Cabala. and we cannot but think, that its importance in early Christian history, which has usually been traced almost exclusively in the West, has been much underrated. Hence came the mystic Cabala (1) of the Jews, the chief parent of those gnostic opinions, out of which grew the heresies of the early Church: here the Jews, under the Prince of the captivity, held their most famous schools, where learning was embodied in the Babylonian Talmud; and here the most influential heresiarch, Manes, attempted to fuse into one system the elements of Magianism, Cabalism, and Christianity. Having thus rapidly traced the fortunes of this great Jewish colony, we must reascend to the time of its first establishment. From a very early period the Jews seem to have possessed a Cabala, a traditionary comment or interpretation of the sacred writings. Whether it existed before the Captivity, it is impossible to ascertain; it is certain that many of their books, even those written by distinguished prophets, Gad and Iddo, were lost at that disastrous time. But whether they carried any accredited tradition to Babylonia, it seems evident, from the Oriental cast which it assumed, that they either brought it from thence on their return to their native land, or received it subsequently during their intercourse with their Eastern brethren (2). Down to the Captivity the Jews of Palestine had been in contact only with the religions of the neighbouring nations, which, however differently modified, appear to have been essentially the same, a sort of Nature-worship, in which the host of Heaven, especially the sun and moon, under Syrian different names, Baal and Moloch, Astarte and Mylitta, and proReligions. bably as symbols or representatives of the active and passive powers of nature, no doubt with some distinction of their attributes, were the predominant objects. These religions had long degenerated into cruel or licentious superstitions; and the Jews, in falling off to the idolatry of their neighbours, or introducing foreign rites into their own religious system, not merely offended against the great primal distinction of their faith, the unity of the godhead, but sunk from the pure, humane, and comparatively civilised institutes of their lawgiver, to the loose and sanguinary usages of barbarism. In the East, however, they encountered a religion of of Persia. a far nobler and more regular structure (3): a religion which offered no temptation to idolatrous practices; for the Magian rejected, with the devout abhorrence of the followers of Moses, the exhibition of the Deity in the human form; though it possessed a rich store of mythological and symbolical figures, singularly analogous to those which may be considered the poetic machinery of the later Religion seems peculiarly appropriate if written in that Lucan's "Cumque superba foret Babylon spo- (1) Cabala is used here in its most extensive sense. See Chiarini, p. 97. (2) Mosheim, De Rebus Christ, ii. 18. (3) In Asia Persarum religionem cæteris esse nobiliorem. Mosheim, Inst. p. 58., and Grot, de Ver. ii. 10. Hebrew prophets (1). The religion of Persia seems to have held an intermediate rank between the Pantheism of India, where the whole universe emanated from the Deity, and was finally to be reabsorbed into the Deity, and the purer Theism of the Jews, which asserted the one omnific Jehovah, and seemed to place a wide and impassable interval between the nature of the Creator and that of the created being. In the Persian system, the Creation owed its existence to the conflicting powers of evil and good. These were subordinate to, or proceeding from, the Great Primal Cause (Zeruane Akerene), Time without bounds (2), which in fact appears, as Gibbon observes, rather as a metaphysical abstraction, than as an active and presiding deity. The Creation was at once the work and the dominion of the two antagonist creators, who had balanced against each other in perpetual conflict a race of spiritual and material beings, light and darkness, good and evil. This Magianism, subsequent to the Jewish Captivity (3), and during the residence of the captives in Mesopotamia, either spread with the conquests of the Persians, from the régions farther to the east, Aderbijan and Bactria, or was first promulgated by Zoroaster, who is differently represented as the author or as the reformer of the faith. From the remarkable allusions or points of coincidence between some of the Magian tenets and the Sacred Writings (4), Hide and Prideaux laboured to prove that Zoroaster (5) had been a pupil of Daniel, and derived those notions, which seem more nearly allied to the purer Jewish faith, from his intercourse with the Hebrew prophet, who held a high station under the victorious MedoPersian monarchy (6). But, in fact, there is such an originality Complete (1) This, it may be observed, has no connection whatever with the originality or authority of these predictions. It should be borne in mind, that in these visions. it is the moral or religious meaning alone which can be the object of faith, not