Part 24 (1/2)
Whatever they said, was firmer than an oath; but they avoided swearing, and esteemed it worse than perjury. They were simple in their diet and mode of living, bore torture with fort.i.tude, and despised death. They cultivated the science of medicine and were very skillful. They deemed it a good omen to dress in white robes. They had their own courts, and pa.s.sed righteous judgments. They kept the Sabbath more rigorously than the Jews.
Their chief towns were Engaddi, near the Dead Sea, and Hebron. Engaddi was about 30 miles southeast from Jerusalem, and Hebron about 20 miles south of that city. Josephus and Eusebius speak of them as an ancient sect; and they were no doubt the first among the Jews to embrace Christianity: with whose faith and doctrine their own tenets had so many points of resemblance, and were indeed in a great measure the same.
Pliny regarded them as a very ancient people.
In their devotions they turned toward the rising sun; as the Jews generally did toward the Temple. But they were no idolaters; for they observed the law of Moses with scrupulous fidelity. They held all things in common, and despised riches, their wants being supplied by the administration of Curators or Stewards. The Tetractys, composed of round dots instead of jods, was revered among them. This being a Pythagorean symbol, evidently shows their connection with the school of Pythagoras; but their peculiar tenets more resemble those of Confucius and Zoroaster; and probably were adopted while they were prisoners in Persia; which explains their turning toward the Sun in prayer.
Their demeanor was sober and chaste. They submitted to the superintendence of governors whom they appointed over themselves. The whole of their time was spent in labor, meditation, and prayer; and they were most sedulously attentive to every call of justice and humanity, and every moral duty. They believed in the unity of G.o.d. They supposed the souls of men to have fallen, by a disastrous fate, from the regions of purity and light, into the bodies which they occupy; during their continuance in which they considered them confined as in a prison.
Therefore they did not believe in the resurrection of the body; but in that of the soul only. They believed in a future state of rewards and punishments; and they disregarded the ceremonies or external forms enjoined in the law of Moses to be observed in the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d; holding that the words of that lawgiver were to be understood in a mysterious and recondite sense, and not according to their literal meaning. They offered no sacrifices, except at home; and by meditation they endeavored, as far as possible, to isolate the soul from the body, and carry it back to G.o.d.
Eusebius broadly admits ”that the ancient Therapeutae were Christians; and that their ancient writings were our Gospels and Epistles.”
The ESSENES were of the Eclectic Sect of Philosophers, and held PLATO in the highest esteem; they believed that true philosophy, the greatest and most salutary gift of G.o.d to mortals, was scattered, in various portions, through all the different Sects; and that it was, consequently, the duty of every wise man to gather it from the several quarters where it lay dispersed, and to employ it, thus reunited, in destroying the dominion of impiety and vice.
The great festivals of the Solstices were observed in a distinguished manner by the Essenes; as would naturally be supposed, from the fact that they reverenced the Sun, not as a G.o.d, but as a symbol of light and fire; the fountain of which, the Orientals supposed G.o.d to be. They lived in continence and abstinence, and had establishments similar to the monasteries of the early Christians.
The writings of the Essenes were full of mysticism, parables, enigmas, and allegories. They believed in the esoteric and exoteric meanings of the Scriptures; and, as we have already said, they had a warrant for that in the Scriptures themselves. They found it in the Old Testament, as the Gnostics found it in the New. The Christian writers, and even Christ himself, recognized it as a truth, that all Scripture had an inner and an outer meaning. Thus we find it said as follows, in one of the Gospels:
”Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of G.o.d; but unto men _that are without_, all these things are done in parables; that seeing, they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand.... And the disciples came and said unto him, 'Why speakest Thou the truth in parables?'--He answered and said unto them, 'Because it is given unto _you_ to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to _them_ it is not given.'”
Paul, in the 4th chapter of his Epistle to the Galatians, speaking of the simplest facts of the Old Testament, a.s.serts that they are _an allegory_. In the 3d chapter of the second letter to the Corinthians, he declares himself a minister of the New Testament, appointed by G.o.d; ”Not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter killeth.” Origen and St. Gregory held that the Gospels were not to be taken in their literal sense; and Athanasius admonishes us that ”Should we understand sacred writ according to the letter, we should fall into the most enormous blasphemies.”
Eusebius said, ”Those who preside over the Holy Scriptures, philosophize over them, and expound their literal sense by allegory.”
The sources of our knowledge of the Kabalistic doctrines, are the books of Jezirah and Sohar, the former drawn up in the second century, and the latter a little later; but containing materials much older than themselves. In their most characteristic elements, they go back to the time of the exile. In them, as in the teachings of Zoroaster, everything that exists emanated from a source of infinite LIGHT. Before everything, existed THE ANCIENT OF DAYS, the KING OF LIGHT; a t.i.tle often given to the Creator in the _Zend-Avesta_ and the code of the _Sabaaens_. With the idea so expressed is connected the pantheism of India. THE KING OF LIGHT, THE ANCIENT, is ALL THAT IS. He is not only the real cause of all Existences; he is Infinite [AINSOPH]. He is HIMSELF: there is nothing in Him that We can call _Thou_.
