CHAPTER VII.

HEBREW ART.

Little, or rather nothing, can properly be said of Hebrew art, for it is a non-entity. The Hebrews are a mixed race. They assert themselves to be of the Semitic group of mankind, but ethnologically they are a composition of black, yellow, and white men, and are closely related to the Arabs and Phœnicians. They were generally slaves. For 450 years they were in bondage in Egypt, whence they first emerged into a national existence. From Moses to Saul, for 450 years, they lived under a kind of theocratic democracy: God, the supreme ruler in heaven, and the Jews on earth his _chosen_ people. For another 450 years they had a kind of theocratic monarchy: God ruled in heaven, as the king ruled on earth. This period lasted from Saul to Zedekiah, and gives us--

(α) A period of 100 years under the first three kings, when the twelve tribes were yet united; and

(β) Another period during which they formed two separate kingdoms. Of these

(_a_) Israel, in this condition, lasted 220 years under twenty kings, who ruled at Samaria, and was destroyed by the Assyrians.

(_b_) Judæa, as a separate State, existed 350 years under twenty-one kings, and was annihilated by the Babylonians.

Not less than 650 years intervened between the destruction of Jerusalem and its second destruction by the Romans. During this period the chosen people were

1. 200 years under Persian sway.

2. 170 years under the dominion of Alexander the Great and his successors.

3. 130 years they enjoyed a certain independence under the Maccabees.

4. 100 years they were ruled by the Herodes and Romans. After the second destruction of Jerusalem the Jews ceased to have an independent State of their own, and were scattered all over the earth. They in reality enjoyed only 550 years of freedom, as a grand and united nation, out of a period of not less than 6,000 historically-known years.

Intellect came to absolute consciousness for the first time amongst the Jews, and in this their historical importance and weight lie. Man, created in the image of God, lost his state of innocence, absolute contentment and immortality, by eating of the tree of knowledge. The Jews were the first to recognise in a higher sense the double nature of man--his godhead and his animal nature. The country in which they developed is a perfect geological marvel. The region in which they settled was divided by a river and a sea. This sea is 1,400 feet below the level of the Mediterranean. The river flows downwards, like the Stygian river, far beneath the level of the ocean. The banks of the Jordan and the lake Asphaltites are the lowest regions of the habitable globe. In the west the Jews found some fertile plains, but they never could obtain full and peaceful possession of them, nor of the sea-coast. They were shut out from the world in a mountainous region as in a gloomy Puritan chapel, and had ample leisure for self-contemplation, and for attempting to solve the riddle of man’s destiny with the help of Egyptian wisdom, Persian, Assyrian and Babylonian theories. Rocks and sand formed the foreground of their earthly existence; the background was made up by a gloomy river and a still gloomier sea--the sea of death, the Acherusian, the Plutonian lake. A sea too low, too mephitic and poisonous for art to exist round it. A region of sorrow, sinfulness, and abject wretchedness cannot be the abode of art and science. The fine art of the Jews was like a migratory bird in its passage over the sea of death.

Not only with the Jews, but also with the Egyptians, Persians, and early Greeks, to represent a god in the likeness of man was considered sinful. The Persians abhorred idols in any shape. The Egyptians gave their gods shape and form, but a merely symbolic form, expressing in concrete signs some higher abstract conception. The human head, the body of a beast or fish, the horns of a ram, or the ears of a cow; the human leg with the foot of a goat, or the human arm with the claws of a bird of prey, were sacred, because symbolical. They had a metaphysical theology written in hieroglyphs. All this was prohibited with the Jews. They allowed some exceptions, and borrowed the figures of the cherubim from the Assyrians, the oxen of the temple from the Egyptians, and the sculptured lions of Solomon’s palace from the Persians; their artists were foreigners, and the imitation of these works was ever after forbidden.

‘All those things,’ says Rabbi Manasseh Ben Israel, one of their most learned commentators, ‘which are esteemed holy in the presence of God, or idea of man, may not be imitated in any known form or shape, although made without the intention of adoring them, so as to preclude the possibility of their being worshipped or deified hereafter. Thus the figure of the divine chariot, which Ezekiel saw, may not be made, nor the likeness of angels of any degree, nor of man, for these creatures are all superior from being made in the image of God.’ ... The prohibition is further applied by him to everything appertaining to the holy temple, and no house or palace could be built of its size or proportions.

