 1823, their revenue 
 amounted to ten thousand pounds annually. I write it 
 in words ! They had, however, distributed seventy thou- 
 sand tracts, and given away eight thousand testaments. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 179 
 
 the shameful flight of the one, and the house- 
 less objects whom Misery, indeed, might 
 there keep stationary. 
 
 The society, long supported by the most 
 honourable names, has erected a Temple to 
 Proselytism, but no crowd has pressed on 
 the threshold of the elegant edifice. This 
 experiment has failed, like many preced- 
 ing ones ; and should there be found among 
 the proselytes any of the temple of Aquila, 
 like Simon of Sienna, Conrad Otto, Castelli, 
 Albi, and a few more of name in their day, 
 who, from converted Jews, relapsed again 
 into their ancient Judaism, the society may 
 be in danger of deducting from their gross 
 amount of proselytes per annum ! 
 
 Attempts of this nature have been made 
 from the times of the Fathers, who, although 
 they successfully demolished the decaying 
 polytheistical institutions amidst which they 
 lived, and which they therefore rightly compre- 
 
180 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 liended, yet were they by no means successful 
 in their attack on the Jewish faith, which they 
 encountered with passion or with levity ; un- 
 questionably with deficient skill and know- 
 ledge. The Fathers do not offer the Jew 
 arguments which every rational Christian 
 would now use ; and it is evident that the 
 Jews and their dispersion, and their insu- 
 lating customs, were as little known to the 
 Fathers as to their masters the Romans. 
 Some of the Fathers whose characteristics 
 remind one of the doting Rabbins, seem to 
 have been more conversant with devils than 
 with their old brethren the Hebrews. 
 
 Justin Martyr has bequeathed us a volumi- 
 nous conference which he held for two days 
 with the Jew Trypho. We are surprised to 
 find that this Father knew little of the rites 
 and customs of the singular people against 
 whom he was directing his ludicrous conceits, 
 which assuredly could be no arguments for 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 181 
 
 them. Tertullian, in his celebrated Apology, 
 indulges a Roman and popular invective 
 against the Hebrews, declaring that they 
 were vagrants, who owned neither man nor 
 God for their sovereign ; and Ambrose and 
 Austin reproach a conquered people that 
 they cannot rise to be -emperors or praefects. 
 The Fathers knew little of the Jews, and less 
 of human nature ; to vilify the wretched, 
 and then to exult over their civil degradation, 
 is no means of conversion, but of exciting 
 the most terrific passions, — implacable hatred, 
 and suppressed vengeance. 
 
 In the iron ages of barbarised Christianity, 
 when the massacre had fatigued, or the con- 
 tributions no longer could be levied, the mode 
 of converting the Jews was by public con- 
 ferences. Abbots and Rabbins, marshalled 
 in due order, encountered each other with 
 their selected arms of theological logomachy. 
 An ignorant crowd of auditors shouted or 
 
182 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 murmured, as the champions of their parties 
 appeared to advance or to retreat in this 
 wordy ordeal. The Hebrews often embar- 
 rassed to show that the Messiah had not yet 
 appeared, in that dilemma usually contrived 
 to give a new turn to this polemical tilting 
 match, by quarrelling on allegorical inter- 
 pretations and applied texts. It sometimes 
 happened that the Rabbins in their zeal with 
 the idolaters, for after all no Protestant will 
 deny that these pagan Christians were no 
 better, would forget in their insolence that 
 they were addressing their lords. This was 
 sometimes brought to their recollections, 
 and then they would close with an ambi- 
 guous retractation, or according to some 
 Jewish accounts, a round sum was scattered 
 among the bishops to break up the confer- 
 ence suddenly ; so that each party afterwards 
 consoled themselves by repeating their most 
 successful points of attack. But as the 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 183 
 
 triumphs of the Jews are chronicled in He- 
 brew, or lie buried in some manuscript, we 
 read only of their complete discomfiture. 
 Nor is this improbable, for the Jews evidently 
 were compelled to dissimulate, and even 
 forced baptisms sometimes followed. These 
 conferences, however, did not always termi- 
 nate in such amicable confusion ; on such 
 occasions the brutal energy of some ignorant 
 but strong-boned knight, would disgrace 
 the order of chivalry. 
 
 Old Joinville, the admirable chronicler of 
 that period, furnishes a perfectly characteristic 
 anecdote of these conferences. In the midst 
 of a Jewish disputation held with the Abbot 
 of the monastery of Clugny, the old abbot, 
 after many a retrogading movement, becom- 
 ing short of arguments to refute the Rabbin, 
 had exhausted the attention of the auditors. 
 Observing how ill matters proceeded, an 
 ancient knight leaning on his staffi begged 
 
184 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 the Abbot to let him put in his word, which 
 he promised should finish the discussion at 
 once. The favour was gladly accepted by 
 the Abbot, who was himself wearied by the 
 obdurate Rabbin. The Knight came at once 
 to the point, by demanding of the Chief 
 Rabbin whether he was a believer in one of 
 the great mysteries of Christianity? The 
 Rabbin replied, that that was the very sub- 
 ject of their discussion, to which he had prof- 
 ferred a negative. " Then you are mad ! " 
 cried the Knight, " and insolent too ! since 
 you do not believe this, and have dared to 
 enter Christ's monastery and his house ; and 
 for this, now shall you know and lack no 
 remembrance of Him ! " So saying, the 
 Knight, lifting his staff, sent a thundering 
 blow under the ear of the Rabbin and felled 
 the circumcised. This mode of argument put 
 all the Jews to flight, without, however, 
 being converted. The Abbot was in as ill 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 185 
 
 a humour, for he considered that he had lost 
 the day by it, insisting that they were on 
 the point of conversion, had the Knight not 
 interrupted his last irrefutable argument. 
 " You have committed a great folly," said 
 the Abbot, " in cutting down the Rabbin 
 whom I was about to confute." " And you 
 a greater," retorted the ancient Knight, " in 
 bringing these Jews with their long argu- 
 ments before such an assembly of good 
 Christians." This story was told to the old 
 chronicler by St. Louis, whose remark on 
 the occasion shows the utmost stretch of the 
 philosophy of that day ; a strange mixture 
 of theology and chivalry. " None but 
 learned clerks," said the French monarch, 
 " should dispute with the Jews, but every 
 layman ought to use the edge of his sword ; 
 a bonne espee tranchant" St. Louis in- 
 ferred that the doughty knight did wrong to 
 confute the Jew, but right in knocking him 
 down. 
 
186 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 Several accounts of these Jewish confer- 
 ences appear in the middle ages ; whenever 
 an abbot or a pope condescended to court 
 popularity they despatched an invitation to 
 the Rabbins. The most memorable confer- 
 ence recorded in the Jewish annals occurred 
 under the Spaniard, Peter of Luna. Having 
 assumed the papacy under the name of 
 Benedict XIII., when driven to Arragon, 
 the usurper tried at popular favour, as that 
 current had strongly set against him, — by a 
 great baptism of Jews. His physician, who 
 was himself a converted Jew, suggested a pub- 
 lic conference, engaging to confute the Israel- 
 ites, not by the usual arguments, but with 
 their own weapons drawn from their own Tal- 
 mud. This promised both novelty and success. 
 His Holiness assembled the Rabbins from all 
 quarters ; and whether it w r ere to soften these 
 opponents into more tenderness by compli- 
 ment and courtesies, the Pope paid all their 
 travelling expenses, and provided accommo- 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 187 
 
 dations for " the chief of the captivity," 
 and all the rest of the captives, as " princes 
 of the house of David." The later Rabbins, 
 though they have preserved their Jewish 
 obduracy, from their helpless situation have 
 usually betrayed its accompanying poverty of 
 spirit, and on receiving courtesies from Chris- 
 tian sovereigns they have usually adopted a 
 style of servile blasphemy. They betrayed 
 this characteristic in their strange idolatry, 
 when they inscribed the initials of Napoleon 
 and his Empress and fixed the imperial eagle 
 on the ark of their synagogue. The same 
 now occurred with this anti-pope, who had 
 paid all their travelling expenses, and to 
 whom they now applied the words of the 
 Psalmist addressed to his Creator*. 
 
 The Rabbins, however they adulated the 
 pope for their comforts during the confer- 
 
 * Psalm lxxxv. 
 
188 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 ence, at the same time were secretly male- 
 dieting the malice of the apostate physician, 
 who had entrapped his old friends into this 
 dilemma. The conference opened. " The 
 Epicurean," so the Rabbins called the traitor 
 of their faith, announced that he had drawn 
 twenty and four passages from their own 
 writings to demonstrate that the twenty and 
 four marks by which they had settled to de- 
 scribe the character of the Messiah, had been 
 fulfilled in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 It would therefore be a consequence, which 
 they could not possibly elude, that they could 
 not deny the evidence, for they stood refuted 
 out of their own mouths. It was a flourish- 
 ing prelude, and the Rabbins had to practise 
 all the arts of theological diplomacy. Each of 
 these four and twenty proofs, however, they 
 first insisted on should be tried by their thir- 
 teen modes of reasoning ; a scholastic logic 
 which was said to have come down from 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 189 
 
 Mount Sinai, but which could either prove or 
 leave a subject in a state impossible to be 
 proved. But the new Christian was ready to 
 fling the dust of their schools into their old 
 eyes. He calculated the years of the great 
 advent by a tradition of Elias, that a period of 
 2000 years was to pass in a state of nature ; 
 two more under the law, and two under the 
 Messiah. But he was short in his first calcu- 
 lation, since four thousand years had not 
 elapsed before the birth of Jesus. He re- 
 plied that the Scripture does not always count 
 rightly, for the children of Israel did not re- 
 main two hundred years in Egypt, yet God 
 had predicted they were to have been more 
 than four hundred. The mystical birth of 
 the Messiah appeared in the closed M in the 
 Hebrew word of Virgo, which denoted both 
 her virginity and the initial of her name. 
 Never had a Christian so much of the Jew in 
 
190 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 him, so that the conference afforded no hopes 
 of closing during the popedom. 
 
