former, attached to the tradition and allegorizing the text of the Sepher,[1] admitted the free will[2]; the others, on the contrary, rejecting it and following the literal meaning, established an irresistible destiny to which all was subjected. The most orthodox Hebrews, and those even who passed as seers or prophets of the nation, had no difficulty in attributing to God the cause of Evil.[3] They were obviously authorized by the history of the downfall of the first man, and by the dogma of original sin, which they took according to the meaning attached to it by the vulgar. It also happened, after the establishment of Christianity and of Islamism, that this dogma, received by both cults in all its extent and in all its literal obscurity, has necessarily drawn with it predestination, which is, in other words, only the fatality of the ancients. Mohammed, more enthusiast than learned, and stronger in imagination than in reasoning, has not hesitated a moment, admitting it as an inevitable result of the Unity of God, which he announced after Moses.[4] It is true that a few Christian doctors, when they have
- (sepher); the name of
the Bible, that we attribute to it, is derived from the Greek [Greek: Biblos], adopted by the so-called translators of the Septuagint.]*
- ↑ The original name of the Book of Moses is [Hebrew
- ↑ Joseph., Antiq., l. xii., c. 22; l. xiii., c. 9 et 23; l. xvii., c. 3; Budd, Introd. ad Phil. Hebr.; Basnage, Histoire des Juifs, t. i.
- ↑ This is founded upon a great number of passages, of which it will suffice to cite the following. One finds in Amos, ch. iii., v. 6: "Shall there be evil in a city which the Lord hath not done?" And in Ezekiel, ch. xxi., v. 3: "And say to the land of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I come against thee, and I will draw forth my sword out of its sheath, and will cut off in thee the just, and the wicked . . . against all flesh, from the south even to the north. . . . That all flesh may know that I the Lord have drawn my sword."
- ↑ all propagation, is applied to productive nature in general, and in particular to a mammal, its symbol among the Egyptians; it signifies properly the Physicists, or the Naturalists.
