Part 1

The Wisdom of the East Series

EDITED BY L. CRANMER-BYNG Dr. S. A. KAPADIA

THE WISDOM OF THE APOCRYPHA

EDITORIAL NOTE

The object of the Editors of this series is a very definite one. They desire above all things that, in their humble way, these books shall be the ambassadors of good-will and understanding between East and West--the old world of Thought and the new of Action. In this endeavour, and in their own sphere, they are but followers of the highest example in the land. They are confident that a deeper knowledge of the great ideals and lofty philosophy of Oriental thought may help to a revival of that true spirit of Charity which neither despises nor fears the nations of another creed and colour. Finally, in thanking press and public for the very cordial reception given to the “Wisdom of the East” Series, they wish to state that no pains have been spared to secure the best specialists for the treatment of the various subjects at hand.

L. CRANMER-BYNG. S. A. KAPADIA.

NORTHBROOK SOCIETY, 185 PICCADILLY, W.

WISDOM OF THE EAST

THE WISDOM OF THE APOCRYPHA

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY C. E. LAWRENCE

AUTHOR OF “PILGRIMAGE,” ETC.

[Illustration]

LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1910

To

A. W. E. & L. C. B.

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION 7

THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON 19

ECCLESIASTICUS 38

NOTE

The Revised Version of the Apocrypha has been used in this volume by the kind permission of the Delegates and Syndics of the University Presses of Oxford and Cambridge. Owing to rigid limitations of space, some deletions have been necessary. These are, principally, the last nine chapters of _The Wisdom of Solomon_, consisting of historical illustrations, and therefore quite well spared; and in _Ecclesiasticus_ chapters xxxv., xxxvi., and from xliv. 16 to 1. 21. The design on the cover is the work of Mr. Edward Frampton, whom I am glad to thank.

C. E. L.

THE WISDOM OF THE APOCRYPHA

INTRODUCTION

It is, comparatively speaking, so little a while since the Bible was the unfailing source of human comfort and inspiration, that the indifference with which, in recent years, it had come to be regarded by the many, must needs have brought disquieting thoughts to the few. In the days of our grandparents, and for five centuries before that, the Bible was, at once, the fount of divine wisdom, the sure depository of truth for the faithful, an impregnable rock; and so firmly was its influence established, that all the contrary efforts of the times could not weaken or diminish its power for strengthening and comforting the hearts and minds of believing men. Then, in perhaps a natural process--for reasons I will not in this connection endeavour to suggest, though they are evident enough to whosoever would seek them--the old power of the scriptures seemed gradually to fade. The Bible became less the personal companion, and more a sideboard ornament; if, indeed, it was not merely an impediment on the shelf of the forgotten. Then time again wrought change, a hopeful change. The scholarly study and criticism given to the book during the last twenty to thirty years, helped by well-organised and wonderfully well-rewarded archæological research, have had, with other tendencies, this effect. They re-established the authority of the scriptures, and reintroduced them to thoughtful minds; not quite, perhaps, as in the old uncritical days, but with the living force and authority of an immortal literature. The Bible became no longer--or should I say, not merely?--a mystical touchstone, a magical entity; but a rich collection of national writings, containing, as it does, a series of human documents of unsurpassable value--history, law, philosophy, politics, prophecy, poetry, proverbs, and allegories--which had for the centuries of its evolution and creation, and have for these days and the years to come, inspiration and messages which, when sought and realised, must inevitably rouse, raise, and instruct the energies and thoughts of mankind.

It is as such--as human documents reflecting the ideals and the philosophy of eastern wisdom--that this selection of two of the Apocryphal books of the Old Testament has been included in the “Wisdom of the East” series. Regarded as human documents, there can be no question of their great interest and value. _The Wisdom of Solomon_ and _Ecclesiasticus_ follow naturally after, and are not unworthy to range with, _The Proverbs_ and _Ecclesiastes_; although not for an instant would one claim for them equality of excellence with those accepted parts of the Canon. Nevertheless, the neglect of the Apocryphal writings has meant a loss, unjustifiable; for they carry on the literature, and generally illustrate the ethical attitude, of the Jews, during the gap of years which lapsed between the last books of the Old Testament and the Synoptic Gospels, and are in many respects unique.

For our purposes they have a necessary message. The truths they tell, the criticism of men and things they make, are as applicable to modern life as are the extremely acute generalisations of _The Proverbs_. They spur, chide, stimulate, promise reward to, and inspire, the wise and the prudent of these days, as they did the people of the times wherein they were written. The world is, after all, intensely conservative. The changes wrought by humanity inevitably work in cycles, and come back to points passed, days, years, ages before. There is, indeed--so we come to the over-quoted aphorism of Solomon--nothing new under the sun. Man in his vanities, his little pride, his temporary strength, his abundant weakness, is the same creature precisely--for what essential difference do modern rules and trappings really make?--as he was when the sun looked down on flocks and herds in the pleasant pastures of Palestine, where now are wearying rocks and blistering sand; as he was when the harp of David, the drums and trumpets of Sennacherib, the war-cries of the Maccabees, challenged the hills and valleys of Judæa for a little while, and then were still. Vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities, all is vanity! The unknown writer of _The Wisdom of Solomon_ in measure echoed and carried on that humbling, eternal truth; so, too, though with still slighter voice, did Jesus the Son of Sirach, who, sometime in the two to three hundred years preceding the dawn of the Christian era, wrote this generally neglected wisdom-book, _Ecclesiasticus_. But, besides the vanity of man, these sages also spoke, even though vaguely, of the hope which waited on him. That is not to be forgotten.

