Simon Dubnow was one of the leading intellectual figures of East European Jewry from the last decade of the 19th century until his death, at the age of eighty-one, at the hands of the Nazis in Riga in December 1941. His major work was a full-length history of the Jewish people which was published in Russian in 1901, and which has been translated into German, Yiddish, and Hebrew. His History of the Jews in Russia and Poland (3 volumes) was published by the Jewish Publication Society in this country. Dubnow was a nationalist but not a Zionist; he believed the Jewish people should be self-governing in all the spheres of cultural and religious life, as it had been in many stages of its exilic history.
This essay is reprinted from Israel Argosy, Spring 1953, published by the Youth and Hechalutz Department of the Zionist Organization. It has been translated by the editor of Israel Argosy, I. Halevy-Levin. Dubnow’s “A New Conception of Jewish History” was published in English for the first time in these pages in March 1946.
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It is not my purpose here to develop any new theory upon a theme to which not a little study has already been devoted, but merely to express a view, which may, I believe, lead to certain definite conclusions. Probably other scholars who have preceded me have arrived at similar conclusions, but they may have preferred not to make them public for fear of impinging upon accepted opinions. Perhaps, in essence, the merit of the present essay resides in the attempt to simplify the issue involved.
It is generally accepted that three ancient peoples contributed to the shaping of European civilization: the Jews, who gave the world the idea of monotheism and of moral religion; the Greeks—philosophy and the arts; and the Romans—jurisprudence and the art of government. Renan underlines this view —which is subscribed to by Jewish scholars— in his introduction to L’histoire d’lsrael.
There is, however, room for closer study in what degree this view is justified. In this essay we shall confine ourselves to the question of philosophy. Is ancient Jewish literature exclusively religious in character and devoid of all trace of philosophy or “wisdom”? The word “philosophy,” in the Greek from which it is derived, denotes “love of wisdom.” A philosopher, accordingly, is a lover of wisdom and knowledge, a seeker after the answer to the riddle of the universe, to the enigma of life, beyond the sphere of religious faith. The Greek sages followed diverse routes in their quest for truth. The earliest schools engaged in the study of cosmology and the nature of matter, enunciating the Law of Four Elements—fire, water, spirit, earth. Plato delved deeply into the sources of consciousness. Aristotle encompassed all questions of physics and metaphysics, bringing them under the rule of reason. They were followed by the moral philosophers—the Stoics, the Epicureans, the Skeptics and, finally, the Theosophists, who reconciled philosophy with religious faith under the influence of Judaism and the early Christians (Philo of Alexandria and the Neo-Platonists).
What do we find in ancient Jewish literature? To reply adequately to this we must first of all define “faith” and “philosophy.”
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From a purely subjective standpoint any man who has found truth and spiritual content in religion is a believer. The philosopher, on the other hand, is one who seeks truth through rational investigation or observation, because he finds faith in ancestral tradition inadequate. “Wisdom” (chochma) , the term applied to science and philosophy in ancient Judaism, was the aide of faith (according to the Agada). At times chochma assists in elucidating religious tenets; not infrequently it opposes or diminishes the validity of these tenets. Examples of both function? can be found in the fragments of the literature of chochma which have been included in the canon of the Bible: in the Books of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, and to some extent even, in certain Psalms. I wish to stress that these must be regarded as fragments, for indubitably the majority of the books of chochma were not included in the Bible at the final redaction but were condemned to suppression and for that reason have been irretrievably lost. After much deliberation and misgiving it was nevertheless resolved to include in the Writings the Books of Job and Proverbs, and even Ecclesiastes “which they thought to suppress” (Shabbat 30:72; Megillah 7:71; Mishnah, Eduyot and Yadaim) . We may assume that other works of this nature expressing views contrary to tradition were condemned and suppressed.
A number of scholars, among them Nachman Krochmal, have drawn attention to an allusion in early literature indicating that the third collection of books in the Bible, the Writings, was formerly known as Sifrei Chochma (Books of Wisdom). But at the time of the final redaction of the Bible other books and scrolls (megillot) of a disparate character were included, all under the common title of Ketuvim— in other words “general literature.” Obviously the intention was to stress that these works ranked lower, in terms of sanctity, than the Torah and the Prophets. In view of the fact that these suppressed Books of Wisdom have been lost, we must perforce rest content with what has survived. We shall examine these to establish the philosophical method common to both Israel and the Gentiles, as well as that specifically Jewish in character.
In the three Books of Wisdom included in the Writings we can clearly discern three distinct phases of philosophical development. The authors of the Proverbs who speak in the language of wisdom generally (in the first eight chapters) seek to reconcile it with religious faith:
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
knowledge(1:7);
Yea, if thou call for understanding . . .
Then shalt thou understand the fear of the
Lord (2:3-5).
Wisdom reigns supreme throughout the creation, for with it God created the world:
The Lord by wisdom founded the earth
(3:19);
Doth not wisdom call . . . .
The Lord made me as the beginning of his
way. . . .
When He established the heavens I was
there;
When He set a circle on the face of the
deep . . .
When He appointed the foundations of the
earth(Chap. 8).