the figures through which that meaning is conveyed. There is no reason why the images of Daniel and Ezekiel should not be derived from, or assimilate to, the prevalent forms around them, as well as those of the rustic Amoz be chiefly drawn from pastoral or rural life. See, e. g., Chiarini's curious theory about the chariot of Ezekiel. Preface to Talmud, p. 90. and 101. (2) So translated by Du Perron and Kleuker. There is a learned dissertation of Foucher on this subject. Acad. des Ins. vol. xxix. According to Bohlen it is analogous to the Sanskrit Sarvam akaranam, the Uncreated Whole; according to Fred. Schlegel, Sarvam akharyam, the Unum indivisibile. (3) The appearance of the Magian order, before the conquest of Babylon by the Medo-Persian Kings, is an extremely difficult question. Nebuchadnezzar's army was attended (Jer. xxxix 3.) by Nergal-sharezer, the Rab-mag, (Archimagus). Compare Bertholdt, Daniel Excurs, iii. (4) Isaiah, xlvii. 7. (5) The name of Zoroaster (Zerotoash), has been deduced from works signifying "the star of gold," or "the star of splendour," and may (6) The hypothesis which places Zoroaster under the reign of Darius Hystaspes, identified with the Gushtasp of Persian mythological history, is maintained by Hyde, Prideaux, Anquetil du Perron, Kleuker, Herder, Goerres, Malcolm, Von Hammer, and apparently by De Guignaut. The silence of Herodotus appears to me among the strongest objections to this view. Foucher, Tychsen, Heeren, and recently Holty, identify Gushtasp with Cyaxares I., and place the religious revolution under the previous Median dynasty. A theory which throws Zoroaster much higher up into antiquity is developed with great ability by Rhode, in his Heilige Sage. The earlier date of the Persian prophet has likewise been maintained by Moyle, Gibbon, and Volney., These views may in some degree be reconciled by the supposition that it was a reformation, not a primary development of the religion which took place under the Medo-Persian, or the Persian monarchy. The elements of the faith and the caste of the Magi were, I should conceive, earlier. The inculcation of agricultural habits on a people emerging from the pastoral life, so well developed by Heeren, seems to indicate a more ancient date. Consult also Gesenius on Isaiah, lxv. 5. Constant, sur la Religion, ii. 187. ness of Zoroastri an system. The Zen. and completeness in the Zoroastrian system, and in its leading principles, especially that of the antagonist powers of good and evil, it departs so widely from the ancient and simple Theism of the Jews, as clearly to indicate an independent and peculiar source, at least in its more perfect development; if it is not, as we are inclined to believe, of much more ancient date, and native to a region much further to the east than the Persian court, where Zoroaster, according to one tradition, might have had intercourse, in his youth, with the prophet Daniel. If, as appears to be the general opinion of the continental wridavesta. ters, who have most profoundly investigated the subject, we have authentic remains, or at least records which, if of later date, contain the true principles of Magianism, in the Liturgies and Institutes of the Zendavesta (1); it is by no means an improbable source · in which we migh! discover the origin of those traditional notions of the Jews, which were extraneous to their earlier system, and which do not appear to rest on their sacred records (2). It is undoubtedly remarkable, that among the Magian tenets, we find so (1) It may be necessary, in this country, briefly to state the question as to the authenticity or value of these documents. They were brought from the East by that singular adventurer, Anquetil du Perron. Sir W. Jones, in a letter, not the most successful of the writings of that excellent and accomplished inan, being a somewhat stiff and laboured imitation of the easy irony of Voltaire, threw a shade of suspicion over the character of Du Perron, which in England has never been dispelled, and, except among Oriental scholars, has attached to all his publications. Abroad, however, the antiquity of the Zendavesta, at least its value as a trustworthy record of the Zoroastrian tenets, has been generally acknowledged. If altogether spurious, those works must be considered as forgeries of Du Perron. But, I., they are too incomplete and imperfect for forgeries; if it had been worth Du Perron's while to fabricate the Institutes of Zoroaster, we should, no doubt, have had something more elaborate than several books of prayers, and treatises of different ages, from which it required his own industry, and that of his German translator, Klenker, to form a complete system. II. Du Per⚫ron must have forged the language in which the books are written, as well as the books them selves. But the Zend is universally admitted by the great Orientalists and historians of language to be a genuine and very curious branch of the Eastern dialects. (See Bopp. Vergleichende Grammatik.) It should be added, that the publication of the Zendavesta, in the