Вольтер
A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 06
Be this as it may, I certify that you are of very good nobility, and that you were lords of Hershalaïm long before the houses of Suabia, Anhalt, Saxony, and Bavaria were heard of.
It may be that the negroes of Angola, and those of Guinea, are much more ancient than you, and that they adored a beautiful serpent before the Egyptians knew their Isis, and you dwelt near Lake Sirbo; but the negroes have not yet communicated their books to us.
THIRD LETTER.
On a few Crosses which befell God's People.
Far from accusing you, gentlemen, I have always regarded you with compassion. Permit me here to remind you of what I have read in the preliminary discourse to the "Essay on the Spirit and Manners of Nations," and on general history. Here we find, that two hundred and thirty-nine thousand and twenty Jews were slaughtered by one another, from the worshipping of the golden calf to the taking of the ark by the Philistines – which cost fifty thousand and seventy Jews their lives, for having dared to look upon the ark, while those who had so insolently taken it in war, were acquitted with only the piles, and a fine of five golden mice, and five golden anuses. You will not deny that the slaughter of two hundred and thirty-nine thousand and twenty men, by your fellow-countrymen, without reckoning those whom you lost in alternate war and slavery, must have been very detrimental to a rising colony.
How should I do otherwise than pity you? seeing that ten of your tribes were absolutely annihilated, or perhaps reduced to two hundred families, which, it is said, are to be found in China and Tartary. As for the two other tribes, I need not tell you what has happened to them. Suffer then my compassion, and do not impute to me ill-will.
FOURTH LETTER.
The Story of Micah.
Be not displeased at my asking from you some elucidation of a singular passage in your history, with which the ladies of Paris and people of fashion are but slightly acquainted.
Your Moses had not been dead quite thirty-eight years when the mother of Micah, of the tribe of Benjamin, lost eleven hundred shekels, which are said to be equivalent to about six hundred livres of our money. Her son returned them to her; the text does not inform us that he had not stolen them. The good Jewess immediately had them made into idols, and, according to custom, built them a little movable chapel. A Levite of Bethlehem offered himself to perform the service for ten francs per annum, two tunics, and his victuals.
A tribe (afterwards called the tribe of Dan) searching that neighborhood for something to plunder, passed near Micah's house. The men of Dan, knowing that Micah's mother had in her house a priest, a seer, a diviner, a rhoë, inquired of him if their excursion would be lucky – if they should find a good booty. The Levite promised them complete success. They began by robbing Micah's chapel, and took from her even her Levite. In vain did Micah and his mother cry out: "You are carrying away my gods! You are stealing my priest!" The robbers silenced them, and went, through devotion, to put to fire and sword the little town of Dan, whose name this tribe adopted.
These freebooters were very grateful to Micah's gods, which had done them such good service, and placed them in a new tabernacle. The crowd of devotees increasing, a new priest was wanted, and one presented himself. Those who are not conversant with your history will never divine who this chaplain was: but, gentlemen, you know that it was Moses' own grandson, one Jonathan, son of Gershom, son of Moses and Jethro's daughter.
You will agree with me, that the family of Moses was rather a singular one. His brother, at the age of one hundred, cast a golden calf and worshipped it; and his grandson turned chaplain to the idols for money. Does not this prove that your religion was not yet formed, and that you were a long time groping in the dark before you became perfect Israelites as you now are?
To my question you answer, that our Simon Peter Barjonas did as much; that he commenced his apostleship with denying his master. I have nothing to reply, except it be, that we must always distrust ourselves; and so great is my own self-distrust, that I conclude my letter with assuring you of my utmost indulgence, and requesting yours.
FIFTH LETTER.
Jewish Assassinations. Were the Jews Cannibals? Had their Mothers Commerce with Goats? Did their Fathers and Mothers Immolate their Children? With a few other fine Actions of God's People.
Gentlemen, – I have been somewhat uncourteous to your secretary. It is against the rules of politeness to scold a servant in the presence of his master; but self-important ignorance is revolting in a Christian who makes himself the servant of a Jew. I address myself directly to you, that I may have nothing more to do with your livery.
Jewish Calamities and Great Assassinations.
Permit me, in the first place, to lament over all your calamities; for, besides the two hundred and thirty-nine thousand and twenty Israelites killed by 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. What says M. de Bougainville, who has returned from the island of Otaheite – that island of Cytherea, whose inhabitants, peaceful, mild, humane, and hospitable, offer to the traveller all that they possess – the most delicious of fruits – the most beautiful and most obliging of women? He tells us that these people have their jugglers; and that these jugglers force them to sacrifice their children to apes, which they call their gods.
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.
Melchim, or Petty Kings of the Jews.
