It is certain that the Jewish nation is the most singular that the world has ever seen; and although in a political view, the most contemptible of all, yet in the eyes of a philosopher, it is, on various accounts, worth consideration.
The Guebers, the Banians, and the Jews, are the only nations which exist dispersed, having no alliance with any people, are perpetuated among foreign nations, and continue apart from the rest of the world...but the Jews are dispersed over the whole face of the earth, and if they were assembled, would compose a nation much more numerous than it ever was in the short time that they were masters of Palestine...
The learned have agitated the question whether the Jews, like so many other nations, really sacrificed men to the Divinity. This is a dispute on words; those whom the people consecrated to the anathema were not put to death on an altar, with religious rites; but they were not the less immolated, without its being permitted to pardon any one of them. Leviticus (27:29) expressly forbids the redeeming of those who shall have been devoted. Its words are, “They shall surely be put to death.” By virtue of this law it was the Jephthah devotedly killed his daughter, that Saul would have killed his son, and that the prophet Samuel cut in pieces King Agag, Saul’s prisoner. It is quite certain that God is the master of the lives of men, and that it is not for us to examine His laws. We ought to limit ourselves to believing these things, and reverencing in silence the designs of God, who permitted them.
The war against the Romans was the last struggle of this nation, which has never lifted its head again. Its constant opinion, that barrenness is a reproach, has preserved it; the Jews have ever considered as their two first duties, to get money and children.
From this short summary it results that the Hebrews have ever been vagrants, or robbers, or slaves, or seditious. They are still vagabonds upon the earth, and abhorred by men, yet affirming that heaven and earth and all mankind were created for them alone. It is evident, from the situation of Judea, and the genius of this people, that they could not but be continually subjugated. It was surrounded by powerful and warlike nations, for which it had an aversion; so that it could neither be in alliance with them, nor protected by them. It was impossible for it to maintain itself by its marine; for it soon lost the port which in Solomon’s time it had on the Red Sea; and Solomon himself always employed Tyrians to build and to steer his vessels, as well as to erect his palace and his temple. It is then manifested that the Hebrews had neither trade nor manufactures, and that they could not compose a flourishing people. They never had an army always ready for the field, the like Assyrians, the Medes, the Persians, the Syrians, and the Romans. The laborers and artisans took arms only as occasion required, and consequently could not form well-disciplined troops. Their mountains, or rather their rocks, are neither high enough, nor sufficiently contiguous, to have afforded an effectual barrier against invasion. The most numerous part of the nation, transported to Babylon, Persia, and to India, or settled in Alexandria, were too much occupied with their traffic and their brokerage to think war. Their civil government, sometimes republican, sometimes pontifical, sometimes monarchical, and very often reduced to anarchy, seems to have been no better than their military discipline.
You ask, what was the philosophy of the Hebrews? The answer will be a very short one--they had none. Their legislator himself does not anywhere speak expressly of the immortality of the soul, nor of the rewards of another life. Josephus and Philo believe the soul to be material; their doctors admitted corporeal angels...The Jews, in the latter times of their sojourn at Jerusalem, were scrupulously attached to nothing but the ceremonials of their law. The man who had eaten pudding or rabbit would have been stoned; while he who denied the immortality of the soul might be high-priest.
It is commonly said that the abhorrence in which the Jews held other nations proceeded from their horror of idolatry; but it is much more likely that the manner in which they at the first exterminated some of the tribes of Canaan, and the hatred which the neighboring nations conceived for them, were the cause of this invincible aversion. As they knew no nations but their neighbors, they thought that in abhorring them they detested the whole earth, and thus accustomed themselves to be the enemies of all men.
One proof that this hatred was not caused by the idolatry of the nations is that we find in the history of the Jews that they were very often idolaters. Solomon himself sacrificed to strange gods. After him, we find scarcely any king in the little province of Judah that does not permit the worship of these gods and offer them incense. The province of Israel kept its two calves and its sacred groves, or adored other divinities...