original, has been commenced by M. Bournouf in Paris, and by M. Olshausen in Germany. III. These documents may be considered as more modern compilations, of little greater authority than the Sadder, which Hyde translated from the modern Persian. That they are of the age of Zoroaster, it may be difficult to prove; but their internal evidence, and their coincidence with the other notices of the Persian religion, scattered among the writings of the Greeks and Romans (see du Perron's and Kleuker's illustrations, especially the Persica of the latter), afford sufficient ground for supposing that they contain the genuine and unadulterated elements of the Zoroastrian faith, and, if not of primitive, are of very high antiquity. The traces of Mahometanism, which Brucker (vol. vi. p. 68 ) supposed that he had detected, and which are apparent in the Sadder, are rather notions bor. rowed by Mahomet from the Jews; but whence obtained by the Jews, is the question. Mr. Erskine, the highest authority on such subjects, considers the existing Zendavesta to have been compiled in the age of Ardeshir Babhegan, the great restorer of the Magian faith. (Bombay Transactions.) In Professor Neuman's translation of Vartan there is a curious sentence, which seems to intimate that the books of the Magian faith either did not exist at that time, or were inaccessible to the generality. IV. A thought has sometimes crossed my own mind (it has been anticipated by Du Perron), whether they can be the sacred books of a sect formed from an union of Gnostic or Manichæan Christianity with the ancient Persian religion. But there is no vestige of purely Christian tradition; and those points in which Parseism seems to coincide with Christianity are integral and inseparable parts of their great system. And against all such opinions must be weighed the learned paper of Professor Rask, who gives strong reasons for the antiquity both of the language and of the books. The language he considers the vernacular tongue of ancient Media. (Trans. of Asiatic Society, iii. 524.) Still, while I appeal to the Zendavesta as authority, I shall only adduce the more general leading principles of the faith, of which the antiquity appears certain; and rarely any tenet for which we have not corroborative authority in the Greek and Latin writers. The testimonies of the latter have been collected both by Du Perron and Kleuker. (2) Mosheim has traced with brevity, but with his usual good sense and candour, this analogy between the traditional notions of the Jews and those of the Magians. De Reb. antè Const. M. ii. 7. many of those doctrines, about which the great schism in the Jewish popular creed, that of the traditionists and antitraditionists, contended for several centuries. It has already been observed, that in the later prophetic writings, many allusions and much of what may be called the poetic language and machinery, is strikingly similar to the main principles of the Magian faith. Nor can it be necessary to suggest how completely such expressions as the "children of light," and the "children of darkness," had become identified with the common language of the Jews, at the time of our Saviour: and when Jesus proclaimed himself" the Light of the world," no doubt he employed a term familiar to the ears of the people, though, as usual, they might not clearly comprehend in what sense it was applicable to the Messiah, or to the purely moral character of the new religion. It is generally admitted, that the Jewish notions about the an- The an gels (1), one great subject of dispute in their synagogues, and what gels. may be called their Dæmonology, received a strong foreign tinge during their residence in Babylonia. The earliest books of the Old Testament fully recognize the ministration of angels; but in Babylonia (2) this simpler creed grew up into a regular hierarchy, in which the degrees of rank and subordination were arranged with almost heraldic precision. The seven great archangels of Jewish tradition correspond with the Amschaspands of the Zendavesta (3): and in strict mutual analogy, both systems arrayed against each other a separate host of spiritual beings, with distinct powers and functions. Each nation, each individual had in one case his Ferver, in the other his guardian angel (4); and was exposed to the malice of the hostile Dev or Dæmon. In apparent allusion to or coincidence with this system, the visions of Daniel represent Michael, the tutelar angel or intelligence of the Jewish people, in opposition to the four angels of the great monarchies; and even our Saviour seems to condescend to the popular language, when he represents the parental care of the Almighty over children under the significant and beautiful (1) La doctrine de l'existence des anges, fondée sur la révélation, a été beaucoup modifiée par les opinions des peuples qui habitaient sur les riva ges du fleuve Cobar, dans la Babylonie, et dans les autres pays de l'Orient, où les deux royaumes d'Israël et de Juda furent dispersés. Sous ce point de vue on peut regarder les