Page:Jewish Encyclopedia Volume 2.pdf/302

264 Atheism Athenians

THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

" nations " might infer that He had abdicated in favor of their idols. Psalm cxv. 2 seq. undoubtedly of the Maccabean period expresses the same anxiety but on a higher and more spiritual plane. It reflects

264

the arguments and conceits of even the enlightened among the Greeks. The invisible God of the Jews was beyond the range of the ancient world's intelligence. visible God alone was entitled to recog-

same fact. Mohammed, incensed at the Jews to acclaim him as the expected final prophet, pours out over them the Attitude of vials of his wrath and abuse. Though Mohammed " the people of the book, " they have and Philo. falsified it. They claim to believe, and still are unbelievers. They disavow him, simply because he believes in God and they do

nition.

not (Koran, suras

—

—

A

Greek thought

may

not have gone so far as Pharaoh did according to the Midrash (Ex. R. v.), reflecting certainly the anti-Jewish attitude of the Greco-Roman period in refusing to recognize Yhwh for the reason that his name was not included in the official list of deities, yet it did erect an altar to " the unknown God " (Acts xvii. 23), as, in fact, the hospitality of the Pantheon was elastic enough to admit every new deity. Still, two considerations dominated the judgment of the Greek world on the religion, or, according to them, irreligion, of the The Jews believed in an invisible God Jews. therefore, according to the Greek mode of thinking, in no God. Secondly, the Jews refused to join them in their worship, though the Greeks were prepared to pay honor to the gods of other nations. These two complaints are at the bottom of the accusation of Atheism against the Jews which is very frequent and violent in the writings of Alexandrian detractors and Roman historians. The philosophers among the Greeks, indeed, furnished many an argument in defense of the excellence of Jewish monotheism but the vast multitude was still addicted to the grosser notions. If the Jews were citizens of the towns where they resided, as they claimed to be, why did they not join in worshiping the communal gods? This was the burden of the popular prejudice against them; and Apion (Josephus, "Contra Ap." ii. § 6), Posidonius, and Apollonius Molo made themselves the willing mouthpieces of popular distrust. Here was proof that the Jews were really atheists. In the Roman empire they refused to pay religious honors to the statues of the emperors. This fact sufficed, in the eyes of Tacitus and Pliny, to accuse them of despising the gods and to describe them as atheists, as a people void of all virtue (Tacitus, " His-

—

—

toric, " v. 5; see Schiirer,

"Gesch." 3d

ed.,

iii.

417).

feeling that led the Greek and Roman enemies of the Jews to accuse them of irreligion is potent in the modern charge brought against them Atheism is indeed a relative term. of unbelief.

The same

The Mohammedan regards both the Christian and the Jew as infidels; and the Christian is not slow to return the compliment to the follower of the Prophet. Refusing to accept the construction of his history that Christian theology puts on it, and declining to subscribe to many of the Christological inter-

pretations of his Bible, the Jew is under the suspicion of irreligion and Atheism. The "amixia," the stubborn defense of his historical identity, and his right to maintain his religious distinctness, which puzzled and angered the Greeks (compare Haman's argument in Esther iii. 8, the precipitate of the Maccabean era), is still a pretext for denying to the Jew genuine religious feeling, and a provocation to class him among the wanton deniers of God. The attitude toward the Jews in the Koran illus-

trates the

refusal of the

ii.

70-73, 116; v. 48, 49, 64-69;

ix. 30).

That there were atheists among the Jews stands to and is made evident among other things by

reason,

the tenor of the Book of Ecclesiastes, which, without the later addition of the saving concluding verses, is really an exposition of the skepticism that had impregnated the minds of the higher classes during the Greek fever preceding the Maccabean rebellion. In Alexandria, too, Jews must have been openly or tacitly inclined to accept the philosophy of negation. Philo takes occasion to discuss Atheism. He quotes the arguments advanced in its defense by those who maintain that nothing exists but the perceptible and visible universe, which had never into being and which would never perish, but which, though unbegotten and incorruptible, was without pilot, guardian, or protector (" De Somnis," ii. 43). He does not state that they who advance these theories are Jews but as he mentions others who embrace a pantheistic interpretation, and describes them as Chaldeans ("De Migratione Abraham!, " p. 32), it is not improbable that "the others" may have been of his people. To Atheism he opposes the doctrine of Moses, " the beholder of the invisible nature, and seer of God " (" De Mutatione Nominum," § 2), according to which the Divine exists, and is neither the cosmos nor the soul of the cosmos, but is the supreme God. The religious philosophy of the Middle Ages has no occasion to deal directly with formulated Atheism. Its preoccupation is largely apologetic, not so much against the attacks of formal and formidable Atheism as against certain theistic or semitheistic schools or other controverts: first Karaite, then Ara-

come



Christian theologians. But in fundamentals of faith the problem of theism versus Atheism in one way or another is involved. The contentions of the Dahri, Mohammedan atheists, believing in the eternity of matter, and the duration of the world from eternity, and denying resurrection and final judgment, as well as the theories of the Motazilites, the Mohammedan freethinkers, rejecting all eternal attributes of God, furnish the text for a large portion of the speculation of the Jewish philosophers. The one objective point of all medieval Jewish philosophy is the clarification of the concept of the Godhead by the removal of every form of anthropomorphism and anthropopathism, and to vindicate to human reason concordance with the true intents of the revealed word of bic,

and,

still later,

their discussions of the

God.

The question which Mohammedan Atheism

raised regarding the eternity of matter is in the very center of polemic debate. But in the later speculation, the system of Crescas, for instance, the eternity of matter, is admitted without reservation.

This throws light at once on the problem whether Spinoza should be classed among the atheoi. From