 At length, and as usual, something was 
 said deemed insolent to a Catholic ear — it 
 would have sounded true to a Protestant 
 had there then been one in the world. The 
 Pope's physician, after all his vaunts, turned 
 out a miserable piece of theological quackery. 
 He was only weighing chaff against chaff. 
 The assembly suddenly broke up, but the 
 apostate physician, who could not succeed in 
 making the Talmudists surrender, resolved 
 the Talmud itself should ; for he presented 
 His Holiness with a copious supply of peril- 
 ous passages from that great work, equally 
 derogatory to the law of Moses, the Mes- 
 siah, and the Christians, and proposing to 
 end all controversies by a general conflagra- 
 tion of all the Talmuds. A hoary Rabbin, 
 as an expedient to save their honour, ad- 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 191 
 
 dressed a state paper to the Pope, not as a 
 denial of the faithfulness of the extracts, but 
 as a protest that however erroneous the pas- 
 sages seemed, they admitted of another con- 
 struction than the sense in which they had 
 been understood by His Holiness's most 
 learned physician ; not that he himself pre- 
 sumed that he always understood the occult 
 wisdom. This was condemning the Talmud 
 by the Talmudists themselves ; a dishonour- 
 able compromise, but among them all, one 
 Spanish Rabbin alone would not subscribe. 
 The fruits of the conference were abundant, 
 according to the Catholics, notwithstanding 
 the cabalistical conundrums of His Holiness's 
 learned physician. It induced five thousand 
 Israelites to abjure the faith of their fathers. 
 Spain was then as Judaised as England was 
 long Catholicised, and these rapid changes in 
 exterior religion depended greatly on the state 
 of the government. The Jewish historians on 
 
192 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 this occasion deny that the old Rabbin's state- 
 paper was a retractation of the Talmud, but 
 acknowledge that a heavy sum was wrung 
 from these Israelites to save their Talmuds 
 and their honours. They do not however 
 deny the progress of the general conversion, 
 and the Spanish Rabbin, who refused his sig- 
 nature, Joseph Albo, eminent in the Jewish 
 annals, immediately composed a celebrated 
 work, in which he contracted the principles of 
 Judaism into three simple articles of faith. At 
 the end of our follies we learn wisdom. Albo 
 compressed Judaism into three articles ! He 
 imagined that, frightened by their volumi- 
 nous Talmud containing so many objection- 
 able passages, and the multiplicity of their 
 rites, the wavering Hebrews would rush into 
 the waters of baptism*. 
 
 * The history of this conference was discovered in a 
 MS. in the public library at Venice, by the Jesuit Bar- 
 
.THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 1Q3 
 
 At a later period professorships were in- 
 stituted for the conversion of the Jews — in 
 Italy, in France, and in Germany. At 
 Rome the Hebrews were compelled to at- 
 tend a course of lectures. I have seen one 
 of these periodical lectures printed, where 
 the friar acknowledges to have occupied 
 the whole summer in demonstrating the 
 nature of the Trinity, and promises for the 
 next course to develope the nature of the 
 real presence. How the Hebrew auditors 
 
 tolacci, then occupied in his researches for his great 
 Bibliotheca Rabbinica, where it is found. 
 
 Mark the changes of time. In 1816, a Jew at Rome 
 having received baptism, and relapsing into his ancient 
 faith, it was conjectured that he could not long see the 
 light. The Pope, however, issued an edict respecting 
 this relapsed Jew, " desiring all Rome to pity him ; that 
 persecution is used by false prophets and false teachers, 
 and that this man who now wished to be deprived of 
 light, may serve to promote the great design of Provi- 
 dence." The successor of this Pope renewed something 
 of the ancient rigour of the papacy. 
 
 Times, May, 1816. 
 K 
 
194 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 felt during these lectures, we may learn from 
 various quarters. Evelyn, who was present 
 at one, describes " their spitting and hum- 
 ming while they are obliged to sit out the 
 sermon." And he adds that " few converts 
 are made." At Carpentras in France, the 
 bishops appointed such lectures for Satur- 
 days, that their trading might not suffer. 
 At first they were decently silent, but the 
 tenth repetition did not please — they grew 
 noisy. The bishop complained to the ma- 
 gistrates of Carpentras, but though the whole 
 corporation could not assist the bishop in 
 making his sermons effective, that something 
 might be done — the assembled magistracy, 
 drove out the sons of Abraham from the 
 town of Carpentras, for ever ! 
 
 These were Roman Catholic countries ; 
 but at Cassel, under the wing of the Re- 
 formed church, the Jews were compelled 
 to learn a catechism, and to attend a perio- 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 195 
 
 dical lecture, where the grounds of Christia- 
 nity were rationally opened to their Jewish 
 brethren. The idolatry of Rome was no 
 longer obtruded on the Jewish mind, and 
 many of the Hebrews were moved even to 
 tears by the pathetic exhortations to which 
 they listened. And yet, adds my reporter, 
 justly expressing his astonishment, " None 
 of them have been converted*." 
 
 Severe measures for the conversion of 
 Jews have only led to a forced renunciation 
 of their ancient faith ; and the strictest pre- 
 cautions were found necessary to prevent 
 the Israelite from returning to the Syna- 
 gogue. The council of Agde required that 
 no Jew should receive the rite of baptism 
 until he had passed the probation of six 
 months in the rank of a catechumen ; and 
 the second council of Nice, discovering that 
 
 * Dury's Case of Conscience. 
 K 2 
 
196 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 there were new converts openly ridiculing 
 the rites of Christianity which they had 
 accepted, condemned them to make a public 
 profession of their ancient religion. Even 
 when the seduction of gentle persuasion was 
 employed, as in the case of some patron to 
 whom a Hebrew lay under obligations, it 
 is curious to observe how entreaties to re- 
 ceive baptism were returned by timid apolo- 
 gies, or distant promises. The greatest 
 converter of Jews was Vincent Ferrier, 
 whose name is emblazoned in the Spanish 
 martyrology. His conversions consisted of 
 large bodies of Hebrews, set off with the 
 pomp which his royal master Ferdinand of 
 Spain lent on these occasions. Eight thou- 
 sand Moors, fifty thousand Jews, and one 
 hundred thousand bad Christians, afterwards 
 called Clwistianos Novos, baptized but sus- 
 pected of Judaism, were the quiet victims 
 of his intrigues. At that period the saving 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 197 
 
 grace of Christianity, such as Christianity 
 then was, seems to have consisted in driving 
 herds of them to the river side, as their 
 driver held a crucifix in his hand. These 
 mighty conversions, splendid in their exte- 
 rior, were hollow within — and they never 
 lasted. Violence on one side and necessity 
 on the other, had spread a general dissi- 
 mulation among this populace of converts. 
 These flocks of Jews were still secretly pre- 
 ferring the baptism of blood to the baptism 
 of water, and still feasted on their paschal 
 lamb in some hiding place of this new 
 Egypt. In the Vatican a letter is preserved 
 from a converted Rabbin, who exhorts his 
 son not to imitate his fathers. At first 
 sight the writer would appear to advise his son 
 not to persist in Judaism, but he becomes less 
 ambiguous as he proceeds ; and the postscript 
 of that letter, a postscript, which, however, 
 never was written, appeared, when a few 
 
198 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 years afterwards, the new Christian tore 
 away the mask, returning to his ancient 
 Judaism *. 
 
 In happier times, and with a nobler spirit, 
 the Jewish controversy was saved out of the 
 profane hands of the sanguinary or the im- 
 becile idolaters of the Roman church. The 
 new church of the Reformed enlarged the 
 sphere of religious inquiry ; it had itself 
 been too long a school of affliction not to 
 sympathise with the afflicted. The first 
 blessing on mankind by the Reformation, 
 was the establishment of that toleration 
 which they had so long wanted. This 
 step approximated Christianity towards Ju- 
 daism ; they ceased to be enemies ; they 
 were neighbours. The Hebrews were no 
 longer hunted down as wild animals, but. 
 invited, like sheep straying without a shep- 
 herd, into the fold. 
 
 * Bartolacci, Bib. Rab., iii. 404, 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 199 
 
 There had long prevailed among the Re- 
 formed a notion, that the Jews were on the 
 point of returning to the land of their 
 fathers, and in their restoration were to em- 
 brace the truths of the Gospel. The most 
 learned men in Europe expounded the Apo- 
 calypse, calculated the weeks of Daniel, and 
 lost themselves in that night of mysticism 
 which had spread over the study of theology. 
 Nothing less for these wretched hordes was 
 promised by these benevolent Christians, 
 than that they were to be their firmest allies 
 in this new empire ; the City of Jerusalem 
 was to hold " kings and chief monarchs of 
 the earth to sway and govern all for the 
 glory of Christ." I am transcribing from 
 a manuscript letter of the learned Joseph 
 Mede, who has sanctioned a work published 
 by the great lawyer Sir Henry Finch*, in 
 
 * Mr. Alexander Chalmers in his account of this 
 learned lawyer (Sir Henry Finch), has observed, that 
 
200 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 the days of James the First. That this work 
 produced a sensation at Court, is evident by 
 
 his work, " On the Calling- of the Jews," is so imper- 
 fectly described by Wood, that it is not easy to dis- 
 cover its drift. That such a complaint may no longer 
 exist, I shall here print the manuscript letter of the 
 learned Joseph Mede : — 
 
 " Mr. Joseph Mede to M. Stuteville. 
 
