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No. III.
To
the Editor of the Occident:
Reverend Sir—Since you have been kind enough to
insert my letters in your magazine I continue to
write on my subject without any farther preface or
apology ; only please to recollect,
<<15>>that I
have stated in my last, that Judaism rests upon four
strong and immovable pillars, 1. God is God; 2.
Man is His image; 3. Man is accountable here and
hereafter to his Maker; and 4. Israel is his own
people.
All the duties of a man and an Israelite, in all
situations of life, are deducible from these four
positions, and all the hopes in life and death, the
confidence, the fortitude, the moral strength, the
joy of heart of an Israelite, are based upon these
doctrines. It would surprise me, if any one should
be able to point out a single duty obligatory on
man, or any moral excellence, which cannot be
accounted for upon one or all of these principles.
We have no difference of opinion, I believe, about
the first axiom; but with the second and third the
difference commences. Our opponents tell us, that
man, in his body, will arise at some distant day,
being then inhabited by the same soul; and that he
will liven early in the same manner as we do now. In
connexion with this resurrection of the body is the
last judgment and the everlasting damnation of those
who deserve such a deplorable lot, besides other
things of the same kind. We suppose that our
opponents take for granted, that if the soul of man
be perishable and die away, a resurrection of the
body would be impossible, wherefore they must agree
with us in maintaining that “The soul of man is
immortal, and can exist and does exist without a
body; but that the body of man is subject to
mortality, and cannot exist in its proper functions
without the soul;” thus we have established the main
point, the very basis of our discussion. This dogma
of ours is derived from the Bible, where man is
called an image of God ; but the dogma of an
immortal body appears to us to be of no biblical
origin, as every impartial student of the Bible will
admit, and you, reverend sir, have not yet come out
with your biblical evidences.
I
shall first consider the matter in a natural point
of view; for it appears to me, that the Rabbis
expressed the most correct opinion on the matter,
when they said כל הנביאים
לא נתנבאו אלא לימות אבל עולם הבא עין לא ראתה אלקים
זולתך. “All the prophets prophesied only for
the times of the Messiah, but the future world no
eye has ever seen it save thine alone, O God.”
(Berachoth fol. 34.)
Hence<<16>> דתניא כל י״ב חודש
גופו קיים ונשמתו עולה ויורדת לאחר י״ב חודש הגוף בטל
ונשמתו עולה ושוב אינה יורדת, “It was
taught (by the earliest Rabbis) that during twelve
months (after death) the body remains uncorrupted;
and the soul ascends and descends (visiting the spot
where its former tenement is buried); but after
twelve months the body dissolved, and the soul
ascends to return never again.” (Sabbath fol. 151.)
Hence we read in Moreh Nebuchim of Maimonides, Part
I. ch. xl., רוח וג׳ והוא
גם כן שם דבר הנשאר מן האדם אחר המות אשר לא ישיגהו
ההפּסד “The noun Ruach is also the name
of that which remains of man after death, and which
is not liable to dissolution, and ibid., chapter
xii., we read the same definition of the term
נפש.
I
shall say nothing about
צער גלגול מחילות the idea that the bodies of
the dead must roll themselves through subterranean
channels to Palestine, where they will be revived;
nor about the opinion
סעודה וסוכה של לויתן
that the pious who have arisen from death shall be
assembled in a tent made of the skin of the
Leviathan, and that they will eat, at a great feast,
the flesh of that fabulous fish, which was killed
and salted by God for this purpose soon after the
creation; though these are substantial portions of
the resurrection creed of those which you please to
call orthodox, because they try to explain those
singular assertions to be of a parabolic nature; but
we have the same right to say all statements about
the revival of the body are of the same nature.
I
shall confine myself exclusively to the question of
the resurrection of the body. The surface of the
earth contains one hundred and fifty-six millions,
two hundred and fifty thousand square miles of land,
including the vast regions of sandy deserts, stony
mountains, marshes and swamps, large districts
covered with perpetual snow and ice, and other
uninhabitable portions. The present population of
the globe is estimated at twelve hundred millions;
if we suppose one generation to be 30 years, and
that since the creation of man be 5611 years, there
must have been then on earth 187 generations, which
would give the sum of individuals 1200,000,000 x 187
÷ 2 = 112, 200,000,000,* which <<17>>would give a
population of 720 to a square mile, if the
resurrection take place in our age; none of our
friends has ever lost himself so far in mystical
conjectures, as to think it natural that such a
population should exist on earth.
