Elijah Benamozegh

“ It is then, beyond doubt, that the Bible, Moses, God himself are arraigned, and we might be tempted to let Christian ethics kill itself by that surcharge of vanity which mines beneath itself a pit, wherein its own titles and very foundation can forever disappear. ”

“ Does he show us a Samaritan suffering on the highway, neglected, abandoned by a priest, a Levite, and succored by a Pagan or a simple Israelite who knew his duty as to charity better than those of the national hierarchy?
Such an exhibition could mean only that charity and help should be extended to all the unfortunate, be they Samaritans, Jews, or Pagans, and Judaism could have naught to gainsay. But this is not what Jesus presents to us. It is not virtue, duty, absolute charity, that he substitutes for national egotism ”

“ But let us first notice two points wherein Jewish Charity far surpasses Christian. These are Country and Society. If Jesus preaches love to all men, if Christianity plumes itself more than does any religion, on its humanitarianism, it is at the expense of a love no less sacred, that of country and society. Christianity knows but one country, the world, or rather Heaven; and but one society, spiritual society. One's country, its rights, its needs, the limitations it sometimes sets to universal charity, as one right limits another ”

“ He who calls his neighbor a bad name, he who makes his neighbor blush by scandalous proposals, and the adulterer. This is the ethics of those formulistic Pharisees, those adorers of the letter, of those heartless men whom the Gospel paints for us. ”

“ Now, without a political enemy, there can be no country; without social penalties, no society, no justice. A striking example of charity supplanting the rights of justice, is the pardon of the adulteress under the pretext that there was no one who, as being guiltless, could stone her; and it is precisely upon the ruins of both the political and the social necessities that Christianity is based—by snapping the ties that bind man to earth, it takes its flight to spheres where man cannot follow. We shall not, just now, dilate on the menstruum Christianity proves for a social organization. ”

“ But what is truly remarkable, and what wrests from the hands of Christian ethics the scepter it has usurped, is that, of all enormous crimes, the only ones that form an exception to the great Jewish principle of non-eternity of punishment, are three against morality, and the first two are the objects of these evangelical imprecations. "Though one were the greatest sinner in the world," say the Pharisees, "hell cannot hold him forever; all shall one day see the light of Heaven and Paradise." ”

“ Causeless anger is forbidden; and should provoked anger be not so too? Pharisaical morality avoids well this restriction—that would allow every one to justify his anger—by forbidding all anger. But what is there too much in the sentence of Jesus? Clearly a disregard of the most natural distinction (one that Judaism never omits to make) between justice and charity, between the civil code and the ethics. Jesus will not have it. He sends the passionate man to the judgment, just as he does the homicide in the preceding verse. The man who says Raca to his brother, shall be punished by the Council. ”

“ This is the mould from which the Gospel ethics copied the raca, the fool, sent by it to the galleys or hell's-fire. Is this all? No; Pharisaical ethics is so refined, so delicate, has such exquisite shades that no rival whatever could be found for it. "Better that a man throw himself into a burning furnace than make his fellow-man blush before the world." [6] And who is the author of this saying? He who is the best representative of the school from which Christianity, as we have reiterated, has drawn its dogmas and ethics—Rabbi Simeon Ben Jochai. ”

“ Perhaps he saw tradition lifting itself with full force to supply amply the needs of the strict Mosaic law. However that be, we ought to show the reader the wonderful expansion, or rather fecundation effected by tradition upon the law of Moses. We must see what those dry, bare formulas, steal not, cheat not, become under the breath of tradition, as we have had a specimen in the two commandments—thou shalt not kill, and thou shalt not commit adultery.
In the eye of tradition, he who gains the public favor by feigned virtue, by imposture, is a thief. ”

“ And the anti-political object of Jesus is so much his concern, that the great danger in which he places his own ethics, escapes his notice. In his impatience to give the Samaritan the title neighbor, he takes it away from the Israelite; in his haste to put egotism under obligation to the benefactor, he forgets to curb it towards the enemy; he forgets that love of one's enemy, the cherished theme of another antagonism which he raises between the old law and the new. ”

“ They have changed the concluding words of the verse, I am the Eternal, into an oath of righteous justice against all who practiced not this precept. They have given Charity this comprehensive appellation, Ghemilouth hassadim. Now, at what do they hold this? No ideas more noble could be entertained. It is, with Doctrine and Religion, one of the three pillars of the Universe. It is the beginning, middle, and end of the law; for this last shows us at its commencement God giving man a companion; secondly, God visiting Abraham; and, finally, still God appointing a tomb for Moses. ”

“ There is the civil law, that shields the life, honor, and property of the citizen, and whose administration is confined to the Courts. And there is the moral law, the duties whereof, a thousand times recalled in the Bible, are naturally set forth in tradition and in the teachings of the doctors. A double law corresponding to the two-fold character of the Jews, to their polity and to their religion. The one is best represented by the Mosaic code, the other by the prophets first and by the doctors afterwards. Would it be right to judge of Jewish ethics by the law of Moses? ”

“ But we should seek in vain for special condemnations of them; for the Pentateuch is, as we have said, but (chiefly) a civil code, while ethics is the concern of tradition and the doctors. And is this last, taken in its own proper sphere, less pure and elevated than that of the Gospels? Are moral vices and faults less severely condemned there than in the Gospels? ”

“ To press your hospitality on any one without seriously meaning to give it, to make great offers, knowing that they will not be accepted, is always, as the ancient Tossifta declares, to steal in some fashion. ”

“ The idea of progress, and consequently of imperfection, about which we have spoken, above all those solemn words, "You have heard what they said in old time," exclude the supposition of the Pharisees merely; and the Bible texts themselves, cited as proof of imperfection, cap the impossibility of a construction that sometimes seems favorable for a Christian apology. ”

“ If it has effected this illusion, it is by taking away from the individual, family, and, above all, country, those rights which Judaism, with more equity had distributed to each class, to give them all to humanity, thereby losing in intensity what it gained in extent. ”

“ Error to think so. "Whosoever steals the esteem, the good opinion of his creatures, steals the esteem of the Most High;" to take advantage of an ambiguity, to get a credit one does not deserve, is just simply to steal. ”

“ But there are none of those minutiae, of those refinements on ethics wherein the Gospel affects pre-eminence, of which the types and origins may not be found in the old Pharisaical morality. Needless to say that the term impious given to a man, is sufficient cause for citation before the Council; [2] that the mere lifting of one's hand against another, without striking, is called impiety, and is punishable by the courts ”

“ The Pharisee, Samuel, the physician of Juda the Holy, the friend of Plotinus, is at hand to undeceive thee. He requires the greatest sincerity in our dealings with all men, whether Jews or Gentiles, and he is the first to illustrate personally that we cannot, without sin, act otherwise ”

“ Without this, possess what virtues he may, a man can be at best but badly righteous; he alone being perfect who is good towards both God and men, while the other is so only towards the Lord. On the other hand, with Charity, all other virtues go ”