XLVII
OF POPULAR PREJUDICE TO WHICH THE SACRED WRITERS HAVE DEIGNED TO CONFORM THROUGH CONDESCENSION
THE HOLY books were made to teach morality and not physics.
The serpent was esteemed by antiquity as the most skilful of all animals. The author of the Pentateuch is pleased to say that the serpent was subtile enough to seduce Eve. Beasts were supposed sometimes to speak; the holy writer makes the serpent and Balaam’s ass speak. Many Jews and many learned Christians have considered this history as an allegory; but whether it be emblematical or real, it is equally respectable. The stars were considered as points in the clouds: the divine author confines himself to this vulgar notion, and says, that the moon was created to preside over the stars.
The common opinion was, that the heavens were solid; they were called in Hebrew Rakiak, which word implies a plate of metal, a body extended and firm, which we translated into firmament. It contained waters, which were dispersed by openings. The scripture chimes in with this physical opinion.
The Indians, the Chaldeans, and the Persians, imagined that God had formed the world at six different times. The author of Genesis, not to startle the weakness of the Jews, represents God as forming the world in six days; though a single word and a single instant would have been sufficient for his omnipotence. A garden and shade were looked upon as great blessings in a dry country, parched with the sun; the divine author places the first man in a garden.
They had no idea of a being purely immaterial. God is always represented as a man: he walks at noon in the garden, he speaks, and is spoken to.
The word Soul, Ruah, signifies breath, life; the soul is always used for life in the Pentateuch.
It was believed that there were nations of giants; and it is said in Genesis, that they were the children of angels and the daughters of men.
Brutes were granted a kind of reason. God, after the deluge, deigns to make alliance with brutes, the same as with men.
Nobody knew what the rainbow was; it was looked upon as something supernatural, and Homer always talks of it in this manner. The scripture calls it the ark of God, the sign of alliance.
Amongst many errors which mankind had adopted, it was believed that animals might be produced of any color that was desired, by showing those colors to the mothers before they conceived: the author of Genesis says, that Jacob had lambs spotted by this device.
All antiquity made use of charms against the bite of serpents; and when the wound was not mortal, or when it was happily sucked by quacks, called Psilles, or when some local application had been successfully made, it was never doubted but that the charms had operated. Moses erected a god, a brazen serpent, whose look cured those who had been bit with serpents. God turned a popular error into a new truth.
The notion that bees could be formed out of a rotten carcass was one of the most ancient errors. This idea was founded upon the daily experience of seeing flies and little worms covering the bodies of dead animals. From this experience, which deceived the eyes, all antiquity concluded that corruption was the principle of generation. As it was believed that a dead body produced flies, it was imagined that the certain method of procuring bees was to prepare the bleeding skins of animals in a proper manner, to operate this metamorphosis. It was not considered how great an aversion bees have for all corrupted flesh, and how very averse they are to all infection. The method of producing bees in this manner could not succeed: but this they attributed to an error in the preparation. Virgil, in his fourth book of the Georgics, says, “that this operation was successfully performed by Aristaeus”; but he also adds, that it “is a miracle,” mirabile monstrum.
This ancient prejudice is rectified in relating that a hive of bees was found by Sampson in the jaws of a lion, which he had torn to pieces with his hands.
It was also a vulgar notion that the asp slit its ear for fear of hearing the voice of the enchanter. The Psalmist gives into this error, by saying, Ps. lviii “they are like the deaf adder, that stoppeth her ear; which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely.”
The ancient opinion that women who have their menses turn wine and milk, prevent butter from coagulating, and make young pigeons die in the dove-houses, still subsists with the vulgar, as well as lunar influences. It was thought that female purgation was the evacuation of corrupted blood; and that if a man approached his wife at that time, he would necessarily produce leprous and lame children. This notion so strongly prevented the Jews, that in the xxth chapter of Leviticus, the man and woman are both condemned to death, who perform conjugal duty at this critical time.
In fine, the Holy Spirit is so inclinable to conform to vulgar prejudices, that the Savior himself says, That new wine should never be put in old casks, and that the grain must rot to ripen.
St. Paul says to the Corinthians, in persuading them to believe a resurrection, “Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die.” We know very well now, that the grain does not rot in the earth to grow; if it rotted it would not grow; but this error then prevailed: and the holy scriptures deigned to draw useful comparisons from it. This is what St. Jerome calls speaking economically.
All convulsive disorders were looked upon as possessions of the devil, as soon as the doctrine of devils was adopted. Amongst the Romans as well as the Greeks, the epilepsy was called the sacred disorder. Melancholy, attended with a kind of madness, was still a disorder, the cause of which was unknown; those who were seized with it ran barking about the tombs at night. They were called Demoniacs, and amongst the Greeks, Lykantropes. The scripture allows of demoniacs, who wander amongst the tombs.
Guilty people among the Greeks were frequently tormented by furies; they had reduced Orestes to such a state of despair, that he ate one of his fingers in one of his raving fits: they had haunted Alcmeon, Eteocles, and Polinices. The Hellenist Jews, who were instructed in all the Grecian opinions, at length admitted amongst them certain kinds of furies, foul fiends, devils who tormented men. It is true the Sadducees did not acknowledge devils; but the Pharisees received them a short time before the reign of Herod. There were at that time amongst the Jews exorcists, who drove out the devils; they made use of a root, which they put under the nose of the person possessed, and employed a formulary taken from a supposed book of Solomon. They were, at length, so skilful in the driving out devils, that our Saviour, who, according to St. Matthew, was himself accused of driving them out by the power of Beelzebub, grants the Jews the same power, and asks them if it is by means of Beelzebub that they triumph over evil spirits?
Certainly if the Jews, who put Jesus to death, had the power of performing such miracles; if the Pharisees in fact drove out devils, they performed the same prodigies as our Savior operated; they had the gift which Jesus communicated to his disciples; and if they had it not, Jesus conformed himself to the popular prejudices, in deigning to suppose that his implacable enemies, whom he called a race of vipers, had the gift of miracles, and prevailed over demons. It is true that neither the Jews nor the Christians any longer enjoy, at present, that prerogative which was for a length of time so common. There are always exorcists, but we no more meet with devils, or people possessed—so much do things change with time! It was then according to the order of things that people should be possessed; and it is proper there should be none in that situation at present. The necessary prodigies to raise a divine edifice are useless, when it has attained its utmost summit. Every thing on earth is changed; virtue alone never alters; it resembles the light of the sun, which contains scarce any known matter, and which is always pure, ever immutable, when all the elements are incessantly confounded. It is only necessary for us to open our eyes to bless its author.