Poetry and music were exempt from this enactment. The importance and influence of the social and religious condition on the development of art may best be studied in the Jews. They had no great architects, sculptors or painters, no inventors, no philosophers in natural science, but many excellent poets, theologians, cabalists, necromancers, philologists and composers. In our times, however, influenced by the vivifying spirit of Christianity, they count amongst themselves, in addition to an inordinate number of picture-dealers, some creditable painters.

They possessed legitimately only _one_ temple. Their first temple was a portable tent. The second was almost entirely of cedar-wood, richly provided with metallic ornaments, made by artists from Tyre and Sidon. They possessed one palace, that of Solomon. Babylonian or Assyrian architecture was probably reflected in this, and we may thus form a dim idea of what Solomon’s palace must have been. First the temple, then the palace was constructed.

The fact that the first temple was a mere tent, shows at once the nomadic character of the Jews, at a period when the Egyptians had possessed their architectural marvels for thousands of years. To the student of history, architecture is a sure measure of the degree of artistic and social development of a nation. We may boldly say, show us the plans of the houses, palaces, and temples of any nation, and we can determine the degree of its civilisation; we can do even more, we can read its character and religious fervour in these wood, brick, or stone records. That the Jews, having been compelled to witness all the misery and superstitious dulness which the Egyptian hierarchy and theocracy produced, should have detested architecture, and looked upon sculpture or any stone and brick as a curse to humanity, was quite natural; and that, once escaped from the bondage of Egypt, they should have hated any monumental, architectural, or artistic sculptural attempt, is equally obvious.

The egotistical character of the nomadic trader may be traced in the architectural constructions of the Jews. Any nation that loves its god or gods with zeal and self-denial will be sure to build grand temples to his or their glorification. The Persians had no temples, because they spiritualised the divine conception to such a degree, that they thought the first cause present everywhere like light. The Jews borrowed the same idea, and yet to fix the Eternal Spirit visibly amongst themselves, they assigned him a permanent abode, where he was exclusively to dwell; to be near them and to watch over them. Religious egotism was the mainspring of their national existence, and this general egotism made every individual Jew an egotist; and egotists are always bad supporters of anything by which the masses generally may benefit. Such people look only to the satisfaction of their momentary wants; they will collect trinkets, earrings, bracelets, armlets, goblets, gold and silver vessels, but the divine art of architecture, which binds masses together, will be neglected. We see them at first contented with a mere tent, and, when they undertook to construct a lasting building, it was done with all the pomp and gaudiness of a _parvenu_; they borrowed from all the surrounding rich people anything they could lay hands upon, merely to be able to say, without reason or taste--‘Look, my special God has also his special house.’ In the most powerful period of their national existence, which was a very short one, the Jews roused themselves to the construction of at least _one_ temple to their Javeh. They wished at last to possess an Akropolis like the Egyptians, who had so many, or the Greeks, Persians, Assyrians and Babylonians. Their God was at last to be housed, like the gods of the despised Gentiles.

The temple of Solomon has been much written upon. Prejudice, religious fanaticism, blind faith, and unconscious or _voluntary_ ignorance, dictated the descriptions and guided the reconstructions. Michaelis, one of the greatest Jewish authorities on Scriptural matters, tells us that ‘all the representations which we possess of the temple of Solomon are ornamented with arbitrary forms, and if we ask for authority or proof of this or that ornamental form, we invariably receive the answer: It must have been so, for I would have built in this way.’ It is naturally very difficult to obtain a correct description of the temple of Solomon, for with regard to its construction we must rely on the records of the Jews themselves. Unfortunately the Books of the Kings, Chronicles, Ezekiel, and the writings of Josephus, the varying descriptions of the translators, and the host of commentators, who generally obscure the simplicity of the simplest subject, are all at variance.

We may divide Jewish history into the eight following periods.

