3. JUDAISM AS CHRISTIANITY’S “ORIGINAL” SIN
1.
Parallel to the psychological version of Judaism we are also given an interpretation of Christianity, which seems to be required by the new understanding. In the sixth volume of the Study, one finds a very elaborate discussion of the points of difference between Judaism and Christianity as they became manifest in the personality of Jesus.
Mr. Toynbee dwells on “the direct influence of the Hellenic motif” on the Christian presentation of the story of the birth of Jesus. Quoting from E. Meyer’s Ursprung und Anfaenge des Christentums, Mr. Toynbee underscores “the correspondence between Matthew and the legend of the birth of Plato,” which is “as exact as it could possibly be.” There are at least six Hellenic stories of the same nature on record, and if we “compare the birth-story of Jesus with that of Herakles, we shall find a still greater number of points of correspondence than Meyer has pointed out in his comparison of the birth-story of Jesus with that of Plato.” Mr. Toynbee insists that “to a Jewish mind the Christian attribution of a divine paternity to Jesus seems like a lapse from the slowly and painfully attained monotheism of the Chosen People of the One True God into one of the grossest and most unedifying superstitions of a Hellenic paganism.”
The other even more fundamental difference between Judaism and Christianity is that according to the Jewish view the Messianic King is a purely human being, “The Anointed of the Lord,” invested by Him with authority; whereas in Christian opinion he is God Incarnate, “the King of God’s Kingdom—and a King who is God Himself and not God’s less-than-divine deputy.”60VI/268-69 and footnotes; also, ibid. 163 and footnote. And again Mr. Toynbee rightly points out that concepts of a god incarnate and of a dying god are quite well known to Hellenic and other forms of paganism but have no place whatsoever in Judaism. A Jewish reader is somewhat astounded by the amount of scholarship and literary energy that the author spends on proving something that is part of the A B C of Judaism, until the reader realizes that the laborious and long-winded discussion is addressed to Toynbee’s own fellow Christians, who—regrettably—overlook what is rather “notorious,” namely, that “the view that the Messiah has to be born of a virgin is … quite unknown to the Jews.” Mr. Toynbee is most anxious to impress upon them the influence of the pagan and—in particular—Hellenic motifs. The importance of these religious influences from paganism is underlined by the fact that in the figure of “Divus Augustus the potential converts of the first Christian missionaries had already acknowledged an incarnation of the Godhead in a living human being whose mortal mother was fabled to have been got with child by an immortal sire.…” Understandably, the happy coincidence of such preparation of souls must have rendered the task of the missionaries very much easier. Truly significant, however, is the use Mr. Toynbee makes of the Hellenic influence. He maintains that “the Christian evolutionist’s inference from this would be, not that there was no truth in Christianity, but that the truth which was in Christianity had already been aglow in paganism for ages before it had burst into a Christian plane.”61VI/458, 460. In other words, the truth that is the very essence of the Christian message was known to the heathens in a less intense form even before the Christian epiphany, and there is a sort of evolutionary continuity between that message in its pagan manifestation and its fuller exposition in Christianity.
We shall have no quarrel with Mr. Toynbee over his interpretation of Christianity. From the standpoint of our analysis of his ideas, however, we cannot help observing that “the direct influence of the Hellenic motif” is—in other passages—complemented by what may perhaps be called the indirect influence of Jesus’ Gentile descent. The “Messiah of Jewry,” says Mr. Toynbee, “comes out of that obscure village in ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’ ”; he is the “inspired Jewish scion of forcibly converted Galilean Gentiles”; or, as he is also referred to, he is Jewry’s “Galilean step-child.”62II/73 and V/658. In short, the truth of Jesus’ divine parentage was “aglow in paganism for ages” before its fuller revelation in the Christian garb, and the potential of his human parentage lay dormant, as it were, in the womb of Galilean Gentiledom for ages before its materialization in the Jewish frame. In order to grasp better the trend of the author’s thoughts, one must remember that Mr. Toynbee also maintains that as to the vital concept of the unity of mankind the source of “the human inspiration in the mind of Jesus” was the “Alexandrian vision” of that idea. The spirit of Alexander the Great was “in the air” in Palestine. This again is what one would expect to hear from Mr. Toynbee. The unity of mankind is the corollary to the fatherhood of God. Alexander did entertain that notion, but Jewry did not. After all, a God who is jealous and intolerant, who “never ceased to be thought of as the parochial god of Jewry,” who is Power and not Love, could not be expected to promote the idea of the brotherhood of men.63Composed of VI/7 and 9; VII/511 and IX/623; VI/125. Far be it from us to argue with the distinguished Christian scholar about the source of the “human inspiration in Jesus.” If he asks us to believe that Jesus had no knowledge of Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, the Psalms, and a great body of the Jewish teaching of his time, containing innumerable variations on the Mosaic theme of “God of the spirits of all flesh,” we must assume that he has valid reason for doing so. It is, however, rather confusing that in Vol. VI it is the Alexandrine discovery of the brotherhood of men (or, since Alexander himself, like Ikhnaton about ten centuries before him, perhaps “learnt the mystery from the lips of Amon’s priests” [see VI/247, footnote] the Alexandrine vision of it), presupposing the fatherhood of God, that inspired Jesus; whereas in other places (e.g., IX/623) we are told that the brotherhood of men was “an original Christian belief … and this Christian belief … was a corollary of a Christian discovery—or revelation—of the fatherhood of God.” Toynbee seems to be no less uncertain about Christianity than he is about Judaism.
