Elijah Benamozegh

“ There is no Hell in the world to come, but the sun shall leave his sheath, burning the wicked and comforting the just. One of the great sufferings of the wicked, as Islamism in its turn teaches, will be a great sweat, produced not only by the great concourse of beings, but especially by the nearness of the sun, which shall then be distant only a mile. [10] The just will be secured from this evil, dwelling "under the shade of the throne of God." ”

“ The Arabs consider the Koran not only a divine revelation in the sense that it is the work of God, but in a more metaphysical one, namely, that the thoughts therein constitute the eternal mind of God, and are his word, his Logos; that they exist, as some say, in the divine essence; that the first copy of the Koran has been from all eternity at the throne of God, written on a vast table that contains his decrees as to the past and future. Is not this Hebrew doctrine uttered by the Arabs? Exoteric Judaism had been very explicit. ”

“ We should, however, for the honor of the human mind, much more than for that of Islamism, remark that the Arab philosophy has struggled in every way against the evil consequences of the fatalism consecrated by Mahomet, and that it has been sometimes bold enough to maintain the opposite opinion,--to assert that the free judgment of man is intact. ”

“ So that Judaism has been, if we may so speak, cut in two at the birth of its two children, each bearing away the half of its doctrine, and making of that half an exclusive creed.
The doctrine of the Koran as to angels is, that they have a pure and rarefied body, created by fire; that they neither eat nor drink; that they have no need of propagation by marriage; that they have different occupations and modes of serving God--some singing His praises; others interceding for the human race; others writing the actions of men; others carrying the heavenly throne. ”

“ Then they press the earth upon the body, which is gnawed by ninety dragons. What Jew has not heard of the Chibbout hakeber, the flagellation of the tomb. When the angel of death sits upon the sepulchre, the soul enters the corpse and lifts it to its feet; then the angel examines the deceased and strikes him with a chain, half of iron, half of fire, so that at the first blow all the limbs are disjointed; at the second, the bones are destroyed; and at the third the body is reduced to dust and ashes. Is not this the picture that Islamism has copied for the use of the Arabs? ”

“ We see the Jews peopling in great numbers those countries where Mahomet's name was about to echo, and bearing with them that religion which, during their exile, is not to leave them again; and, what is much more, we see their credit constantly increasing, their influence and, therefore, their religion becoming dominant. History attests, in the most formal manner, that several princes and tribes embraced the religion of Israel. Mahomet now conceives his bold scheme of reform. Will he forget the potent aids that are within his reach? ”

“ Ever the exclusive culture of the spiritual side of Judaism, of faith proper, of the individual conscience, in which man, despising the fore-named relations of the present life, shuts himself up and intrenches himself! [4]
A phenomenon, just the reverse of this, awaits us in Islamism. It is the other side of Judaism, the one abandoned by Jesus, that Mahomet selects for his chief principle, for the corner-stone of his system. ”

“ These faithful Israelites will never renounce one part of their religion, even though it were to see the other adopted by the prophet of Araby; and the world shall have a new religion modeled somewhat after Judaism, without this last ceasing to be what it has been, or that fountain being sullied at which other generations shall quench their thirst. Whatever results Mahomet may have expected from these Hebrew grafts, these have ever been recognized as such by every serious historian of Islamism. ”

“ We have already seen, when treating of Christianity, that the Hebrew Verbum is the written law, and that its spouse, the Kingdom, is tradition. But what is now very important to remark, is, that both these laws, scripture and tradition, the Verbum and the Kingdom, are identified in a higher degree in the scale of emanations, in that superior Wisdom called simply the eternal Law, Tora Kedouma, of which, when divided, the written and the oral Law are but the two parts. But the Arabian doctrine sees, in the eternal text of the [8] Koran, the "table of destiny." ”

“ He fashions and regulates the world to come after the model of our present life, whose pains, pleasures, passions, caprices, etc. he transfers to the future state, wherein is nought but a prolongation, a repetition of man's life here-below. Islamism, by excluding the spiritual side of Judaism, has barbarized its polity; Christianity, by soaring beyond the social life of Judaism, has transformed its religion into ascetism. ”

“ In short, if Christianity carried the principles and rules of a future life into the very midst of the present one, if it effaced and absorbed in the world to come the present world, imposing upon the latter the conditions of eternity,--it is precisely the antithesis of this doctrine which we get from Mahomet. ”