During the _first_ period we find them as nomads on the shores of the Euphrates and Tigris.

During the _second_ period they were received as shepherds in Egypt Here they learnt for the first time the arts of a settled people. They found a mighty hierarchy already established; astronomy, chemistry, architecture, and sculpture were practised by priests, who were well-versed theologians, lawyers, physicians, and philosophers. Not only the Jews, who lived amongst the Egyptians, but also the wisest and most learned men of Greece, owed much to the land of hidden wisdom, which was undoubtedly the cradle of the Jewish faith and of Greek philosophy. Moses, Lykurgus, and Solon sat piously listening to the oracular instructions of the Egyptian priests, who taught in mystic symbols. Thales, Pythagoras and Plato borrowed their philosophical theories and systems largely from the Egyptians. The Egyptians worked out the incarnation theory with mystic refinement. Osiris, the concealed Lord of heaven, had to become flesh, to conquer evil. He condescended to become a redeemer--had to suffer a cruel death in order to paralyse the influences of Typhon. The Greeks and Jews never could grasp the mystery of a god changing his almighty subjectivity into an objective human form, in order to attain, through suffering and death, what he could have fulfilled in a thousand other ways. Osiris was not only the supreme ruler in heaven, but he was also the supremely just and inexorable judge in hell. The division of the universe into an abode of bliss for the departed just, and of eternal darkness and fire for the unjust, was an Indian, Persian, and Egyptian dogma. To the blessed it was promised that they should pluck the sweetest fruits in heaven, ‘for they have given food to the hungry, and water to the thirsty; they clothed the naked, and lived in truth; for their heart was with God and God was with them, and they will enjoy eternal life in his presence,’ Of the wicked, on the contrary, it was said: ‘that they could not see the countenance of the Lord of heaven, nor ever hear his voice; they would go about without heads, drag after them their hearts, be boiled for ever in a cauldron, be hanged for ever by their legs.’

From these metaphysical and mystic Egyptians, the immortal Jewish lawgiver borrowed the division of his nation into twelve tribes, in imitation of the twelve zodiacal signs, and the division of Egypt into twelve nomes. In Egypt he learnt to distinguish between clean and unclean animals; to practise circumcision, which was with the Egyptians confined to their priests; but Moses promised to make his compatriots ‘a nation of priests.’ He established the tribe of the Levites, in imitation of the Egyptian priest-caste; and regulated their income, mode of living, and duties according to the ten books of the prophets (see p. 112); he divided the priests into four different classes, which at a later period were called _Peshat_, exegists, _Remes_, expounders of dubious points, _Derush_, composers of homilies, and _Sod_, the hierophants, or those versed in the real mysteries. The initials of the four names are taken from the Persian word PRDS (paradise) which may be adduced to prove that what Moses originally instituted was worked out, and systematised, at a later period, under Persian influence. The whole arrangement of the tabernacle was Egyptian; the serpent-worship was Egyptian, and so was the idolatrous predilection for the golden calf. Moses in his wise gratitude forbade the Jews ever to be hostile to the Egyptians.

During the _third_ period they left Egypt, and though they were acquainted with all the smaller arts of their Egyptian task-masters, and knew how to weave, to cut stones, to model, to cast, and to found gold and silver, they had to seek and to gain by hard fighting a new home to settle in. During this period they forgot everything; their accomplishments were gone when they settled in the Holy Land. For during times of war the growth of sciences and arts was never fostered.

During the _fourth_ period they reached the very climax of their national glory. David became master of a large empire which extended from the shores of the Euphrates to the frontiers of Egypt; this expansion was accomplished by the force of arms. His successor Solomon administered and consolidated the empire, founded on blood and iron, by wisdom and the culture of the arts of peace. After a Cæsar, the Jews had an Augustus. Solomon lived in friendship and peace with the surrounding mighty kingdoms, especially with Hiram, King of Tyre. It was Solomon who began to build Tadmor (afterwards Palmyra, the queen of the East), to establish in the desert a common emporium for Phœnician wares, and to enable the Jews to trade with them.