 " April!, 1621. 
 " I have seen Sir Henry Finch, who has published 
 ' The World's great Restauration or Calling- of the Jews, 
 and with them of all the Nations and Kingdoms of the 
 Earth, to the faith of Christ.' I cannot see but for 
 the main of the discourse I might assent unto him. 
 God forgive me if it be a sin, but I have thoug-ht so 
 many a day. But the thing- which touches his Ma- 
 jesty in this point which I will write out for you ver- 
 batim: — ' The Jews and all Israel shall return to their 
 land and antient seats, conquer their foes, have their 
 soil more fruitfull than ever. They shall erect a glo- 
 rious church in the land of Judah itself, and bear rule 
 far and near. We need not be afraid to aver and main- 
 tain that one day they shall come to Jerusalem again ; 
 be kings and chief monarchs of the earth, sway and 
 govern all, for the glory of Christ that shall shine 
 amongst them.' And this is it Laclantius saith, lib. vii., 
 chap. 15. ' The Roman name (I will speak it because 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 201 
 
 the anecdote which enriches the letter, that 
 James the First said that, " He was too auld 
 a king to do his homage at Jerusalem." 
 We might refer to more recent instances of 
 these visionary theologians ; vain men who 
 have brought many Rabbinical deliriums into 
 Christian expositions*. 
 
 A more rational controversy succeeded. 
 
 it must one day be) shall be taken from the earth, and 
 the empire shall return to Asia; and again shall the 
 East bear dominion and the West be in subjection' In 
 another place, ' Ashur and Egypt, all these large and 
 vast countries shall be converted to Christ ; the chief 
 sway and sovereignty remaining- with the Jews.' All 
 nations shall honour them. 
 
 " The king says he shall be a pure king, and he is 
 so auld that he cannot tell how to do his homage at 
 Jerusalem." 
 
 * That the reader may form a correct notion of this 
 class of presumptive prophets, let him consult the index 
 to Burnet's History ; under the article, " Lloyd Bishop 
 of Worcester," in his interview with Queen Anne, in 
 the presence of statesmen ; how he expounded, how 
 they reasoned, and how in a passion the erudite bishop 
 desired to resign his bishopric. 
 
 k3 
 
202 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 Grotius, in his treatise on " the Truth of 
 Christianity," put forth a refutation of Ju- 
 daism. Leslie, who had written folios of 
 controversial divinity, imagined his "Short 
 and Easy Methods," which he diversely ad- 
 dressed to Catholics, to Deists, and to Jews, 
 were infallible. 
 
 The most admirable monument in the 
 Jewish controversy is the published confer- 
 ence which the learned Limborch maintained 
 with the Jew Orobio. The small but favour- 
 ite volume* was accepted by all parties, for 
 even the Romanist only excepts " les sorties 
 que Limborch fait contre les Catholiques," 
 and the Hebrew is not displeased to find his 
 arguments urged by Orobio, a subtle dispu- 
 tant. Orobio had suffered a close confine- 
 ment in a narrow cell of the Inquisition 
 
 * De Veritate Religionis Christiana, Amico Collatio 
 cum erudito Judceo. Basle, 1740. The last and best 
 edition. — Brunei, 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 203 
 
 during four years, in horrible torment and 
 distraction, till, as he has himself told, he 
 became almost doubtful of his personal iden- 
 tity. He had studied in Spain the old scho- 
 lastic philosophy; and now the metaphy- 
 sician, cut off from all human intercourse 
 whatever, found a resource for life itself in 
 undertaking every day to maintain a disputa- 
 tion, in which he was by turns moderator, 
 opponent, and respondent. Limborch has 
 stated the unexpected points of his adver- 
 sary's attacks or his defence, and his own 
 refutations, with the purest integrity, in this 
 " friendly conference," which merits its title. 
 Limborch embarrassed Orobio by reducing 
 him to acknowledge that he could furnish no 
 proof of the truth of the Mosaic religion, but 
 which equally served to demonstrate that of 
 Christianity. Orobio discovered that it was 
 easier to raise objections against the Christian 
 doctrine, than to demonstrate the verity of 
 
204 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 the Jewish. The subtle Hebrew tenaciously 
 inferred that, as he could discover no motive 
 to change his religion, he thought that every- 
 one should remain in the religion of his 
 fathers, it being more easy to raise objections 
 to another mode of faith than to demonstrate 
 the verity of our own. These famous pole- 
 mics parted as they had met, with mutual 
 esteem, but not with mutual conviction. 
 From the same acknowledged facts they had 
 deduced opposite conclusions, and when texts 
 were adjusted they persisted in assigning dif- 
 ferent explications. Each party may still be 
 referred to as having exposed the opposite 
 principles of Judaism and Christianity. 
 
 The Romanists have asserted that this 
 Spaniard Orobio was a man of no religion. 
 Had he been such, he would not have been im- 
 mured alive for years. Having escaped from 
 his living grave, he settled in France. There 
 he was disgusted with the same forms of a reli- 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 205 
 
 gion which he could not endure ; and at length 
 settling in Holland as a Jewish physician, he 
 cast off his catholic baptismal name Baltha- 
 zar, and adopted the more consecrated one of 
 Isaac. He suffered the severest rite on his 
 entrance into Judaism, which, late in life, is 
 not performed without endangering it. We 
 ought not to doubt the sincere piety of Orobio, 
 any more than we do that of Limborch. The 
 conviction of the truth of their respective 
 modes of faith, was a blessing that came from 
 Heaven. 
 
 In our own days we have witnessed the 
 imprudent and cruel proceedings of the en- 
 thusiastic Lavater. He dedicated Bonnet's 
 work on Christianity to Moses Mendelsohn, 
 and challenged that tranquil and platonic 
 genius, either to do that which the love of 
 truth ought to compel him, by renouncing 
 Judaism, or to refute Bonnet. The Jewish 
 philosopher, involuntarily, was dragged into a 
 
206 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 public correspondence. The Hebrew pleaded 
 with his accustomed delicacy and nervous 
 sensitiveness, and to close the interminable 
 dispute, for some of the German divinity 
 professors had gradually been brought into 
 the midst of the polemical conflict, the Jewish 
 philosopher, with more energy than his usual 
 amenity approved, awfully, as if in anger, 
 exclaimed, "I am as firmly persuaded of the 
 essential of my religion as you and Mr. Bon- 
 net can be of your's, and I attest before the 
 God of truth, our Creator and our Preserver, 
 by whom you conjure me, that I will remain 
 in my principles as long as my soul shall not 
 change its nature." Mendelsohn has accu- 
 rately expressed his notion, by the "essential 
 of his religion ; M sensible of the corruptions of 
 Judaism : and this eloquent metaphysician, in 
 his " Jerusalem," was not, I believe, held to be 
 the most orthodox Hebrew by his ownRabbins. 
 I could here furnish the reader with the 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 207 
 
 secret history of many Jewish conversions, of 
 which I possess some extraordinary docu- 
 ments, both of the last century and of the 
 present. But the misery of weak minds, or 
 the impostures of gross knaves, are details 
 which are of no consideration in this view of 
 the Genius of Judaism. 
 
 The most learned Christians have composed 
 excellent treatises ; Jewish lectures have been 
 delivered, even by converted Jews ; confer- 
 ences, both public and private, have been held ; 
 and societies, industrious like " the London," 
 assisted by every human means. We have 
 arguments the most demonstrative on one 
 side, and refutations the most complete on 
 the other; exhortations which have drawn 
 tears from both parties, and satires the most 
 witty and malicious. 
 
 But the cause of truth, or of Christianity, 
 will never be advanced by indirect or subdo- 
 lous practices, which have been often employed 
 
£08 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 by inferior agents in this trade of conversion ; 
 by hunting after miserable proselytes in the 
 dark purlieus of filthy quarters, parentless chil- 
 dren, or torn from their disconsolate parents ; 
 by agonising the conscience of thoughtless 
 persons; or importing young Polanders, who 
 lose their Jewish complexion by fattening at 
 the tables of their generous hosts; or even by 
 occasionally picking up a stupid illiterate Rab- 
 bin, who reminds us of the description which 
 the Florentine Poggio has left us in an account 
 of his own Hebrew studies, " I pass many jokes 
 on my tutor, a stupid, unsteady, and illiterate 
 man : which indeed is the general character 
 of those who are converted from Judaism to 
 Christianity." 
 
 The conversion of Jews to Christianity, 
 reformed Christianity, must be looked for 
 by a different principle than the modes 
 hitherto pursued. 
 
 A sincere Christian, without any diminu- 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 209 
 
 tion of his evangelical faith, may be satisfied 
 that nothing short of an universal miracle 
 can be " a sign " to the religious Israelite 
 for his conversion to Christianity. It is not 
 by disputed texts ; by prophecies variously 
 applied ; by mystical types, or even by his- 
 torical incidents, ambiguous or contradictory, 
 that the immutable Hebrew can be altered 
 in the singular and supernatural position in 
 which he has been fixed by Providence. For 
 centuries after centuries men, blinding them- 
 selves with the dust of their libraries, have 
 finally imagined that they have opened the 
 secret and ineffable way of the Supreme 
 Being ; but what are their mighty folios ? 
 monuments of their passions ; but frail as 
 the opinions which they entertain. It is a 
 singular, but wondrous truth, that God has 
 granted to the Hebrew arguments and to 
 the Christian refutations, which each repeat ; 
 for the conviction is equal on both sides. 
 
210 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 According to the eighth article of the 
 creed of the Jew, he is to believe that there 
 is no distinction in point of authenticity 
 between the passage, " and the children of 
 Ham were Cush and Misraim," — and, " I am 
 the Lord thy God :" " all are equally alike 
 the word of God, delivered by him to 
 Moses*. There is something monstrous in 
 this unintelligent view of the historical annals, 
 and the ecclesiastical, the civil, and other 
 laws in the code of Moses ; but there are 
 articles as monstrous in other creeds, be- 
 sides the Hebraic. 
 
