2. JUDAISM AS A TRIBAL RELIGION AND JEWRY’S DREAM OF WORLD DOMINION
1.
It would appear that between writing Volume V and Volume VI of his Study, Mr. Toynbee did some more thinking on the subject of Jewish Messianism and, to his great dismay, must have discovered that his interpretation of it as a mundane hope for a mundane national kingdom was not at all convincing.
Just imagine what a mundane Messiah would have to accomplish. After the fall of their country, the Jews were dispersed over the world. The Messiah would have to lead them out of their world-wide exile and reunite them in their national kingdom. Unfortunately between the hope and its realization there stood the might of the Great King and, at a later date, that of the Caesars. It is fairly obvious that, since—according to the premise—the restoration was to be a purely mundane undertaking, the mundane world-powers of the day would also have had some say in the matter, which of course would have complicated things somewhat. The Jewish people were shattered and scattered; the two “puny, ephemeral principalities” that had once been their homeland were effectively incorporated as minor provinces—or parts of provinces—in a vast all-powerful universal state. What madness could have moved a completely fragmentized and impotent Jewry to expect to wrest their mundane liberation by mundane means from the mailed fist of omnipotent Empire? In terms of the mundane world, within which a mundane Jewish Messianism was supposed to operate, what Mr. Toynbee said on the subject must be deemed hopeless bunkum.
However, a historian like Mr. Toynbee is never at a loss to save his theories by buttressing them with new ones. Jewry realized well enough that as long as the might of the Great King or of Caesar remained unimpaired they would have no chance of liberating themselves from the foreign yoke. Well, that was just too bad for a Cyrus, or a Titus, or a Hadrian; they would have to go. At first, one would try to use diplomacy; if it did not work, nolens volens, one would have to use force. Now, is this not most ingenious! Those old Jews were no fools; that is what Mr. Toynbee says. He recognizes that
… if the New David was effectively to reunite all Jewry under his rule—and what but this was his mission?—in an age, in which the living generation of Jews was scattered over the face of the Earth, then he must gird himself to acquire a dominion to which his forebears had never aspired in the highest flights of their ambition. He must wrest the sceptre of world-empire from the hands of its present holder and must make Jerusalem become tomorrow what Susa was today and what Babylon had been yesterday. In order to reunite the Jews he must now reign as King of Kings over Jews and Gentiles alike. And why, after all, should the coming champion of Jewry not attain this pinnacle of power and glory? In a world in which a Cyrus or Seleucus could rise and a Cambyses or Antiochus the Great could fall with the speed of lightning when it flickers between the Earth and the Firmament, why should not a Zerubbabel have as good a chance of world dominion as a Darius, or a Judas Maccabaeus as an Antiochus Epiphanes, or a Bar Kokaba as a Hadrian?”44VI/120; see also footnote.
Mr. Toynbee’s boldness of vision is at times breath-taking. However, should anyone doubt its basic soundness, let him turn to Volume V, pp. 412-19 of the Study, where in a philosophical dissertation our author himself has already proved that “the belief in the omnipotence of Chance … is apt to prevail in times of social disintegration.”
Having conceived the policy of world dominion, the Jews proceeded to implement it. There was, for instance, “Deutero-Isaiah,” who hailed Cyrus as the Lord’s anointed “in the wild hope that the Persian conqueror may be moved to bestow his world-empire upon the Jews!”45VI/122, footnote 3. A fuller explanation of this point one finds in VI/130, footnote 3. Then there were the short-lived successes of Zerubbabel and of the Maccabees, both having in common the purpose of providing “a nucleus for the Messianic Empire that was shortly to be expected.”46VI/121, footnote 2. It was not until Jewry was completely crushed in the appalling insurrections against omnipotent Rome that in the final rebellion of Bar Kokba “the hope of a new mundane Jewish commonwealth was finally extinguished.”47VI/123. It is good to have this reassurance. Otherwise one might have been inclined to believe that the Jewish aspiration for world dominion, unveiled by Mr. Toynbee, was the original form of the international Jewish conspiracy, which is the theme of the spurious Protocol of the Elders of Zion. Toynbee does not seem to consider the Protocol genuine; the Jewish hopes for world dominion were “finally extinguished, in the blood of the followers of Bar Kokaba” in the second century C.E. It had taken the Jews from about 522 B.C.E. to 135 C.E. “to learn by an agonizing process of trial and error that Futurism simply would not work.”
2.
