Note 4 — Chapter XIII · Epistle to the Hebrews (A Sequel to Sophia Solomontos).

With this reservation, and a large one it is, that Jesus was not delivered up to Satan by God, but left to confront his torments in an effort to subdue him, “bring him to nought,” the central idea of the Epistle is a doctrinal transfiguration of Job, who being delivered up to Satan, triumphs over the tempter and tormentor, and through all preserves his sinlessness and loyalty to God. The result being that those who had denied Job’s merits, his sinlessness, had to secure Job’s intercession in order to escape the penalty of having ascribed his sufferings to God (Job xlii. 8).4 This relationship of ideas is all the more interesting because apparently unconscious in the writer of the Epistle, and thus revealing the extent to which Oriental religion had remoulded Judaism among the educated Jews of his time. Monotheism is strictly inconsistent with the supremacy of “merits” which is the very soul of Oriental religion. The sacred books of India contain records of saints or Rishis who by extraordinary austerities, sacrifices, and virtues so piled up their “merits” that the gods were frightened, as they were at the tower of Babel; and sometimes the gods tempted these powerful saints to commit some sin that would reduce their “merits.” The Solomonic “Proverbs” are pervaded by the Oriental doctrine of “merits”: a man is proved by test of his merits, as gold passing through the furnace (xxvii. 21); the perfect inherit good (xxviii. 10); and perhaps that sublime pedlar of transcendent gems imported along with the gold of Ophir some version of the Puranic legend of Harischandra, “the Hindu Job.” All the Jahvist adulterations of the biblical version do not conceal the fact that when Jahveh, by delivering the meritorious man up to Satan, delivered himself also into the hands of Satan, he (Jahveh) was compelled to surrender before the merits on which the man had planted himself. Jahveh reclaimed his sovereignty, but agreed that Job, who had said “God hath wronged me,” had spoken of him “the thing that is right” (xlii. 8). In the same way the storm-god Indra (the Hindu Jahveh) accompanied by all the gods, headed by Dharma (Justice), appears to Harischandra after his trials, and tells him that he, his wife and son, had, by their merits, “conquered heaven” (Markandeya Purana). The completion of these merits was when Harischandra resolved with his wife to die on the funeral pyre of their son, who, as a result of their torments, had died by a serpent’s bite. It was then that the god Indra appeared to restore the son, and admit that the just and faithful king, his wife and son, had “conquered heaven.” We are thus carried to the Solomonic affirmations that “when the whirlwind passeth the just man is on an everlasting foundation” (Prov. x. 25), that “justice delivereth from death” (x. 2), that “the just man finds a refuge in death” (xiv. 32); and we are carried forward to the Epistle to the Hebrews, where, after the last ordeal, death, the son of the heavenly king is restored to life, and Satan, who had over him the power of death, “brought to nought” (ii. 14). But further, in the Puranic legend, which from time immemorial has been a passion-play in India, Harischandra, when told that he, his wife and son, had “conquered heaven,” refused to ascend to heaven without his “faithful subjects.” “This request was granted by Indra, and after Viswamitra had inaugurated Rohitaswa, the king’s son, to be his successor, Harischandra, his friends and followers, all ascended to heaven.” Thus, in our Epistle, the son, having “learned obedience by the things which he suffered, and having been made perfect, became unto all them that obeyed him the author of eternal salvation.” “For in that he hath himself suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted.” The subjects of King Harischandra who remained faithful to him after he was reduced to beggary, ascended with him. Faith is declared in our Epistle to be “the testing of things not seen” (xi. 1), and faithfulness is to “run with patience the course that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the captain and perfector of faithfulness, who for the joy set before him endured the stake (σταυρόν), despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (xi. 1, xii. 1, 2).