 On this principle, the literal Jew, for he is 
 ever literal when he has to encounter the typi- 
 cal and allegorical style of the Christian, 
 takes his impregnable position. For the 
 Hebrew, reared in the faith of his fathers, 
 there are insuperable difficulties in abjuring 
 
 * Levi's Letters to Dr. Priestly, 14. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 211 
 
 his ancient creed, which lie not in the way 
 of him who has received the water of Chris- 
 tianity. The Jew has to annul what he 
 adores as the dictation of the Creator him- 
 self ; a code of perpetual obligation, and 
 " everlasting," while the Christian has only 
 to preserve his own possession. The elder 
 religion clings to one revelation, while the 
 younger enjoys a happier inheritance in 
 two. The Christian exults in the comple- 
 tion of that Judaism which the Hebrew con- 
 templated as perfect at its divine institution. 
 The enlightened Christian should not indeed 
 persecute his ancient brother, since Chris- 
 tianity and Judaism rest on the same foun- 
 dation ; nor is the faith of either in danger 
 from the other, since the apostolical narratives 
 are not more authentic for the Christian, than 
 when at Sinai, the Lord " came in a thick 
 cloud," and the people saw that " God talked 
 to man." But the greatest obstacle to the 
 
212 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 conversion of the unfortunate Israelite, when- 
 ever he may be disposed to embrace the 
 Gospel, is the choice of his converter. Chris- 
 tianity becomes for our neophyte a world 
 of waters, and no where shall this dove find 
 a green branch to rest his weary wing ; for, 
 let the Hebrew choose where he will, he 
 must be deemed impious, or be condemned 
 by other Christians. Dissenters rise against 
 dissenters, missions are expedited against 
 missions ; all alike prompt to convert, while 
 each establishes his own dogma, his pecu- 
 liar rule of faith. Let those who are born 
 in the happy faith of Christianity compas- 
 sionate the Jew, for we cannot relieve him. 
 A single step only divides Judaism from 
 Christianity, but Heaven has interposed, and 
 for " the son of the covenant," that step no 
 human effort shall pass— though, like the 
 Talmudical wall which divides heaven from 
 earth, that step is but a hair's breadth. 
 
213 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 OF THE CAUSES OF THE UNIVERSAL HATRED 
 OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 
 
 Among every people the Hebrews have 
 found a malignant Apion ; that man who, to 
 please the Alexandrians, would hesitate at 
 no lie to stigmatise the Israelite, and headed 
 a deputation to Caligula that, by the force of 
 his invectives and the audacity of his calum- 
 nies, this public denouncer might obtain 
 their expulsion. Why were this holy people 
 ever hated by their neighbours ? Josephus, 
 in speaking of his nation, who were utterly 
 unknown to the Greeks, to vouch for their 
 antiquity, refers to the Egyptian and Phoe- 
 nician writers, observing, however, that "the 
 Egyptians hate us, the Phoenicians do not 
 
214 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 like us, and those particularly of Tyre are 
 our declared enemies ; of the Chaldeans I 
 cannot say so much, for they have reigned 
 over our nation*." 
 
 The Deity, in the election of his people 
 Israel as his " peculiar treasure," accompa- 
 nied the graces bestowed on them by the trial 
 of concomitant afflictions. The real cause 
 of the universal hatred which the Hebrews 
 have excited in every nation and every age, 
 may be traced to their unparalleled institu- 
 tions, and because it was decreed that they 
 should be " a peculiar people." They have 
 had to encounter, with such holy intrepidity 
 and glory, the antipathies and the calumnies 
 which " a peculiar people" only could have 
 endured. 
 
 At first, surrounded by seven nations, each 
 mightier than themselves, when " the fewest 
 
 * Josephus's Answer to Apion, chap. iv. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 215 
 
 of all people " were chosen as the head of all 
 nations, the conquest of their neighbours was 
 proclaimed in the name of " the Lord of 
 Hosts." The sacerdotal republic became 
 necessarily a military one. The whole his- 
 tory of the ancient Jews is that of religious 
 wars ; and the history of the modern is the 
 inevitable result of the ancient. The ancient 
 exhibits an universal hostility ; the modern 
 an universal persecution. When triumphant, 
 the armies of Israel promulgated the faith of 
 their ancestors ; when conquered, they volun- 
 tarily sealed their holy Code with their 
 blood, or in secrecy wept over it. 
 
 Severe and awful was the genius of the 
 Hebrew Legislator, though paternal and emi- 
 nently provident of the common affairs of 
 life. He whose mighty mind had protected 
 the mother-bird in her nest, the growth of 
 the fruit tree through the stages of maturity, 
 had granted " a release " to the poor man in 
 
21 6 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 his bondage. He who commanded, that he 
 who builds a house should encircle the roof 
 with a battlement, that no man shall fall and 
 " bring blood upon thine house." — He who 
 would not suffer to be dragged to battle him 
 who was planting a vineyard, or had betrothed 
 a wife, or was fearful and faint-hearted,* 
 this father-lawgiver, by the difficult position 
 which he held, had blown the flame of con- 
 quest in the breasts of his people, by point- 
 ing to their hopes a promised land— a land 
 to be wrested from their possessors at "the 
 
 * " If a bird's nest chance to be before thee in the 
 way, and the dam sitting 1 upon the young-, or upon the 
 eggs, thou shalt not take the dam with the young - ." 
 Deut. xxii. 6. 
 
 No tree was to be plucked of its fruit till its maturity. 
 In the first three years of its bearing- it was called " un- 
 circumcised," in the fourth it was dedicated to the Lord, 
 and was only eaten on the fifth. Nor were any fruit 
 trees to be used for implements of war, for these objects 
 he commanded to use only the wild trees that " be not 
 trees for meat." Deut. xx. 19, 20. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 217 
 
 edge of the sword." ' Mankind was to be 
 subdued by " the fear of the Lord" In 
 every city which defended its entrance, the 
 Israelites were not "to leave a soul alive* ;" 
 it was a religion of war. The mystery of 
 the mission was accomplished. But the 
 missionaries incurred the odium of the whole 
 human race. A sect arose in the second 
 
 * Deut. xx. 16. . 
 
 To remove this sanguinary stigma from the Hebrews, 
 which has always inflicted a horror on the Jew and 
 the Christian of later times, the Rabbins delivered a 
 precept which somewhat mitigates this anathema of 
 human destruction. " According to the precept of our 
 Rabbins," says the High Priest in a modern sermon, 
 " we are directed in the siege or blockade of a town, 
 always to leave a part open for the flight of any of the 
 inhabitants who would save themselves." I do not un- 
 derstand military affairs, and less the tactics of the Rab- 
 bins ; but to " leave a part open," would admit of rein- 
 forcements as well as of flight. I rather suspect that this 
 humane precept was promulgated in ag-es when the Jews 
 were no longer conquerors, and dreaded a massacre for a 
 massacre. Maimonides notices it De Regibus et Bellis 
 eorum, Parti v. chap, vi.: and Mikotti Prsecep. Affirm. 1 18. 
 
218 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 century of Christianity who, shocked by the 
 inhuman wars of the Jews, indulged the here- 
 tical notion that the God of the Jews could 
 not be the God of the Christians. The be- 
 nevolence of the Creator could only be expe- 
 rienced by the creature in a religion of 
 peace, whose founder, possessing every vir- 
 tue under a human appearance, inculcated 
 "the love of God," invoking "Our Father 
 who art in heaven ! " It was only when 
 papal Christianity relapsed into the severity 
 of Judaism, and affected the splendours of 
 the synagogue, that the intolerant and exter- 
 minating genius was resuscitated ; and when 
 Christianity abandoned the Judaic genius of 
 the papal, it became necessary to recommend 
 itself by express treatises on Toleration ; yet 
 toleration is still found to be a very doubtful 
 and even dangerous concession. In the creed 
 of a great portion of Christian Europe, Tole- 
 ration is called the cry of a weak minority. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 219 
 
 The second cause which provoked the 
 hatred of other nations for the Hebrews, was 
 their just veneration of the Holy Code ; but, 
 as was usual with this vain people, it excited 
 their contempt for the laws of all other na- 
 tions. When they became a people without 
 a country, their vindictive masters retaliated, 
 and the laws of Moses, concealed in an un- 
 known language, yet living on the lips of 
 the circumcised, aroused the indignation and 
 multiplied the calumnies of every man of 
 genius who could only behold in an abject 
 people an obdurate and contemptible race. 
 The stern painter of manners among the 
 Romans, to exemplify the results of a bad 
 education, according to his notions, points at 
 those who " are born of fathers who keep the 
 sabbath day, and learn by rote their secret 
 law delivered by Moses." It is Juvenal's 
 retaliation for the Jewish contempt of the 
 Roman laws. 
 
 l 2 
 
220 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 Romanas autem soliti contemnere leges 
 Judaicum ediscunt, et servant ac metuent Jus, 
 Tradidit arcano quodcunque volumine Moses. 
 
 And taught the Roman ritual to deride, 
 Clings to the Jewish, and observes with awe 
 All Moses bade in his mysterious law. 
 
 Gifford. 
 
 The declamatory satirist could only ridi- 
 cule what he could not comprehend ; for 
 Juvenal imagined that the Jews, having no 
 visible Deity, and often looking upwards to 
 heaven in their orisons, worshipped the 
 clouds and the sky. Their unsocial habits 
 incurred the suspicions of the vulgar, and 
 the lofty Roman condescends to collect the 
 most vulgar tales, of their sullenness to tra- 
 vellers, misdirecting their journey, and refus- 
 ing to allay their thirst, unless they were 
 brothers of the circumcision, and ascribes 
 these evil habits to idling away one whole 
 day in the week : to abstain from pork and to 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 221 
 
 despise the Roman laws, with Juvenal seems 
 to constitute Judaism. 
 