Our old brethren have two different methods to help
themselves out of this difficulty; they say first,
חוי יודע שעולם הבא אינה
עשוי אלא לצדיקים ולישראל “Know that the world
to come is made for none but the righteous and the
Israelites” (Jebamoth fol. 46). But this is not in
accordance with the passage in Daniel, which they
suppose to be expressive of the doctrine of the
resurrection of the body: “And many of those who
sleep in the dust of the ground shall awake; some to
an everlasting life and some to shame and
everlasting reproach.” (Daniel xii. 2.) If our
friends will insist, that Daniel speaks in this
chapter only of Israel, then they cannot help saying
but that only many of Israel will arise; some of
those who arise will be a shame and an everlasting
reproach, consequently they must admit, that among
those who arise will be wicked people too; to assert
the wicked shall arise and die again is incompatible
with the text, in which the
עולם “everlasting”
prohibits such a construction. And if this
contradiction is not to exist, our old friends
cannot remove the difficulty by the above-quoted
conjecture; for it is unquestionable that five
children die to one grown person; and what wrong can
a child have done? and among the rest of mankind
they must reckon חצאי זכאי
וחצאי חיב “one half innocent and the other
half guilty,” which is a strict talmudical
principle; consequently the immense number of 720 to
a square mile would be immaterially reduced. They
cannot remove this difficulty by conjecturing that
those who have risen will be of such a spiritual
nature that they have no wants whatever; for this
would be no resurrection of the same body, but a new
creation; hence, as it is said
עתידים צדיקים שיעמדו
בלבושיהם “The righteous will arise in future
with their garments” (Kethuboth, fol. 112), and
consequently they will need clothes; and
עתידים כל בעלי אומניות
שיעמדו על הקרקע “In future all the tradesmen
will resort to the tillage of the ground” (Jebamoth,
fol. 49); so they will need, accordingly, the
produce of the earth and as they shall eat of the
flesh of the <<18>>Leviathan, and dwell in the tent
made of his skin (Baba Bathra, fol. 73), they must
be nearly the same as we now are; hence, as
Jerusalem will be again the capital of Palestine
(Baba Bathra, fol. 75), and as the geographical
division of that country will be nearly the same as
was in time of yore (ibid. fol. 122), the necessity
of possession will be then the same as now, so it
must be peopled by persons with carnal wants.
It
is also said אין גהינים
לעתיד לבוא אלא הקב״ה מוציא חמה מנרטקה צדיקים מתרפּאין
בה וגו׳ “There shall
be no hell in future, but God will take the sun out
of his case, and the righteous will be healed
thereby, whilst the wicked shall be punished by the
same.” (Nedarim, fol. 8.) None can be healed who is
not sick. We see, therefore, that they who have been
revived will eat, drink, dress, dwell in houses,
have possession of land, labour, be sick and healed,
consequently they will be the same persons as we
are; in which case no 720 human beings can exist on
each square mile all over the earth, not even then
if we adopt the opinion of Rab (Kethuboth, fol.
112), “that in the world to come all trees growing
in Palestine will bear fruits;” and also then not if
we adopt the view of Rabbi Jehudah (Yerushalmi,
Shekalim, ch. ii), “that in the world to come, grain
will ripen once every month, and fruit once in two
months.” I am not able to tell you how the ancient
Rabbis knew all this, since they themselves confess
(Berachoth, fol. 34) that even the prophets mention
nothing of the subject; but our erudite
contemporaries, who persecuted me publicly and
privately, because I dared to say “the Talmud is not
divine,” will doubtless be able to explain it all to
you.
The second view of our ancient brethren is
that when the resurrection of the body will take
place, the revived shall live in an unnatural,
supernatural, or preternatural state (remember your
note under my letter, p. 494); but we have to tell
them again that if any one should demonstrate by
passages from the Bible 3 x 3 is 8, or will be 8 at
some future day, we would reject his opinion as
erroneous, contrary to and impairing the truth and
divinity of the Bible, which allows no contradiction
to nature, and the handiwork of the same Maker;
consequently I have no right to share their views on
the resurrection of the body.
<<19>>
My letter has grown to a considerable length, which
invites me to close it, and consider the matter
farther in my next.
Respectfully yours,
ISAAC M. WISE, D.D.
Albany, February 18th, 5611, A. M.