Mehestani, ou les sectateurs de Zoroastre, comme ceux qui ont appris beaucoup de choses aux dépositaires de la tradition, et dont les maximes se retrouvent aujourd'hui dans les deux Talmuds. Chiarini, Le Talmud de Babylone, tom. i. p. 101. (2) Even the traditionists among the Jews allowed that the names of the angels came from Babylon; they are nevertheless pure Hebrew or Chaldean. Mich-a-el (who is as God), Gabri-el, the Man of God. Gesen. Lex. in verb. Bellerman, über die Essaer, p. 30. The transition from the primitive to the Babylonian belief may be traced in the apocryphal book of Tobit, no doubt of Eastern origin. On the Notions of Dæmons, see Jortin, Eccl, Hist. i. 161. (3) Jonathan, the Chaldean paraphrast, on Gen. ii. 7. "The Lord said to the seven angels that stand before him." Drusius, on Luke i. 19. Seven, however, seems to have been the number of perfection among the Jews from the earliest period. Old Testament, passim. Six seems the sacred number with the Persians. The Amschaspands are usually reckoned six; but Oromasd is sometimes included to make up seven. See the Yesht of the Seven Amschaspands, in the Zendavesta of Du Perron or Kleuker. Compare also Foucher's Disquisition, translated in Kleuker, Anhang. i. p. 294. (4) In the LXX. the doctrine of guardian angels is interpolated into the translation of Deut. xxxii. 8. Plato adopted the notion either mediately, or immediately, from the East. Polit. et in Critià (in init.). Compare Max. Tyrius, xv. 17. Hostanes the Magian held the same opi nions. Cypr. de Van. Idol., Min. Fel. Principle of Evil. The Supreme De connec the mate rial world. 66 image, that in Heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in Heaven (1).” The great impersonated Principle of Evil appears to have assumed much of the character of the antagonist power of darkness. The name itself of Salan (2), which in the older poetical book of Job is assigned to a spirit of different attributes, one of the celestial ministers who assemble before the throne of the Almighty, and is used in the earlier books of the Old Testament in its simple sense of an adversary, became appropriated to the prince of the malignant spirits the head and representative of the spiritual world, which ruled over physical as well as moral evil. Even the notion of the one Supreme Deity had undergone some ity remov- modification consonant to certain prevailing opinions of the time. ed from all Wherever any approximation had been made to the sublime truth tion with of the one great First Cause, either awful religious reverence or philosophic abstraction had removed the primal Deity entirely beyond the sphere of human sense, and supposed that the intercourse of the Divinity with man, the moral government, and even the original creation, had been carried on by the intermediate agency, either in Oriental language of an Emanation, or in Platonic, of the Wisdom, Reason, or Intelligence of the one Supreme. This Being was more or less distinctly impersonated, according to the more popular or more philosophie, the more material or more abMediator. stract notions of the age or people (3). This was the doctrine from the Ganges, or even the shores of the Yellow Sea (4), to the Ilissus; it was the fundamental principle of the Indian religion and Indian philosophy (5); it was the basis of Zoroastrianism (6), it was pure Platonism (7), it was the Platonic Judaism of the Alexandrian school. Many fine passages might be quoted from Philo, on the impossibility that the first self-existing Being should become cognizable to the sense of man; and even in Palestine, no doubt, John the Baptist, and our Lord himself, spoke no new doctrine, but rather the common sentiment of the more enlightened, when they declared that no man had seen God at any time (8)." In conformity with 66 (1) Matt. xviii. 10. (2) Schleusner, Lex. voc. Satan. Dr. Russell, in a Dissertation prefixed to his Connection of Sacred and Profane History, has traced the gradual development of this tenet. It is rather sin gular that in the work of Theodorus of Mopsuestia on Magianism (quoted Photii Bibliotheca, num. 81.), Zeruan is said to have produced τὸν Ορμίσδαν * * καὶ τὸν Σατανᾶν. Οι the other side of this question may be consulted Rosenmuller on Job, ch. i., and Michaelis, Epimetron in Lowth, de sacra Poesi. (3) It is curious to trace the development of books of the Old Testament. In the book of (4) M. Abel Remusat says, of the three Chinese religions, "Parmi leurs dogines fondamentaux, enseignés six siècles avant notre ère par Lao-tseu, l'un de leurs maîtres, est celui de l'existence de la raison primordiale, qui a créé le monde, le Logos des Platoniciens. Rech. Asiat. 2 ser. i. 38. (5) In the Indian system Brahın, in the neuter, is the great Primal Spirit. See Baron W. Von Humboldt, über den Bhagavat Gita. Compare Bopp. Conjugations System, 290. 301. (6) See above. (η) Πᾶν τὸ δαιμονιον μεταξύ ἐστι Θεοῦ καὶ θνητοῦΘεὸς δὲ ἀνθρώπῳ οὐ μίγνυται, ἄλλα διὰ τούτου πᾶσά ἐστιν uínia. Plato, in Symp. (8) John, i. 18. Compare John, i. 4. 18. vi. 46. |