Curiosities of Superstition, and Sketches of Some Unrevealed Religions. Adams William Henry Davenport

thou love picking meat? Or wouldst thou see

      A man in the clouds, and hear him speak to thee?

      Wouldst thou be in a dream, and yet not sleep?

      Or wouldst thou in a moment laugh and weep?

      Wouldst lose thyself, and catch no harm?

      And find thyself again without a charm?

      Wouldst read thyself, and read thou know’st not what

      And yet know whether thou art blest or not

      By reading the same lines? O then come hither,

      And lay this book, thy head and heart together.”

      Mr. Deutsch thus seeks to disarm antagonists by a skilful concession. He does not wonder – not he – that the so-called “Rabbinical stories,” submitted at intervals to the English public, should have met with an unflattering reception. The Talmud, which has always at hand a drastic word, says of their collectors: – “They dived into an ocean, and brought up a potsherd.” But then, he says, these follies form only a small item in the vast mass of allegories, parables, and the like, that compose the Haggadah. And, besides, they are partly ill-chosen, partly ill-translated, and partly did not even belong to the Talmud, but to some recent Jewish story books. Herder – to name the most famous critic of the “Poetry of Peoples” – has spoken most eulogistically of what he saw of the genuine specimens. And, indeed, “not only is the entire world of pious biblical legend which Islam has said and sung in its many tongues to the delight of the wise and simple for twelve centuries, now to be found either in embryo or fully developed in the Haggadah, but much that is familiar among ourselves in the circles of mediæval sagas, in Dante, in Boccaccio, in Cervantes, in Milton, in Bunyan, has consciously or unconsciously flowed out of this wondrous realm, the Haggadah. That much of it is overstrained, even according to Eastern notions, we do not deny. But,” argues Mr. Deutsch, “there are feeble passages even in Homer and Shakespeare.” To this it may be replied, that in Homer and Shakespeare such passages are rare, and do not form the bulk of their writings; and, moreover, that for the Iliad or for Hamlet we do not claim the position of authority which is claimed for the Talmud.

      Let us glance briefly at the cosmogony of the Talmud. It assumes that the universe has been developed by means of a series of cataclysms; that world was destroyed after world, until God made “this world, and saw that it was very good.” It assumes also that the kosmos was wrought out of some original substance, itself created by God. “One or three things were before this world, – Water, Fire, and Wind; Water begat the darkness, Fire begat light, and Wind begat the spirit of Wisdom.”

      “The how of the creation was not mere matter of speculation. The co-operation of angels, whose existence was warranted by Scripture, and a whole hierarchy of whom had been built up under Persian influences, was distinctly denied. In a discussion about the day of their creation, it is agreed on all hands that there were no angels at first, lest men might say, ‘Michael spanned out the firmament on the south, and Gabriel to the north.’” There is a distinct foreshadowing of the Gnostic Demiurgos – that antique link between the Divine Spirit and the world of matter – to be found in the Talmud. What with Plato were the Ideas, with Philo the Logos, with the Kabbalists the “World of Aziluth,” what the Gnostics called more emphatically the wisdom (σοφία), or power (δύναμις), and Plotinus the νοῦς, that the Talmudical authors call Metation. There is a good deal, in the post-captivity Talmud, about the Angels, borrowed from the Persian. The Archangels or Angelic princes are seven in number, and their Hebrew names and functions correspond almost exactly to those of their Persian prototypes. There are also hosts of ministering angels, the Persian Yazatas, whose functions, besides that of being messengers, were twofold, – to praise God, and to be guardians of man. In their first capacity they are daily created by God’s breath out of a stream of fire that rolls its waves under the supernal throne. In their second, two of them accompany every man, and for every new good deed man acquires a new guardian angel, who always watches over his steps. When a righteous man dies, three hosts of angels descend from the celestial battlements to meet him. One says, (in the words of Scripture,) “He shall go in peace;” the second takes up the strain and says, “Who has walked in righteousness;” and the third concludes, “Let him come in peace and rest upon his bed.” In like manner, when the wicked man passes away, three hosts of wicked angels are ready to escort him, but their address is not couched in any spirit of consolation or encouragement.