Chapter XIII
Original French
Extrême Tolérance des Juifs.
AInsi donc sous Moïse, sous les Juges, sous les Rois, vous voyez toujours des exemples de tolérance. Il y a bien plus: Moïse dit plusieurs fois Exode, Chap. 20, v. 5.que Dieu punit les peres dans les enfants, jusqu'à la quatrieme génération: cette menace était nécessaire à un Peuple à qui Dieu n'avait révélé ni l'immortalité de l'ame, ni les peines & les récompenses dans une autre vie. Ces vérités ne lui furent annoncées ni dans le Décalogue, ni dans aucune Loi du Lévitique & du Deutéronome. C'étaient les dogmes des Perses, des Babyloniens, des Egyptiens, des Grecs, des Crétois; mais ils ne constituaient nullement la Religion des Juifs. Moïse ne dit point: Honore ton pere & ta mere, si tu veux aller au Ciel; mais, Honore ton pere & ta mere, afin de vivre long-temps sur la terre: Deutér. Chap. 28.il ne les menace que de maux corporels, de la galle seche, de la galle purulente, d'ulceres malins dans les genoux & dans les gras des jambes, d'être exposés aux infidélités de leurs femmes, d'emprunter à usure des étrangers, & de ne pouvoir prêter à usure; de périr de famine, & d'être obligés de manger leurs enfants: mais en aucun lieu il ne leur dit que leurs ames immortelles subiront des tourments après la mort, ou goûteront des félicités. Dieu qui conduisait lui-même son Peuple, le punissait ou le récompensait immédiatement après ses bonnes ou ses mauvaises actions. Tout était temporel; & c'est la preuve que le savant Evêque Warburton apporte pour démontrer que la Loi des juifs était divine:29 parce que Dieu même étant leur Roi, rendant justice immédiatement après la transgression ou l'obéissance, n'avait pas besoin de leur révéler une Doctrine qu'il réservait au temps où il ne gouvernerait plus son Peuple. Ceux qui par ignorance prétendent que Moïse enseignait l'immortalité de l'ame, ôtent au Nouveau Testament un de ses plus grands avantages sur l'ancien. Il est constant que la Loi de Moïse n'annonçait que des châtiments temporels jusqu'à la quatrieme génération. Cependant, malgré l'énoncé précis de cette Loi, malgré cette déclaration expresse de Dieu, qu'il punirait jusqu'à la quatrieme génération, Ezéchiel annonce Ezéch. Chap. 18, v. 20.
Ezéch. Chap. 20, v. 25.tout le contraire aux Juifs, & leur dit, que le fils ne portera point l'iniquité de son pere: il va même jusqu'à faire dire à Dieu, qu'il leur avait donné des préceptes qui n'étaient pas bons.30
Le Livre d'Ezéchiel n'en fut pas moins inséré dans le Canon des Auteurs inspirés de Dieu: il est vrai que la Synagogue n'en permettait pas la lecture avant l'âge de trente ans, comme nous l'apprend St. Jérôme; mais c'était de peur que la jeunesse n'abusât des peintures trop naïves qu'on trouve dans les chapitres 16 & 23 du libertinage des deux sœurs Olla & Ooliba. En un mot, son Livre fut toujours reçu, malgré sa contradiction formelle avec Moïse.
Enfin,31 lorsque l'immortalité de l'ame fut un dogme reçu, ce qui probablement avait commencé dès le temps de la captivité de Babylone, la secte des Saducéens persista toujours à croire qu'il n'y avait ni peines ni récompenses après la mort, & que la faculté de sentir & de penser périssait avec nous, comme la force active, le pouvoir de marcher & de digérer. Ils niaient l'existence des Anges. Ils différaient beaucoup plus des autres Juifs, que les Protestants ne different des Catholiques; ils n'en demeurerent pas moins dans la Communion de leurs freres: on vit même des grands Prêtres de leur secte.
Les Pharisiens croyaient à la fatalité32 & à la Métempsycose.33 Les Esséniens pensaient que les ames des Justes allaient dans les Isles fortunées,34 & celles des méchants dans une espece de Tartare. Ils ne faisaient point de sacrifices; ils s'assemblaient entre eux dans une Synagogue particuliere. En un mot, si l'on veut examiner de près le Judaïsme, on sera étonné de trouver la plus grande tolérance, au milieu des horreurs les plus barbares. C'est une contradiction, il est vrai; presque tous les Peuples se sont gouvernés par des contradictions. Heureuse celle qui amene des mœurs douces, quand on a des loix de sang!
29 Il n'y a qu'un seul passage dans les Loix de Moïse, d'où l'on pût conclurre qu'il était instruit de l'opinion régnante chez les Egyptiens, que l'ame ne meurt point avec le corps: ce passage est très-important; c'est dans le chap. 18 du Deutéronome: Ne consultez point les Devins qui prédisent par l'inspection des nuées, qui enchantent les serpents, qui consultent l'esprit de Python, les Voyants, les Connoißeurs qui interrogent les Morts, & leur demandent la vérité.
Il paraît, par ce passage, que si l'on évoquait les ames des morts, ce sortilege prétendu supposait la permanence des ames. Il se peut aussi que les Magiciens dont parle Moïse, n'étant que des trompeurs grossiers, n'eussent pas une idée distincte du sortilege qu'ils croyaient opérer. Ils faisaient accroire qu'ils forçaient des morts à parler, qu'ils les remettaient par leur magie dans l'état où ces corps avaient été de leur vivant; sans examiner seulement si l'on pouvait inférer ou non de leurs opérations ridicules le dogme de l'immortalité de l'ame. Les Sorciers n'ont jamais été Philosophes; ils ont été toujours des jongleurs stupides, qui jouaient devant des imbécilles.
On peut remarquer encore qu'il est bien étrange que le mot de Python se trouve dans le Deutéronome, long-temps avant que ce mot Grec pût être connu des Hébreux: aussi le terme Python n'est point dans l'Hébreu, dont nous n'avons aucune traduction exacte.