The entire system of ethics of this collection of Proverbs is based upon the premise that wisdom and ethics are mutually related and opposed to folly and vice:
To know wisdom and instruction. . .
To receive the discipline of wisdom,
Justice, and right, and equity (1:2,3).
Thus the interconnection between wisdom, faith, and ethics (instruction) is the salient characteristic of this initial sphere of philosophical speculation.
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In the second phase we have the contradiction between simple faith and rational ethics. The author of the Book of Job rebels in the name of reason and ethics against faith because he has not found the “justice and law” which are bound up with the very essence of faith in life, ‘but on the contrary he has witnessed the righteous suffering while the wicked prosper. Suffering man remonstrates with the wrathful Divinity, crying out in anger,
And how can man be just with God. . . .
Who will say unto Him, “What doest
thou?” . . .
Whom, though I were righteous yet I would
not answer . . . .
And if of justice, who will appoint me a
time? . . .
He destroyeth the innocent and the wicked
(Chap. 9).
Here I discern a bitter irony upon the maxim The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom in Job’s verses,
Whence then cometh wisdom? . . .
Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living. . . .
God understandeth the way thereof,
And he knoweth the place thereof. . . .
And unto man He said:
“Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wis-
dom” (Chap. 28).
But man does not accept this last principle because he cannot discover wisdom in the conduct of the universe (“it is hid from the eye of all living“) and accordingly he may ask: How reconcile it with faith, with the fear of God? Job’s companions reply to him with weak argument and God himself answers out of the storm, silencing the rebel with the admonition that the ways of the Creator of the Universe must not be called into question. Job’s declamation is silenced but the contradictions are not reconciled.
Man submitting to the rebuke of his Creator pours forth his complaint in the Psalms. He murmurs against the evil and violence that dominate the world, the peace of the wicked and the suffering of the righteous, and the fate of man in his brief span of existence. “Yet is their pride but labor and sorrow.” But here the believer gains the ascendancy over the skeptic in his understanding that without faith there is no tranquility of soul. The believer reproves the agnostic.
The fool hath said in his heart: “There is no
God” . . . .
The Lord looked forth from heaven upon
the children of men,
To see if there were any man of understand-
ing, that did seek after God (Psalms 14,
53).
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Was the number of “fools” who denied the existence of God indeed so great, and so few the number of the “men of understanding” that did seek after God (perhaps in the sense that they sought after God despite the fact that they were men of understanding)? At all events it is abundantly clear that even in ancient Israel skeptics and agnostics were not wanting. What these extremists sought is clear from Ecclesiastes.
In this book chochma attains its third phase. Man can find support for his soul neither in faith nor in reason and cries out in bitter despair.
In much wisdom is much vexation, and All is vanity. The Creator does not govern the universe but all revolves without change, for there is nothing new under the sun. Not Divine Providence but Fate or Chance (tyche in the system of the Greek philosophers) reigns supreme.
For that which befalleth the sons of men
befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth
them; as the one dieth so dieth the other;
yea, they have all one breath; so that man
hath no pre-eminence above a beast; for all
is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the
dust and all return to dust. Who knoweth the
spirit of man, whether it goeth upward, and
the spirit of the beast whether it goeth down-
ward to the earth? (3:19-21).
Here there is an utter refutation of the idea that man is the crowning achievement of creation.
Then I saw [in the beginning] that wis-
dom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth
darkness [and in the end] . . . . And I also
perceived that one event happeneth to them
all. Then said I in my heart: “As it happeneth
to the fool, so will it happen even to me; and
why was I then more wise?” Then I said in
my heart, that this also is vanity (2:13-15).
This phase is already beyond philosophy, the unbelief that comes in the wake of that same wisdom which the authors of the Book of Proverbs so exalted to the status of God’s associate in the work of creation. Instead of Job’s great protest at the disturbance of the laws of ethics and justice in the conduct of the universe, Ecclesiastes arrives at the gloomy conclusion that such is the way of the world and nought can be done to alter it.
But I returned and considered all the op-
pressions that are done under the sun; and
behold the tears of such as were oppressed,
and they had no comforter (4:1).
. . .there are righteous men, unto whom
it happeneth according to the work of the
wicked; again, there are wicked to whom it
happeneth according to the work of the
righteous (8:14).
. . .there is one event to the righteous and
to the wicked (9:2).
. . .bread [is not] to the wise nor yet riches
to men of understanding . . . but time and
chance happeneth to them all. For man also
knoweth not his time; as the fishes that are
taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are
caught in the snare, even so are the sons of
men snared in an evil time, when it falleth
suddenly upon them (9:11-12) .
All this was uttered by a man who, according to his own testimony, in the beginning applied his heart
To seek and search out by wisdom all things
that are done under heaven . . .
And whose heart
had great experience of wisdom and knowl-
edge.
But if one skeptic had already advanced beyond the bounds of wisdom, still he testifies to the many remaining within its borders and continuing to study books of science and philosophy. These books have not survived because, after being condemned to suppression, they were lost. The Book of Ecclesiastes, however, “they sought to suppress” but did not do so. Why? Because it confounds philosophic verities, although at the same time it denies religious truths. The Scribes and the Pharisees who were hostile to philosophy condoned the religious heresy of Ecclesiastes because he was their ally in refuting the claims of chochma. Was it not Ecclesiastes who said
Make not thyself overwise; why shouldst
thou destroy thyself . . . .