It is true, Mr. Toynbee does not make Jesus a Galilean Aryan, as is customary in Teutonic theological “research”; but he has certainly de-judaized him thoroughly. It would seem that the only connection that “Jewry’s Messiah” has with Judaism is his complete break with it; and one may even wonder what could be meant by “the Galilean Jewish prophet whose message to his fellow men was the consummation of all previous Jewish experience.”64V/658. What that message seems now—i.e., in Volume VI—to consummate more than anything else is a great deal of pagan, Hellenic, and Alexandrine vision and experience. Mr. Toynbee wishes to make the point that, beside Judaism, the other “tributary” of Christianity was Hellenism; and he makes the point so successfully that his acknowledgment of “the immensity of this Jewish empire in the spiritual dimension,” neatly tucked away in an annex to Volume VI, sounds hollow, a mere hypocritical lip service to the traditional Christian belief “that the coming of Christ is the fulfillment of Scripture.”65VI/537. His efforts to separate Christianity from Judaism are the logical consequences of his psychological version of the development of Judaism. The relationship between the two religions was, at first, according to the theological interpretation, indicated unequivocally. After the “transformation” of Judaism by Maccabean and Zealot Jewry, the Jewish religious genius took refuge among those segments of the internal proletariat of the Hellenic world that remained loyal to the spirit of the “untransformed” Judaism and, in bringing Christianity forth, gave a new expression to that spirit.66See above p. 11 and V/126. This did make sense as long as Judaism was described as a Higher Religion which in the creative travail of the prophets of Israel and Judah found its majestic manifestation as an ecumenical faith; it does not make sense in relation to a parochial religion, to which Judaism has now been reduced. A tribal deity who through the unexpected luck of a psychological aberration “widens” into an omnipotent and universal god, but who remains chained to its tribal past, is nothing much to be proud about; the separation of Christianity from such a Judaism becomes an intrinsic necessity.
2.
Does Mr. Toynbee, by producing his psychological version of Judaism, mean to repudiate his original theological version? We have already seen that he is not perturbed by the inconsistency of his various theories as long as he can make each of them consistent within itself. He holds on to both of his versions of Judaism, just as we saw him hold on simultaneously to his contradictory interpretations of Maccabean history.67See above p. 6. His method of using mutually exclusive theories is strikingly illustrated by the final interpretation he places on the Maccabean guilt of Jewry and the significance he attaches to it.
Discussing the various forms of “Encounters Between Civilizations,” Mr. Toynbee also surveys anti-Semitism. In this connection he deals with the persecution of Jewry by the Visigoths, who placed before them the choice of either accepting Christianity or banishment from the country. In this kind of persecution of the Jews he is able to discern “a hidden vein of tragic irony,” for—believe it or not—the first people in history to indulge in such a barbarous misuse of power against a minority were the Jews themselves. Says our author:
The earliest known instance of ‘bigotry’ [Toynbee’s play on the possible etymological derivation of the term from ‘Visigoth’!] is the compulsory conversion of the conquered Gentiles of Galilee to Judaism by their Maccabean Jewish conqueror Alexander Jannaeus68It should be Aristobolus, who—having conquered the Itureans of a frontier district in North Galilee—converted them to Judaism. See Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, XIII/11. … and the Maccabean temper was inherited by Christendom from a Jewry that came to be the principal victim of this Jewish vein in the Christian religion. Jewish “Maccabeanism” was not, of course, the sole source of Christian “Antisemitism” … but the combination of a fanatical religious intolerance with an antipathy arising from social and economic grievances was an aggravation of pre-Christian “Antisemitism” into which Christianity was betrayed by the Judaic, not the Hellenic, element in its ethos.69VIII/279, footnote.