Cette Langue a des difficultés insurmontables: c'est un mélange de Phénicien, d'Egyptien, de Syrien & d'Arabe; & cet ancien mélange est très-altéré aujourd'hui. L'Hébreu n'eut jamais que deux modes aux verbes, le présent & le futur: il faut deviner les autres modes par le sens. Les voyelles différentes étaient souvent exprimées par les mêmes caracteres, ou plutôt ils n'exprimaient pas les voyelles; & les inventeurs des points n'ont fait qu'augmenter la difficulté. Chaque adverbe a vingt significations différentes. Le même mot est pris en des sens contraires. Ajoutez à cet embarras la sécheresse & la pauvreté du langage: les Juifs, privés des Arts, ne pouvaient exprimer ce qu'ils ignoraient. En un mot l'Hébreu est au Grec, ce que le langage d'un Paysan est à celui d'un Académicien.
30 Le sentiment d'Ezéchiel prévalut enfin dans la Synagogue; mais il y eut toujours des Juifs qui, en croyant aux peines éternelles, croyaient aussi que Dieu poursuivait sur les enfants les iniquités des peres. Aujourd'hui ils sont punis par-delà la cinquantieme génération, & ont encore les peines éternelles à craindre. On demande comment les descendants des Juifs, qui n'étaient pas complices de la mort de Jesus-Christ, ceux qui étant dans Jérusalem n'y eurent aucune part, & ceux qui étaient répandus sur le reste de la terre, peuvent être temporellement punis dans leurs enfants, aussi innocents que leurs peres? Cette punition temporelle, ou plutôt, cette maniere d'exister différente des autres Peuples, & de faire le commerce sans avoir de Patrie, peut n'être point regardée comme un châtiment en comparaison des peines éternelles qu'ils s'attirent par leur incrédulité, & qu'ils peuvent éviter par une conversion sincere.
31 Ceux qui ont voulu trouver dans le Pentateuque la doctrine de l'Enfer & du Paradis, tels que nous les concevons, se sont étrangement abusés: leur erreur n'est fondée que sur une vaine dispute de mots; la Vulgate ayant traduit le mot Hébreu Sceol, la fosse, par Infernum, & le mot Latin Infernum ayant été traduit en Français par Enfer, on s'est servi de cette équivoque pour faire croire que les Anciens Hébreux avaient la notion de l'Ades & du Tartare des Grecs, que les autres Nations avaient connus auparavant sous d'autres noms.
Il est rapporté au Chapitre 16 des Nombres, que la terre ouvrit sa bouche sous les tentes de Coré, de Dathan & d'Abiron, qu'elle les dévora avec leurs tentes & leur substance, & qu'ils furent précipités vivants dans la sépulture, dans le souterrein; il n'est certainement question dans cet endroit, ni des ames de ces trois Hébreux, ni des tourments de l'Enfer, ni d'une punition éternelle.
Il est étrange que dans le Dictionnaire Encyclopédique, au mot Enfer, on dise que les anciens Hébreux en ont reconnu la réalité; si cela était, ce serait une contradiction insoutenable dans le Pentateuque. Comment se pourrait-il faire que Moïse eût parlé dans un passage isolé & unique, des peines après la mort, & qu'il n'en eût point parlé dans ses Loix? On cite le 32e Chapitre du Deutéronome, mais on le tronque; le voici entier: Ils m'ont provoqué en celui qui n'était pas Dieu, & ils m'ont irrité dans leur vanité; & moi je les provoquerai dans celui qui n'est pas Peuple, & je les irriterai dans la Nation insensée. Et il s'est allumé un feu dans ma fureur, & il brûlera jusqu'au fond de la terre; il dévorera la terre jusqu'à son germe, & il brulera les fondements des montagnes, & j'assemblerai sur eux les maux, & je remplirai mes fleches sur eux; ils seront consumés par la faim, les oiseaux les dévoreront par des morsures ameres; je lâcherai sur eux les dents des bêtes qui se traînent avec fureur sur la terre, & des serpents.
Y a-t-il le moindre rapport entre ces expressions & l'idée des punitions infernales, telles que nous les concevons? Il semble plutôt que ces paroles n'ayent été rapportées que pour faire voir évidemment que notre Enfer était ignoré des anciens Juifs.
L'Auteur de cet Article cite encore le passage de Job, au Chap. 24. L'œil de l'adultere observe l'obscurité; disant, l'œil ne me verra point, & il couvrira son visage; il perce les maisons dans les ténebres comme il l'avait dit dans le jour, & ils ont ignoré la lumiere; si l'aurore apparaît subitement, ils la croyent l'ombre de la mort, & ainsi ils marchent dans les ténebres comme dans la lumiere: il est léger sur la surface de l'eau; que sa part soit maudite sur la terre, qu'il ne marche point par la voye de la vigne, qu'il passe des eaux de neige à une trop grande chaleur: & ils ont péché le tombeau, ou bien, le tombeau a dissipé ceux qui pechent, ou bien, (selon les Septante) leur péché a été rappellé en mémoire.
Je cite les passages entiers, & littéralement, sans quoi il est toujours impossible de s'en former une idée vraie.
Y a-t-il là, je vous prie, le moindre mot, dont on puisse conclure que Moïse avait enseigné aux Juifs la doctrine claire & simple des peines & des récompenses après la mort?
Le Livre de Job n'a nul rapport avec les Loix de Moïse. De plus, il est très-vraisemblable que Job n'était point Juif; c'est l'opinion de St. Jérôme dans ses questions hébraïques sur la Genese. Le mot Sathan, qui est dans Job, n'était point connu des Juifs, & vous ne le trouvez jamais dans le Pentateuque. Les Juifs n'apprirent ce nom que dans la Chaldée, ainsi que les noms de Gabriel & de Raphael, inconnus avant leur esclavage à Babylone. Job est donc cité ici très-mal à propos.
On rapporte encore le Chapitre dernier d'Isaïe: Et de mois en mois, & de Sabath en Sabath, toute chair viendra m'adorer, dit le Seigneur; & ils sortiront, & ils verront à la voirie les cadavres de ceux qui ont prévariqué; leur ver ne mourra point, leur feu ne s'éteindra point, & ils seront exposés aux yeux de toute chair jusqu'à satiété.
Certainement s'ils sont jettés à la voirie, s'ils sont exposés à la vue des passants jusqu'à satiété, s'ils sont mangés des vers, cela ne veut pas dire que Moïse enseigna aux Juifs le dogme de l'immortalité de l'ame; & ces mots, Le feu ne s'éteindra point, ne signifient pas que des cadavres qui sont exposés à la vue du Peuple subissent les peines éternelles de l'Enfer.
