New-York tribune., 1895-02-17
RENAN AND THE JEWS.
A VOLUME ON THE TINES OF PERSIAN
AND GREEK INFLUENCE.

HISTORY or THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL ,EI cIsn2I FrSm
the Rule of the Persians TO That OF the Greeks
BY Ernest Renan. PIP. vi 5oi Koperts BIOS
terest in the later periods of Jewish history as In
those that were earlier. A number Of reasons can
no imagined for this change in his relation to his
theme He was purst. not from pedantry but
from delicacy Of perception in the choice OF words
Style went far with him. not only in his own
writings bu; In the writings which he had to
study His complaints show the temper into
which he fell as he watched the decay OF classicai
Hebrew and the gradual substitution OF the COM
posite Aramaean. The later books and records
with which he had to deal betrayed the failure OF
spirit and skill In the Jewish people In the sense
proper to older times these people were no longer
capable Of creating literature OF their own AS
they had forgotten their own language so they
had lost the grand impulses Of their national
youth Later Jewish history. from an exterhai
point Of view is series of episodes whch nave
little connection with each other. This was an
noyng TO a man Of Remains temper. VINO had
trained himself in a system of historic evolution
ali his own, by which nations were supposed 10
follow step by step a path traced for them before
In the necessity Of the by their own inherent
tendencies II was not pleasant for him to dis
cover that his theory was met by alterations he
could not account for without illusions Wnich ne
would gladly have omitted He dismissed Assyri-
ology with scant ceremony This he could aHord
TO do because the points OF contact between the
IIahrey civilization and that Of the Mesopota-
mia, Valley BELONGED to a time when the inner
spirit OF the former was still unmpaired. It's own
movement was so steady that forces acting from
without could affect 1t only slightly and slowly.
II Israel under the stress OF ideas borrowed from
the East. swerved little from the lines which
the historian had marked out for it, the diver
gence was so slight at its inception that he could
afford to ignore it, But when the Chosen People
returned from their hated exile In Babylon with
distorted reminiscence of their own past, and
with host OF ideas which they could never have
originated, II left to themselves, Remains eminent
ly scientific scheme was upset. lie conceded tne
influence Of the Persans wherever the matter
was one of rank superstition. But when it came
10 a vital principle, even one which Judaism ac-
cepted with reluctance ne again had recourse to
tactics similar to those which Dickens immortal
ized in the character of Pecksniff He dismissed
Persia with wave of the hand when he came 10
account for the doctrine OF future lire. III was
strange that he should do this for he accepted
the opinion general among the learned that the
hierarchies of good and wicked spirits which were
elaborated with painful minuteness by the Jews
of later times had been derived at the outset
from the Zoroastrans He even went so far as to
say that If the Hebrews had failed to set forth
clearly their conception of Jehovah. we might
dimly have discernec him under his Persian SYM
boil" the disc Of Ahurawazda. Even Jewish
worship" said ne. lowed something to Persian
dominant customs. The altar OF the tamid, or
perpetual sacrifice. in the second Temple. closely
resembled a fire-al.ar and tradition saw in the
had ,no1O of an
eternal flame" In manners, in thought he shows
how much the Jews owed to Persia. But when
1t comes to the future life. he says merely that
Persia had this belief before the Jews, that the
Book Of Daniel, where it was for the first time
mainly ayowed by Jew, was full OF the traces
of Persian influence, all of which signifies moth
ing because "men do not borrow what they need
for their salvation" He shows that the whole
trend Of Hebrew lore in the old times had been
toward the view that the reward OF the righteous
was prosperity and wealth and honor in this life;
that the idea Of resurrection OF the dead was
not tolerated until the nation became the victim
Of oppression: that the Sadducees who denied i'm
mortality "held to the old tradition and then he
remarks that belief in the resurrection proceed
ed so logically from the development Of Jewish
ideas that II is needless to examine whether 1t
had any foreign origin 1t is hard to sec how
these statements can be hdrmonlZeu
Renan might. perhaps. have reconciled himself
TO post-exilian Judaism and Jewish literature by
the Hellenistic tendencies which 1t finally deve-
oped, If this borrowed Helenism had retained
any OF the features of classic Greek. AS it was,
he found forgery, awkwardness. bad language
and worse sense wherever he turned The Jew,
he held having lost his own form Of speech, never
learned to use that OF anybody else with good
taste Aside from the translation of the old
Scriptures, and an example or two of pessi-
mistic philosophy. the later literature is COM
posed Of legend and of pretended works from
more ancient hands 1t Is literature not for the
learned but for the haf-educated who can be
made to believe anything II 1t is on paper before
their eyes. Renan does not say all these rude
thnes so bluntly as they are put here. But he
says them plainly enough, and they bring up the
point that he himself an author changed
greatly after he began writing the history OF the
Jews He was always cynical but in his earlier
years cynicism was tempered In him by genial
humor. He showed that ne meant his sharp
thrusts kindly. But later he put off this friendly
air. and when he gave wound did not always
take the trouble 10 smile One might well infer
that things were not coming out he had an
tcipated So far his history was concerned,
they were certainly ntractab'e. In his study OF
the origins Of Christianity he had committed
himself to we-defined views respecting the evo-
lution of Judaism. His history was undertaken
70 elucidate and enforce those views In the
earlier periods 1t was not difficult 10 construct
his work on lines that converged toward the
conclusions which he had already set up. But
as he proceeded the task became more and more
difficult Conditions which were logically re-
oured for the beginnings Of tn" coming religion.
and which had been present In the heroic age
of Hebrew history, were no longer to be found
in the times of Persian and Greek domination.
Palestine was longer centre from which
power emanated. either temporal or spiritual; its
population was influenced from without. either
hx the vast body OF Jews who sun remained In