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| Chapter XXXI
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Chapter
XXXI.
After this, wishing to prove that there is no
difference between Jews and Christians, and those animals previously
enumerated by him, he asserts that the Jews were “fugitives from
Egypt, who never performed anything worthy of note, and never were held
in any reputation or account.”3817
| 3817 οὔτ᾽ ἐν
λόγῳ οὔτ᾽ ἐν
ἀριθμῷ
αὐτούς ποτε
γεγενημένους. | Now, on
the point of their not being fugitives, nor Egyptians, but Hebrews who
settled in Egypt, we have spoken in the preceding pages. But if
he thinks his statement, that “they were never held in any
reputation or account,” to be proved, because no remarkable event
in their history is found recorded by the Greeks, we would answer, that
if one will examine their polity from its first beginning, and the
arrangement of their laws, he will find that they were men who
represented upon earth the shadow of a heavenly life, and that amongst
them God is recognised as nothing else, save He who is over all things,
and that amongst them no maker of images was permitted to enjoy the
rights of citizenship.3818
For neither
painter nor image-maker existed in their state, the law expelling all
such from it; that there might be no pretext for the construction of
images,—an art which attracts the attention of foolish men, and
which drags down the eyes of the soul from God to earth.3819
| 3819 [See note on Book III.
cap. lxxvi. supra, and to vol. iii. p. 76, this series.] | There was, accordingly, amongst them a
law to the following effect: “Do not transgress the law,
and make to yourselves a graven image, any likeness of male or female;
either a likeness of any one of the creatures that are upon the earth,
or a likeness of any winged fowl that flieth under the heaven, or a
likeness of any creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, or a
likeness of any of the fishes which are in the waters under the
earth.”3820
The law,
indeed, wished them to have regard to the truth of each individual
thing, and not to form representations of things contrary to reality,
feigning the appearance merely of what was really male or really
female, or the nature of animals, or of birds, or of creeping things,
or of fishes. Venerable, too, and grand was this prohibition of
theirs: “Lift not up thine eyes unto heaven, lest, when
thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and all the host of
heaven, thou shouldst be led astray to worship them, and serve
them.”3821
And what a
régime3822
was that under
which the whole nation was placed, and which rendered it impossible for
any effeminate person to appear in public;3823
| 3823 οὐδὲ
φαίνεσθαι
θηλυδρίαν
οἷόν τ᾽ ἦν. |
and worthy of admiration, too, was the arrangement by which harlots
were removed out of the state, those incentives to the passions of the
youth! Their courts of justice also were composed of men of the
strictest integrity, who, after having for a lengthened period set the
example of an unstained life, were entrusted with the duty of presiding
over the tribunals, and who, on account of the superhuman purity of
their character,3824
| 3824 οἵ τινες διὰ
τὸ καθαρὸν
ἦθος, καὶ τὸ
ὑπὲρ
ἄνθρωπον. | were said to be
gods, in conformity with an ancient Jewish usage of speech. Here
was the spectacle of a whole nation devoted to philosophy; and in order
that there might be leisure to listen to their sacred laws, the days
termed “Sabbath,” and the other festivals which existed
among them, were instituted. And why need I speak of the orders
of their priests and sacrifices, which contain innumerable indications
(of deeper truths) to those who wish to ascertain the signification of
things?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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