Having recovered from the first impact of the Toynbean sledge hammer, a Jew is grateful to find that the “Judaic” responsibility for the crimes of Christian anti-Semitism is not really meant to be as grievous as he at first gathered. Mr. Toynbee does concede that the “Jewish vein in the Christian religion” is not the only possible cause of anti-Semitism. As is well known, there was anti-Semitism in the Hellenic world,—a fact dramatically exemplified by the persecutions and pogroms in Alexandria at the time of Philo. Undoubtedly, it could not have originated from a non-existent “Judaic element” in the Hellenic ethos. What Mr. Toynbee wishes to explain is the specific Christian anti-Semitism, which—as he well realizes—has been so much more sordid and inhuman than the pre-Christian anti-Semitism of the heathens. On this he maintains that the Christian form of anti-Semitism is an aggravation of the anti-Semitic infection, which was already acute when Christianity first appeared on the scene and which—one guesses—Christianity “inherited” from its Hellenic “tributary”. In other words, if, for the sake of clarity, one wished to express it in the form of an equation, one would have to say: Christian Anti-Semitism = Pre-Christian, Hellenic Anti-Semitism + An Aggravation. However, An Aggravation = A Fanatical Religious Intolerance (alias Maccabean Temper) + An Antipathy. Therefore one might also say: Christian Anti-Semitism = Hellenic Anti-Semitism + Maccabean Temper + An Antipathy. For the Hellenic component no doubt only the Hellenic element in the Christian ethos can be blamed; for the Maccabean temper the blame is placed on the Judaic element; to whom the “antipathy arising from social and economic grievances” is to be charged is not stated. The Christian element in the Christian ethos bears no responsibility whatever; one can only guess that, being outmatched by a majority of at least two to one, its effectiveness is neutralized. Bearing in mind the feats of Hellenic anti-Semitism and pondering over the potentialities for persecution that are extant in an antipathy of the kind here described, it is rather difficult to put out of one’s mind the thought that had there never been a Maccabean temper for Christendom to inherit the story of Christian Anti-semitism would still be a far more “sordid tale” than that of the pre-Christian brand.
Let us now analyze Mr. Toynbee’s reasoning about the boomerang action of the “Judaic element” in the Christian ethos. He does not suggest that the Visigoths merely imitated the religious intolerance of the Maccabees. It is unlikely that they knew much about the religious policy of the one or two petty “Maccabean” (i.e. Hasmonean) princes in question, which found some vague recording in a few words of the Jewish historian Josephus. It would indeed be silly to suggest that one or two obscure incidents of Hasmonean history could have inspired with a barbarous fanaticism the Visigoths of the Iberian peninsula to enact the same kind of policy seven or eight centuries later. What Mr. Toynbee suggests is that the Maccabean temper became a constituent part of Christianity—“this Jewish vein in the Christian religion.” But by itself such a pronouncement is hardly convincing. A religion, we assume, is a set of dogmas, beliefs, and values, which is consciously embraced; a temper, on the other hand, is a not-very-pleasant propensity of human nature. How on earth can a temper be so “inherited” that it becomes the constituent part of a religion! And so, as if to smooth out the wrinkles on a reader’s forehead, in the next sentence Mr. Toynbee paraphrases “the Maccabean temper” by “Maccabeanism.” An “ism” is much more dignified than a mere temper; an “ism” has an ideology. Since, however, “Maccabeanism” is—in the same sentence—supplanted by “a fanatical religious intolerance,” which is like a reversion to the Maccabean temper, one must assume that both the temper and the intolerance are an “ism” because they represent a consciously adopted attitude which was suggested by a principle of Judaism. This then is the “Judaic element” in the Christian ethos: not a mere temper, nor just intolerance, but part of an ideology. Something of the very ethos of Judaism got into Christianity and rebounded against the Jews. And so we have rediscovered our old friend, “the violent ethos of Maccabean Judaism.”70See above p. 8-9 and V/175.
