Bildad, and Zophar are Dogmatists. They represent the prevalent beliefs of the nation. The extreme readiness with which they infer moral culpability from adverse circumstances would be almost ludicrous if it did not testify to the strength of Hebrew prejudice on the point. For the greater portion of the poem Job remains in complete suspense. He still feels a lingering affection for the old theory which connected temporal prosperity with religious and moral rectitude; at the same time, he will not renounce his faith in his own innocence. There is therefore a conflict between conscience and human instincts on the one hand, and dogma and religious tradition on the other, which sometimes passes into desperation and absolute pessimism. At last the Eternal Himself interposes to solve what is an undoubted dignus vindice nodus. But the solution is in point of fact only a reaffirmation of the problem. In two chapters of sublime poetry Jahve proclaims His infinite power: He vindicates His laws by asserting their wisdom and necessity, and deprecates human research by declaring its incompetence. However, Job's suspense between conscience and dogma is defended, and the conduct of his friends in inferring his guilt from his misfortunes is reproved. Skepticism is thus not only triumphant in the person of its great representative, but receives a direct sanction from the words attributed to the Eternal. Knowledge is thus affirmed not to be that easy possession which Job's dogmatic friends had deemed it, and the highest attitude a man can adopt in presence of the inscrutable enigmas of the world is pronounced to be confessed ignorance. But the drama, notwithstanding Job's recalcitrant Skepticism, ends by reaffirming the doctrine questioned. Job is reinstated in all his original possessions. He has restored to him his children, his flocks, and herds, his men and maid servants, all the various kinds of material prosperity which were the accepted guarantees of the Divine favour. Thus his trials become only an episode in his life. His legitimate condition as a wealthy righteous man terminates as it began his existence; and whatever the effect of Job's sturdy independence, his arraignment of Jahve, his vehement declaration of the rights of conscience and humanity, the end of the story could only have tended to confirm the Jews in their ancient beliefs. We may observe also that Job arrives exactly at the same conclusion as the Skeptical Psalms, the thirtyseventh and seventy-third, in both of which occasional aberrations from the usual course of Providence, with regard to the conditions of the righteous and the wicked, are declared to be possible, though they are not permanent. Sooner or later the prosperous wicked are duly punished, and the suffering righteous are made happy. The Book of Job, therefore, so far as it was intended as a protest against a theory of Divine Providence difficult to harmonize with human experience, must be pronounced ineffective. Yet the spirit of the book and its very striking qualities were not likely to be lost. Undoubtedly it was an enormous advance on any prior stage of Jewish thought. The date of the book is a moot question, on which I do not feel competent to enter, but it was evidently written after a period during which there had been a large influx of foreign elements into Judaism, and the free tone and mental independence of the work are not less conspicuous indications of its origin than the numerous Aramaic words and forms of expression which it contains. Indeed, both the basis and method of its speculation are altogether alien to theocratic modes of thought. Its conception of Deity, of the universe, of providence, of history, exhibit a stage of Hebrew theology when the sacred privileges of nationality, descent from Abraham, exclusive enjoyment of Divine guidance and protection, the temple worship at Jerusalem, &c. are all lost sight of. A still more striking divergence from Judaism is indicated by the self-assertion of Job. In his reasoning, though it be intuitive rather than deductive, and spasmodic than continuous, we have the spectacle of a single individual conscience arraigned against the creed of his nation and his friends. Personal experience is accepted as being to every man the final test of the workings of God's laws. Job thus manifests a well-marked individualism which elevates him above the level of his nation, and brings him into juxtaposition with such men as Sokrates and Descartes. Certainly the former in his pleadings before the Dikastery at Athens does not evince a fuller, albeit perhaps a more tranquil and serene, consciousness of his own integrity than does Job in his arguments with his friends; and Descartes discovering the solution of his philosophic doubt in the verdict of consciousness finds a parallel in the man of Uz, and his immovable stand on the moral assurance of his conscience, from which impregnable fortress he is prepared to defy his friends, his religion, and even his God. The Skeptical tenor of much of Job's utterances cannot be said to be affected by the dénoûment of the drama, and by his reinstation in his former wealth. Like the extreme shifts we occasionally find in fiction, this was too violent and unnatural, too distinctly a sacrifice to a foregone conclusion, to impress any but those who were already wedded to the Jewish theory of Providence. Hence, in relation to Hebrew Dogma, the book must be pronounced Skeptical. Given as data, the Jewish conception of the rule of Providence, and the experience of every man of the actual operation of that rule, and we cannot say that either the Dogmatism of the three friends or the Skepticism of Job has succeeded in harmonizing the divergent ideas. The words of the Eternal only affirm human impotence and ignorance in presence of the great questions of the universe, and so far justify a suspensive attitude in relation to all dogmas which claim to determine them. III. Proceeding in order of thought, possibly also of time, we reach a third stage of Hebrew Skepticism, that which affirms consciously and deliberately that all knowledge is hurtful, and that the highest ideal of human blessedness is to be found in complete and unqualified ignorance. No doubt this conviction pervades more or less unwittingly all early Hebrew thought, but the peculiarity of the stage of which I am now speaking is that the bliss of ignorance becomes openly and freely admitted, and receives the fullest possible imprimatur at the hands of God Himself. Now such a conclusion, avouched with all possible solemnity and regarded as a Divine revelation, seems to me to presuppose