“ He said that the Koran is a body which can change itself at one time into a man, at another into an animal, or, as others express it, that this book has two faces--one, that of a man, the other, that of an animal. Can we not see in this a trace of the old distinction made by the Psychics and the Pneumatics, between the different classes of the faithful and readers of the Bible--one just made by the Cabalists, and after them, as we have elsewhere noticed, by the Christians and Gnostics?
We lay no stress on the respect and veneration with which the Arabs regard their books. ”

“ Islamism is no less indebted to Pharisaism for its description of Paradise. The latter locates it in the seventh heaven, called Araboth, at the foot of God's throne, which the Cabalists designate by the Sephira, the exact Eon of Malkhout, called Throne of God, Paradise, and Gan Eden,--the seat, as we have said, of souls. [15] Islamism teaches that Paradise is situated in the seventh heaven, immediately beneath the Throne of God ”

“ According to some, souls keep generally near sepulchres; and this is what the Cabalists tell us concerning the Nefesch, which rarely leaves its body, and especially about the Habala degarme, "the breath of the bones," which never leaves it. According to others, souls are with Adam in the lowest heaven, those destined for Paradise on the right, and those for hell on the left. Is not this a paraphrase of the Cabalistic dogmas? For these inform us that all human souls are contained in Adam, some in his head, some in his arms, others in his breast, and so on ”

“ For while with the Pharisees the limitation of punishment is a general law, applicable to both Jews and Pagans, with the Mussulmen it is confined to believers, and eternal punishment reserved for infidels and idolaters. ”

“ The books that will be produced at the last day, the scales [15] in which actions will be weighed, the bridge of Hell over which men are to pass, belonged to Pharisaism long before they figured in the Koran. [12] But these images are too deeply founded in man's spiritual nature to derive an argument from them. What best merits our attention is rather whatever is arbitrary and capricious as to places, as to the duration and nature of rewards and punishments; for if a resemblance between the religions in such matters be shown, it must have great weight for an impartial critic. ”

“ But a still more important analogy, is the justification which the soul and the body shall plead in that great day, each trying to shift the responsibility of its evil deeds upon the other. "O, Lord," the soul will say, "I received from thee my body, because thou didst create me without hands to seize anything, without feet to walk, eyes to see or ears to hear, until I entered into the body ”

“ The Arabian prophet--so little conversant with the rabbinical literature in which Jesus excelled, so far from Palestine and, above all, from that time and society of which Jesus was the product, when the Hebrew mind was in a state of ferment to find some central point of thought, when speculations jostled each other on all sides, and intellectual development had reached the zenith of power and productiveness--Mahomet could see only what struck every eye, what all could comprehend, what the Jews bore everywhere with them, viz, external Monotheism ”

“ But this is not all; before the creation of man, as well as after his fall, Mahomet comes as close as possible to the Pharisees. Their tradition speaks of God consulting the angels before the creation of man, and of their response eminently adverse to this creation. Now, is not this what we read in the second chapter of the Koran? The Pharisees mention the penitence of Adam, and especially the prayer he was to pronounce in honor of the Sabbath. Now the Koran says expressly that God taught Adam a prayer, and that He accepted his repentance. ”

“ Its Doctrine.
In an investigation of the influence that Judaism has had upon subsequent religions, we cannot but take notice of one other system which has left a deep and durable trace in human history--we allude to Islamism. The natural limits of the task we have undertaken, as well as those of the time at our command, compel us to restrict ourselves to a narrower circle than we should otherwise have kept. We do not, therefore, enter upon a general examination of Islamism, nor of the different theological or philosophical schools it has begot ”

“ It alone recognized these four archangels, who surpass all others in dignity and power, and who command the four cohorts of the Schechina, and the names of the first two are exactly the same as in the Hebrew creed. As to Azrael, no doubt it comes from the Azazel of Moses, the angel to whom God devoted the scape-goat on the day of Atonement--the Azael of the Talmud and the Zohar. [6] Should the name of the last (Israfel) be a reminiscence of that ancient doctrine, that the world must end by a general combustion, as it arose from the same? The Hebrew root (saraph, to burn) leads us to think so. ”