Note 39 — Chapter XII · IF NON-TOL­ERA­TION WAS PART OF THE DI­VINE LAW A­MONG THE JEWS, AND WHETH­ER IT WAS AL­WAYS PUT IN PRAC­TICE.

Several writers have too rashly concluded from this passage that the chapter concerning the golden calf—which is no other than the Egyptian god Apis—has, as well as many other chapters, been added to the books of Moses. Eben-Ezra was the first who undertook to prove that the Pentateuch—or the five books of Moses—was written in the times of the Kings. Wollaston, Collins, Tindal, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and many others have asserted that in those ages men had no other way of committing their thoughts to writing but by engraving them upon polished stone, brick, lead, or wood; and tell us that in the time of Moses the Chaldæans and Egyptians had no other way of writing, and that then they could engrave but in a very abridged manner, and by hieroglyphics, the substance only of such things as they thought worthy of being transmitted to posterity, and could never form any regular histories; then it was next to an impossibility to engrave books of any considerable bulk in the wilderness, where they were continually changing their habitation; where they had no person to furnish them with clothing, to make that clothing for them, or even to mend their sandals, and where God was obliged to perform a miracle to preserve the garments of His people entire. They say that it is hardly probable that there should have been so many engravers among them, at the time that they were so deficient in the more necessary arts of life, and did not know even how to make bread; and if we answer to this, that the pillars of the tabernacle were of brass, and their chapiters of massy silver they reply, that though the order for this might have been given in the wilderness, it was not executed till after they were settled in perfect tranquillity. They cannot conceive, they say, how the Israelites, who were a poor and vagabond people, could have asked for a calf of massy gold to be erected for the object of their adoration, at the foot of the very mountain where God was then talking with Moses, and in the very midst of the thunder and lightning, and the sound of the heavenly trumpet, which were heard and seen by all present. They profess their astonishment that it should have been only the day before Moses descended from the mountain, that all the people should have addressed themselves to his brother Aaron to raise this golden calf; or how it was possible for Aaron to have cast such an image in one single day; and still more, how Moses could have reduced it into an impalpable powder. They say that it is impossible for any artist to make a statue of gold in less than three months, and that not all the possible efforts of the chemical art are sufficient to reduce such a mass into a powder that may be swallowed, and consequently, that the prevarication of Aaron and this operation of Moses must have been two miracles. Deceived by the humanity and goodness of their hearts, they cannot believe that Moses slaughtered three and twenty thousand souls to expiate this crime; nor, that so many men would have tamely suffered themselves to be murdered without a third miracle. Lastly, they think it very extraordinary that Aaron, who was the most guilty of all, should have been rewarded for that very crime for which the rest underwent so dreadful a punishment, by being created high-priest, and go to offer sacrifice at the high altar, while the bodies of three and twenty thousand of his slaughtered brethren lay bleeding round him. They start the same difficulties concerning the eighty thousand Israelites who were slain by order of Moses, to atone for the crime of a single one of them, for being surprised with a Moabite woman; and seeing that Solomon, and so many other of the Jewish kings did, without being punished for it, take to themselves strange wives, they cannot conceive what great crime there could be in an individual making an alliance with one Moabite woman. Ruth was a Moabitess, though her family was originally of Bethlehem; the Scripture always distinguishes her by the name of Ruth the Moabitess; and yet she went and laid herself by the side of Boaz, received six measures of barley from him, was afterwards married to him, and was the grandmother of David. Rahab was not only a stranger, but also a common prostitute, or a harlot, as she is called in Scripture; yet she was taken to wife by Solomon, a prince of Judæa; from whom also David was descended. This Rahab is taken to be a type of the Christian church by several of the ancient fathers; and especially by Origen, in his seventh homily on Joshua. Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, by whom David begat Solomon, was a Hittite. And if we go farther back, we shall find that the patriarch Judah married a Canaanitess; and his sons lay with Thamar, who was of the race of Aaron; and the woman with whom Judah, without knowing it, committed incest, was not of the Israelitish race. Thus then was our Lord Jesus Christ pleased to take upon him flesh in a family descended from five aliens, to show that all nations should partake of his inheritance. The rabbi Eben-Ezra was, as we have already observed, the first who undertook to prove that the Pentateuch was compiled long after the time of Moses; and for his authority quotes several passages in those books; and amongst others the following: “The Canaanite then dwelt in that land. The mountain of Moriah, called the Mountain of God. The bed of Og, king of Bashan, is still to be seen in Rabah. And the country of Bashan is called the villages of Jaiar unto this day. Never was there a prophet seen in Israel like unto Moses. These are the kings who reigned in Edom, before any king reigned over Israel.” He pretends that these passages, in which mention is made of events that happened long after the time of Moses, could never have been written by Moses himself. To this it is replied, that these passages were added long after by way of notes by the transcribers. Newton, whose name ought on every other occasion to be mentioned with respect, but who, as a man, may have been liable to error, in the introduction to his commentaries upon Daniel and St. John, ascribes the five books of Moses, Joshua, and Judges to holy writers of much later date; and founds his opinion on the thirty-sixth chapter of Genesis, the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twenty-first chapters of Judges, the eighth chapter of Samuel, the second chapter of Chronicles, and the fourth chapter of the book of Ruth; and indeed, considering that in the thirty-sixth chapter of Genesis we find mention made of Kings, and that David is spoken of in the books of Judges and that of Ruth, it should seem that those books were compiled in the times of the Kings. This is also the opinion of several divines, at the head of whom is the famous Le Clerc. But there are very few of those who are followers of this opinion, that have had the curiosity to fathom these mysteries; a curiosity which certainly makes no part of the duty of man. For when the learned and the ignorant, the prince and the peasant, shall, after this short life, appear together before the throne of Eternal Majesty, every one of us then will wish to have been just and humane, generous and compassionate; and no one will pride himself in having known exactly the year in which the Pentateuch was written, or in having been able to distinguish the true text from the additional notes in use among the Scribes. God will not ask us whether we were of the opinion of the Masorites against the Talmud, or whether we may not have mistaken a Caph for a Beth, a Yod for a Vau, or a Daleth for a Resh. No, certainly; but he will judge us according to our deeds, and not according to our knowledge of the Hebrew language. Let us therefore abide firmly by the decision of the Church, so far as is agreeable to the reasonable duty of a believer. We will conclude this note with an important passage from Leviticus, a book composed after the time of the golden calf. The Jews are there commanded no more to offer their sacrifices to goats with whom they have gone a-whoring.* We cannot say whether this strange worship came from Egypt, the country of sorcery and superstition; but there is reason to believe, that the custom of our pretended magicians of keeping a Sabbath apart, for adoring a goat, and committing such detestable uncleanliness with it as is shocking to conception, came from the ancient Jews, as it is certain that they first taught a part of Europe the practice of magic. What a detestable people! Surely * Leviticus vii. and xviii. 22. such infamous and unnatural practices deserve the punishment at least equal to that which befell them for worshipping the golden calf; and yet, we find the lawgiver contents himself with simply prohibiting those practices. We have quoted this subject only to show what the Jewish nation was; the sin of bestiality must certainly have been very common amongst them, since they are the only people we know among whom there was a necessity for any law to prohibit that crime, the commission of which was not even suspected by any other legislators. There is reason to believe that on account of the fatigues and distresses which the Jews suffered in the deserts of Paran, Horeb, and Kadash-Barnea, the female species, which is always the weakest, might have failed amongst them; and it is certain that the Jews were greatly in want of women, since we find them almost always commanded, when they conquered any town or village, to the right or left of the lake Asphaltes, to put all the inhabitants to the sword, excepting only the young women who were of an age to know man. The Arabs, who still inhabit a part of these deserts, stipulate to this day in the treaties which they make with the caravans, that they shall furnish them with marriageable women; so that it is not improbable but that the young men of those barren countries might have carried the depravation of human nature so far as to have had carnal commerce with goats, as is related of the shepherds of Calabria. It is still, however, uncertain whether any monsters were produced by this unnatural copulation, and whether there is any foundation for the ancient stories of satyrs, fauns, centaurs, and minotaurs; history says there is; but natural philosophy has not yet cleared up to us this monstrous circumstance.