During the _fifth_ period the vast empire was divided into two parts, the one of which was altogether annihilated, and the other fell into the hands of the Babylonians, and the temple of Solomon was destroyed. Slaves and captives are rarely good artists.

During the _sixth_ period, after Kyrus had freed the Jews and permitted them to return to their native country, their national position improved. Under Darius, Zorobabel received permission to reconstruct the temple of Solomon on the foundations of the one erected by that wise king, and it was accordingly rebuilt, but this could only be done in accordance with the impoverished condition of freed captives.

During the _seventh_ period, under Alexander the Great and his followers, the Jews, attacked by Persians, Egyptians, and Syrians, showed that they could rise to the very highest deeds of heroism and self-sacrifice.

Finally, during the _eighth_ period, under the Romans, they gave up all hope of maintaining their position as a chosen people; they revolted sometimes, but more for theological than political reasons. Pompey treated them with great kindness and consideration after the capture of Jerusalem. During the reign of Augustus the town attained a grandeur and extension which it had never possessed, even in its brightest days under the sway of Solomon. But stubborn and arrogant as the Jews always were in times of prosperity, though enjoying a certain amount of freedom, they revolted, and the town and temple were destroyed. Nothing was left but the candlestick with seven branches, symbolic with the Egyptians of the seven planets, and with the Jews of seven archangels, or of the seven days of the week, sculptured in marble on the Arch of Titus, together with a facsimile of the holy ark, and some of the trumpets, used in religious ceremonies. It would be most interesting if the original relics, which it is assumed are buried in the Tiber, could be recovered; and, as so many venerable relics of by-gone ages have been brought to light, we do not despair of once seeing these remains.