Comment peut-on citer un passage d'Isaïe pour prouver que les Juifs du temps de Moïse avaient reçu le dogme de l'immortalité de l'ame? Isaïe prophétisait, selon la computation Hébraïque, l'an du monde 3380. Moïse vivait vers l'an du monde 2500; il s'est écoulé huit siecles entre l'un & l'autre. C'est une insulte au sens commun, ou une pure plaisanterie, que d'abuser ainsi de la permission de citer, & de prétendre prouver qu'un Auteur a eu une telle opinion, par un passage d'un Auteur venu huit cents ans après, & qui n'a point parlé de cette opinion. Il est indubitable que l'immortalité de l'ame, les peines & les récompenses après la mort, sont annoncées, reconnues, constatées dans le Nouveau Testament, & il est indubitable qu'elles ne se trouvent en aucun endroit du Pentateuque.
Les Juifs, en croyant depuis l'immortalité de l'ame, ne furent point éclairés sur sa spiritualité; ils penserent comme presque toutes les autres Nations, que l'ame est quelque chose de délié, d'aérien, une substance légere, qui retenait quelque apparence du corps qu'elle avait animé; c'est ce qu'on appellait les ombres, les mânes des corps. Cette opinion fut celle de plusieurs Peres de l'Eglise. Tertullien, dans son Chap. 22. de l'Ame, s'exprime ainsi: Definimus animam Dei flatu natam, immortalem, corporalem, effigiatam, substantiâ simplicem; «Nous définissons l'ame née du souffle de Dieu, immortelle, corporelle, figurée, simple dans sa substance.
St. Irenée dit dans son Livre II, Chap. 34. Incorporales sunt animæ quantùm ad comparationem mortalium corporum. «Les ames sont incorporelles en comparaison des corps mortels.» Il ajoute, que «Jesus-Christ a enseigné que les ames conservent les images du corps;» Caracterem corporum in quo adoptantur, &c. On ne voit pas que Jesus-Christ ait jamais enseigné cette Doctrine, & il est difficile de deviner le sens de St. Irenée.
St. Hilaire est plus formel & plus positif dans son Commentaire sur St. Matthieu: il attribue nettement une substance corporelle à l'ame: Corpoream natura sua substantiam sortiuntur.
St. Ambroise sur Abraham, Liv. II, Chap. 8, prétend qu'il n'y a rien de dégagé de la matiere, si ce n'est la substance de la Ste. Trinité.
On pourrait reprocher à ces hommes respectables d'avoir une mauvaise Philosophie; mais il est à croire qu'au fond leur Théologie était fort saine, puisque ne connaissant pas la nature incompréhensible de l'ame, ils l'assuraient immortelle, & la voulaient Chrétienne.
Nous savons que l'ame est spirituelle, mais nous ne savons point du tout ce que c'est qu'esprit. Nous connaissons très-imparfaitement la matiere, & il nous est impossible d'avoir une idée distincte de ce qui n'est pas matiere. Très-peu instruits de ce qui touche nos sens, nous ne pouvons rien connaître par nous-mêmes de ce qui est au-delà des sens. Nous transportons quelques paroles de notre langage ordinaire dans les abymes de la Métaphysique & de la Théologie, pour nous donner quelque légere idée des choses que nous ne pouvons ni concevoir, ni exprimer; nous cherchons à nous étayer de ces mots, pour soutenir, s'il se peut, notre faible entendement dans ces régions ignorées.
Ainsi nous nous servons du mot esprit, qui répond à souffle & vent, pour exprimer quelque chose qui n'est pas matiere; & ce mot souffle, vent, esprit, nous ramenant malgré nous à l'idée d'une substance déliée & légere, nous en retranchons encore ce que nous pouvons, pour parvenir à concevoir la spiritualité pure; mais nous ne parvenons jamais à une notion distincte: nous ne savons même ce que nous disons quand nous prononçons le mot substance; il veut dire, à la lettre, ce qui est dessous; & par cela même il nous avertit qu'il est incompréhensible: car, qu'est-ce en effet que ce qui est dessous? La connaissance des secrets de Dieu n'est pas le partage de cette vie. Plongés ici dans des ténebres profondes, nous nous battons les uns contre les autres, & nous frappons au hasard au milieu de cette nuit, sans savoir précisément pourquoi nous combattons.
Si on veut bien réfléchir attentivement sur tout cela, il n'y a point d'homme raisonnable qui ne conclue que nous devons avoir de l'indigence pour les opinions des autres, & en mériter.
Toutes ces remarques ne sont point étrangeres au fond de la question, qui consiste à savoir si les hommes doivent se tolérer: car si elles prouvent combien on s'est trompé de part & d'autre dans tous les temps, elles prouvent que les hommes ont dû dans tous les temps se traiter avec indulgence.
32 Le dogme de la fatalité est ancien & universel: vous le trouvez toujours dans Homere. Jupiter voudrait sauver la vie à son fils Sarpedon; mais le Destin l'a condamné à la mort; Jupiter ne peut qu'obéir. Le Destin était chez les Philosophes ou l'enchaînement nécessaire des causes & des effets nécessairement produit par la nature, ou ce même enchaînement ordonné par la Providence; ce qui est bien plus raisonnable. Tout le systême de la fatalité est contenu dans ce Vers d'Anneus Seneque: Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt. On est toujours convenu que Dieu gouvernait l'Univers par des Loix éternelles, universelles, immuables: cette vérité fut la source de toutes ces disputes inintelligibles sur la liberté, parce qu'on n'a défini jamais la liberté, jusqu'à ce que le sage Loke soit venu: il a prouvé que la liberté est le pouvoir d'agir. Dieu donne ce pouvoir, & l'homme agissant librement selon les ordres éternels de Dieu, est une des roues de la grande machine du monde. Toute l'Antiquité disputa sur la liberté; mais personne ne persécuta sur ce sujet jusqu'à nos jours. Quelle horreur absurde, d'avoir emprisonné, exilé pour cette dispute, un Pompone d'Andilly, un Arnaud, un Sacy, un Nicole, & tant d'autres qui ont été la lumiere de la France.