Note by the Editor.—We know not indeed that in our
whole editorial career we have given publicity to an
article with more pain and unwillingness than in
laying the above letter “on the resurrection” before
our readers. Dr. Wise speaks out plainly enough that
he does not believe in it, and that he is satisfied
with the philosophical immortality of the soul as
all-sufficient in Judaism. He sets out, as our
readers will perceive, by laying down four axioms,
and insists upon it that we who believe in the
possibility of a revival of the dead deny his second
and third premises. But we are at a loss to
understand how “that man is the image of God, and
that man is accountable here and hereafter” gainsays
that his body and soul may become reunited after
they have been separated. When we say that “the dead
shall live again,” we do not say that I am less in
the image of God than when we say “they shall not
rise.” Accountability is never diminished by such a
view or its opposite.
The only question is, Does the Bible teach it? Dr.
Wise says that we have not yet brought forward
biblical evidences. But we had not yet reached the
subject at all in our discussion of “Judaism and its
Principles;” we were developing our doctrines
gradually, to see what nature, reason, history, and
the Bible, the four arbiters of Dr. Wise, would
teach us in the premises; and though when the time
comes we shall not be wanting to do the best we can
to illustrate the question, it is surely
unreasonable to expect that we should introduce any
heterogeneous matter or hasten the discussion to a
close, merely to anticipate the ideas of our
opponent in the debate before us.
When we commenced in
September last to write on this
topic, we merely appended a note to point out the
tendency of our remarks; but we did not promise any
particular mode nor a limited number of pages to
finish them in. Before we got even properly under
way, before we had laid down our premises, Dr. Wise,
thinking himself assailed, sent us his reply, not
against what we had written, but against what we
were aiming at. Consequently there can be no blame
attached to us, that we have not come forward with
biblical proofs in favour of the resurrection before
we had reached the topic itself.
Dr. Wise himself brings forward no proof of the
kind; and the only biblical passage he
<<20>>quotes,
to wit, Daniel xii. 2, pointedly speaks of the
resurrection, not as a matter of speculation, but as
one of future accomplishment. Now even take the word
ורבים in the usual
acceptation of the word, and translate it “and
many,” what does it convey? but the veriest idea
which follows, “of those who sleep in the dust of
the earth shall awake;” does this say they shall
not live? no, it says they shall; consequently,
according to Daniel, the resurrection is not a
matter of doubt or even possibility, but absolute,
unavoidable certainty.
But before going farther we may assume that
ורבים has a more
extended meaning than many, and can signify the “multitude
of those,” &c., which would make the rising from the
dust of the ground general instead of a partial
event. Whatever may, however, be the true meaning of
the prophet, which, as the subject itself is
mysterious, may safely be left to conjecture without
violating any principle of correct interpretation,
the doctrine of ancient Judaism is clearly
established, viz., that what is dust now may become
endowed again with life, and exist in a state of
higher exaltation than it is possible now to
exhibit.
Even the denouncement of everlasting shame and
contempt carries with it a great destiny, an undying
existence, a power of endurance which is also from
God, so that the wicked in bearing their yoke
magnify even thus the great Creator whose work they
are no less than the righteous who enjoy everlasting
bliss and life. Our learned readers will perhaps
call to mind the beautiful talmudic idea “As well as
the Lord gives strength to the pious to bear their
reward, so will He give strength to the wicked to
bear their punishment.” Few there may be who will
fully comprehend the sublimity of this view of the
goodness of God; but to the sincerely pious it
reveals the most far-reaching mercy even in the
deepest idea of human degradation; nothing places us
beyond the reach of the Most High, and his mercy and
might are with us in the holiest abode of the blest
(to use a phrase which is in itself metaphorical, as
much as the “Tabernacle of the Leviathan” which the
Rabbins employ), and in the region of the damned, if
there be a special receptacle for those who are
doomed.
Dr. Wise refers to an arithmetical impossibility,
and he endeavours to prove that 720 human beings
cannot exist on every square mile all over the
earth. He argues farther that the Rabbins, the
original promulgators of the doctrine of the
resurrection, had very narrow views of the existence
of the spirit; they invested it with desire for
food, clothing, possession of land and property; and
he strives to show that <<21>> if such be the state
of the revived dead, they could not possibly exist
on our present globe with its present dimensions.
But it is surprising to us , how so able a reasoner
as Dr. Wise should so entirely forget or rather lose
sight of the meaning of the idea of resurrection.
For however he may carp at the proposition that it
is absurd, unnatural, supernatural, and
preternatural, it is in itself only possible by
assuming it to be beyond the ordinary laws of nature
as understood by us. In nature the dead are finally
dead; no one can say that he has ever seen a being
deprived of animal life, a fruit deprived of its
vegetable life, nay, even a stone disfigured by
crushing or otherwise from its original state,
restored to what it was originally. We only see
changes which once produced are so far irrevocable.