You then ask whether the ancient philosophers and law-givers borrowed from the Jews, or the Jews from them? We must refer the question to Philo: he owns that before the translation of the Septuagint the books of his nation were unknown to strangers. A great people cannot have received their laws and their knowledge from a little people, obscure and enslaved...Their people, after their captivity at Babylon, had no other alphabet than the Chaldean; they were not famed for any art, any manufacture whatsoever; and even in the time of Solomon they were obliged to pay dear for foreign artisans. To say that the Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks, were instructed by the Jews, were to say that the Romans learned the arts from the people of Brittany. The Jews never were natural philosophers, nor geometricians, nor astronomers. So far were they from having public schools for the instruction of youth, that they had not even a term in their language to express such an institution. The people of Peru and Mexico measured their year much better than the Jews. Their stay in Babylon and in Alexandria, during which individuals might instruct themselves, formed the people to no art save that of usury. They never knew how to stamp money...In short, we find in them only an ignorant and barbarous people, who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched. Still, we ought not to burn them.
Their law must appear, to every polished people, as singular as their conduct; if it were not divine, it would seem to be the law of savages beginning to assemble themselves into a nation; and being divine, one cannot understand how it is that it has not existed from all ages, for them, and for all men...
In this law it is forbidden to eat eels, because they have no scaled; and hares, because they chew the cud, and have cloven feet. Apparently, the Jews had hares different from ours. The griffin is unclean, and four-footed birds are unclean, which animals are somewhat rare. Whoever touches a mouse or a mole is unclean. The women are forbidden to lie with horses or asses. The Jewish women must have been subject to this sort of gallantry. The men are forbidden to offer up their seed to Moloch; and here the term seed is not metaphorical. It seems that it was customary, in the deserts of Arabia, to offer up this singular present to the gods; as it is said to be usual in Cochin and some other countries of India, for the girls to yield their virginity to an iron Priapus in a temple. These two ceremonies prove that mankind is capable of everything. The Kaffirs, who deprive themselves of one testicle, are a still more ridiculous example of the extravagance of superstition.
Another law of the Jews, equally strange, is their proof of adultery. A woman accused by her husband must be presented to the priests, and she is made to drink of the waters of jealousy, mixed with wormwood and dust. If she is innocent, the water makes her more beautiful; if she is guilty, her eyes start from her head, her belly swells, and she bursts before the Lord...
It has been pretended that the dispersion of this people had been foretold, as a punishment for their refusing to acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Messiah; the asserters affecting to forget that they had been dispersed throughout the known world long before Jesus Christ. The books that are left of this singular nation make no mention of a return of the twelve tribes transported beyond the Euphrates by Tiglath-Pileser and his successor Shalmaneser; and it was six hundred years after, that Cyrus sent back to Jerusalem the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, which Nebuchadnezar had brought away into the provinces of his empire. The Acts of the Apostles certify that fifty-three days after the death of Jesus Christ, there were Jews from every nation under heaven assembled for the feast of Pentecost. St. James writes to the twelve dispersed tribes; and Josephus and Philo speak of the Jews as very numerous throughout the East.
It is true that, considering the carnage that was made of them under some of the Roman emperors, and the slaughter of them so often repeated in every Christian state, one is astonished that this people not only still exists, but is at this day no less numerous than it was formerly. Their numbers must be attributed to their exemption from bearing arms, their ardor for marriage, their custom of contracting it in their families early, their law of divorce, their sober and regular way of life, their abstinence, their toil, and their exercise.
Their firm attachment to the Mosaic law is no less remarkable, espe- cially when we consider their frequent apostasies when they lived under the government of their kings and their judges; and Judaism is now, of all the religions in the world, the one most rarely abjured—which is partly the fruit of the persecutions it has suffered. Its followers, perpetual martyrs to their creed, have regarded themselves with progressively increasing confi- dence, as the fountain of all sanctity: looking upon us as no other than rebellious Jews, who have abjured the law of God, and put to death or tor- ture those who received it from His hand...