 The ancient Polytheists had no real know- 
 ledge of the Jews. The Egyptians were 
 known to the Greeks by their maritime inter- 
 course, but the Hebrews, from their inland 
 locality, were shut out from the world. Aris- 
 totle classes the Hebrews among the Bra- 
 mins of India, probably from their separation 
 among every people, Plutarch accuses the 
 Jews of worshipping the hog, having observed 
 them rigidly abstain from that animal as food. 
 Among the Romans they were censured as a 
 people without religion, deniers as they were 
 of a plurality of deities. Florus writes of them 
 impice gentis. Justin, Strabo, and Appian, 
 equally betray the same ignorance of this 
 people, and fall into the same popular mis- 
 conceptions. The philosophical Tacitus, the 
 only great writer of antiquity who caught 
 a gleam of the revelation of Judaism, when 
 
222 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 he looked on the despised hordes of the 
 Israelites at Rome, could venture in his im- 
 mortal style to brand them, pronouncing that 
 inter se nihil illicitum. Tacitus classed 
 the Jews among the worshippers of Bacchus, 
 from the circumstance that Pompey had found 
 a golden vine among the ornaments of the 
 temple, and the feast of tabernacles happen- 
 ing at the time of the celebration of the 
 orgies. Jews and Christians were long un- 
 distinguished among the Romans ; hence 
 Suetonius, in his life of Claudius, ascribes the 
 expulsion of the Jews from Rome, to the fre- 
 quent seditions raised among them by their 
 chief Chrestus. Suetonius had probably 
 heard of the dissensions between the Chris- 
 tians and the Judaising Christians. The 
 early Christians, who were so long con- 
 founded with the Jews in the cruel reign of 
 Domitian, with them were condemned for 
 the crime of impiety; the worship of a single 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. c 223 
 
 God seemed a sort of atheism to the Poly- 
 theist ! Christians were classed among pros- 
 titutes and adventurers who paid a tax to be 
 allowed to reside at Rome. Such is the tes- 
 timony of the indignant Tertullian. Confis- 
 cations of Jewish or Christian property were 
 frequent. The crime of impiety involved 
 the punishment of death. Nerva, the suc- 
 cessor of Domitian, ordained that none of 
 his subjects should be persecuted for religion, 
 for " impiety or Judaism" A medal bears 
 this interesting inscription, perpetuating the 
 fact ; 
 
 Calumnia, Fisci, Judaici sublata; 
 
 importing that Calumny from Taxation is 
 abolished, and that the Jews had ceased to 
 be burdened by heavy penalties under those 
 false pretexts which they had recently in- 
 curred under Domitian.* 
 
 Petit, Var. Lect., p. 2569, apud Basnage. 
 
224 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 By what the ancients have delivered to us 
 on the Jews, the most illustrious names of 
 learned antiquity have left on record a per- 
 petual evidence how their history, unsanc- 
 tioned by anthority, may have been too 
 frequently supplied by popular tales and 
 uncertain traditions. They have sent down 
 to us the most puerile fancies, the grossest 
 misconceptions, and the most malignant 
 calumnies concerning this people. When a 
 conquered race becomes despised, even the 
 inquisitive cease to inquire after foreigners, 
 and we discover here a remarkable evidence 
 of the misconceptions which one people may 
 form of another, by deciding on customs 
 which they have observed without inquiry. 
 
 The Epicurean urbanity of Horace, could 
 only sear in pleasantry, without inflicting an 
 inflaming wound on these adorers of anti- 
 quity, " the curtailed Jews," — but the 
 
 Yin 'tu 
 Curtis Judsei oppedere? 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 225 
 
 expresses his contempt, without the accus- 
 tomed delicacy of his raillery. With finer 
 humour the poet avenges himself on the 
 Anti-poetical, alluding to the Jewish, per- 
 haps the Christian zeal for acquiring pro- 
 selytes, he threatens to convert them to 
 poetry. 
 
 ac veluti te 
 Judaei cogemus in hanc concedere turbam. 
 
 Sat. lib. i. iv. 143. 
 To force you, like the proselyting- Jews, 
 To be, like us, a brother of the Muse. 
 
 Francis. 
 
 He treats them as superstitious and cre- 
 dulous, for on his journey when he hears 
 of a miraculous incident which occurred at 
 the gate of a Temple, he exclaims, " Let 
 the Jew, Appella, believe it, not I ! " 
 
 Credat Judaeus Appella, 
 Non ego. 
 
 Sat. lib.i.v. 100. 
 
 The Jew, Appella, was probably a distin- 
 
226 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 guished Jew at Rome, who practised Ju- 
 daism with fervour. The Polytheists ac- 
 cused the Jews and Christians of credulity ; 
 Appella had no doubt related to the Idolaters, 
 the miracles of Sacred History ; and though 
 Polytheism was itself a series of absurd 
 metamorphoses, yet such is the obduracy 
 of a predisposition that they could refuse 
 their belief to the most sublime interposi- 
 tions of the Divinity. The Jews were nu- 
 merous at Rome in the days of Horace, and 
 it is evident that some were found in the 
 higher classes. A beloved friend of Horace's 
 was a Jew and a poet ; the Fuscus Aristius, 
 whom he includes among his other great 
 friends, Pollio, Varius, Maecenas, and Virgil ; 
 and whom he could not stop on his way, 
 hastening to the Synagogue *. 
 
 * Sat. i. lib. x. v. 83. The addresses to Fuscus, 
 Epist. x. lib. i., and again his fine Ode, lib. i., xxii. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 2^7 
 
 The philosophic genius of Tacitus, which 
 nowhere insinuates that the deities of his 
 country were monstrous imaginations or a 
 fabulous machinery, could declare that the 
 Jewish rites were ridiculous, and was asto- 
 nished why this solitary and sullen people 
 profaned whatever the Romans held sacred. 
 This profound genius discovered, however, 
 as he imagined, the real cause of the pecu- 
 liarities of this people. " In order to draw 
 the bond of union closer, and to establish 
 his own authority, Moses gave a new form 
 of worship, and a system of religious cere- 
 monies, the reverse of any thing known to 
 any other age or country." Such was the 
 narrow view the philosophical polytheist was 
 compelled to take of what he remained 
 ignorant ; but when this truly profound ge- 
 nius drew from the depths of his own vast 
 intellect — not misled by superficial observa- 
 tion or biassed by popular prejudices, per» 
 
228 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 haps too, instructed by the authority of 
 Josephus, or warmed by the platonic Philo 
 Judasus, the Pagan awfully contemplated 
 on the spiritual presence of the God of 
 Israel — catching the inspiration of the 
 Jewish faith, the Polytheist becomes him- 
 self a sublime Hebrew. Observing that the 
 Jews suffer no visible representation of the 
 Divinity, Tacitus describes " the unknown 
 God." " The Jews acknowledge one God 
 only, and Him they see in the mind ; and 
 Him they adore in contemplation. The 
 God of the Jews is the great governing 
 mind that directs and guides the whole 
 frame of Nature, Eternal, Infinite, and 
 neither capable of change, nor subject to 
 decay." The Polytheist could not have 
 applied this noble description to any one of 
 his populace of fabulous Deities. 
 
 The third cause of the continued hatred of 
 the Jewish people, was the unhappy position 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 229 
 
 which they held in society, through what are 
 called the middle ages ; ages which had lost 
 the simplicity of primitive Christianity, and 
 could make no progress in the enlightened 
 Christianity of later times ; dark ages and 
 merciless men, who converted even Chris- 
 tianity into barbarism. Every where the Jews, 
 deprived of citizenship, admitted on no terms 
 of toleration, but skulking in great towns by 
 connivance, or protected by some artful baron 
 as " his Jews," this deserted race could only 
 look for their resources in the most humi- 
 liating industry. When a whole people devote 
 themselves to one great pursuit, one single 
 art, they open sources of invention, they reach 
 to a noble perfection. Unhappily for the pre- 
 sent professors, that great pursuit, that single 
 art, was, the commerce of money ; and to 
 render fortunes invisible, their genius pro- 
 duced the wonderful invention of bills of 
 exchange ; an object, like the art of printing, 
 
'230 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 become too familiar to be admired ; tbe mi- 
 racle has ceased and its utility only remains, 
 yet both are sources of civilisation, and connect 
 together, as in one commonwealth, the whole 
 universe. Their successful pursuits worked 
 their own fatality. The Hebrews became the 
 reservoirs of the wealth of the strange lands 
 where they were found. For the steel-clad 
 baron, they were sponges to suck in as much 
 water as they could hold, that his protecting 
 hand, as he listed, might squeeze them to their 
 last drop ; for the luxurious abbots and the 
 rosy canons, who heaped up their improvident 
 bonds on the Hebrew affecting the poverty he 
 was to relieve, the Jews became the creditors 
 of a whole province. Dark rumours spread 
 that they crucified a child when they roasted 
 the paschal lamb ; poisoned wells, as they 
 could live without water ; that their physi- 
 cians, for the great medical characters in 
 Europe were Hebrews, got rid of their 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 231 
 
 Christian patients, by which they ruined 
 their practice. They were made responsible 
 for a long drought in a dry season, or a pes- 
 tilence. All these rumours usually preceded 
 an expulsion or a massacre, and all the Jewish 
 bonds were burnt! The Jews have always 
 been most degraded and persecuted in " free 
 commercial cities" such as those of Ham- 
 burgh and Frankfort. It was their calamity 
 to excel in the arts their neighbours practised. 
 A society which becomes too powerful by 
 their wealth, has ever been marked out for 
 the spoil of the government, or the people ; 
 there are so many passions in human nature 
 which are allied against a flourishing body. 
 First hated, and then calumniated, they be- 
 come the victims of state ; and Justice veils 
 her eyes during the popular suppression or 
 destruction. Such was the fate of the order 
 of the Templars, of the English monastic in- 
 stitutions, of the Jesuits throughout Europe ! 
 