some preliminary examination into the nature and grounds of knowledge, as well as into its general effect on investigators. He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow' is a proposition which, whether true or untrue, could have only been adopted after some experience of the effects of increasing knowledge. This phase of Hebrew thought comes before us in the beautiful legend of the Fall contained in the third chapter of Genesis. In this wellknown story, which I may incidentally observe I here consider exclusively from the point of view of a philosopher, there are certain features which seem to make its position in sequence of thought to the phase we have just examined in the Book of Job. Here it is not one or more alleged facts in the government of the universe that is called in question, but the validity or usefulness of all human knowledge whatever. The condition deprecated by Job, of complete insensibility, as the only one which could justify Jahve's severe trials,' is declared in the story of Genesis to be man's original state. Paradise is represented as a condition of complete ignorance, a garden in which the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is expressly forbidden; and when Adam, the representative of the race, is tempted by the delights 1 Comp. Job vi. 12; xiii. 25. of knowledge to transgress the command, he is declared to have brought disaster and ruin both on himself and his posterity. So far then as we may regard this narrative as revealing a phase of Jewish thought, it clearly manifests a profound distrust of knowledge in its bearing on human happiness. That death should be the threatened penalty of investigation into good and evil certainly denotes an hostility to knowledge far transcending ordinary forms of Skepticism. On this point the contrast between Hebrew thought on the one hand, and Hindu and Greek philosophy on the other, is very striking. With all his passive tendencies the Hindu cherishes knowledge, delights in the unimpeded exercise of his intellectual faculties. His culminating perfection of Nirvana is only attained through and by means of knowledge. No doubt he is quite aware of the disadvantages, restrictions, and disappointments that beset the path of the truth-seeker, and his consciousness of those drawbacks assumes occasionally the form of pessimism, but he is seldom tempted to proclaim knowledge itself as a curse. The contrast between Hebrew and Greek ideas is still more striking. It will be best estimated by a brief comparison of the narrative of the fall with the fable of Prometheus, the latter being taken in the mature form presented by the sublime drama of Aischylos. The close relation existing between these two legends has been often noted, but not perhaps from the point of view belonging to our subject. A comparison of their similarities and dissimilarities will throw considerable light on the phase of Hebrew Skepticism we are now examining. We shall thereby learn the diverse idiosyn crasies of the two races, and we shall discover how early in the general history of humanity the painful experience was acquired that increase of knowledge means increase of sorrow. In the Bible narrative, man's primary condition is that of innocence and It seems that this idea was common also to other Chaldæan narratives of the creation, &c. of man. Thus we read in the newly discovered tablets of cuneiform inscriptions v. 16. He like me also, Hea may he punish him. Wisdom and knowledge hostilely may they injure him. 2 Comp. e.g. Welcker's Prometheus, p. 73, &c. Prof. Blackie remarks, in his paper On the Prometheus Bound of Eschylus (Classical Museum, vol. v. p. 41, note), that the sin of Adam in Gen. iii. and the sin of Prometheus in Hesiod and Eschylus, however they may differ in form and in effect, are in conception and principle substantially the same.' ignorance-indeed, the former is made to depend entirely on the latter. As another result of his ignorance, he is supremely happy. In the Aischylean drama, man, before the Promethean enlightenment, is also ignorant, but on account of that ignorance his condition is intensely miserable. Instead of being under the direct guardianship of God and in the enjoyment of a paradise where all his material wants are cared for, he is represented as hardly above the level of the brutes. Hence the first contact with knowledge as an independent possession was conceived by the Jew in the form of a temptation and a fall—a sudden and irrevocable deterioration, while to the Greek it was a starting-point in the path of progress. Both the Hebrew and Greek writers agree that the agency which produced this stupendous change in the lot of humanity was supernatural. The serpent in Genesis was probably in early Jewish legend, as undoubtedly in later, identified with the fallen archangel; and the Titan Prometheus was confessedly related to the ruling dynasty of Olympus. Both narratives too are alike in their motive: Prometheus steals heavenly fire in order to assimilate men to God, and the serpent promises that after eating the forbidden fruit man should become 'as God, knowing good and evil.' It may be added that the serpent's prophecy is verified by the express admission of God Himself, whereas the Divine threat of death as the direct consequence of eating the fruit remains unaccomplished. Thus both the serpent in Genesis and Prometheus in Greek legend are supposed to be endued with powers of foresight greater than those of the Hebrew God on the one hand or Olympian Zeus on the other. Both stories agree that the enlightenment of humanity was accomplished against the will and intention of the Supreme Being, though in the Hebrew narrative the intention was supposed to be beneficent, whereas in the Greek mythos it was clearly hostile. Both further agree that the event which in either case resulted in the enlightenment of humanity imparted a new impulse and direction to man's activity; but the former makes the new energy consist in a warfare with nature, which assumes in consequence of man's fall an attitude of direct hostility towards him, whereas the quickened energy that ensued on the Promethean theft consists in the subjugation of natural forces, which henceforward become obedient vassals of human needs. Lastly, there is on both sides a 'set-off' to the evil and good respectively that resulted to humanity from the thefts of Prometheus and Adam. For if in the Greek legend man 1 This idea has been extended and modernized by Shelley in a passage of matchless beauty-Prometheus Unbound, act ii. scene iv. Cf. also the Chorus of Spirits' in the same drama, act iv. |