33 Le Roman Théologique de la Métempsycose vient de l'Inde, dont nous avons reçu beaucoup plus de fables qu'on ne croit communément. Ce dogme est expliqué dans l'admirable douzieme Livre des Métamorphoses d'Ovide. Il a été reçu presque dans toute la terre: il a été toujours combattu; mais nous ne voyons point qu'aucun Prêtre de l'Antiquité ait jamais fait donner une lettre de cachet à un Disciple de Pythagore.
34 Ni les anciens Juifs, ni les Egyptiens, ni les Grecs leurs contemporains, ne croyaient que l'ame de l'homme allât dans le Ciel après sa mort. Les Juifs pensaient que la Lune & le Soleil étaient à quelques lieues au-dessus de nous dans le même cercle, & que le firmament était une voûte épaisse & solide, qui soutenait le poids des eaux, lesquelles s'échappaient par quelques ouvertures. Le Palais des Dieux, chez les anciens Grecs, était sur le mont Olympe. La demeure des Héros, après la mort, était, du temps d'Homere, dans une Isle au-delà de l'Océan, & c'était l'opinion des Esséniens.
Depuis Homere, on assigna des planetes aux Dieux; mais il n'y avait pas plus de raison aux hommes de placer un Dieu dans la Lune, qu'aux habitants de la Lune de mettre un Dieu dans la planete de la terre. Junon & Iris n'eurent d'autre Palais que les nuées; il n'y avait pas là où réposer son pied. Chez les Sabéens, chaque Dieu eut son étoile; mais une étoile étant un Soleil, il n'y a pas moyen d'habiter là, à moins d'être de la nature du feu. C'est donc une question fort inutile de demander ce que les Anciens pensaient du Ciel; la meilleure réponse est qu'ils ne pensaient pas.
Musean translation
Complete machine-assisted Musean translation directly from French, reviewed against it. Includes all 25 chapters, Voltaire’s notes and the added Article with six edition references. Article transcription: French Wikisource, Garnier 1879, revision 15479820. Translation and Article: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.
The extreme tolerance of the Jews
Thus under Moses, under the judges, under the kings, you always find examples of tolerance. There is more: Moses says several times that God punishes fathers in their children, down to the fourth generation. Exode, Chap. 20, v. 5. This threat was necessary for a people to whom God had revealed neither the immortality of the soul nor punishments and rewards in another life. These truths were proclaimed to them neither in the Decalogue nor in any law of Leviticus or Deuteronomy. They were doctrines of the Persians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Cretans; but they formed no part of the Jewish religion. Moses does not say: “Honor your father and mother if you wish to go to heaven”; but: “Honor your father and mother so that you may live long upon the earth.” Deutér. Chap. 28. He threatens them only with bodily afflictions: dry scabies, festering scabies, malignant ulcers on their knees and calves; exposure to their wives' infidelities; having to borrow at interest from foreigners while being unable to lend at interest themselves; perishing of famine and being forced to eat their children. Nowhere does he tell them that their immortal souls will suffer torments after death or taste bliss. God, who himself led his people, punished or rewarded them immediately after their good or evil actions. Everything belonged to this world; and this is the evidence the learned Bishop Warburton offers to demonstrate that the Jewish law was divine:29 since God himself was their king, dispensing justice immediately after transgression or obedience, he had no need to reveal a doctrine he was reserving for the time when he would no longer govern his people. Those who ignorantly maintain that Moses taught the immortality of the soul deprive the New Testament of one of its greatest advantages over the Old. It is certain that the law of Moses proclaimed only temporal punishments down to the fourth generation. Yet despite this law's precise wording, despite God's express declaration that he would punish down to the fourth generation, Ezekiel announces—Ezéch. Chap. 18, v. 20.
Ezéch. Chap. 20, v. 25.—the very opposite to the Jews, telling them that the son will not bear his father's iniquity. He even goes so far as to make God say that he had given them precepts that were not good.30
The Book of Ezekiel was nonetheless included in the canon of authors inspired by God. It is true that the synagogue did not permit it to be read before the age of thirty, as St. Jerome tells us; but that was for fear that the young might misuse the overly explicit pictures, in chapters 16 and 23, of the debauchery of the two sisters Oholah and Oholibah. In short, his book was always accepted, despite its direct contradiction of Moses.
Finally,31 when the immortality of the soul became an accepted doctrine—a development that had probably begun during the Babylonian captivity—the sect of the Sadducees continued to believe that there were neither punishments nor rewards after death, and that the faculty of feeling and thinking perished with us, like our active strength, our ability to walk and digest. They denied the existence of angels. They differed far more from other Jews than Protestants differ from Catholics; yet they remained in communion with their brothers. There were even high priests of their sect.
The Pharisees believed in fate32 and the transmigration of souls.33 The Essenes thought that the souls of the just went to the Fortunate Isles,34 and those of the wicked to a kind of Tartarus. They offered no sacrifices; they gathered among themselves in a synagogue of their own. In short, anyone willing to examine Judaism closely will be astonished to find the greatest tolerance amid the most barbarous horrors. It is a contradiction, certainly; almost every people has governed itself through contradictions. Happy the contradiction that brings gentleness of manners where the laws are written in blood!
29 There is only one passage in the laws of Moses from which we might conclude that he knew the opinion prevailing among the Egyptians, that the soul does not die with the body. This passage is very important; it is in chapter 18 of Deuteronomy: “Do not consult the diviners who foretell by examining the clouds, who charm serpents, who consult the spirit of Python, the seers, the adepts who question the dead and ask them for the truth.”
This passage seems to suggest that, if people called up the souls of the dead, this supposed sorcery presumed the souls' continued existence. It is also possible that the magicians Moses mentions, being nothing but crude impostors, had no clear idea of the sorcery they believed they performed. They made people believe that they forced the dead to speak, that by their magic they restored them to the condition those bodies had enjoyed in life, without even considering whether the doctrine of the immortality of the soul could be inferred from their ridiculous operations. Sorcerers have never been philosophers; they have always been stupid conjurers performing before fools.
We may also observe how strange it is that the word Python should appear in Deuteronomy long before this Greek word could have been known to the Hebrews. In fact, the term Python is not in the Hebrew, of which we have no exact translation.