232 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 The horrid crimes of which the Hebrews 
 have been accused, could never bear an his- 
 torical scrutiny. But thus have sects and 
 parties calumniated each other. The Chris- 
 tians under the Romans were rendered odious 
 by similar fictions. The earliest Reformers 
 were thus blackened by the Papalists. The 
 Romanists in our country were harassed by 
 the same grievous arts. This historical pro- 
 blem is of no difficult solution. Whenever 
 a heavy price is proclaimed to disccver 01- 
 fenders, however innocent, offenders will be 
 found ; and for the informers there can be no 
 higher price than a share in the confiscation. 
 
 But it was not only for their sordid arts 
 and insulating habits that the Jews incurred 
 the hatred of Christian nations, during the 
 middle ages. They nourished an hereditary 
 hatred against Christianity, and vomited forth 
 libels against the Christian religion. A biblio- 
 maniac might exhaust his passion in no small 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 233 
 
 library of anti-christian books*. The learned 
 Wagenseil collected in two quarto volumes 
 some of the most striking in his Tela Ignea 
 Satance, and refuted the aspersions ; but he 
 might securely have left his " fiery arrows" 
 to be quenched in the waters of oblivion, 
 where they had already been plunged. For 
 many centuries a rivalry still seemed to rage 
 between theAbbot and the Rabbin ; they were 
 irreconcilable neighbours ; and the vitupera- 
 tions of the Church were retorted by the invec- 
 tives of the Synagogue, not less infamous, but 
 more harmless, concealed as they must have 
 been in the narrow circle of obscure Judaism. 
 At these " horrible attacks," as Wagenseil 
 
 * The erudite Italian professor De Rossi has re- 
 cently given a Bibliotheca Judaica Anti- Christiana 
 qua editi et inediti Judceorum adversus Christiani Re- 
 ligionem Lihri Recensentur, Parmse 1800. This cata- 
 logue is extremely curious for an account of works which 
 never emerged out of their manuscript state. 
 
'234f THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 justly calls them, on the Christians, we need 
 not be surprised. If we except a fabulous 
 life of Jesus, — too vulgar a fiction, in every 
 sense, ever to have been noticed, but with 
 which on the Continent the Jews are too fre- 
 quently reproached, — the writers were of a 
 race inflated by their own imaginations, and 
 deemed infamous for the very circumstance 
 which made them haughty, mercilessly 
 branded and badged. Had their masters 
 through the middle ages been capable of 
 reading the Gospel, assuredly those masters 
 would have received a more grateful tribute ; 
 for the wretched had sought but for a rest- 
 ing place. The Jews in these Anti-christian 
 productions, were in fact only anticipating 
 what the Reformed and the Protestants sub- 
 sequently not less vehemently performed. 
 There are, indeed, some later writings which 
 remain in manuscript, not in the collection 
 of Wagenseil. These are composed chiefly 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. Q35 
 
 in the Spanish language by Jewish emi- 
 grants, recent from the tortures of the In- 
 quisition, or the fires of an Auto da Fe. 
 Effusions of heated minds in agony, Mount 
 Sinai seems changed into Mount Vesuvius, 
 while from all parts bursts forth the floating 
 and burning lava. To the Hebrews, the 
 Christians of Spain and Portugal, and Italy, 
 in their image-worship, and numerous su- 
 perstitious observances, appeared the most 
 palpable of idolaters — whether they en- 
 countered the tinkling host in the streets 
 to kneel as it passed, or were forced to 
 swallow " su magestad," his majesty, as 
 in the tumid Spanish taste they titled " the 
 real presence ; " whether they were watched 
 if they did not light the lamps to the 
 " bambino" nailed at their gates, or in- 
 dignantly witnessed, or were told of some 
 puppet-god shedding tears or sweating blood 
 — with the Hebrews, as with ourselves, all 
 
236 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 this was a renewal of " bowing the knee to 
 Baal." 
 
 It is thought by some that the rigid 
 Hebrew has an inherent national charac- 
 teristic which must keep him distinct from 
 other people. But we must distinguish be- 
 tween the rites and habits of his religion, 
 which insulate him, and the character of the 
 individual according to his locality. A 
 shrewd observer tells us, " Whether you dine, 
 or pray, or converse, or correspond with a 
 pure and conscientious Jew, some peculiarity 
 forces upon your notice that he is not one 
 of the people ; and in these more than in 
 the peculiarities of their religious creed, 
 rests the execution of the curse which still 
 keeps the descendants of Israel a distinct 
 and despised people among the Gentile 
 nations*." 
 
 * A Tour in Germany, &c, 1824. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 237 
 
 Inexorable Judaism ! The priests of the 
 idolaters were not more cruel in exacting 
 from their heartless votaries the blood of 
 their children, than thou wert in separating 
 man from men. But is this a stroke from 
 heaven, or an artifice of man ? Manners, and 
 habits, and notions, are long hereditary, but 
 the Hebrew is often himself a foreigner, and 
 this writer who discovers that " the Jew is 
 not one of the people," might attach the 
 same observation to every stranger in Eng- 
 land who bears the characteristics of his 
 own nation. The Jewish people are not a 
 nation, for they consist of many nations ; 
 they are Spanish or Portuguese, German 
 and Polish, they are Italian, English, and 
 French; and, like the chameleon, they reflect 
 the colour of the spot they rest on. The 
 people of Israel are like waters running 
 through vast countries, tinged in their course 
 with all the varieties of the soil where they 
 
238 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 deposit themselves. After a few generations 
 the Hebrews assimilate with the character, 
 and are actuated by the feelings, of the 
 nation where they become natives. What 
 a distinct people are the Jews of London, 
 of Paris, and of Amsterdam, from the Jews 
 of Morocco, of Damascus, and the Volga ! 
 
239 
 
 CHAPTER XIIL 
 
 THE ENGLISH JEWS. 
 
 Who are the English Jews? I doubt 
 whether any precise notion of this people 
 has been formed either by Jew or Christian. 
 The Hebrews, who so long persisted in the 
 neglect of their own history, have few or no 
 recollections of their ancestors in this country; 
 and the Christian confounds an heterogeneous 
 mixture of Jewish races, and is apt to judge 
 erroneously of them all. 
 
 I am not writing the history of the Jews, 
 for antiquaries, but the Genius of Judaism for 
 philosophers. I therefore pass over a period 
 in our own history, in which it is supposed 
 there were no Jews in England — the reigns 
 
240 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 of Elizabeth, James, and Charles I. My 
 researches might show that they were not 
 then unknown in this country. Had there 
 been no Jews in England, would that lumi- 
 nary of law, Sir Edward Coke, have needed 
 to inveigh against the Jews as " Infidels and 
 Turks," delivering them all alike to the 
 devil : stigmatised and infamous persons, 
 " perpetui inimici" says Littleton, " and 
 not admissible as witnesses." Our philoso- 
 phical curiosity is amused in tracing the slow 
 steps by which a nation approaches common 
 humanity and common sense. The servile 
 sages of the law, have rarely been the leaders 
 of public opinion ; groping after doubtful 
 precedents, and entrenching themselves be- 
 hind statutes made for the genius of other 
 times. Judge Hale and our lawyers gradually 
 retreated from this legal excommunication. 
 Under Charles II., Lord Keeper North 
 found no difficulty in swearing a Jew on his 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 241 
 
 Pentateuch, and Acts of Parliament under the 
 Georges overturned the patriarchal opinion 
 of the Lord Chief Justice Coke — who, had he 
 now lived, would have started from the bench 
 at the apparition of a Jewish counsellor ! or 
 that one of the most profound and luminous 
 juri-consults in Europe should be a Jew ! 
 
 Cromwell treated the Jews much like Na- 
 poleon ; he did nothing more for them than 
 what his policy required. He took a states- 
 man's view, and did a statesman's act. He 
 wished to render their commercial knowledge 
 useful to his own financial operations. It 
 was then a question, theological and civil, 
 whether it were lawful to admit them ? His 
 divines were heard in council ; he declared 
 there was nothing but confusion in their 
 counsels ; and, as had been his first intention, 
 he allowed a limited number to settle in 
 London, and to have synagogues. They 
 were sufficiently numerous to celebrate the 
 
 M 
 
242 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM, 
 
 feast of tabernacles in booths, on the borders 
 of the Thames. They imprudently thought 
 they had found a new Judea : but this public 
 rejoicing would only occasion another turn- 
 ing over of the texts of " the gilt pocket 
 bibles " of the puritanical doctors ; and the 
 feast of the tabernacles was probably not 
 repeated, for we find new inquiries afloat, 
 upon what terms they were admitted ; and 
 they were reminded that the old act of banish- 
 ment of Edward I. had not been repealed. 
 They retired into their silent quarters. 
 
 I recollect my astonishment in looking over 
 the memoirs of the Royal Academy of Lisbon, 
 of modern date, to find a considerable portion 
 occupied by subjects of Jewish erudition, and 
 on Jewish writers in the first age of the Portu- 
 guese monarchy, to the seventeenth century. 
 The memoirs of no other national academy dis- 
 play this recondite knowledge, and this great 
 delight in Jewish writers. The philosophical 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 243 
 
 physician of the embassy enlightened me ; 
 he assured me that the tenderness for the 
 religion of their fathers was excessive ; and 
 that many public characters, in the agony of 
 their religious consciences, had often flown 
 to the synagogues of England and Holland. 
 It was this feeling, which, notwithstanding 
 their Autos da Fe, the government itself 
 could no longer disguise. Several edicts are 
 now before me ; the last issued in 1773. 
 Here is formally abolished the odious dis- 
 tinction of Christianos Novos, and Chris- 
 tianos Velhos, — New and Old Christians, 
 which had so long tormented the half- Judaised 
 Portuguese. It even allows the children of 
 Moses to hold their festivals ; it prohibits 
 the compulsion of baptism ; it relieves them 
 from any tribute or tax hitherto levied on 
 Jews ; and it makes honourable mention, by 
 name, of certain officers of state who were 
 Jews, yet had been prime ministers, and trea- 
 
 M 2 
 
244 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 surers ; and finally it declares, that " the 
 blood of the Hebrews is the blood of our 
 apostles, our deans, our presbyters, and our 
 bishops." All this may be confirmed by a 
 recent casual observation of Madame Junot, 
 the Duchess of Abrantes: "The Portuguese 
 nation," she writes, " though three parts 
 Jewish, are extremely tenacious of admitting 
 amongst them any persons who do not bring 
 good proofs of their purity of blood." 
 