It is singular that the Christians pretend to have accomplished the prophecies by tyrannizing over the Jews, by whom they were transmitted. We have already seen how the Inquisition banished the Jews from Spain. Obliged to wander from land to land, from sea to sea, to gain a livelihood; everywhere declared incapable of possessing any landed property, or holding any office, they have been obliged to disperse, and roam from place to place, unable to establish themselves permanently in any country, for want of support, of power to maintain their ground, and of knowledge in the art of war. Trade, a profession long despised by most of the nations of Europe, was, in those barbarous ages, their only resource; and as they necessarily grew rich by it, they were treated as infamous usurers. Kings who could not ransack the purses of their subjects put the Jews, whom they regarded not as citizens, to torture.
What was done to them in England may give some idea of what they experienced in other countries. King John, being in want of money, had the rich Jews in his kingdom imprisoned. One of them, having had seven of his teeth drawn one after another, to obtain his property, gave, on losing the eighth, a thousand marks of silver. Henry III extorted from Aaron, a Jew of York, fourteen thousand marks of silver, and ten thousand for his queen. He sold the rest of the Jews of his country to his brother Richard, for the term of one year, in order, says Matthew Paris, that this count might disembowel those whom his brother had flayed.
In France they were put in prison, plundered, sold, accused of magic, of sacrificing children, of poisoning the wells. They were driven out of the kingdom; they were suffered to return for money; and even while they were tolerated, they were distinguished from the rest of the inhabitants by marks of infamy. And, by an inconceivable whimsicality, while in other countries the Jews were burned to make them embrace Christianity, in France the property of such as became Christians was confiscated. Charles IV, by an edict given at Basville, April 4, 1392, abrogated this tyrannical custom, which, according to the Benedictine Mabillon, had been intro- duced for two reasons:
First, to try the faith of these new converts, as it was but too common for those of this nation to feign submission to the gospel for some personal interest, without internally changing their belief.
Secondly, because as they had derived their wealth chiefly from usury, the purity of Christian morals appeared to require them to make a general restitution, which was effected by confiscation.
But the true reason of this custom, which (Montesquieu) the author of the Spirit of the Laws has so well developed, was a sort of...redemption for the sovereign, or the seigneurs, of the taxes which they levied on the Jews, as mortmainable serfs, whom they succeeded; for they were deprived of this benefit when the latter were converted to the Christian faith.
At length, being incessantly proscribed in every country, they ingen- iously found the means of saving their fortunes and making their retreats forever secure. Being driven from France under Philip the Long, in 1318, they took refuge in Lombardy; there they gave to the merchants bills of exchange on those to whom they had entrusted their effects at their de- parture, and these were discharged.
The admirable invention of bills of exchange sprang from the extrem- ity of despair; and then, and not until then, commerce was enabled to elude the efforts of violence, and to maintain itself throughout the world.
Gentlemen: When, forty-four years ago, your countryman Medina' became a bankrupt in London, being twenty thousand francs in my debt, he told me that "it was not his fault; that he was unfortunate"; that "he had never been one of the children of Belial"; that "he had always endeavored to live as a son of God”—that is, as an honest man, a good Israelite. I was affected; I embraced him; we joined in the praise of God; and I lost eighty percent.
You ought to know that I never hated your nation; I hate no one...
Far from hating, I have always pitied you. If...I have sometimes bantered a little, I am not therefore the less sensitive. I wept, at the age of sixteen, when I was told that a (Jewish) mother and her daughter had been burned at Lisbon for having eaten, standing, a little lamb, cooked with lettuce, on the fourteenth day of the red moon; and I can assure you that the extreme beauty that this girl was reported to have possessed, had no share in calling forth my tears, although it must have increased the spec- tators' horror for the assassins, and their pity for the victim...
You clearly see, then, that even so long ago I was your servant, your friend, your brother; although my father and mother had preserved to me my foreskin.
I am aware that virility, whether circumcised or uncircumcised, has caused very fatal quarrels...I have read enough of your books to know that Hamor's son Sichem ravished Leah's daughter Dinah, who at most was not more than five years old, but was very forward for her age. He wanted to make her his wife; and Jacob's sons, brothers of the violated damsel, gave her to him in marriage on condition that he and all his people should be circumcised. When the operation was performed, and all the Sichemites, or Sechemites, were lying-in of the pains consequent there-upon, the holy patriarchs Simeon and Levi cut all their throats one after another. But, after all, I do not believe that uncircumcision ought now to produce such abominable horrors; and especially I do not think that men should hate, detest, anathematize, and damn one another every Saturday or Sunday, on account of a morsel more or less of flesh.