The tabernacle, or earliest temple of the Jews, was entirely constructed on the plan of an Egyptian temple. To convince ourselves of this truth we need only compare its plan with that of the temple at Edfou. The triple division into a Pronaos, Naos, and Adytum, or the Holy of Holies, was strictly observed in both. The Adytum was a cube 10 cubits, or 15 feet each way; an outer temple, as Naos, consisted of two such cubes, 15 feet broad by 30 feet long. Adytum and Naos were covered by a sloping roof, which projected 5 cubits (7½ feet) in every direction beyond the temple itself, making the whole 40 cubits, or 60 feet, in length, by 20 cubits, or 30 feet, in width. Adytum and Naos stood in an enclosure--the Pronaos, 100 cubits (150 feet) long, by 50 cubits (75 feet) broad. From Moses to Solomon, for 600 years, this tabernacle was the only temple of the Jews. When Solomon began to construct the temple, he adhered strictly to the above arrangement, only doubling all the dimensions. The temple partook more of the character of a square shrine, or a store-house intended to contain precious works in metal; a kind of opisthodomos. The principal ornaments were two brazen pillars, Jachin and Boaz (sun and moon), by the skilful Hiram of Tyre. They were said to have been marvels of metal-work. The pillars of Susan or Persepolis, which had capitals of the same relative proportions, may give us some idea of these. In Egyptian temples it was also usual to place propyleæ at the porch of a temple, and the same custom prevailed with the Phœnicians, as in the case of the celebrated Venus (Astarte or Astharote) shrine at Paphos. After the construction of the temple by Solomon, Jerusalem became the holy and exclusive central point of Judaism. There only, and nowhere else, did they allow their God to be present. Zorobabel erected on the very spot another altar and temple in the same spirit, and this is the reason why the erection of a second temple at Heliopolis by Onias, under the Ptolemæians, caused such animosity and jealousy amongst Egyptian and Judaic Jews. It is said that the necessary marble, wood, and stone, and also the gold, silver, and brass vessels had already been weighed and prepared for the construction of the temple during the reign of King David, who gave his son the plan of the whole architectural construction. According to Chronicles, however, it appears that David made little or no preparation, and that Solomon only found some of the brass-work ready for use. This latter assertion is clearly verified by the correspondence between Solomon and Hiram. Solomon asks for wood for building in general, as also cedars and cypress trees from Mount Lebanon; adding that he wishes that Sidonians, as experienced carpenters, should help his own workmen, whom he designates as less able. This does not say very much in favour of the artistic skill of the Jews, who at the period of Solomon’s reign had not yet attained the same degree of proficiency as the pre-historic constructors of pile-dwellings. The request of Solomon was granted by the King of Tyre, and Adoniram was sent as foreman of the Sidonian carpenters, of whom 30,000 were appointed by Solomon; 10,000 of these worked alternately from month to month. Besides the 30,000 carpenters, there were 80,000 sculptors, or rather stone-cutters and masons, and 70,000 journeymen, making altogether 180,000 working men, under 3,300 overseers, employed in the construction of the temple, all tributary _strangers_ whom David had conquered. The construction began 592 years after Exodus, about 975 years B.C. Mount Moreah, or Moriah, was the site chosen, and the temple was completed in _seven_ years. The inner temple was 60 cubits (90 feet) long, 20 cubits (30 feet) broad, and 30 cubits (45 feet) high. Josephus says it was 120 cubits (180 feet) high; this would make the edifice resemble a square tower. The Pronaos may have been 120 cubits high. The space, 60 cubits long and 20 broad, was separated into two divisions. Of these the rear was 20 cubits square, forming the Holy of Holies, the ‘sekos’ of the Egyptian temples. The other division, 40 by 10, formed the Naos, the holy place, which was preceded by a hall, the Pronaos. The division: One God, one priesthood, and one people, was thus expressed. Rooms were constructed round the temple three stories high, corresponding to the rooms in the Egyptian Labyrinth, and the Brahmanic and Buddhistic choultries, or cloisters. There were thirty rooms on each floor. The height of the temple having been 30 cubits, this would give 15 feet for each story, walls included. Josephus doubles all these dimensions, and adopts inconceivable measurements. The ninety rooms were used as receptacles for the sacred vessels, and the temple was thus literally a holy treasury. The Holy of Holies having been only 20 cubits high, a space of 10 cubits, or 15 feet, would have been left above it; of this room no intelligible mention is made. In the Septuagint there is an allusion, which differs from the Vulgate and the different translations. In Chronicles we have upper chambers mentioned, which were overlaid with gold; this might have been the rooms or chambers above the Holy of Holies. No special staircase led to this room. It was undoubtedly a mysterious apartment, and, like all mysteries, excited some writers to very varied speculations on its possible nature. Amongst others the learned Ben David, in a letter to Lichtenberg in the Berlin ‘Archive der Zeit,’ asserted that this chamber must have contained an electric battery, for golden chains connected the room with the pillars of Jachin and Boaz, which were hollow, and could be placed in communication with the altar of brass. The points of the temple were golden. At the consecration of the temple, clouds, produced by incense, suddenly filled the interior of the temple, and a flash of lightning ignited the sacrifice. Michaelis tells us that the temple was never struck by lightning--the lightning, therefore, setting fire to the sacrifice must have been produced within the temple.