 It was this race which formed the first 
 general settlement of Jews in England ; 
 Spanish and Portuguese fugitives from the 
 infernal fires of the Autos da Fe, and the 
 living graves of the Inquisition. Ships 
 freighted with Jewish families and Jewish 
 property, landed on the shores of England 
 and Holland. Many escaped without any 
 preparation, to save their lives by a day. 
 They were composed of all ranks, noble- 
 men, officers, learned physicians, and opulent 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 245 
 
 merchants : many conveyed great wealth, and 
 there were individuals who maintained in Eng- 
 land a ducal establishment. The first names of 
 the Portuguese nation may still be traced in 
 their present descendants, who occupy very 
 different situations. The Villa Reals, the 
 Alvarez, the Mendez, the Francos, the Re- 
 bellos, the De Silvas, the Garcias, the D'A- 
 guilars, the Souzas, the De Castros, the Sal- 
 vadors, and a long list, betray their Lusita- 
 nian lineage. 
 
 These distinguished persons for many 
 years constituted what is called the com- 
 munity of Spanish and Portuguese Jews of 
 London. The nobler families who brought 
 wealth, assumed their rank in society ; the 
 mercantile class opened new sources of com- 
 merce, and unquestionably the Lisbon trade 
 must have flourished. Their origin here is 
 still attested by the circumstance that their 
 translated prayers and their Bible are in 
 
246 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 Spanish, and all their by-laws and judicial 
 and other civil documents, are still issued 
 in the Portuguese language. Many of their 
 physicians obtained great practice in Eng- 
 land and in Holland. In the science of 
 medicine the Jews had been eminent from 
 very remote aeras. The physician of Henry 
 IV. of France was a Jew, and at his desire 
 his bones were carried to the Holy Land : 
 Voltaire inscribed an epistle to the Jewish 
 physician, Isaac de Silva. 
 
 These Portuguese Jews at London, could 
 never drop their national characteristic ; they 
 were remarked for their haughtiness, their 
 high sense of honour, and their stately man- 
 ners. Subsequently, Jewish emigrants flocked 
 from Germany, and Poland, and Barbary, — 
 a race in every respect of an inferior rank. 
 Their entrance into these realms was silent, 
 and no record has fallen in my researches, 
 which imparts the dignity of history. The 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 247 
 
 Portuguese Grandees shrunk from their con- 
 tact ; they looked on those lees of the people 
 in bitter scorn, and through a long century 
 the contumely was never forgiven. In every 
 respect these differing races moved in con- 
 trast. The one opulent and high-minded ; 
 the other humiliated by indigence, and pur- 
 suing the meanest, and not seldom the most 
 disreputable, crafts. The one indolent, po- 
 lished, and luxurious ; the other, with offen- 
 sive habits, active and penurious, hardy in 
 frame, and shrewd in intellect. The one 
 splendid in dress and equipage, while the 
 abject Pol antler still retained the beard com- 
 manded by Moses with the gaberdine. The 
 one, though yet too proud to adopt the idiom 
 of his new country, was yet critical in his 
 own ; scientific and literary, while the other, 
 totally illiterate, adhered to abarbarous Hebrew 
 dialect. From the first, different synagogues 
 separated them ; every intercourse was for- 
 
248 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 bidden ; the haughty Lusitanian Jew would 
 have returned to the fires of Lisbon, ere he 
 condescended to an intermarriage with the 
 Jew of Alsace or Warsaw. The mutual 
 hatred of these Jews reminds one of the Turks 
 and Persians, who, if one called the other 
 dogs, the other declared against asses. — 
 Among ourselves, these two classes of Jews 
 are still known as the Portuguese and the 
 German Jews, and we often wonder how 
 and why they are divided. 
 
 Such was the state of the Jews in England, 
 and likewise in Holland, where the same cir- 
 cumstances had occurred about half a century 
 ago ; when a great revolution was occurring 
 with this little people. 
 
 A Jewish philosopher, for there have 
 been philosophers among this unphilosophical 
 nation, once observed that the wealth of a 
 Jewish family never outlasted two genera- 
 tions , and the reason he assigned was that 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 249 
 
 all their property was personal, for they 
 were prohibited from having any stable pro- 
 perty, as landholders. This seems verified 
 in the present history of the Portuguese 
 Jewish settlers. The pride and the passion 
 for splendour of the first race in England, 
 who were not mercantile men, and probably 
 very unskilful stewards, fell to their dissipa- 
 ting heirs ; and this race, like torches, con- 
 sumed themselves in their own brilliancy. 
 The Salvadors, the Francos, the Mendezs, 
 were once the ornaments of fashionable 
 drawing rooms, but none of these had other 
 property than that which " maketh itself 
 wings and flieth." At that day the literal 
 bigotry of our lawyers insisted that no Jew 
 could even purchase the house he lived in. 
 This was long credited, till later and more 
 sagacious counsellors overturned the obsolete 
 opinion. 
 
 The first and second generation of the 
 
Q50 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 Portuguese Jews resided in retired quarters 
 in the city ; then its mansions were not de- 
 serted even by our own merchants. As 
 foreigners and as Hebrews such a locality 
 was preferred, for their language and their 
 habits continued to be Portuguese. Their 
 sons would become more familiar with our 
 own. A third generation were natives. A 
 fourth were purely English. About the time 
 of the first George this foreign race were 
 zealously national ; firm adherents to the 
 Protestant succession. A Romanist on 
 the throne for them would have been re- 
 viving the terror their relatives had flown 
 from, and even as late as this period fresh- 
 fugitives landed on our coasts. It is evident 
 that the Jews, for every protecting govern- 
 ment, become the most zealous patriots. I 
 do not know that their patriotism springs 
 from the most elevated source — it lies more 
 level with common feelings, but it will never 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 9,51 
 
 dry. The Hebrew identifies his interests 
 with those of the country ; their wealth is his 
 wealth ; their victories secure his prosperity. 
 On several trying occasions, both in England 
 and in Holland, they have laid on the altar 
 of public safety noble sacrifices of their lives 
 and their fortunes. In recent times, faithful 
 to a paternal government, they have marched 
 in the armies of European sovereigns. Prussia 
 has many Jewish officers ; France, since her 
 regeneration, has counted numerous Israelites 
 in her Ecole Polytechnique, and the blood 
 of Israel profusely flowed in the fields of 
 Waterloo. The King of Holland has a com* 
 plete regiment of gallant Hebrews. All this 
 confirms what I have already asserted, that 
 every native Jew, as a political being, becomes 
 distinct from the Jew of any other nation. 
 If the Jewish military under the King of 
 Holland were to encounter the French 
 Israelites, the combat would be between the 
 Dutch and the French. The Hebrew adopts 
 
252 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 the hostilities and the alliances of the land 
 where he was born — he calls himself by the 
 name of his country. 
 
 To return to our English Jews. They 
 had the interest to procure the famous Jew 
 bill of lJoS to pass ; but not the power to 
 still the popular clamour which repealed it. 
 
 I come now to their domestic history. A 
 small community, like a great nation, has its 
 meridian and its decline. The Portuguese 
 opulence decayed, no eminent person suc- 
 ceeded to the splendid race, who have only 
 left heirs to their names. By the chances 
 and changes of fortune, some of the German 
 Jews emerged from their lowly state ; skilled 
 in the arts, and the artifices of finance, the 
 wealth of the Jewish nation is probably depo- 
 sited in their coffers, and these northern 
 Jews are even courted by the humble de- 
 scendants of their haughty Portuguese bre- 
 thren. The dates of fortune are prescribed. 
 
 It is the singular result of the fortunes of 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. Q53 
 
 "the peculiar people " that, in writing their 
 annals, the historian must necessarily digress 
 into those of other nations. The great emi- 
 gration of the Jews into England was occa- 
 sioned by a renewal of the persecutions of 
 the Inquisition, particularly in Portugal. The 
 truth is, and an extraordinary truth it will 
 appear, the greater part of the Portuguese 
 nation are absolutely Jewish. At the first great 
 expulsion from Spain it has been said that fifty 
 thousand families had been driven into Por- 
 tugal, and one hundred and forty thousand 
 scattered in the East. Those whose fathers had 
 received baptism were distinguished as Chris- 
 tianos Novos, who became odious to those 
 whose origin was deemed purer. They were 
 numerous, and most of them secretly Judaised. 
 They were known by their baptismal names, 
 but often among themselves they had pre- 
 served their more ancient denominations. 
 The Portuguese have been always reproached 
 
2,54 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 by their ecclesiastics as encouraging too great 
 a tenderness for the perfidious Jews. " A 
 few," says a friar, " have been burnt at Lis- 
 bon, but not enough ; for they still grow up 
 like that fabulous serpent of Hercules, every 
 head you destroy produces seven, or seventy. 
 If we had more regular Autos they might 
 in time clear the country*." That the Por- 
 tuguese are almost wholly Judaic in their 
 descent, will appear from an anecdote told me 
 by the ancient resident physician of the Por- 
 tuguese embassy. Under the administration 
 of the great Pombal, the priestly party had 
 persuaded King Joseph to renew that badge 
 of Judaism — the yellow hat — to mark the 
 numerous Christianos Novos among his sub- 
 jects. The edict was prepared. On the fol- 
 lowing morning the minister appeared before 
 
 * Breve discurso contra a heretica perftda do Judais- 
 mo. Par Vicente da Costa Mattos. Lisboa, 1622. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 255 
 
 his majesty with three yellow hats — one he 
 offered to the King, another he brought for 
 the Grand Inquisitor, and the third for his 
 own head. " I obey your majesty's order," 
 said the minister, "in providing these badges 
 to be worn by those whose blood has been 
 tainted by Judaism/' 
 
256 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Whatever political boon Christians may 
 concede to their ancient brothers, it is quite 
 evident that the social reform of the English 
 Jews must mainly depend upon themselves. 
 It would be an act of political justice that 
 the name of Briton, which now must be 
 attached to the Hebrew born in the domi- 
 nions of Great Britain, should no longer be 
 held in disregard ; and it would be an act 
 of political wisdom to remove all those civil 
 disabilities and privations which hitherto have 
 aggrieved and degraded so considerable a 
 portion of our fellow-subjects. It is not 
 less evident that there are certain privileges 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 257 
 
 which a Christian government can never 
 concede to a Jewish subject. 
 