That language presents insurmountable difficulties. It is a mixture of Phoenician, Egyptian, Syrian, and Arabic, and this ancient mixture is greatly altered today. Hebrew never had more than two verbal forms, the present and the future; the others must be guessed from the sense. Different vowels were often expressed by the same characters—or rather, they did not express the vowels; and the inventors of the points only increased the difficulty. Each adverb has twenty different meanings. The same word is used in opposite senses. Add to this confusion the dryness and poverty of the language: the Jews, lacking the arts, could not express what they did not know. In short, Hebrew is to Greek what a peasant's speech is to an academician's.
30 Ezekiel's view eventually prevailed in the synagogue; but there were always Jews who believed in eternal punishments and also believed that God visited the fathers' iniquities upon their children. Today they are punished beyond the fiftieth generation, and still have eternal punishments to fear. The question is asked: how can the descendants of the Jews who were not accomplices in the death of Jesus Christ—those who were in Jerusalem but took no part in it, and those scattered over the rest of the earth—be punished in this world in their children, who are as innocent as their fathers? This temporal punishment, or rather this manner of living differently from other peoples and carrying on trade without a homeland, may not be regarded as a punishment in comparison with the eternal torments they bring upon themselves by their unbelief, and which they can escape through sincere conversion.
31 Those who have sought in the Pentateuch the doctrine of hell and paradise as we understand them have been strangely deluded. Their error rests only on an idle dispute over words. The Vulgate translated the Hebrew word Sheol, the pit, by the Latin Infernum; and the Latin word Infernum was translated into French as Enfer. This ambiguity has been used to make people believe that the ancient Hebrews possessed the notion of the Greeks' Hades and Tartarus, which other nations had known earlier under other names.
Chapter 16 of Numbers relates that the earth opened its mouth beneath the tents of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, swallowed them with their tents and their possessions, and hurled them alive into the grave, into the underground. This passage certainly concerns neither the souls of these three Hebrews, nor the torments of hell, nor eternal punishment.
It is strange that the Dictionnaire Encyclopédique, under Enfer, should say that the ancient Hebrews acknowledged its reality. If that were so, it would be an untenable contradiction in the Pentateuch. How could Moses have spoken of punishments after death in one single, isolated passage, and never spoken of them in his laws? Chapter 32 of Deuteronomy is quoted, but mutilated; here it is in full: “They have provoked me with what was not God, and angered me with their vanity; and I shall provoke them with what is not a people, and anger them with a senseless nation. And a fire has been kindled in my fury, and it will burn to the depths of the earth; it will devour the earth to its seed, and burn the foundations of the mountains. And I shall heap evils upon them, and fill them with my arrows; they will be consumed by hunger, birds will devour them with bitter bites. I shall unleash upon them the teeth of beasts that crawl furiously over the earth, and serpents.”
Is there the slightest connection between these expressions and the idea of infernal punishments as we conceive them? It seems, rather, that these words have been quoted only to make it plain that our hell was unknown to the ancient Jews.
The author of that article also quotes the passage from Job, chapter 24: “The adulterer's eye watches for darkness, saying, the eye will not see me, and he will cover his face; he breaks into houses in the darkness, as he had said in the daytime, and they have not known the light. If dawn appears suddenly, they think it the shadow of death, and so they walk in darkness as in light. He is light upon the surface of the water; may his portion be cursed upon the earth; may he not walk by the way of the vineyard; may he pass from snow waters to excessive heat; and they have sinned the tomb”; or else, “the tomb has scattered those who sin”; or else, according to the Septuagint, “their sin has been called to remembrance.”
I quote the passages in full and literally; without that, it is always impossible to form a true idea of them.
Is there, I ask you, a single word here from which we can conclude that Moses had taught the Jews the clear and simple doctrine of punishments and rewards after death?
The Book of Job has no connection with the laws of Moses. Moreover, it is very likely that Job was not a Jew; this is St. Jerome's opinion in his Hebrew Questions on Genesis. The word Satan, which appears in Job, was unknown to the Jews, and you never find it in the Pentateuch. The Jews learned this name only in Chaldea, along with the names Gabriel and Raphael, which were unknown before their enslavement in Babylon. Job is therefore cited here quite inappropriately.
The last chapter of Isaiah is also quoted: “And from month to month, and Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh will come to worship me, says the Lord; and they will go out and see on the rubbish heap the corpses of those who have transgressed; their worm will not die, their fire will not be quenched, and they will be exposed to the eyes of all flesh until it has had its fill.”
Certainly, if they are thrown on the rubbish heap, exposed to the sight of passersby until they have had their fill, and eaten by worms, this does not mean that Moses taught the Jews the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. And the words the fire will not be quenched do not mean that corpses exposed to the people's gaze undergo the eternal punishments of hell.
How can anyone cite a passage from Isaiah to prove that the Jews in Moses' day had received the doctrine of the immortality of the soul? According to Hebrew reckoning, Isaiah was prophesying in the year of the world 3380. Moses lived around the year of the world 2500; eight centuries elapsed between them. It is an insult to common sense, or a mere joke, to abuse the freedom to quote in this way: to claim to prove that an author held a certain opinion by a passage from an author who came eight hundred years later and did not discuss that opinion. It is beyond dispute that the immortality of the soul, punishments and rewards after death, are proclaimed, acknowledged, and established in the New Testament; and it is beyond dispute that they are found nowhere in the Pentateuch.
Although the Jews later believed in the immortality of the soul, they were not enlightened as to its spiritual nature. Like almost every other nation, they thought the soul something fine and airy, a light substance that retained some semblance of the body it had animated. These were what people called the shades, the departed spirits of bodies. Several Fathers of the Church held this opinion. Tertullian, in his work de l'Ame, Chap. 22, puts it this way: “We define the soul as born of God's breath, immortal, corporeal, possessed of a form, simple in substance”; “We define the soul as born of God's breath, immortal, corporeal, formed, simple in its substance.”
St. Irenaeus says in his Livre II, Chap. 34: “Souls are incorporeal in comparison with mortal bodies.” “Souls are incorporeal in comparison with mortal bodies.” He adds that “Jesus Christ taught that souls preserve the images of the body”: “the form of the bodies in which they are received, and so on.” We do not find that Jesus Christ ever taught this doctrine, and it is difficult to guess St. Irenaeus' meaning.