It is nevertheless unusual for an experienced author like Mr. Toynbee to use the term “temper” as if it were an ideology, and to use the subjective emotional disturbance of fanatical intolerance to indicate an ethos. Nor does he do it unintentionally. He needs both the Maccabean temper and the Maccabean “ism.” The two terms are purposefully left vague and made to mean practically the same thing. Going out to prove what he wants to prove, Mr. Toynbee is in a quandary. Did he not say that, when the Maccabees “transformed” the Judaism of the prophetic age into a political instrument to be used for a mundane purpose and thus effected “the unfortunate change of ethos” in Judaism from gentleness to militancy, the religious genius of the Judaism of gentleness found its new expression in the Christian garb? Did he not also declare that, as the result of that event, the violent ethos of Maccabean Judaism was the antithesis to the gentle ethos of Christianity?71V/175 and 126-27; and 126, footnote 5. All this, of course, means that there is no connection whatever between “Maccabeanism” and Christianity, and that the Judaic element in the Christian ethos is inherited from the classical Judaism of the way of gentleness, which was repudiated by “Maccabeanism.” Yet, at the same time, we remember that there was another version of the Maccabean misdeeds. According to this, the Maccabees were not engaged in a petty mundane enterprise and did not “transform” Judaism into a political weapon. On the contrary, inspired by zeal for the religion of their fathers, they conceived “a policy of religious conversion by political force.” Obviously, only this version of the Maccabean policy may be dubbed “bigotry” and compared to the religious policies of the Visigoths. This version may yield a Maccabean lapse from Judaism into militancy, a Maccabean sin or temper, but no new Maccabean Judaism with a changed ethos.72See above p. 11. The Judaism of the Maccabees with a temper of religious intolerance is the same Judaism of gentleness that was taken over by Christianity.
This then is the dilemma: The mundane Maccabean “ism” has an ethos of violence but, far from being a Judaic element in Christianity, it is its antithesis; the Maccabean temper of the “religious” version does have some contact with Christendom, both having the same Judaism of the prophetic age for their religious background, but it provides no Judaic element of violence for the ethos of Christianity. Mr. Toynbee is not overwhelmed by logical difficulties of this kind. He lets the event of the conversion of some Gentiles by the Maccabees fulfill a double function. Its religious interpretation gave us the “Maccabean temper”; from the mundane one followed the Maccabean “ism.” Though they are exclusive of each other, they are put to work together. What one cannot do, will be accomplished by the other. All that is needed is vagueness and ambiguity—and the boomerang effect of the Maccabean policy will sound plausible. The recipe is ingenious: Take Maccabean temper, Maccabeanism, a fanatic religious intolerance, the Judaic element in the Christian ethos, and by a continuous interchange of these terms giddy the reasoning faculty of the reader—and you will get the betrayal of Christianity into Christian anti-Semitism by the “Judaic element” in the Christian ethos.73If it were not so depressing to witness in this “mid-twentieth Christian century” so much literary ingenuity spent on such an unworthy cause, one could only be amused by the way the true nature of the Toynbean reasoning does break through the camouflage of ambiguity. Having declared that the Maccabean temper or Maccabeanism, as “a vein in the Christian religion,” recoiled upon Jewry in anti-Semitism, Mr. Toynbee—as we saw—hastened to add that “Maccabeanism” (i.e., the Maccabean temper) was not the sole reason. But a “fanatical religious intolerance” combined with a socially and economically conditioned antipathy to become an “aggravation” of an already existent anti-Semitism. But it was—and this is the “tragic irony”—by the Judaic element in its ethos that Christianity was betrayed. Since, however, a “fanatical religious intolerance” is the same as “Maccabeanism” or the Maccabean temper, which, having been inherited by Christendom, became “this Jewish vein in the Christian religion”; and since the “Judaic element” in the Christian ethos is identical with “Maccabeanism” or with “a fanatical religious intolerance” or the Maccabean temper—then what Mr. Toynbee says about the tragic irony of Christian anti-Semitism may also be paraphrased in this manner: “Maccabeanism” is not the only reason for Christian anti-Semitism, but the combination of this Maccabean “vein in the Christian religion” with “an antipathy” was an aggravation of pre-Christian anti-Semitism into which Christianity was betrayed by the Maccabean, not the Hellenic, vein in its ethos. What Mr. Toynbee actually says is that “the aggravation,” which was the result of the combination of the Maccabean vein in Christianity with “an antipathy,” was caused by the “Maccabean vein in Christianity.” It is as logical as to say that it is because of A that A + B is C. It is, of course, nonsense; but it is the acme of Mr. Toynbee’s ingenious method of holding on to contradictory interpretations of Judaism. At first, with the help of the Maccabean “ism,” he smuggles the Maccabean temper into Christianity, as a “vein” in that religion, as a Judaic element in it. Having thus safely lodged the “Judaic element” in Christianity, he reverts to the proper literary and logical difference between a “temper” in people and an “element” in a religion. To enhance ambiguity, he replaces “the Maccabean temper” (alias Maccabean “vein” alias “Judaic element”) by a “fanatical religious intolerance”; and thus the statement that the “Judaic element” (alias Maccabean “vein,” alias Maccabean temper) was responsible for the combination of “a fanatical religious intolerance” with “an antipathy” can be made to sound plausible.
