Toleration and other essays

by Voltaire

Let us always distinguish between dogma and history, and between dogma and that eternal morality which all legislators have taught and all peoples received.

O holy morality! O God who has created it! I will not confine you within the bounds of a province. You reign over all thinking and sentient beings. You are the God of Jacob; but you are the God of the universe.

I cannot end this discourse, my dear brethren, without speaking to you of the prophets. This is one of the large subjects on which our enemies think to confound us. They say that in ancient times every people had its prophets, diviners, or seers. But does it follow that because the Egyptians, for instance, formerly had false prophets the Jews may not have had true prophets? It is said that they had no mission, no rank, no legal authorisation. That is true; but may they not have been authorised by God? They anathematised each other, and treated each other as rogues and fools; the prophet Zedekiah even dared to strike the prophet Michah in the presence of King Josaphat. We do not deny it; the Paralipomena record the fact. But is a ministry less holy because the ministers disgrace it? Have not our priests done things a hundred times worse than the giving of blows?

The commandments of God to the prophets Ezekiel and Hosea scandalise those who think themselves wise. Will they not be wiser if they see that these are allegories, types, parables, in accordance with the ways of the Israelites? And that we have no more right to ask of God an account of the orders he gives in accordance with these ways than to ask the people why they have them? No doubt God could not order a prophet to commit debauch and adultery; but he wished to let us see that he disapproved the crimes and adulteries of his chosen people. If we did not read the Bible in this spirit, we should, alas, be filled with horror and indignation at every page.

Let us find edification in what scandalises others; let us find wholesome food in their poison. When the proper and literal meaning of a passage seems to be in accord with reason, let us keep to it. When it seems to be contrary to the truth or to sound morals, let us seek a hidden meaning that may reconcile truth and sound morals with Holy Scripture. Thus have all the fathers of the Church proceeded; thus do we proceed daily in the commerce of life. We always interpret favourably the discourses of our friends and partisans. Would we treat more harshly the sacred books of the Jews, which are the object of our faith? Let us, in fine, read the Jews’ books that we may be Christians; and if they make us not more wise, let them at least make us better.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

My Brethren:

There are in the New Testament, as there are in the Old, depths that we cannot sound, and sublimities that our poor reason can never attain. I do not propose here either to reconcile the gospels, which seem to contradict each other at times, or to explain mysteries which, by the very fact that they are mysteries, must be inexplicable. Let those who are more learned than I discuss whether the Holy Family betook itself to Egypt after the massacre of the children at Bethlehem, as Matthew says, or remained in Judæa, as Luke says; let them seek if the father of Joseph was named Jacob, his grandfather Matthan, and his great-grandfather Eleazar, or if his great-grandfather was Levi, his grandfather Matthat, and his father Heli. Let them settle this genealogical tree according to their light; it is a study that I respect. I know not if it would enlighten my mind, but I do know that it cannot speak to my heart. Paul the Apostle tells us himself, in his first epistle to Timothy, that we must not trouble ourselves about genealogies. We will not be any the better for knowing precisely who were the ancestors of Joseph, in what year Jesus was born, and whether James was his brother or his cousin. What will it profit us to consult what remains of the Roman annals to see if Augustus really did order a census of all the peoples of the earth when Mary was pregnant with Jesus, Quirinus governor of Syria, and Herod king of Judæa? Quirinus, whom Luke calls Cyrenius, was (the learned say) not governor in the time of Herod, but of Archelaus, ten years later; and Augustus never ordered a census of the Roman Empire.

We are told that the Epistle to the Hebrews, attributed to Paul, was not written by Paul; that neither Revelation nor the Gospel of John was written by John; that the first chapter of this gospel was evidently written by a Greek Platonist; that the book could not possibly come from a Jew; and that no Jew could ever have made Jesus say: “I give you a new commandment: that you love each other.” This commandment, they say, was certainly not new. It is given expressly, and in even stronger terms, in the laws of Leviticus: “Thou shalt love thy God above all things, and thy neighbour as thyself.” Such a man as Jesus Christ—a man learned in the law, who confounded the doctors at the age of twelve, and was ever speaking of the law—could not be ignorant of the law; and his beloved disciple could not possibly have charged him with so palpable a mistake.

Let us not be troubled, my brethren. Let us remember that Jesus spoke a dialect, half Syrian and half Phœnician, that was hardly intelligible to Greeks; that we have the Gospel of John only in Greek; that this gospel was written more than fifty years after the death of Jesus; that the copyists may easily have altered the text; and that it is more probable that the text ran, “I give you a commandment that is not new,” than that it said: “I give you a new commandment.” Let us return to our great principle. The precept is good; it is our duty to fulfil it as well as we may, whether or no Zoroaster was the first to announce it, and Moses copied it, and Jesus renewed it.