St. Hilary is more explicit and more definite in his commentary on St. Matthew. He plainly attributes a bodily substance to the soul: “By their nature they are allotted a corporeal substance.”
St. Ambrose, in his work on Abraham, Liv. II, Chap. 8, maintains that nothing is free of matter except the substance of the Holy Trinity.
One might reproach these venerable men for their bad philosophy; but we may believe that at bottom their theology was very sound, since, although they did not know the soul's incomprehensible nature, they declared it immortal and wished it to be Christian.
We know that the soul is spiritual, but we do not know at all what spirit is. We know matter very imperfectly, and it is impossible for us to have a distinct idea of what is not matter. Knowing so little of what touches our senses, we can know nothing by ourselves of what lies beyond them. We carry a few words from our ordinary language into the abysses of metaphysics and theology, to give ourselves some faint idea of things we can neither conceive nor express. We try to shore ourselves up with these words, to sustain our feeble understanding, if we can, in these unknown regions.
Thus we use the word spirit, which corresponds to breath and wind, to express something that is not matter. And since this word—breath, wind, spirit—leads us back despite ourselves to the idea of a fine and light substance, we strip away from it whatever more we can in order to arrive at a conception of pure spirituality. But we never reach a distinct notion. We do not even know what we are saying when we utter the word substance: literally, it means what lies beneath; and by that very fact it warns us that it is incomprehensible. For what, indeed, is that which lies beneath? Knowledge of God's secrets is not our portion in this life. Here, plunged in profound darkness, we fight one another, striking at random in the midst of this night, without knowing precisely why we fight.
If we reflect carefully on all this, no reasonable person can fail to conclude that we must show indulgence toward the opinions of others, and earn it for our own.
None of these observations is foreign to the heart of the question, which is whether human beings should tolerate one another. For if they prove how much people on every side have erred in every age, they prove that in every age people should have treated one another with indulgence.
32 The doctrine of fate is ancient and universal; you find it everywhere in Homer. Jupiter would like to save the life of his son Sarpedon, but Fate has condemned him to death; Jupiter can only obey. Among philosophers, Fate meant either the necessary chain of causes and effects necessarily produced by nature, or this same chain ordained by Providence—which is much more reasonable. The whole system of fate is contained in this verse of Annaeus Seneca: The Fates lead the willing and drag the unwilling. It has always been agreed that God governs the universe by eternal, universal, immutable laws. This truth was the source of all those unintelligible disputes over freedom, because freedom was never defined until the wise Locke appeared. He proved that freedom is the power to act. God grants this power, and man, acting freely according to God's eternal ordinances, is one of the wheels in the great machine of the world. All antiquity disputed freedom, but no one persecuted anyone over it until our own day. What an absurd horror, to have imprisoned or exiled for this dispute a Pomponne d'Andilly, an Arnauld, a Sacy, a Nicole, and so many others who have been the light of France!
33 The theological romance of the transmigration of souls comes from India, from which we have received far more fables than is commonly thought. This doctrine is explained in the admirable twelfth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses. It has been accepted almost throughout the world; it has always been disputed. But we do not find that any priest in antiquity ever obtained a royal warrant for the imprisonment of a disciple of Pythagoras.
34 Neither the ancient Jews, nor the Egyptians, nor their Greek contemporaries believed that the human soul went to heaven after death. The Jews thought that the moon and sun were a few leagues above us, in the same circle, and that the firmament was a thick, solid vault supporting the weight of the waters, which escaped through certain openings. Among the ancient Greeks, the palace of the gods was on Mount Olympus. In Homer's day, the dwelling of heroes after death was on an island beyond the Ocean, and this was the Essenes' opinion.
After Homer, planets were assigned to the gods; but there was no more reason for men to put a god on the moon than for the moon's inhabitants to put a god on the planet Earth. Juno and Iris had no palace but the clouds; there was nowhere there to rest a foot. Among the Sabaeans, each god had his star; but since a star is a sun, there is no way to live there unless one is made of fire. It is therefore quite pointless to ask what the ancients thought about heaven. The best answer is that they did not think.
Plain English translation
Independent, complete machine-assisted Plain English translation directly from French, reviewed against it. All 25 chapters, author’s notes and added Article with six edition references are retained. Article transcription: French Wikisource, Garnier 1879, revision 15479820. Translation and Article: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.
The Jews' extreme tolerance.
So under Moses, the judges, and the kings, we keep seeing examples of tolerance. There is much more. Moses says several times, Exode, Chap. 20, v. 5. that God punishes fathers through their children down to the fourth generation. This threat was necessary for a people to whom God had revealed neither the soul's immortality nor punishments and rewards in another life. These truths were not announced to them in the Ten Commandments or in any law in Leviticus or Deuteronomy. They were beliefs of the Persians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Cretans, but they formed no part of the Jewish religion. Moses does not say: "Honor your father and mother if you want to go to heaven." He says: "Honor your father and mother so that you may live long on earth." Deutér. Chap. 28. He threatens them only with bodily evils: dry scabies, festering scabies, malignant ulcers on their knees and calves, their wives' unfaithfulness, having to borrow at interest from foreigners and being unable to lend at interest, dying of famine, and being forced to eat their children. Nowhere does he tell them that their immortal souls will suffer torment or enjoy happiness after death. God, who led his people himself, punished or rewarded them immediately after their good or bad actions. Everything concerned this life. This is the proof the learned Bishop Warburton offers to demonstrate that Jewish law was divine.29 Since God himself was their king and administered justice immediately after disobedience or obedience, he had no need to reveal a teaching he was reserving for the time when he would no longer govern his people. Those who ignorantly claim that Moses taught the immortality of the soul take away one of the New Testament's greatest advantages over the Old. It is certain that the law of Moses announced only punishments in this life, down to the fourth generation. Yet despite the precise wording of this law, despite God's explicit declaration that he would punish down to the fourth generation, Ezekiel announces, Ezéch. Chap. 18, v. 20.