Having reached this point in our deliberations, we are now introduced to the rather startling revelation that in “the bankruptcy of Futurism the Jews made the further tremendous discovery of the existence of the Kingdom of God.”48VI/124-26. In order to be able to follow Mr. Toynbee in his development of this theme, we must perform a deed of intellectual acrobatics and erase from our memory what we heard from our author about the development of Judaism as a Higher Religion. Did he not say that the “fable of Solomon’s Choice is a parable of the history of the Chosen People,” whose first concern was the search for the Kingdom of God, that the greatest achievement of that early Syriac civilization was its discovery of the particular conception of God which is common to Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam? Did he not declare that the first Syriac Time of Troubles, beginning with the Assyrian conquests and ending by the establishment of the Achaemenian Empire, was the period of Syriac creativity, in that during this period the prophets of Israel developed an “embryonic Higher Religion” into a mature one? Did Mr. Toynbee not maintain that monotheistic Judaism was “the positive and immense spiritual achievement of the Prophets of Israel and Judah?”49IV/224 and III/141. All this must now be treated as if it had never been mentioned; that is how Mr. Toynbee himself treats in this part of his Study what he himself has thus far said about Judaism as a Higher Religion.
Now, the period of creativity begins with the establishment of the Achaemenian Empire, which ushered in a time that was previously described as a phase of stagnation.50III/141. We are now asked to believe that the per-exilic prophets of Israel—Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the other—had no inkling of the One True God. In their eyes “the victory of the Assyrians and Chaldeans over the prophets’ countrymen is the work of the victim’s own national god …”51VI/30. Thus spoke that Teutonic scholar Eduard Meyer, whose work has now become Mr. Toynbee’s Holy Bible on Judaism. The purification of this parochial concept started only with the creation of the Achaemenian Empire in 525 B.C.E. In the law and order of the universal state of the Syriac civilization the petty subject people from the hills of Judea beheld for the first time the image of a universal law and a universal order; and behind it all they could not help perceiving the likeness of a universal ruler, namely that of the Achaemenian Great King. This new experience released a process of religious fermentation, and under “the influence of the Achaemenian Monarchy upon the Jewish conception of the God of Israel” Jewry was led toward the idea of a “Unique and Omnipotent God.”52VI/34-35. There is, of course, a problem posed by such an interpretation. There were other peoples beside the Jews who “shaped their conceptions of an Almighty God in the image of the Great King of a universal state.” Why then did “the god of the Achaemenian emperors’ insignificant Jewish subjects” become “the vehicle” for the revelation of the One True God to all mankind? Mr. Toynbee is especially perturbed by the fact that the tribal Jewish deity is provincial at home, impudent in exile, and altogether intolerant and jealous. The qualifications of “a barbaric and provincial Yahweh” would seem to be “so conspicuously inferior to those of so many of his unsuccessful competitors.” See VI/39-41. Mr. Toynbee believes that two of its qualities were responsible for the victory of the uncouth deity of the Jews. The Jews imagined their tribal god to be alive. It so happens that “God’s essence” for Man is “that He is a living god with whom a living human being can enter into a spiritual relation.” It is the most difficult divine attribute to discover and to grasp; only Jews were able to see and to equip with it their national divinity. Secondly, the very easy-going tolerance of the other divinities towards their competitors was their undoing. They were not ambitious enough; whereas the vulgar “devouring jealousness” of the Jewish god kept it in the race for “a monopoly of divinity.” He who pushes hardest gets farthest. But not even Mr. Toynbee can miss the fact that mankind has failed to grasp the unity of God “in a world in which the God of Israel has not been on the scene,” which seems to indicate that there may be something more in being nasty than “Sheer survival-value in a struggle for existence between competing divinities.” “Its transcendent value lies in the disconcerting fact that a divinity who is credited by his worshippers with this spirit of uncompromising self-assertion proves to be the only medium through which the profound and therefore elusive truth of the unity of God has been firmly grasped hitherto by human souls.” (See VI/49.) This is indeed disconcerting. There must be something wrong with the human soul or with the unity of God or—perhaps—with Mr. Toynbee himself who may not know what he is talking about. His idea of devouring provincial jealousy as the receptacle for the concept of a Universal Omnipotent and True God is childish. He does put his finger on something important when he mentions the divine quality of Being-alive. However, he does not seem to be surprised that the most hidden attribute of God, the most difficult to grasp, should have been understood by primitive Israelites alone and in relationship to a rather “barbarous” concept of a local divinity. Be that as it may—and we shall yet deal more fully with the qualities of Being-alive and Jealousness (see below)—one cannot help being somewhat amused by what has developed for Mr. Toynbee in relationship to his Study. One of its basic principles indicates that there is nothing unique about either Judaism or Jewry, as there is nothing unique about anything else in human history. Everything happens in accordance with the general “pattern” and the “laws” which Mr. Toynbee uncovers with such ingenuity But now he himself is compelled to concede that both the priceless treasure of a living Deity, without which religion in the Christian-Islamic-Judaic sense is inconceivable, and that “disconcerting” gadget of “a jealous god,” without which—as a matter of fact—the unity of God has never been grasped by human souls, have been lifted into the light of history by some semi-barbarous Israelites; and not even Mr. Toynbee can formulate a “law” to account for it. Here, at last, is something without parallel, something outside the natural course of events, the one and only exception of all history. And what a fateful irregularity! Since in Mr. Toynbee’s own opinion “Religion is the true end of man” (see VII/448) one cannot escape the conclusion that the entire purposeful destiny of the human race was entrusted into the hands of Israel. Lucky devil of an uncouth little parochial divinity, to have drawn the First (and only) Prize in the world’s history, where otherwise—on the testimony of Mr. Toynbee—there are no lotteries and nothing is left to chance! But, although the vision of a universal ruler in human shape started off this phase of religious growth, by itself it would apparently not have been potent enough to bring about the culmination of the new development. As always, trouble was needed as a stimulus. This duly set in with the collapse of the Achaemenian universal state under the impetus of the conquests of Alexander the Great. This new Time of Troubles, by bringing about the final defeat of Futurism, is mainly responsible for the emergence of the Jewish faith in an omnipotent and righteous God.
