A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 07

by Voltaire

Sacred writers, and our Lord Jesus Himself, often compare the reign of the Messiah and eternal beatitude to a nuptial festival or a banquet; but the Talmudists have strangely abused these parables; according to them, the Messiah will give to his people, assembled in the land of Canaan, a repast in which the wine will be that which was made by Adam himself in the terrestrial paradise, and which is kept dry, in vast cellars, by the angels at the centre of the earth.

At the first course will be served up the famous fish called the great Leviathan, which swallows up at once a smaller fish, which smaller fish is nevertheless three hundred leagues long; the whole mass of the waters is laid upon Leviathan. In the beginning God created a male and a female of this fish; but lest they should overturn the land, and fill the world with their kind, God killed the female, and salted her for the Messiah's feast.

The rabbis add, that there will also be killed for this repast the bull Behemoth, which is so large that he eats each day the hay from a thousand mountains. The female of this bull was killed in the beginning of the world, that so prodigious a species might not multiply, since this could only have injured the other creatures; but they assure us that the Eternal did not salt her, because dried cow is not so good as she-Leviathan. The Jews still put such faith in these rabbinical reveries that they often swear by their share of the bull Behemoth, as some impious Christians swear by their share of paradise.

After such gross ideas of the coming of the Messiah, and of His reign, is it astonishing that the Jews, ancient as well as modern, and also some of the primitive Christians unhappily tinctured with all these reveries, could not elevate themselves to the idea of the divine nature of the Lord's Anointed, and did not consider the Messiah as God? Observe how the Jews express themselves on this point in the work entitled "Judæi Lusitani Quæstiones ad Christianos." "To acknowledge a God-man," say they, "is to abuse your own reason, to make to yourself a monster—a centaur—the strange compound of two natures which cannot coalesce." They add, that the prophets do not teach that the Messiah is God-man; that they expressly distinguish between God and David, declaring the former to be Master, the latter servant.

When the Saviour appeared, the prophecies, though clear, were unfortunately obscured by the prejudices imbibed even at the mother's breast. Jesus Christ Himself, either from deference towards or for fear of shocking, the public opinion, seems to have been very reserved concerning His divinity. "He wished," says St. Chrysostom, "insensibly to accustom His auditors to the belief of a mystery so far above their reason. If He takes upon Him the authority of a God, by pardoning sin, this action raises up against Him all who are witnesses of it. His most evident miracles cannot even convince of His divinity those in whose favor they are worked. When, before the tribunal of the Sovereign Sacrificer, He acknowledges, by a modest intimation, that He is the Son of God, the high priest tears his robe and cries, 'Blasphemy!' Before the sending of the Holy Ghost, the apostles did not even suspect the divinity of their dear Master. He asks them what the people think of Him; and they answer, that some take Him for Elias, other for Jeremiah, or some other prophet. A particular revelation is necessary to make known to St. Peter, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God."

The Jews, revolting against the divinity of Christ, have resorted to all sorts of expedients to destroy this great mystery; they distort the meaning of their own oracles, or do not apply them to the Messiah; they assert that the name of God, "Eloï," is not peculiar to the Divinity, but is given, even by sacred writers, to judges, to magistrates, and in general to such as are high in authority; they do, indeed, cite a great many passages of the Holy Scriptures that justify this observation, but which do not in the least affect the express terms of the ancient oracles concerning the Messiah.

Lastly, they assert, that if the Saviour, and after Him the evangelists, the apostles, and the first Christians, call Jesus the Son of God, this august term did not in the evangelical times signify anything but the opposite of son of Belial—that is, a good man, a servant of God, in opposition to a wicked man, one without the fear of God.

If the Jews have disputed with Jesus Christ His quality of Messiah and His divinity, they have also used every endeavor to bring Him into contempt, by casting on His birth, His life, and His death, all the ridicule and opprobrium that their criminal malevolence could imagine.

Of all the works which the blindness of the Jews has produced, there is none more odious and more extravagant than the ancient book entitled "Sepher Toldos Jeschu," brought to light by Wagenseil, in the second volume of his work entitled "Tela Ignea," etc.

In this "Sepher Toldos Jeschu," we find a monstrous history of the life of our Saviour, forged with the utmost passion and disingenuousness. For instance, they have dared to write that one Panther, or Pandera, an inhabitant of Bethlehem, fell in love with a young woman married to Jokanam. By this impure commerce he had a son called Jesua or Jesu. The father of this child was obliged to fly, and retired to Babylon. As for young Jesu, he was not sent to the schools; but—adds our author—he had the insolence to raise his head and uncover himself before the sacrificers, instead of appearing before them with his head bent down and his face covered, as was the custom—a piece of effrontery which was warmly rebuked; this caused his birth to be inquired into, which was found to be impure, and soon exposed him to ignominy.