Your Samuel had good reason for not wishing you to have kings; for nearly all your kings were assassins, beginning with David, who assassinated Mephibosheth, son of Jonathan, his tender friend, whom he "loved with a love-greater than that of woman"; who assassinated Uriah, the husband of Bathsheba; who assassinated even the infants at the breast in the villages in alliance with his protector Achish; who on his death-bed commanded the assassination of his general Joab and his counsel Shimei – beginning, I say, with this David, and with Solomon, who assassinated his own brother Adonijah, clinging in vain to the altar, and ending with Herod "the Great," who assassinated his brother-in-law, his wife, and all his kindred, including even his children.
I say nothing of the fourteen thousand little boys whom your petty king, this mighty Herod, had slaughtered in the village of Bethlehem. They are, as you know, buried at Cologne with our eleven thousand virgins; and one of these infants is still to be seen entire. You do not believe this authentic story, because it is not in your canon, and your Flavius Josephus makes no mention of it. I say nothing of the eleven hundred thousand men killed in the town of Jerusalem alone, during its siege by Titus. In good faith, the cherished nation is a very unlucky one.
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 the 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 fathers 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 offence 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 girls for your soldiers, 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.
The Thirty-two Thousand Virgins, the Seventy-five Thousand Oxen, and the Fruitful Desert of Midian.
Let your secretary no longer evade – no longer equivocate, respecting the carnage of the Midianites and their villages. I feel great concern that your butcher-priest Eleazar, general of the Jewish armies, should have found in that little miserable and desert country, seventy-five thousand oxen, sixty-one thousand asses, and six hundred and seventy-five thousand sheep, without reckoning the rams and the lambs.
Now if you took thirty-two thousand infant girls, it is likely that there were as many infant boys, and as many fathers and mothers. These united amount to a hundred and twenty-eight thousand captives, in a desert where there is nothing to eat, nothing to drink but brackish water, and which is inhabited by some wandering Arabs, to the number of two or three thousand at most. You will besides observe, that, on all the maps, this frightful country is not more than eight leagues long, and as many broad.
But were it as large, as fertile, and as populous as Normandy or the Milanese, no matter. I hold to the text, which says, the Lord's share was thirty-two maidens. Confound as you please Midian by the Red Sea with Midian by Sodom; I shall still demand an account of my thirty-two thousand virgins. Have you employed your secretary to calculate how many oxen and maidens the fine country of Midian is capable of feeding?
Gentlemen, I inhabit a canton which is not the Land of Promise; but we have a lake much finer than that of Sodom, and our soil is moderately productive. Your secretary tells me that an acre of Midian will feed three oxen: I assure you, gentlemen, that with us an acre will feed but one. If your secretary will triple the revenue of my lands, I will give him good wages, and will not pay him with drafts on the receivers-general. He will not find a better situation in all the country of Midian than with me; but unfortunately this man knows no more of oxen than he does of golden calves.
As for the thirty-two thousand maidenheads, I wish him joy of them. Our little country is as large as Midian. It contains about four thousand drunkards, a dozen attorneys, two men of sense, and four thousand persons of the fair sex, who are not uniformly pretty. These together make about eight thousand people, supposing that the registrar who gave me the account did not exaggerate by one-half, according to custom. Either your priests or ours would have had considerable difficulty in finding thirty-two thousand virgins for their use in our country. This makes me very doubtful concerning the numberings of the Roman people, at the time when their empire extended just four leagues from the Tarpeian rock, and they carried a handful of hay at the end of a pole for a standard. Perhaps you do not know that the Romans passed five hundred years in plundering their neighbors before they had any historian, and that their numberings, like their miracles, are very suspicious.
As for the sixty-one thousand asses, the fruits of your conquests in Midian – enough has been said of asses.
Jewish Children Immolated by their Mothers.
I tell you, that your fathers immolated their children; and I call your prophets to witness. Isaiah reproaches them with this cannibalish crime: "Slaying the children of the valleys under the clefts of the rocks."
You will tell me, that it was not to the Lord Adonai that the women sacrificed the fruit of their womb – that it was to some other god. But what matters it whether you called him to whom you offered up your children Melkom, or Sadaï, or Baal, or Adonai? That which it concerns us to know is, that you were parricides. It was to strange idols, you say, that your fathers made their offerings. Well, – I pity you still more for being descended from fathers at once both parricidal and idolatrous. I condole with you, that your fathers were idolaters for forty successive years in the desert of Sinai, as is expressly said by Jeremiah, Amos, and St. Stephen.
You were idolaters in the time of the Judges; and the grandson of Moses was priest of the tribe of Dan, who, as we have seen, were all idolaters; for it is necessary to repeat – to insist; otherwise everything is forgotten.