If I have said that some of the circumcised have clipped money at Metz, at Frankfurt on the Oder, and at Warsaw (which I do not remember) I ask their pardon; for, being almost at the end of my pilgrimage, I have no wish to embroil myself with Israel.
I have the honor to be (as they say)
Permit me, in the first place, to lament over all your calamities; for, besides the two hundred and thirty-ine thousand and twenty Israelites killed by the order of the Lord, I find that Jephthah’s daughter was immolated by her father. Turn which way you please--twixt the text as you will--dispute as you like against the fathers of the Church; still he did to her as he had vowed; and he had vowed to cut his daughter’s throat in thanksgiving to God. An excellent thanksgiving!
Yes, you have immolated human victims to the Lord; but be consoled; I have often told you that our Celts and all nations have done so formerly...
I find that seventy brothers of Abimelech were put to death on the same stone by this Abimelech, the son of Gideon and a prostitute. This son of Gideon was a bad kinsman, and this Gideon, the friend of God, was very debauched.
Your Levite going on his ass to Gibeah--the Gibeonites wanting to violate him--his poor wife violated in his stead, and dying in consequence--the civil war that ensued--all your tribe of Benjamin exterminated, saving only six hundred men--give me inexpressible pain.
You lost, all at once, five fine towns which the Lord destined for you, at the end of the lake of Sodom; and that for an inconceivable attempt upon the modesty of two angels. Really, this is much worse than what your mothers are accused of with the goats. How should I have other than the greatest pity for you, when I find murder and bestiality established against your ancestors, who are our first spiritual fathers, and our near kinsmen according to the flesh? For after all, if you are descended from Shem, we are descended from Japhet. We are therefore evidently cousins...
Did the Jews eat human flesh? Among your calamities, which have so often made me shudder, I have always reckoned your misfortune in having eaten human flesh. You say that this happened only on great occasions; that it was not you whom the Lord invited to HIs table to eat the horse and the horseman, and that only the birds were guests. I am willing to believe it.
Were the Jewish ladies intimate with goats? You assert that your mothers had no commerce with he-goats, nor your father with she goats. But pray, gentlemen, why are you the only people upon earth whose laws have forbidden such commerce? Would any legislator ever have thought of promulgating this extraordinary law if the offense had not been common?
Did the Jews immolate human victims? You venture to affirm that you have never immolated human victims to the Lord. What, then, was the murder of Jephthah’s daughter, who was really immolated, as we have already shown from your own books?
How will you explain the anathema of the thirty-two virgins, that were the tribute of the Lord, when you took thirty-two thousand Midianitish virgins and sixty-one thousand asses? I will not here tell you, that according to this account there were not two asses for each virgin; but I will ask you, what was this tribute for the Lord? According to your Book of Numbers, there were sixteen thousand for your priests, and on the soldiers’ share there was levied a tribute of thirty-two virgins for the Lord. What became of them? You had no nuns. What was the Lord’s share in all your wars, if it was not blood? Did not the priest Samuel hack in pieces King Agag, whose life King Saul had saved? Did he not sacrifice him as the Lord’s share?
Either renounce your sacred books, in which, according to the decision of the church, I firmly believe, or acknowledge that your forefathers offered up to God rivers of human blood, unparalleled by any people on earth.
My tenderness for you has only a few words more to say. We have been accustomed for ages to hang you up between two dogs; we have repeatedly driven you away through avarice; we have recalled you through avarice and stupidity; we still, in more towns than one, make you pay for liberty to breathe the air; we have, in more kingdoms than one, sacrificed you to God; we have burned you as holocausts--for I will not follow your example, and dissemble that we have offered up sacrifices of human blood; all the difference is, that our priests, content with applying your money to their own use, have had you burned by laymen; while your priests always immolated the human victims with their own sacred hands. You were monsters of cruelty and fanaticism in Palestine; we have been so in Europe: my friends, let all this be forgotten.