But are not all productions beyond the ordinary
power of nature? can you point out a single reason
why chemistry, electricity, heat, or other agents
should have the precise effect which they have? We
deal momentarily with agents the origin and
operation of which are entirely unknown to us; all
we know is that they exist, beyond this all is vague
conjecture. Ask the physician why calomel, the
proto-chloride of mercury, should be so powerful or
remedial an agent, and corrosive sublimate, the
deuto chloride of the same substance, should be so
fatal to the existence of life. In both these agents
we have so far as known to science the same
elements, chlorine gas and metallic mercury, only in
the first there is one proportion in the other two
proportions of a substance which is a great
ingredient in the common salt which is so necessary
to make food palatable and healthy, and without
which the economy of life could hardly be carried
on. Here then we have a necessary element, a remedy,
and a poison, all derived from one source; and no
one will be hardy enough to account for it on any
other ground than that it is so.
Suppose now one had argued on Dr. Wise’s plan, 3
times 3 is 9, not 8; and as we know that chlorine
and mercury combined form a remedy, it is impossible
that they can combine so as to produce a poison,
thus ch + m = r, wherefore 2
ch + m are not = p. Would our
equation not be laughed at for its absurdity? It is
the very thing that in one formula we have 1 ch,
in the other 2 ch; the quantities are
different, and hence the powers are equally so.
Now we acknowledge that no man can have the power to
revive the dead, and to assume it would be to make 3
x 3 not = 9, or in other words, we would have to
invest him with a power which he has not and cannot
have. Life is not within man’s gift, he only can
work with and move within the spheres of forces
which outward nature yields to his
<<22>>manipulation. So then the electrician can by his
Voltaic battery make the limbs of a recently
deceased move with a convulsive twitch, and cause
him to open and shut his eyes, whilst with this his
power ends.
Yet would even this much not have been considered an
absurdity within the range of possibility had it
been predicted but seventy years ago? And suppose
any one had, when the belief in witchcraft was
rampant, performed such a miracle, would he not have
been burned at the stake as having a confederation
with the spirits of darkness? If, however, we assume
that there is a Being not bound by nor circumscribed
within the powers of outward nature, what is there
absurd in the proposition that He should be able
to revive the dead? To deny it is to maintain that
nature is primitive, and God at best a
mere superior agent in handling it, only exalted in
a degree above the weaker agent—man. No
Jewish theologian can be guilty of defending such a
blasphemy; the heathen gods had some such sort of
power; they could do what they pleased within the
range of fate, beyond which they could not
stir; and should the God of Israel be controlled
invincibly by Nature which He ordained? He that
gives power of life and death within the same
substances, should He not be able to arrange death
and life to suit his purposes? The resurrection,
therefore, is no more nor less than a manifestation
of God’s creative power , and as such we assume it
as possible; that it will occur we believe, because
it is predicted in the Bible, and if even nowhere
else, in the twelfth chapter of Daniel.
That there are difficulties in the way of explaining
how the resurrection of one or all the dead can take
place, after all the flesh and bones have been
changed into dust or dissolved into their original
elements, no one will deny; we have no standard of
comparison by which we could form a natural
hypothesis of the idea, so as to represent it in a
clear and distinct light. But how will any one
explain to us the condition of the soul in a manner
separate and distinct from matter? or how is it that
a human offspring should have power of speech, and
that of a brute be like its progenitors? What is
there in nature for which you can find an
explanation? what is there in mind which you can
explain at all? Still no one, who is a Jew, will for
such grounds deny the superiority of the human soul
over brute instinct, or gainsay the immortality of
the spirit, though it has no longer an outward
dwelling to make itself manifest.
Suppose, however, we would argue on Dr. Wise’s plan:
Whatever we know of, has an outward shape or form;
whatever lives manifests itself through motion and
perceptibility; and <<23>>whereas the dead body does
not move, nor show that it feels outward pressure,
and whereas we have never seen a soul, or anything
which has no material form, consequently it does not
exist, and when a man is dead, it is all over with
him, he is annihilated as far as life is concerned,
however it may take some time longer before the
particles of which he was composed shall resume
their original form, because 3 x 3 are 9 and not 8.
Is this legitimate reasoning? who does not see at
once that the analogy from arithmetic does not hold
good? The product of multiplication is a necessary
inherent principle in the numbers required to
produce it; it is so and not otherwise, and we
cannot imagine any other result without arriving at
an absurdity, although it is not capable of any
absolute proof of its being so.