You were idolaters under your kings; you were not faithful to one God only, until after Esdras had restored your books. Then it was that your uninterruptedly true worship began; and by an incomprehensible providence of the Supreme Being, you have been the most unfortunate of all men ever since you became the most faithful – under the kings of Syria, under the kings of Egypt, under Herod the Idumæan, under the Romans, under the Persians, under the Arabs, under the Turks – until now, that you do me the honor of writing to me, and I have the honor of answering you.
SIXTH LETTER.
Beauty of the Land of Promise.
Do not reproach me with not loving you. I love you so much that I wish you were in Hershalaïm, instead of the Turks, who ravage your country; but who, nevertheless, have built a very fine mosque on the foundations of your temple, and on the platform constructed by your Herod.
You would cultivate that miserable desert, as you cultivated it formerly; you would carry earth to the bare tops of your arid mountains; you would not have much corn, but you would have very good vines, a few palms, olive trees, and pastures.
Though Palestine does not equal Provence, though Marseilles alone is superior to all Judæa, which had not one sea-port; though the town of Aix is incomparably better situated than Jerusalem, you might nevertheless make of your territory almost as much as the Provencals have made of theirs. You might execute, to your hearts' content, your own detestable psalmody in your own detestable jargon.
It is true, that you would have no horses; for there are not, nor have there ever been, about Hershalaïm, any but asses. You would often be in want of wheat, but you would obtain it from Egypt or Syria.
You might convey merchandise to Damascus and to Said on your asses – or indeed on camels – which you never knew anything of in the time of your Melchim, and which would be a great assistance to you. In short, assiduous toil, to which man is born, would fertilize this land, which the lords of Constantinople and Asia Minor neglect.
This promised land of yours is very bad. Are you acquainted with St. Jerome? He was a Christian priest, one of those men whose books you do not read. However, he lived a long time in your country; he was a very learned person – not indeed slow to anger, for when contradicted he was prodigal of abuse – but knowing your language better than you do, for he was a good grammarian. Study was his ruling passion; anger was only second to it. He had turned priest, together with his friend Vincent, on condition that they should never say mass nor vespers, lest they should be too much interrupted in their studies; for being directors of women and girls, had they been moreover obliged to labor in the priestly office, they would not have had two hours in the day left for Greek, Chaldee, and the Jewish idiom. At last, in order to have more leisure, Jerome retired altogether, to live among the Jews at Bethlehem, as Huet, bishop of Avranches, retired to the Jesuits, at the house of the professed, Rue St. Antoine, at Paris.
Jerome did, it is true, embroil himself with the bishop of Jerusalem, named John, with the celebrated priest Rufinus, and with several of his friends; for, as I have already said, Jerome was full of choler and self-love, and St. Augustine charges him with levity and fickleness: but he was not the less holy, he was not the less learned, nor is his testimony the less to be received, concerning the nature of the wretched country in which his ardor for study and his melancholy confined him.
Be so obliging as to read his letter to Dardanus, written in the year 414 of our era, which, according to the Jewish reckoning, is the year of the world 4000, or 4001, or 4003, or 4004, as you please.
"I beg of those who assert that the Jewish people, after the coming out of Egypt, took possession of this country, which to us, by the passion and resurrection of our Saviour, has become truly a land of promise – I beg of them, I say, to show us what this people possessed. Their whole dominions extended only from Dan to Beersheba, about one hundred and sixty miles in length. The Holy Scriptures give no more to David and to Solomon… I am ashamed to say what is the breadth of the land of promise, and I fear that the pagans will thence take occasion to blaspheme. It is but forty-six miles from Joppa to our little town of Bethlehem, beyond which all is a frightful desert."
Read also the letter to one of his devotees, in which he says, that from Jerusalem to Bethlehem there is nothing but pebbles, and no water to drink; but that farther on, towards the Jordan, you find very good valleys in that country full of bare mountains. This really was a land of milk and honey, in comparison with the abominable desert of Horeb and Sinai, from which you originally came. The sorry province of Champagne is the land of promise, in relation to some parts of the Landes of Bordeaux – the banks of the Aar are the land of promise, when compared with the little Swiss cantons; all Palestine is very bad land, in comparison with Egypt, which you say you came out of as thieves; but it is a delightful country, if you compare it with the deserts of Jerusalem, Sodom, Horeb, Sinai, Kadesh, etc.
Go back to Judæa as soon as you can. I ask of you only two or three Hebrew families, in order to establish a little necessary trade at Mount Krapak, where I reside. For, if you are (like us) very ridiculous theologians, you are very intelligent buyers and sellers, which we are not.
SEVENTH LETTER.
Charity which God's People and the Christians should entertain for each other.
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.
Would you live in peace? Imitate the Banians and the Guebers. They are much more ancient than you are; they are dispersed like you; they are, like you, without a country. The Guebers, in particular, who are the ancient Persians, are slaves like you, after being for a long while masters. They say not a word. Follow their example. You are calculating animals – try to be thinking ones.
