By-paths in Hebraic bookland

by Israel Abrahams

FRANZ DELITZSCH’S “IRIS”

Light and color are the themes of the poet. But they and the flowers attract the theologian also. Franz Delitzsch produced his Studies in Color and Talks on Flowers in 1888 (an English version appearing in the following year). The book gives the lie to the supposition that the technical scholar is so engaged in dissecting things of beauty, that he is blind to the beauty of things. Delitzsch—the student and interpreter of the Bible—assures us that he could not remember the time when he did not muse on the language of colors; while, as for flowers, they ever had heavenly things to tell him; in their perfume he felt “the nearness and breath of the Creator.” Hence he called his book Iris. “The prismatic colours of the rainbow, the brilliant sword-lily, that wonderful part of the eye which gives it its colour, and the messenger of heaven who beams with joy, youth, beauty, and love, are all called Iris.” A pretty notion, this, so to name a book which is occupied largely with the lore of Bible and Talmud.

But the question arises: Did the olden Hebrews and their rabbinic descendants appreciate colors? Here we are face to face with a basic error to which some investigators have succumbed. They rely too much on words. The Hebrew names for colors are vague and few. Does it, however, follow that the ancient people were unable to enjoy the blue of the sky because they had no word for sky-blue? Men do not name everything they know. There is, for instance, no specific Hebrew for volcano, yet there are a score of passages in which volcanic phenomena are forcibly described in the Old Testament. Delitzsch did not belong to the superficial theorists just cited. He points out that, though biblical language has no adjective for blue, it compares the sky to sapphire in the Sinaitic theophany (Exodus 24. 10), as well as in Ezekiel’s vision of the divine throne. “Sapphire-blue is the blue of heaven; the colour of the atmosphere as illumined by the sun, through which shine the dark depths of space, the colour of the finite pervaded by the infinite, the colour taken by that which is most heavenly as it comes down to the earthly, the colour of the covenant between God and man.” So, too, the Midrash says of the blue fringe worn by Israelites on the corners of their garments—a blue of the purple hyacinth hue—that it was reminiscent of the heavens and the Throne of Glory. And blue, continues Delitzsch, passes almost universally as the color of fidelity. He proves this by reference to German and Sanskrit. The Indians would say of a steadfast man that he was “as unchangeable as the indigo flower,” which is as durable as it is lovely. “But in biblical symbolism there is associated with blue the idea of the blue sky, and with the blue sky the idea of the Godhead coming forth from its mysterious dwelling in the unseen world, and graciously condescending to the creature.” Delitzsch, scientific commentator though he was, had something of the darshan in him, and that accounts in part for his charm. The spirit of Midrash rests where it will: it is a happy truth that it sometimes finds itself a home in the hearts of others besides the sons of Israel.

Delitzsch, then, may be likened to the darshan: he is equally at home as allegorist. He can use the method of an Abbahu; he can also follow the manner of a Philo. Take, for example, his treatment of the four colors which are found in the priestly vestments—purple-red, purple-blue, scarlet, and white. White, he says, is the sacred color. Light is white and God is white. Dressed in the white of holiness, the priests blessed Israel in the words: “May the Lord make His face shine in light upon thee.” Delitzsch interprets light in the sense of love. This is not quite adequate. He often quotes German university customs in illustration of his views; it is a pity that he forgot the motto of the University of Oxford, Dominus illuminatio mea (“the Lord is my light”), from the first verse of the twenty-seventh Psalm. “God is the author of knowledge as well as the source of love,” comments Mr. C. G. Montefiore. White would stand for mind-service as well as heart-service: illumination, no doubt, is emotional, but it must also be intellectual to be sane and complete. Scarlet, on the other hand, continues Delitzsch in his allegory of the priestly colors, is the contrast to white. Isaiah speaks of sin “red as scarlet”—scarlet is the color of fire, hence of sin and the anger it evokes. “Scarlet with white in the dress of the high priest, therefore, means that he is the servant of that God who is holy not only in His love, but also in His anger.” A fine phrase that, showing deep insight into the Hebrew conception of God. Delitzsch, obviously, is not to be lumped together with those who would make of God all love; there is a holy anger, too, which belongs (inseparably with the love) to the divine nature. With regard to the two purples in the priestly robes, they typify majesty, for the dye was costly and its effects magnificent. Purple-red points to “God’s majesty as the exalted One, and purple-blue to God’s majesty in His condescension. For,” continues Delitzsch, “even taken in itself, the impression produced by purple-red is severe and earnest: whereas purple-blue has a soft tranquillizing effect. And whereas purple-red suggests the God of judgment who, when He frowns in anger, changes the heavens into blackness and the moon into blood, purple-blue suggests the God of peace, who overarches the earth with the blue of heaven, like a tent of peace.” How very fanciful, but how very Philonean, and therefore how very Jewish all this is!

There is much more as good as this in Iris. For instance, one would hardly have looked for poetry in the laws of bedikah—the minute scrutiny of the carcasses of animals as regards symptoms of disease. But just as in Samson’s riddle out of the body of the lion there came forth sweetness, so in Iris the author extracts aesthetics from the bedikah rules, and sees in them evidence of the close observation of colors by the rabbinic legalists. “The colour of the lung especially is subjected to the most careful examination. It is reckoned healthy if it is black like the Eastern eye paint—that is, tending to blueish—or green like leek, or red, or liver-coloured, but it is declared to be unsuitable for eating if the colour is as black as ink, yellowish-green like hops, yellow like the yolk of an egg, yellow like saffron, yellow-red like raw flesh.” And after the recital, Delitzsch exclaims: “Is not this a rich variegated sampler of colours?”

Since the date when Delitzsch wrote there has come about an important change in the opinion of anthropologists. Little more than a quarter of a century has passed, but all anthropological theorists no longer accept (though some still do) one theory on which Delitzsch builds, namely, that primitive peoples were color-blind. Several eminent authorities deny that savages lack the power to discriminate colors. The fact simply is that with advance in culture there enters greater precision in nomenclature; color-language becomes not so much more definite, as of wider range. But why? Surely not because of more accurate observation of natural tints. Culture associates itself with town life, and urbans are far more color-blind than rustics. At least, statistics are said to prove this, though Dr. Maurice Fishberg questions one of the inferences. The discussion has importance owing to the statement often made that Jews are more subject to color-blindness than Gentiles, the suggestion being that, as Jews live predominatingly in towns, they see less green than do those who dwell in the country. Dr. Fishberg, on the other hand, maintains that, while the poor and ill-nourished are always susceptible to color-blindness, Jews of the well-nourished classes are quite as good distinguishers of shades of color as the rest of the population of the same social status.

There remains something else to add. Culture carries with it luxury, and luxury leads to the manufacture of silks and cloths of every variety of shade. It is the mediæval improvement in the art of dyeing that has produced the increase of definition and range in the color vocabulary. And the art of dyeing owed much to Jews. To repeat a well-known fact, wherever he went on his Itinerary in the mid-twelfth century, Benjamin of Tudela always found Jewish dyers. Here, however, we must break off, for we seem getting a longish way from Iris. But not really. The book itself makes no attempt to be systematic, and discursiveness is, accordingly, not inappropriate in a causerie on Franz Delitzsch’s masterpiece.