But of the power of God we cannot say that it is as
we find it, and that it cannot be otherwise; 3 x 3 is
9 and invariably so; God, however, is not limited by
Nature, nor in any shape dependent on it; life is
merely a phenomenon which is derived from Him, and
death a stage or period in it, which only changes
its appearance and does not interrupt its
continuance. This is based on the doctrine of the
immortality of the soul, and the assumption, the
correctness of which no Israelite will dispute, that
there is spirit distinct from matter, and able to
exist without material form or aids. If now a time
has elapsed since the body and soul were separated,
what prevents God from reinfusing the tenement, worn
out and corrupt as it confessedly has been, with
renewed animation and power?
The difficulty will be urged, as Dr. Wise does,
about the identity. But it is futile to speak of an
objection which is only feasible on the plea that it
is such if man be the agent. To God it is no more
difficult to re-gather the particles of matter
necessary to construct a human frame, than to let an
infant grow up into a vigorous man, and to let him
then decay into a decrepit old man, and next to let
him die entirely. The only question here is: “Will
He do it?” and that He will is derived from
Scripture.
Dr. Wise cites some passages from the Talmud to
exhibit the unreasonable ideas which the Rabbis
entertained of the state of the revived bodies on
earth. To this we may at once except, first, that
some of the passages quoted, particularly the one
from Kiddushin, fol. 112, do not, to our view, refer
to the time of the resurrection, but to the period
subsequent to the coming of the Messiah, when, in
the opinion of our teachers, the land of Palestine
is to be extremely fruitful to accommodate the large
numbers of Israelites who are then to dwell therein.
That this is not so unreasonable an expectation must
be evident from <<24>>a view of the probable large
increase of the nation of Israel, superadded, as
they will have, many strangers, and the numerous
pilgrims who are to resort annually to the temple at
Jerusalem, of which we shall treat more fully in the
proper place.
And secondly, that there can be no doubt that the
Rabbis spoke allegorically when they refer to
Leviathan and to the tabernacle made from his skin
we need not tell Dr. Wise that our teachers had
often from necessity to hide their doctrines under
fabulous or parabolical narratives, so as to be
understood only by their auditors, who were
Israelites, whilst the governments who often
persecuted them for their religion’s sake remained
ignorant of the principles they were thus privately
and extensively inculcating. It is possible enough
that what they first conveyed as instructive fables
was at length taken in after-periods as the literal
doctrine of the Rabbis; and that perhaps it would
have been far better, when Rab Ashy collected the
Talmudical principles and legends, he had left out
all which would in the least be misunderstood. But
his not having done so, does not authorize us at
this day to assert that our teachers taught contrary
to the Bible and nature, because we, forsooth, have
lost the key to the mystic language they employed.
It
is indeed strange that professed successors of the
Rabbis, those who exercise functions which ought not
to exist if the Talmud were a tissue of errors,
should be found among the followers of Eisenmenger
and MacCaul, and libel by their satire or invective
those who have transmitted to us with so much care
the undefiled Bible, the pure word of God, without
admixture and addition. If they had meant to
propagate error, they would have been cautious how
they preserved the Scriptures, contradict as these
would do their assumption on every page. We had
hoped that our ministers and preachers would have
hesitated long before they cast reflections so
unjust upon our glorious predecessors.
But it is useless to deny the fact that our
destroyers are members of our own household, and
that we are hence compelled to take up defensive
armour against men belonging to Israel, even those
who are in other respects an ornament to us and our
cause. We hope, therefore, that we shall not be
charged with a spirit of persecution and
proscription, which is foreign to our feelings, in
the progress of discussion, which has been forced
upon us, and the termination of which we have no
means of now perceiving.
We
must, at the same time, apologise for the want of
erudition which we may display; for though engaged
in the cause of our people for years, the calm hours
of study, so necessary to an extensive reading, have
been denied to us, and we had also
<<25>>but little
personal intercourse with the learned in Jewish
literature, that we might derive additional
knowledge from them. It may be, hence, presumptuous
in us to discuss this difficult question with one so
far above us, as Dr. Wise is, in an extensive
acquaintance with the philosophical works written by
Israelites. But Dr. W. having in an unfortunate
moment given expression to opinions which he had
better kept to himself, even if he honestly
entertained them (which, by the by, we doubt not in
the least), and as he has been challenged and
assailed for so avowing them, we cannot refuse
letting him give his reasons for his ideas, whilst
we deem it our duty to defend what we deem the
principles of our belief in the best way we can.
Should we be deficient either in knowledge,
understanding of the subject, or power of reasoning,
we hope that those who are better qualified,
especially they who have provoked the discussion,
will come to our aid, and help us fight the battles
in which we are all alike interested. For the
present we must close here, owing to the great
length this paper has already attained. |
