[[293]]
An eminent scholar has said that while the letter of Scripture
became ossified in Palestine, it became volatilized at Alexandria;
and the truth of this remark was proved by the Alexandrian Jewish
theologians just before the beginning of our era.
This, too, was in obedience to a law of development, which is, that
when literal interpretation clashes with increasing knowledge or
with progress in moral feeling, theologians take refuge in mystic
meanings--a law which we see working in all great religions, from
the Brahmans finding hidden senses in the Vedas, to Plato and the
Stoics finding them in the Greek myths; and from the Sofi reading
new meanings into the Koran, to eminent Christian divines of the
nineteenth century giving a non-natural sense to some of the
plainest statements in the Bible.
Nothing is more natural than all this. When naive statements of
sacred writers, in accord with the ethics of early ages, make
Brahma perform atrocities which would disgrace a pirate; and
Jupiter take part in adventures worthy of Don Juan; and Jahveh
practise trickery, cruelty, and high-handed injustice which would
bring any civilized mortal into the criminal courts, the invention
of allegory is the one means of saving the divine authority as soon
as men reach higher planes of civilization.
Pages:
1211
1212
1213
1214
1215
1216
1217
1218
1219
1220
1221
1222
1223
1224
1225
1226
1227
1228
1229
1230
1231
1232
1233
1234
1235