In the Indian doctrine, not only is the Supreme Being the real cause of all, but he is the only real Existence: all the rest is illusion. In the Kabalah, as in the Persian and Gnostic doctrines, He is the Supreme Being unknown to all, the ”Unknown Father.” The world is his revelation, and subsists only in Him. His attributes are reproduced there, with different modifications, and in different degrees, so that the Universe is His Holy Splendor: it is but His Mantle; but it must be revered in silence. All beings have emanated from the Supreme Being: The nearer a being is to Him, the more perfect it is; the more remote in the scale, the less its purity.
A ray of Light, shot from the Deity, is the cause and principle of all that exists. It is at once Father and Mother of All, in the sublimest sense. It penetrates everything; and without it nothing can exist an instant. From this double FORCE, designated by the two parts of the word I. H. U. H. emanated the FIRST-BORN of G.o.d, the Universal FORM, in which are contained all beings; the Persian and Platonic Archetype of things, united with the Infinite by the primitive ray of Light.
This First-Born is the Creative Agent, Conservator, and animating Principle of the Universe. It is THE LIGHT OF LIGHT. It possesses the three Primitive Forces of the Divinity, LIGHT, SPIRIT, and LIFE F??, ??e??, and ???. As it has received what it gives, Light and Life, it is equally considered as the generative and conceptive Principle, the Primitive Man, ADAM KADMON. As such, it has revealed itself in ten emanations or _Sephiroth_, which are not ten different beings, nor even beings at all; but sources of life, vessels of Omnipotence, and types of Creation. They are _Sovereignty_ or _Will, Wisdom, Intelligence, Benignity, Severity, Beauty, Victory, Glory, Permanency_, and _Empire_.
These are attributes of G.o.d; and this idea, that G.o.d reveals Himself by His attributes, and that the human mind cannot perceive or discern G.o.d Himself, in his works, but only his mode of manifesting Himself, is a profound Truth. We know of the Invisible only what the Visible reveals.
_Wisdom_ was called NOUS and LOGOS [and ???~? ?????], INTELLECT or the WORD. _Intelligence_, source of the oil of anointing, responds to the Holy Ghost of the Christian Faith.
_Beauty_ is represented by green and yellow. _Victory_ is YAHOVAH-TSABAOTH, the column on the right hand, the column _Jachin: Glory_ is the column _Boaz_, on the left hand. And thus our symbols appear again in the Kabalah. And again the LIGHT, the object of our labors, appears as the creative power of Deity. The circle, also, was the special symbol of the first Sephirah, Kether, or the Crown.
We do not further follow the Kabalah in its four Worlds of Spirits, _Aziluth, Briah, Yezirah_, and _Asiah_, or of _emanation, creation, formation_, and _fabrication_, one inferior to and one emerging from the other, the superior always enveloping the inferior; its doctrine that, in all that exists, there is nothing purely material; that all comes from G.o.d, and in all He proceeds by irradiation; that everything subsists by the Divine ray that penetrates creation; and all is united by the Spirit of G.o.d, which is the life of life; so that all is G.o.d; the Existences that inhabit the four worlds, inferior to each other in proportion to their distance from the Great King of Light: the contest between the good and evil Angels and Principles, to endure until the Eternal Himself comes to end it and re-establish the primitive harmony; the four distinct parts of the Soul of Man; and the migrations of impure souls, until they are sufficiently purified to share with the Spirits of Light the contemplation of the Supreme Being whose Splendor fills the Universe.
The WORD was also found in the Phnician Creed. As in all those of Asia, a WORD of G.o.d, written in starry characters, by the planetary Divinities, and communicated by the Demi-G.o.ds, as a profound mystery, to the higher cla.s.ses of the human race, to be communicated by them to mankind, created the world. The faith of the Phnicians was an emanation from that ancient wors.h.i.+p of the Stars, which in the creed of Zoroaster alone, is connected with a faith in one G.o.d. Light and Fire are the most important agents in the Phoenician faith. There is a race of children of the Light. They adored the Heaven with its Lights, deeming it the Supreme G.o.d.
Everything emanates from a Single Principle, and a Primitive Love, which is the Moving Power of All and governs all. Light, by its union with Spirit, whereof it is but the vehicle or symbol, is the Life of everything, and penetrates everything. It should therefore be respected and honored everywhere; for everywhere it governs and controls.
The Chaldaic and Jerusalem Paraphrasts endeavored to render the phrase, DEBAR-YAHOVAH ??? ????, the Word of G.o.d, a personalty, wherever they met with it. The phrase, ”And G.o.d created man,” is, in the Jerusalem Targum, ”And the Word of IHUH created man.”
So, in xxviii. Gen. 20,21, where Jacob says: ”If G.o.d [???? ???? IHIH ALHIM] will be with me...” then shall IHUH be my ALHIM [Hebrew ]; UHIH IHUH Li LALHIM; and this stone shall be G.o.d's House [[Hebrew].. IHIH BITH ALHIM]: Onkelos paraphrases it, ”If the word of IHUH will be my help ... then the word of IHUH shall be my G.o.d”.
So, in iii. Gen. 8, for ”The Voice of the Lord G.o.d” [[Hebrew], IHUH ALHIM], we have, ”The Voice of the Word of IHUH.”
In ix. Wisdom, 1, ”O G.o.d of my Fathers and Lord of Mercy! who has made all things with thy word.. [Greek: ?? ????? s??.]”