No stone roofs or vaults are mentioned in connection with the temple or palace built by the Jews; architecture was, therefore, in its most primitive stage. The inner temple and the Holy of Holies were entered through folding-doors. The Holy of Holies was entirely empty, symbolic of the incomprehensibility of the nature of the Deity. This was also the case in Egypt with the ‘sekos,’ which was, in fact, a shrine either quite empty, or containing a scroll, on which were written the words: ‘I am that was, that is, and that shall be.’ Two courts surrounded the temple, an inner and an outer court. The outer court was open to every Jew, but the inner court to the priests only. The former was surrounded by a double row of pillars overlaid with cedar-wood. It is said that Solomon had valleys filled up in order to make the concrete subconstruction of the length even. Each side of the outer wall surrounding the whole temple was 4 stadia or 1 stadium (606 feet 9 inches English) in length, giving 2,427 feet all round. The pillars Jachin and Boaz stood on the staircase of the inner court; each was 36 feet in circumference, 54 feet in height without the capital, which was 15 feet high. The shafts were hollow and the brass 4 inches thick. On the south-eastern side stood the round brass basin, called the sea, 30 feet in diameter, in which the priests used to wash their hands. Besides the ‘sea,’ there stood on pedestals on either side of the temple five cups, 12 feet in diameter and 9 feet high. The altar of the burning sacrifice, in the middle of this space, was 60 feet broad and as many feet long; all these secondary necessaries of the temple stood in the east. The surrounding courts rose in terraces like those of the palace of Persepolis. The temple, whatever its magnificence might have been in precious stones, gold, silver, carved cherubim, brass and silver vessels, washing-basins and candlesticks, was architecturally an utter failure, whether compared with the monumental temples of Egypt, the grand and splendid palaces of Assyria, Babylon, or Persepolis, or the temple of Diana at Ephesus. The latter, which was built on a marsh, that it might not be endangered by earthquakes, was 425 feet in length and 220 in width, and had 127 columns 60 feet high, each the gift of a king. This is the account given by Pliny, who, however, describes either the seventh or eighth temple. Stable as was everything in religious matters with the Jews, they did not venture in rebuilding their temple to make any alterations; a stone displaced, an ornament improved, might have driven their God from his chosen abode. With such ideas art is impossible. The additions made to the temple under the Romans, in order to render the building more in harmony with their street architecture, were only outer courts with rich colonnades of Corinthian columns, and had nothing to do with the temple itself. These formed the Stoa-Basilica, with the court of the Gentiles, which is spoken of as imposing and forming a mighty group, and must not be confounded with the temple itself, which was certainly no specimen of architecture, either in dimension, in plan, or in decoration, if we except some stiff vine foliage on capitals, which was exceptionally characteristic of the Jewish style.

The numerous tombs in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem are rock-hewn, clearly betraying their Egyptian origin; they are provided with numerous hollows for the reception of the bodies. These sepulchres are without any artistic stamp; on some façades we can see the Egyptian fluted corona. The façades of the so-called royal tombs of Jacob or the judges are decorated in a Greek style, as are the tombs of Zacharias and Absalom; the latter stand out from the rock as independent structures, ornamented with Ionic pillars, and above the Egyptian corona rises a pyramidal or conical structure; a combination of the pre-historic tumulus with Egyptian and classic elements. Something is borrowed from everyone to make up a chosen national element.

In books or in conversation this may avail, but in art, where the outer impression is to create a corresponding sensation, assertions must be borne out by visible productions, and to falsify architectural records is much more difficult than to interpolate passages, alter dates, or make assertions in utter defiance of probability and possibility. The Hebrews, whether as Jews or Israelites, had no art, and never pretended to have one; they were contented with the art-products which other nations made for them, in perfect accordance with the clearly-expressed promise of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: ‘That He would give them great and goodly cities, which they would not build; and houses full of good things, which they would not fill; and wells digged, which they would not dig; and vineyards and olive trees, which they would not plant.’ With such principles neither architecture, sculpture, nor ornamentation could flourish. Art in Asia never became master of matter from an esthetical point of view, for, in all these works, matter sways the mind; it is either an exhibition of precious stones on walls, or lace-work in marble, or endless heaps of huge granite blocks and columns without purpose, or decorations in wild, fantastic, and endless combinations. The Eastern mind could not free itself from the influence of a mighty hierarchy. In the East it was the eternal _Hermes_, the _Logos_, the _priest_, who read truth in the stars, manufactured gods and goddesses, wrote the language of heaven, drew up plans for temples, squared out the proportions of the human body, and gave laws to sculptors and painters, to stone-cutters and masons, to joiners and carpenters, weavers and dyers. Hermes, with his followers, was the physician, the lawgiver, and the judge of the masses; he prayed, he sacrificed for them, he prophesied, circumcised, married, embalmed, and buried them. The priest in the East, whether as Brahman, Buddhist, Hierophant, Magi, or Levite, generally placed the idea, the spirit, the word, the λόγος {logos} above the form, which, in itself, crippled the form the more effectually, because the form, however revolting, was the mere symbol of some sacred mystery. The creative genius of art was thus almost extinguished under the stifling and petrifying influence of hierarchical formalism, and, until it had been freed from this, could neither develop nor prosper. The process of freeing humanity from this formalism was first begun and accomplished by the Greeks.