It was the “mundane situation,” not at all favorable to the Jews and continually deteriorating, which compelled Jewry to revise its concept of a protecting national divinity. After all, as we may still remember, the Jews “had set their hands to a task which was, humanly speaking, an impossible one; for, when they had failed to preserve their independence, how could they rationally hope to reconquer it—and, what is more, to supplant their own conquerors in the lordship of the World—by the strength of their own right arm?”53VI/124-6. The question has, of course, already been answered once: they started out in their plans for world dominion with the “belief in the omnipotence of Chance.” One must therefore assume that the Jewish faith in Chance just helped Jewry to conceive the idea of world empire but, as might have been expected, was unable to survive the disappointments of the first Jewish defeats. At that point, one must again assume, the Jews could have done the very reasonable thing and given up their idiotic hankering after world conquest. Fortunately for them and the rest of mankind, being the “stiff-necked” people that they have always been, rather than give up the wild dream of empire they remembered their old god “from the uplands”—he must have lived in semi-retirement during the short sway of the goddess Chance—and began “the widening of the conception of the protecting divinity.” The Jewish ambition, having waxed world-embracing, proceeded to equip the tribal deity with sufficient power to guarantee world-wide fulfillment.
To succeed in this tremendous undertaking they must have behind them a god who was not only competent to see fair play but was also capable of redressing a balance that, on any human reckoning, was hopelessly inclined against this god’s terrestrial protégés. If the protégés were engaged on a forlorn hope, then the protector must be nothing less than omnipotent—and it would follow from this that he must also be actively and whole-heartedly righteous; for only an all-powerful godhead who cared for righteousness above everything else would be both able and willing to exert himself with effect on behalf of a people whose cause was just but whose worldly position was insignificant.54Ibid.
With one big leap from the parochial domain of “a barbarous” tribal deity, we have landed in the Kingdom of an omnipotent and righteous God or—rather—god. Actually, “Yahweh did not cease to be thought of as the parochial god of Jewry in a certain sense.” In view of “the mundane situation” it had to be an omnipotent and righteous “divinity who stood behind the devoted human leader of a futurist forlorn hope.” As Futurism fails, the human figure fades away, “while the divinity who has originally been called in aid merely in order to give supernatural power to the human elbow of ‘the Lord’s Anointed’ now comes to dominate the scene.” Thus, by bitter experience Jewry learns that “a human Messiah is not enough. God himself must condescend to play the part, which He alone can effectively play, of serving His people as their saviour and their king.”55Ibid.
This, of course, is neither history nor theology but psychology: a psychological explanation of how the idea of an omnipotent Godhead developed in the minds of Jewry, which says nothing about the objective existence of the Godhead. Jewry formed the concept of a god in the image of its needs. Mr. Toynbee cannot overlook the fact that he has described the progress of escapism with which modern psychoanalysis is so familiar: an unhappy people that set itself an unattainable goal imposes the responsibility of action upon a whole series of substitutes. First it is a human champion; when he fails, he is fortified by the backing of an imaginary divinity; “and finally, when even the Lord’s Anointed breaks down, the fools in desperation signal S.O.S. to a wholly fictitious divine being whose alleged omnipotence is expected to make up for the proven impotence of his human inventors.” Mr. Toynbee believes that this may have been true of the militant Zealots and the pacifist Quietists among the Jews. The first were convinced that their God would take upon Himself the fulfillment of their “self-appointed mundane task,” whereas the latter refrained from all action in the faith that the realization of their mundane dream was God’s own concern. That was still Futurism. There were, however, two other answers—those of Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai and of the Christian Church. The psychoanalytical diagnosis does not apply to them, since the very essence of their response was the surrendering of the foolish goal of Futurism, “a withdrawal of the libido from the previous mundane aim.” Surrendering the purpose of Futurism, they put their treasure “in a purpose which is not Man’s but God’s and which therefore can only be pursued in a spiritual field of supra-mundane dimensions.”56Ibid., 128.
