‘All those things,’ says Rabbi Manasseh Ben Israel, one of their most learned commentators, ‘which are esteemed holy in the presence of God, or idea of man, may not be imitated in any known form or shape, although made without the intention of adoring them, so as to preclude the possibility of their being worshipped or deified hereafter. Thus the figure of the divine chariot, which Ezekiel saw, may not be made, nor the likeness of angels of any degree, nor of man, for these creatures are all superior from being made in the image of God.’ ... The prohibition is further applied by him to everything appertaining to the holy temple, and no house or palace could be built of its size or proportions.
Poetry and music were exempt from this enactment. The importance and influence of the social and religious condition on the development of art may best be studied in the Jews. They had no great architects, sculptors or painters, no inventors, no philosophers in natural science, but many excellent poets, theologians, cabalists, necromancers, philologists and composers. In our times, however, influenced by the vivifying spirit of Christianity, they count amongst themselves, in addition to an inordinate number of picture-dealers, some creditable painters.
They possessed legitimately only one temple. Their first temple was a portable tent. The second was almost entirely of cedar-wood, richly provided with metallic ornaments, made by artists from Tyre and Sidon. They possessed one palace, that of Solomon. Babylonian or Assyrian architecture was probably reflected in this, and we may thus form a dim idea of what Solomon’s palace must have been. First the temple, then the palace was constructed.
The fact that the first temple was a mere tent, shows at once the nomadic character of the Jews, at a period when the Egyptians had possessed their architectural marvels for thousands of years. To the student of history, architecture is a sure measure of the degree of artistic and social development of a nation. We may boldly say, show us the plans of the houses, palaces, and temples of any nation, and we can determine the degree of its civilisation; we can do even more, we can read its character and religious fervour in these wood, brick, or stone records. That the Jews, having been compelled to witness all the misery and superstitious dulness which the Egyptian hierarchy and theocracy produced, should have detested architecture, and looked upon sculpture or any stone and brick as a curse to humanity, was quite natural; and that, once escaped from the bondage of Egypt, they should have hated any monumental, architectural, or artistic sculptural attempt, is equally obvious.
The egotistical character of the nomadic trader may be traced in the architectural constructions of the Jews. Any nation that loves its god or gods with zeal and self-denial will be sure to build grand temples to his or their glorification. The Persians had no temples, because they spiritualised the divine conception to such a degree, that they thought the first cause present everywhere like light. The Jews borrowed the same idea, and yet to fix the Eternal Spirit visibly amongst themselves, they assigned him a permanent abode, where he was exclusively to dwell; to be near them and to watch over them. Religious egotism was the mainspring of their national existence, and this general egotism made every individual Jew an egotist; and egotists are always bad supporters of anything by which the masses generally may benefit. Such people look only to the satisfaction of their momentary wants; they will collect trinkets, earrings, bracelets, armlets, goblets, gold and silver vessels, but the divine art of architecture, which binds masses together, will be neglected. We see them at first contented with a mere tent, and, when they undertook to construct a lasting building, it was done with all the pomp and gaudiness of a parvenu; they borrowed from all the surrounding rich people anything they could lay hands upon, merely to be able to say, without reason or taste—‘Look, my special God has also his special house.’ In the most powerful period of their national existence, which was a very short one, the Jews roused themselves to the construction of at least one temple to their Javeh. They wished at last to possess an Akropolis like the Egyptians, who had so many, or the Greeks, Persians, Assyrians and Babylonians. Their God was at last to be housed, like the gods of the despised Gentiles.
The temple of Solomon has been much written upon. Prejudice, religious fanaticism, blind faith, and unconscious or voluntary ignorance, dictated the descriptions and guided the reconstructions. Michaelis, one of the greatest Jewish authorities on Scriptural matters, tells us that ‘all the representations which we possess of the temple of Solomon are ornamented with arbitrary forms, and if we ask for authority or proof of this or that ornamental form, we invariably receive the answer: It must have been so, for I would have built in this way.’ It is naturally very difficult to obtain a correct description of the temple of Solomon, for with regard to its construction we must rely on the records of the Jews themselves. Unfortunately the Books of the Kings, Chronicles, Ezekiel, and the writings of Josephus, the varying descriptions of the translators, and the host of commentators, who generally obscure the simplicity of the simplest subject, are all at variance.
We may divide Jewish history into the eight following periods.
During the first period we find them as nomads on the shores of the Euphrates and Tigris.
During the second period they were received as shepherds in Egypt Here they learnt for the first time the arts of a settled people. They found a mighty hierarchy already established; astronomy, chemistry, architecture, and sculpture were practised by priests, who were well-versed theologians, lawyers, physicians, and philosophers. Not only the Jews, who lived amongst the Egyptians, but also the wisest and most learned men of Greece, owed much to the land of hidden wisdom, which was undoubtedly the cradle of the Jewish faith and of Greek philosophy. Moses, Lykurgus, and Solon sat piously listening to the oracular instructions of the Egyptian priests, who taught in mystic symbols. Thales, Pythagoras and Plato borrowed their philosophical theories and systems largely from the Egyptians. The Egyptians worked out the incarnation theory with mystic refinement. Osiris, the concealed Lord of heaven, had to become flesh, to conquer evil. He condescended to become a redeemer—had to suffer a cruel death in order to paralyse the influences of Typhon. The Greeks and Jews never could grasp the mystery of a god changing his almighty subjectivity into an objective human form, in order to attain, through suffering and death, what he could have fulfilled in a thousand other ways. Osiris was not only the supreme ruler in heaven, but he was also the supremely just and inexorable judge in hell. The division of the universe into an abode of bliss for the departed just, and of eternal darkness and fire for the unjust, was an Indian, Persian, and Egyptian dogma. To the blessed it was promised that they should pluck the sweetest fruits in heaven, ‘for they have given food to the hungry, and water to the thirsty; they clothed the naked, and lived in truth; for their heart was with God and God was with them, and they will enjoy eternal life in his presence,’ Of the wicked, on the contrary, it was said: ‘that they could not see the countenance of the Lord of heaven, nor ever hear his voice; they would go about without heads, drag after them their hearts, be boiled for ever in a cauldron, be hanged for ever by their legs.’
From these metaphysical and mystic Egyptians, the immortal Jewish lawgiver borrowed the division of his nation into twelve tribes, in imitation of the twelve zodiacal signs, and the division of Egypt into twelve nomes. In Egypt he learnt to distinguish between clean and unclean animals; to practise circumcision, which was with the Egyptians confined to their priests; but Moses promised to make his compatriots ‘a nation of priests.’ He established the tribe of the Levites, in imitation of the Egyptian priest-caste; and regulated their income, mode of living, and duties according to the ten books of the prophets (see p. 112); he divided the priests into four different classes, which at a later period were called Peshat, exegists, Remes, expounders of dubious points, Derush, composers of homilies, and Sod, the hierophants, or those versed in the real mysteries. The initials of the four names are taken from the Persian word PRDS (paradise) which may be adduced to prove that what Moses originally instituted was worked out, and systematised, at a later period, under Persian influence. The whole arrangement of the tabernacle was Egyptian; the serpent-worship was Egyptian, and so was the idolatrous predilection for the golden calf. Moses in his wise gratitude forbade the Jews ever to be hostile to the Egyptians.