Ezéch. Chap. 20, v. 25. the exact opposite to the Jews. He tells them that the son will not bear his father's wrongdoing. He even goes so far as to make God say that he had given them precepts that were not good.30
The Book of Ezekiel was still included in the canon of authors inspired by God. It is true that the synagogue did not allow it to be read before the age of thirty, as St. Jerome tells us. But this was for fear that young people would misuse the all too frank descriptions in chapters 16 and 23 of the sexual misconduct of the two sisters, Oholah and Oholibah. In short, his book was always accepted, despite its direct contradiction of Moses.
Finally,31 when the immortality of the soul became an accepted belief—a process that probably began as early as the Babylonian captivity—the sect of the Sadducees continued to believe that there were neither punishments nor rewards after death. They believed that the ability to feel and think perished with us, just like the energy to act and the ability to walk and digest. They denied the existence of angels. They differed much more from other Jews than Protestants differ from Catholics. Yet they remained in communion with their brothers. There were even high priests from their sect.
The Pharisees believed in fate32 and the transmigration of souls.33 The Essenes thought that the souls of the just went to the Fortunate Isles,34 and those of the wicked to a kind of Tartarus. They made no sacrifices. They met among themselves in a separate synagogue. In short, anyone who closely examines Judaism will be astonished to find the greatest tolerance amid the most barbarous horrors. It is a contradiction, certainly. Almost all peoples have governed themselves through contradictions. Happy is the contradiction that brings gentle customs to a people with bloody laws!
29 There is only one passage in the laws of Moses from which we might conclude that he knew the belief prevalent among the Egyptians that the soul does not die with the body. This passage is very important. It is in chapter 18 of Deuteronomy: "Do not consult diviners who predict the future by examining clouds, who charm snakes, who consult the spirit of Python, seers, or those with special knowledge who question the dead and ask them for the truth."
From this passage it seems that if people called up the souls of the dead, this supposed sorcery assumed that souls continued to exist. It is also possible that the magicians Moses speaks of, who were only crude deceivers, had no clear idea of the sorcery they believed they were performing. They made people believe that they forced the dead to speak, that their magic restored these bodies to the state they had been in while alive. They did not even examine whether the immortality of the soul could be inferred from their ridiculous performances. Sorcerers have never been philosophers. They have always been stupid tricksters performing for fools.
We may also note how strange it is that the word Python appears in Deuteronomy, long before this Greek word could have been known to the Hebrews. In fact, the term Python is not in the Hebrew, of which we have no accurate translation.
This language presents insurmountable difficulties. It is a mixture of Phoenician, Egyptian, Syrian, and Arabic, and this ancient mixture is now greatly altered. Hebrew never had more than two verb forms, the present and the future. The other forms have to be guessed from the meaning. Different vowels were often expressed by the same characters—or rather, the vowels were not expressed at all. The inventors of vowel points only increased the difficulty. Each adverb has twenty different meanings. The same word is used in opposite senses. Add to this confusion the language's dryness and poverty. Without the arts, the Jews could not express what they did not know. In short, Hebrew is to Greek what a peasant's language is to that of a member of the Academy.
30 Ezekiel's view finally prevailed in the synagogue. But there were always Jews who believed in eternal punishments and also believed that God punished children for their fathers' wrongdoing. Today they are punished beyond the fiftieth generation, and still have eternal punishments to fear. People ask how the descendants of the Jews who were not accomplices in the death of Jesus Christ—those in Jerusalem who took no part in it, and those scattered across the rest of the earth—can be punished in this life through their children, who are as innocent as their fathers. This punishment in this life—or rather, this way of living differently from other peoples, carrying on trade without a homeland—may not be regarded as a punishment compared with the eternal torments they bring on themselves through their unbelief, and which they can avoid through sincere conversion.
31 Those who have tried to find the teaching of hell and paradise as we understand them in the Pentateuch have been strangely mistaken. Their error rests only on an empty argument over words. The Vulgate translated the Hebrew word Sheol, the pit, as Infernum. The Latin word Infernum was translated into French as Enfer. This ambiguity was used to make people believe that the ancient Hebrews had the idea of the Greeks' Hades and Tartarus, which other nations had known earlier under other names.
Chapter 16 of Numbers reports that the earth opened its mouth beneath the tents of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. It swallowed them, their tents, and their possessions, and they were thrown alive into the grave, underground. This passage certainly says nothing about the souls of these three Hebrews, the torments of hell, or eternal punishment.
It is strange that the Dictionnaire Encyclopédique says under Enfer that the ancient Hebrews acknowledged its reality. If that were true, it would create an impossible contradiction in the Pentateuch. How could Moses have spoken of punishments after death in one single, isolated passage, but not have mentioned them in his laws? Chapter 32 of Deuteronomy is quoted, but cut short. Here is the whole passage: "They have provoked me with what was not God, and angered me with their vanity. And I will provoke them with what is not a people, and anger them with a foolish nation. A fire has been kindled in my fury, and it will burn to the depths of the earth. It will devour the earth down to its seed and burn the foundations of the mountains. I will heap evils on them and fill them with my arrows. They will be consumed by hunger; birds will devour them with bitter bites. I will unleash on them the teeth of beasts that crawl furiously over the earth, and of snakes."
Is there the slightest connection between these expressions and the idea of punishments in hell as we understand them? Rather, these words seem to have been quoted only to show clearly that the ancient Jews knew nothing of our hell.
The author of this article also quotes the passage in chapter 24 of Job: "The adulterer's eye watches for darkness, saying: No eye will see me; and he will cover his face. He breaks into houses in the darkness, as he had said during the day, and they have not known the light. If dawn suddenly appears, they think it the shadow of death, and so they walk in darkness as in light. He is light on the surface of the water. Let his share be cursed on earth; let him not walk along the vineyard's path; let him pass from snow waters to excessive heat. And they have sinned the grave"; or else, "the grave has scattered those who sin"; or else, according to the Septuagint, "their sin has been called to mind."
I quote the passages in full and literally. Otherwise it is always impossible to form an accurate idea of them.
Tell me, is there the slightest word there from which we can conclude that Moses taught the Jews the clear and simple doctrine of punishments and rewards after death?
The Book of Job has nothing to do with the laws of Moses. Besides, it is very likely that Job was not Jewish. This is St. Jerome's opinion in his Hebrew Questions on Genesis. The word Satan, which appears in Job, was not known to the Jews, and you never find it in the Pentateuch. The Jews learned this name only in Chaldea, along with the names Gabriel and Raphael, which were unknown before their enslavement in Babylon. So Job is quoted here very inappropriately.