3.
Notwithstanding his sophistry, one cannot help having some sympathy with Mr. Toynbee. Having extolled the towering superiority of the essentially new Christian departure as compared with Judaism, he is badly let down by the Christian performance in history in general, and not only in the specific case of anti-Semitism. He cannot overlook the intolerance and the violence with which the religion of gentleness and love treated other religions and philosophies of life or Christian deviations from orthodoxy and the officially approved religious dogma or belief. According to Mr. Toynbee the evidence of history is so condemning that he does not hesitate to declare: “There has been no religion in which this fanaticism—this persecution of all heterodox opinions without regard for the consequences and without shrinking from any crime—has been, and remained, so dominant as it has been in Christianity in all its manifestations.”74VII/438, footnote 2. This, of course, requires an explanation, and Mr. Toynbee finds it in the unpleasantly close association between Judaism and Christianity. For reasons of exigency, it appears, Christianity, after having taken “a decisive new departure from Judaism,” readmitted “the incongruous Israelitish concept and service of ‘the Jealous God’ Yahweh.”75Ibid., 431. It is thence that intolerance and religious fanaticism entered the body of Christendom.
Once again the Toynbean method of ignoring logical inconsistencies and contradictions is apparent. One might wonder what could be meant by the readmission of the incongruous Israelitish service of the Jealous God. According to his theological version of Judaism, the pre-exilic prophets of Israel and Judah had overcome the earlier tribal concepts and found the way of gentleness and Transfiguration. Christianity had no contact with “the Israelitish Jealous God,” in the Toynbean sense of the term. That concept was abrogated by Judaism about eight or nine centuries before Christianity came into being, and about twelve centuries before its “readmission” into Christianity—with the beginning of Christian intolerance—is supposed to have occurred. Mr. Toynbee’s psychological version of Judaism alone brings the intolerant and jealous god right to the doorstep of Christianity. On that basis, however, although there is proximity in time there is hardly any association in spirit. As we have heard, Jewry never really got beyond the concept of the tribal deity, “widened” by psychological escapism. It was only the Christian Church, on the one hand, and Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai, on the other—but also in the “Christian” manner—which by way of Transfiguration discovered the One True God. Seen in this light, Christianity was regarded as a radically new departure from the Judaism of the Jealous God, inheriting from it nothing more than the bankruptcy of Futurism. Christianity was no kindred religion of that Judaism, and Judaism was no component part of it.
The dilemma does not disturb Mr. Toynbee; he mixes his frames of reference without a qualm. The theological version of Judaism proved that the Jewish religious genius took refuge in Christianity; the psychological version proved that the Israelitish tribal deity was fanatically intolerant. It is true that the Jewish religious genius, absorbed by Christianity, is the genius of the ethos of gentleness, and that the intolerant tribal deity has no connection whatever with Christianity; nevertheless, if we pretend that the words “Jewish,” “Judaism,” and “Israelitish” are always used with the same meaning and that the two versions of “Judaic” development are not what they really are—namely, a contradiction—we do get the “conclusion” that the world-wide Christian intolerance that mars Western history is due to the readmission of the “Israelitish concept and service of the Jealous God.”
We may now understand why Mr. Toynbee, having built up such a powerful case for the separation of Christianity from Judaism, nevertheless retains the association between them that derives from his earlier, theological interpretation of Judaism. In truth, Christianity is a “decisive new departure” in all essential teachings and dogmas. But it is useful not to renounce the traditionally assumed contact with Judaism; that contact enables one to exculpate the religion of love for its crimes of fanaticism and intolerance by blaming them on the readmission of barbarous Judaic concepts. The ambiguities of style, the literary trickery, and the confusion of the frames of reference give us still another version of Judaism, under which it may be considered Christianity’s “original sin.” There seems to be no escape from the power of that original sin. It is responsible not only for Christian fanaticism, but even for the intolerance of the “neo-pagan” Western secular enlightenment. This is because “a post-Christian Western rationalism … inherited from Christianity a Judaic fanaticism and intolerance in its feelings and its conduct towards its adversaries.”76Ibid., 474, footnote 1, and VIII/406.
CHAPTER II Thus Christian religious and post-Christian secular fanaticism and persecutions both originate from the Judaic element introduced into the West by Christianity. Thus, Mr. Toynbee provides the “scholarly” backing for what the Nazis knew instinctively, namely, that “the Jews are our misfortune.” If only Christianity had been more careful with whom it kept company in its early youth!