Moreover, in order to make the suspected work conform, the Scribes interpolated not only single epigrams in various chapters, but appended an entire concluding chapter composed according to the ancient maxim, “Know what thou shouldst reply to an unbeliever,” which atones for all the sins of the heretical author. Even in the penultimate chapter we End an editorial interpolation into the epigrams of the author who said:
Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth
And let thy heart cheer thee in the days of
thy youth,
And walk in the ways of thy heart,
And in the sight of thine eyes (11:9) . . . .
(to confound the express commandment of the Torah: That ye go not about after your own heart and your own eyes). The editor therefore introduced the warning in the line immediately following:
But know thou that for all these things,
God will bring thee into judgment.
The author then says:
Therefore remove vexation from thy heart
And put away evil from flesh
and the editor replies,
For childhood and youth are vanity.
The concluding chapter is particularly noteworthy, for it is entirely the reply of a believer to a heretic. The believer continues from the previous chapter.
Remember then thy Creator in the days of
thy youth
(to counter, “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth”)
Before the evil days come
And the years draw nigh when thou shah
say
I have no pleasure in them.
and he proceeds to paint a grim picture of human suffering in old age.
Because man goeth to his long home
. . . And the dust returneth to the earth as it
was
And the spirit returneth unto God who gave
it.
(An explicit protest against the statement of the skeptic who said: Who knoweth the spirit of man, whether it goeth upward?)
Finally the anonymous editor expresses his opinion of the book in general: Kohelet sought to find out words of delight (but did not succeed).
The end of the matter, all having been
heard; fear God and keep His command-
ments; for this is the whole man. For God
shall bring every work into the judgment,
covering every hidden thing, whether it be
good or whether it be evil.
In view of this admonition, the book, which is full of heretical opinions, was endorsed and permitted to enter the canon of the Writings and to be included in the Holy Writ though it ranks lower. In the Talmud we are told, “The Sages sought to suppress the Book of Ecclesiastes because its words contradict each other. Why then did they not suppress it? Because it begins with words of Torah and ends with words of Torah.”
According to our theory this statement must be amended: The book was not condemned to be. suppressed because of the contradictions it embodies, these contradictions having been introduced by those believers who interpolated the “words of Torah” to counter the words of heresy, thus converting it into a sort of dialogue, similar to that in the Book of Job.
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Our conclusions must accordingly be (a) ancient Jewish literature comprised not only religious works but secular works too, and the books of chochma or philosophical inquiry which it included were not infrequently contrary to the spirit of religious tradition; (b) books which could not be revised in the religious spirit were suppressed and subsequently lost. Thus only the books of chochma presented in the form of a dialogue between a believer and an inquirer, or in which the believer’s glosses upon the inquirer’s arguments are appended and the inquiring mind submits to the dominant faith (in keeping with the dictum: The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God) were included in the writings; (c) from the fragments of this secular literature preserved in the Ketuvim we are enabled to form an estimate of the extent of the controversy between believers and free inquirers over questions of universal import. The more ingenuous readers of later generations remained unconscious of these contradictions because the freethinking opinions expressed were submerged beneath the multitude of authoritative glosses, so much so that only close observers could distinguish between the sacred and the secular.
To what extent did this ancient Jewish literature of chochma influence contemporary Jewish and non-Jewish thought, especially through the agency of the Greek translation of the Bible? There can be no doubt whatever that the influence was mutual. Originally Jewish thought was influenced by the Greeks as is evident from the Book of Ecclesiastes. Such views were commonly held in the Hellenistic and Judaistic spheres which met in that period in Hither Asia and in Alexandria. Jewish literature in the Greek language and especially in the Septuagint constituted the intellectual bridge enabling this meeting, and towards the end of the period Philo of Alexandria emerges with a mission to reconcile the two world concepts. The influence exerted by Philo on early Christianity, which was born of the marriage, is beyond all doubt.
However, the influence of the fragments of the Books of Wisdom incorporated in the Writings is not restricted in time or space, like the majority of other books of the Bible, but is endowed with eternal significance. Let the Jobs of all generations and climes say what they felt and feel when they read the Book of that Ancient Complainer. Let the sons of Kohelet even in modern generations, the Fausts and the Hamlets wheresoever they may be, all those who despair not only of faith but of philosophy and science, declare why study of this work of extreme skepticism rouses such a storm in their breasts.
Many works of this kind were rejected and placed beyond the confines of the Holy Writ, but there can be no doubt that they too were illumined by the spark of holiness which we attribute to the surviving literature of chochma. All philosophy that is disinterested, which seeks truth and justice and is not sophistic, is inspired with sanctity. He who seeks faith is of a status equal to that of a believer, insofar as he truly believes in the possibility of achieving truth. And even he who despairs of this hope in a spirit of deep sorrow and genuine longing for a solution of the universe may enter the company of the righteous of his generation.
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