3.
The intriguing aspect of this theory is that the concept of a god, which was originally a mere figment of escapism, turned out to correspond to the One True God of the Universe. The bankruptcy of Futurism was like the rending of the veil of the Temple, which revealed the reality of an Other World that was always present but unseen or unrecognized. Most surprising of all, however, is the revelation that only now is the One True God discovered in this “spiritual reorientation”—the discoverers being Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai on the one hand and the Christian Church on the other. In this psychological interpretation of Judaism, Mr. Toynbee proceeds as if David and Solomon, Elijah and Elisha, Hosea, Amos, Micah, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Hillel and the other prophets, teachers, leaders, and saints of Israel had never lived. It is obvious that our author has become the victim of his own fabrications. Having decided that Jewish Messianism wanted nothing but a mundane national kingdom, he could not suppress that very logical question, how—according to the Jews—such a task was to be accomplished. Having then answered, rather cleverly, that the only solution to the problem of Jewish political and military helplessness was Jewish world dominion, to be initiated with the propitious assistance of Omnipotent Chance, he was inevitably led on to the discovery of “the rake’s progress in escapism.” It was rather logical to expect—was it not?—that a people as broken and scattered as the Jews were, had it believed in the One True God, would have turned to Him for help in a contrite spirit and with a longing heart—exactly as described in Mr. Toynbee’s original version of Judaism, but now denied—rather than seeking their salvation in a mad mundane ambition for world conquest. One must therefore begin with a tribal deity, whose power is weakly, and rather narrowly, circumscribed, and call in the Goddess Chance to start escapism rolling by way of Futurism into the ante chamber of “the Kingdom.” Of course, there might have been no need for such an imaginative reconstruction of Judaism and Jewish history, had Mr. Toynbee assumed that Jewish Messianism was not quite so mundane, that the Maccabees—notwithstanding their numerous shortcomings—did not “transform” Judaism into a mere instrument of political struggle with world empires. His impressions of Judaism and Jewry might have been very much different, had he allowed the Jewish hopes for a return to Zion to be in some way related to a Jewish faith in the One God, had he granted them at least some “other worldly,” religious significance. But this is exactly what he cannot do—let go of the idea of a mundane Jewish Messianism. We shall have to understand why the concept is so dear to him.
In the meantime, however, let us note the significance of this theory in its relationship to the first presentation of Judaism as a Higher Religion. Originally, the sense of sin played an important part in leading Jewry to the discovery of an “Other World of supra-mundane dimensions” and to a closer communion with the One True God; now,57See above p. 3 and V/433. on the contrary, it is a sense of self-righteousness, the conviction of the people that their “cause was just,” which produces the concept of an omnipotent and righteous God. Futurism, which meant desertion from the presence of God, now—of intrinsic escapist necessity—equips itself with a faith that brings Jewry much closer to the One God than they had ever been before. On this showing, one can no longer speak of a “Nemesis of Creativity,” upon which earlier Jewry’s downfall was blamed.58See above p. 12 and IV/262. Toynbee does say (see VI/101) that at times Futurism is “allowed to transcend itself through rising into Transfiguration.” It remains however unexplained that, whereas in Vol. V Jewry finds God through a form of Transfiguration and loses Him later through Maccabean Futurism, in Vol. VI Jewry is led to God via Futurism, which ultimately transcends itself in Transfiguration. It is impossible for both these versions to be true. On the contrary, one must now assume that there was a continuous growth from the post-exilic tribal deity to Futurism and, through Futurism, to Transfiguration in its rabbinical (represented by Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai!) and Judeo-Christian variations. Mr. Toynbee has now every reason to be grateful to the sin of Jewish Futurism. Without this Jewry would have submitted to its fate and would have certainly disappeared in the universal melting pots of the Achaemenian and Romano-Hellenic empires, like all its other contemporaries. There might never have occurred “the renting of the veil in the Temple,” and one would have to write a study of history regarding “the true end of man” from the standpoint of “a Syriac Mithras, an Egyptian Isis, a Hittite Cybele.”59VI/46.
In the following pages, for the sake of brevity, we shall often refer to Toynbee’s first version of the full development of Judaism in the prophetic age as the “theological” one. The second version, in which the role of the prophets of Israel and Judah is completely ignored, and the motivating force of development is the Jewish escapism of the period from 525 B.C.E. to 70 C.E., we shall call the “psychological” one.