 But should the Jews be admitted to the 
 equality of citizens, and, notwithstanding, 
 not amalgamate with citizenship ; if amidst 
 freedom the Hebrew cannot be free, their 
 moral and political reform will remain in- 
 complete. Napoleon discovered that the 
 jealous genius of Judaism resisted a social 
 union with his nation at the voice of the 
 Rabbin, and the imperial seducer could only 
 calculate by the votes of his submissive Isra- 
 elites. The synagogue was against him, but 
 not the synagoguers — the priesthood, but not 
 the people. To blend the severity of orien- 
 tal Judaism with the pliant conformity of 
 European Christianity, has long formed the 
 despair of the Christian and the Jew when 
 equally enlightened. The difficulty consists 
 in the rigid Hebrew associating with his 
 fellow Christians — from the Mosaic prohibi- 
 
Q5H THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 tion of aliments, and from the innumerable 
 customs which are the inventions of the 
 Rabbins. 
 
 Let us not dispute with the Jews on the 
 perpetuity of the Law of Moses ; it will be 
 sufficient to show that it cannot be per- 
 petuated. 
 
 Mortera, the great champion of Judaism, 
 among his proofs of the truth of the Law of 
 Moses has this one, that " the divine law alone 
 is sufficient to govern the people of Israel ; 
 and it requires no other science, nor know- 
 ledge, in any occurrence which can happen 
 to man" From the same Rabbinical school, 
 as we have already shown*, it is their creed 
 that " every tittle of their code was the 
 dictation of God himself." With the ten- 
 fold cecity of zeal without reason, they have 
 carried the fiction of inspiration even to its 
 
 * See pp. 93, 95, and 210. 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 259 
 
 words, its syllables, and its letters ; and ac- 
 cepting literally the term " everlasting," 
 they are still extending that law to objects 
 which have ceased to be. 
 
 We might have expected that the votaries 
 of the Law of Moses would ere now have 
 read their sacred code with a clearer and 
 more intelligent spirit, than did their ances- 
 tors in the last century. Biblical studies 
 and critical theology, the philosophical spirit 
 of our own times has advanced beyond our 
 hopes ; and the hallowed localities of the 
 Israelitish annals are not more familiar to our 
 travellers than the amplifications and hyper- 
 boles of the oriental style are to our students. 
 The Hebrew might have been taught to weigh 
 some of his Hebraisms, and often to dis- 
 cern where the indefinite is used for the de- 
 finite ; and by the genius of the language 
 and the age of the writings, to qualify those 
 rhetorical expressions, which, in a volume not 
 sacred, he would justly comprehend. 
 
260 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 Did Moses imagine that his government 
 would be established for ever, and that his 
 people should possess their soil " everlast- 
 ingly ?" Far from this ; the sublime legis- 
 lator dreaded the slightest intercourse of his 
 insulated people with their neighbours. Nor 
 could the inspired legislator deem that an 
 ordinance which was in its nature temporary 
 and local, could by any human contrivance 
 be made of perpetual obligation, and uni- 
 versal in its practice. Moses contemplated 
 the temporal prosperity of his people of 
 children, and all his views are limited to the 
 regions where they flourished. The splendid 
 ceremonial ; the forbidden aliments ; the 
 civil regulations ; the sumptuary laws ; the 
 medical precepts ; and the minute domestic 
 regulations, could only be laws as long as 
 they were practicable, salutary, and desirable 
 — and above all while the nation maintained 
 its independence. 
 
 But this code they assert is not only per- 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 26l 
 
 petual, but to be observed, " without diminu- 
 tion or addition." A people who deem their 
 laws immutable, at length will come to have 
 laws for what does not exist, and for what 
 does exist they are without laws. All laws 
 which cease to be efficient annul themselves ; 
 and, from altered circumstances, laws may 
 become impediments to the very purpose of 
 their institution. 
 
 It is evident to all men, but Hebrews who 
 still cling to the ignorant pride of a semi- 
 civilised race, that a considerable portion of 
 the Mosaic code could not be designed for 
 perpetuity, but was accommodated to imme- 
 diate purposes. Many laws, therefore, have 
 fallen extinct with their objects. The motives 
 which induced Moses to forbid the eating of 
 pork, of shell-fish, and other aliments, no 
 longer prevail in another climate, and among 
 a race who are not idolaters. Ordinances re- 
 lating to the seven Canaanean nations could 
 
262 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 only be absolute while those hordes existed. 
 Customs of the East, prescribed as religious 
 rites, frequent ablutions, and living in 
 bowery tabernacles in the chill of autumn, 
 would not have been commanded in the cold, 
 or even in the temperate zones. The laws 
 are not perpetual which relate to certain 
 contagious maladies which have disappeared, 
 while other prevalent diseases have arisen 
 for which Moses could provide no laws. 
 Would the Hebrew at this day inflict punish- 
 ments peculiar to the East, because they are 
 decreed by the Mosaic code? The whole 
 constitution of Israel has passed away ; the 
 sacrifice and the sacrificer have vanished ; 
 the altar sunk with the throne. A con- 
 quered people ridiculously exist as if they 
 were in a state independent, amidst the 
 miseries and the degradations of twenty 
 centuries. 
 
 But while the laws of the Sacred Code 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. Q§3 
 
 admit of such obvious explanations, and can- 
 not be perpetuated in all times and in all 
 places, and, in opposition to the vain credu- 
 lity of its followers, may well allow both of 
 " diminution and addition," strange to say, 
 a spurious legislation, by the artifices of an 
 unrelenting faction, to this late day tyran- 
 nises over the Jewish people. The infinite 
 multiplicity of customs, and gross supersti- 
 tions, as ridiculous as once were those of 
 witchcraft, the mere inventions of their Tal- 
 mudical doctors, are incorporated in their 
 faith, in their ceremonies, and their daily 
 customs. These scholastic impostures have 
 bound them hand and foot, and cast them 
 into the cavern of the lone and sullen Genius 
 of Rabbinical Judaism, cutting them off from 
 the great family of mankind, and perpetuat- 
 ing their sorrows and their shame. 
 
 Far be it from us to w r ound tender con- 
 sciences, or to torture with religious terrors 
 
264 THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 thoughtful minds among the children of 
 Israel. But let the Rabbinicals inquire who 
 were these Rabbins, who, for two thousand 
 years, constituted themselves the arbiters 
 of the laws of Moses ; and whose traditions 
 form an integral part of the Divine Code ? 
 So they assert! Ingenious sophists and 
 visionary enthusiasts, some dreamers and 
 many dotards, grave expounders of the most 
 ridiculous observances, and not a few ambi- 
 tious spirits, haughty with domination— these 
 formed, for the most part, the consistory of 
 these Jewish sages. We know the artifice 
 they practised in sealing up the national mind 
 of their people, by adopting that Asiatic 
 principle, that all knowledge was foolishness 
 which was not to be found in their own 
 Encyclopaedia and Koran — their Talmud ! 
 From age to age they went on corrupting 
 the simplicity of their antique creed; forging 
 chains upon chains for their credulous pup- 
 
THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. ®65 
 
 pets, and who cannot yet escape from the 
 malignant influence of a doctrinal govern- 
 ment. 
 
 I would implore the Jews to begin to 
 educate their youth as the youth of Europe, 
 and not of Palestine ; let their Talmud be 
 removed to an elevated shelf, to be consulted 
 as a curiosity of antiquity, and not as a manual 
 of education. Many, indeed, among the higher 
 classes of the Hebrews, have attempted to 
 educate their children in Christian schools, 
 for they have no others ; but the conflict of 
 the parental feelings, of their own good 
 sense with the excluding dicta of the 
 Talmudists — the forbidden food and the 
 omitted customs — have scared even the 
 intelligent among them. The civil and poli- 
 tical fusion of the Jewish with their fellow- 
 citizens, must commence by rejecting every 
 anti-social principle ; let them only separate 
 to hasten to the Church and to the Syna- 
 
 N 
 
2()() THE GENIUS OF JUDAISM. 
 
 gogue. The Hebrew, exulting in his immu- 
 table law, has yet to learn that a wise legis- 
 lature, in accommodating itself to the times, 
 and to the wants of the people, suspends or 
 executes laws as the juncture may require. 
 The chief end of laws is not only their 
 observance, but the good of the people. 
 Salus Populi suprema Lex. Let them 
 remember that their great ancestor, Judas 
 Maccabeus, fought on the Sabbath-day ; for, 
 he said, " It is not as it was heretofore with 
 us!" To free themselves of their supersti- 
 tions will not be the least difficult conversion 
 of the Jews. The common enjoyments of 
 civil rights will neither endanger the genius 
 of Judaism, nor the genius of Christianity. 
 
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