The last chapter of Isaiah is also quoted: "From month to month and Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh will come to worship me, says the Lord. They will go out and see at the dumping ground the corpses of those who have done wrong. Their worm will not die, their fire will not go out, and they will be exposed to the eyes of all flesh until everyone has seen enough."
Certainly, if they are thrown on the dumping ground, exposed to the view of passersby until everyone has seen enough, and eaten by worms, this does not mean that Moses taught the Jews the immortality of the soul. And the words the fire will not go out do not mean that corpses exposed to public view suffer the eternal punishments of hell.
How can anyone quote a passage from Isaiah to prove that the Jews in Moses' time had received the teaching of the soul's immortality? According to the Hebrew reckoning, Isaiah prophesied in the year of the world 3380. Moses lived around the year of the world 2500. Eight centuries passed between them. To misuse the right to quote in this way is an insult to common sense, or simply a joke: it claims to prove that one author held an opinion by a passage from an author who came eight hundred years later and did not discuss that opinion. There is no doubt that the immortality of the soul, and punishments and rewards after death, are announced, acknowledged, and established in the New Testament. There is no doubt that they appear nowhere in the Pentateuch.
When the Jews later came to believe in the soul's immortality, they gained no understanding of its spiritual nature. Like almost all other nations, they thought the soul was something thin and airy, a light substance that retained some likeness to the body it had given life to. These were what people called shades, the spirits of bodies. Several Fathers of the Church held this opinion. In de l'Ame, Chap. 22, Tertullian puts it this way: We define the soul as born from the breath of God, immortal, bodily, having a shape, and simple in substance; "We define the soul as born from the breath of God, immortal, bodily, having a shape, and simple in substance."
St. Irenaeus says in Livre II, Chap. 34: Souls are immaterial compared with mortal bodies. "Souls are immaterial compared with mortal bodies." He adds that "Jesus Christ taught that souls retain the images of the body": the form of the bodies in which they are received, and so on. We do not find that Jesus Christ ever taught this doctrine, and it is difficult to guess St. Irenaeus' meaning.
St. Hilary is more explicit and definite in his commentary on St. Matthew. He plainly attributes a bodily substance to the soul: By their nature they receive a bodily substance.
St. Ambrose, on Abraham, Liv. II, Chap. 8, maintains that nothing is free of matter except the substance of the Holy Trinity.
We might reproach these respected men for their bad philosophy. But we may suppose that their theology was fundamentally very sound. Although they did not know the soul's incomprehensible nature, they affirmed its immortality and wanted it to be Christian.
We know that the soul is spiritual, but we do not know at all what spirit is. Our knowledge of matter is very incomplete, and it is impossible for us to have a clear idea of what is not matter. Knowing very little about what touches our senses, we can know nothing on our own about what lies beyond them. We carry a few words from our everyday language into the depths of metaphysics and theology, to give ourselves some faint idea of things we can neither understand nor express. We try to lean on these words to support our weak understanding, if possible, in these unknown regions.
Thus we use the word spirit, which corresponds to breath and wind, to express something that is not matter. But this word—breath, wind, spirit—brings us back against our will to the idea of a thin, light substance. We strip away still more of that idea, as far as we can, to try to conceive of a purely spiritual nature. But we never reach a clear notion. We do not even know what we are saying when we pronounce the word substance. Literally it means what is underneath. That very meaning warns us that it is incomprehensible, for what, in fact, is this thing underneath? Knowledge of God's secrets is not given to us in this life. Plunged here into deep darkness, we fight one another and strike at random in this night, without knowing exactly why we are fighting.
If we take the trouble to think carefully about all this, no reasonable person can fail to conclude that we must be forgiving of other people's opinions, and deserve forgiveness ourselves.
These remarks are not outside the heart of the question, which is whether people should tolerate one another. For if they prove how much people on all sides have been mistaken in every age, they prove that in every age people should have treated one another with tolerance.
32 The belief in fate is ancient and universal. You find it throughout Homer. Jupiter would like to save his son Sarpedon's life, but Destiny has condemned him to death, and Jupiter can only obey. Among philosophers, Destiny meant either the necessary chain of causes and effects necessarily produced by nature, or that same chain ordered by Providence, which is much more reasonable. The whole system of fate is contained in this line by Annaeus Seneca: "Fate leads the willing and drags the unwilling". People have always agreed that God governs the universe through eternal, universal, unchanging laws. This truth was the source of all those unintelligible arguments about freedom, because no one ever defined freedom until the wise Locke came along. He proved that freedom is the power to act. God gives this power, and man, acting freely according to God's eternal commands, is one of the wheels in the great machine of the world. The whole ancient world argued about freedom, but no one persecuted anyone over it until our own time. What an absurd horror that a Pomponne d'Andilly, an Arnauld, a Sacy, a Nicole, and so many others who were the light of France should have been imprisoned and exiled over this argument!
33 The theological fantasy of the transmigration of souls comes from India, from which we have received far more fables than is generally thought. This belief is explained in the admirable twelfth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses. It has been accepted almost everywhere on earth and has always been challenged. But we find no sign that any priest in the ancient world ever had a royal order for imprisonment issued against a disciple of Pythagoras.
34 Neither the ancient Jews, nor the Egyptians and Greeks of their time, believed that a person's soul went to heaven after death. The Jews thought the moon and sun were a few leagues above us in the same circle, and that the firmament was a thick, solid vault supporting the weight of the waters, which escaped through a few openings. Among the ancient Greeks, the gods' palace stood on Mount Olympus. In Homer's time the home of heroes after death was on an island beyond the Ocean. The Essenes held this opinion too.
After Homer, planets were assigned to the gods. But people had no more reason to put a god on the moon than the moon's inhabitants would have to put a god on the planet Earth. Juno and Iris had no palace but the clouds: there was nowhere there to rest a foot. Among the Sabaeans, each god had his star. But since a star is a sun, there is no way to live there unless one is made of fire. So asking what the ancients thought about heaven is a very pointless question. The best answer is that they did not think.
About this section
Chapter XIII is part of Treatise on Tolerance by Voltaire. This page sets the French original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is chapter 13 of 26 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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