It is necessary before noticing the general message and appeal of these wisdom-books to revert briefly to the question of the particular place and value of the Apocrypha as compared with some of the canonical books of the Old Testament. This is not quite where it was. It is worth while to realise that. The higher criticism, as it is called, by subjecting the scriptures to the wholesome test of educated and scientific inquiry, has modified the comparative value of its component parts. Some it has illumined and strengthened; others it has proved to be of different value from that previously ascribed to them. Dreams and visions, allegories and parables, are the reasonable and helpful explanations of certain supernatural signs and wonders in the Old Testament, the literal truth of which, though hampering and perplexing to many believers of scriptural truth, would have been fiercely maintained and stoutly defended by the Bunyan type of religious warrior--and honour be to every man in that fighting company! Be that as it may, the results of the higher criticism have brought into prominence this fact, that the action of St. Jerome in shelving the Septuagint and retranslating the Old Testament from the original Hebrew, thereby excluding the Apocrypha from the place it had hitherto occupied with the canonical scriptures, entailed consequences which the translators of the Authorised Version, who followed in his steps, would, under cross-examination in these days, if such were possible, have found it hard to justify. Why, for example, I ask with profound respectfulness, should the story of the slaying of Sisera by Jael, who flagrantly broke the laws of eastern hospitality, have been accepted within the Canon, while the kindred but not so flagrant deed of Judith, the destroyer of Holofernes, was relegated to the Apocrypha? Why, too, should that beautiful poem _The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s_, have been accepted as “establishing doctrine,” while the wisdom-books in this volume were ignored--to be neglected ever since, unread and practically forgotten by the overwhelming majority of religious people. In any case, the criticism which has questioned and diminished the value of certain books or chapters in the Old Testament has by doing so revived interest in the Apocrypha. If, here and there, its history may be unreliable and its incidents fantastic, does that necessarily weaken the value of its better parts? Certainly not; otherwise the better parts of the canonical scriptures would be so weakened also.

It is, therefore, a good thing that the long-time neglect of this supplement to the Bible should be ended; and, as the wisdom-books here printed amply testify, humanity has lost through not having better acquaintance of them. Church-people have known something about them, for parts of _The Wisdom of Solomon_ and of _Ecclesiasticus_ are included in the Lectionary; but no such inadequate selection, no such casual fragments as are read in the churches, can give more than a slight idea of their particular value and importance. They hold ideals. The degree of the sublimity of those ideals is various, and depends, in measure, on the receptivity and character of the reader; but they are ideals, and uplifting, nevertheless; and at no time, in any civilisation, can ideals be dispensed with. Where no vision is, the people perish.

The idea “Wisdom” meant different things to the Jews as their history made progress, and has in these books various meanings and is differently applied as the supposed needs of the nation or the individual are illustrated. No simple definition of Wisdom as lauded by Ben Sira, his grandson, or the unknown author of _The Wisdom of Solomon_ (whose wisdom certainly it was not), can, therefore, be exact or adequate. To do justice to the word in all the circumstances of its use would require a many coloured catalogue; but, taking it in its larger sense and expressing the general idea in simple English, it meant duty--duty with the implied sacrifice of self, duty associated with submission to Jehovah, “the Lord.” Not always is the wisdom of Ben Sira worthy of this lofty description--Mr. Worldly Wiseman might often quote him comfortably--but, reading the books through, it may justly be said to mean that.

It was a wisdom based on centuries of hard experience. The Jews whose philosophy, Hellenised, is here expressed, had known the extremes, and pretty well all the conditions, of life; and every phase of their development--the slow pastoral age, the years of Egyptian bondage, the fighting days in Canaan, the periods of heroism, of kingship, of failure, of captivity, ending with the scattering of God’s Chosen, never to be gathered again into one local community--was remembered with burning memory, though it was not without balm. We have, then, in these books, the settled philosophy, characteristically eastern, which, while remembering the pain of the past, makes the best of present blessings.

Life, as shown in these wisdom-books, is a shadowy affair. We have the experienced patriarch’s view of it as a business to which, uninvited, man was put to be got through manfully. “We also, as soon as we were born, ceased to be”--how sombrely true are those words!--and “Our allotted time is the passing of a shadow.” Yes: but the snatched fragment of fleeting time contains an opportunity for knowing truth and practising wisdom. “My Soul,” says _Ecclesiasticus_, “prove thy soul in thy life.” There we find the kernel of all this philosophy. Existence on earth is the opportunity for duty: do it--now! Other passages, no doubt, could be quoted, giving a cruder meaning to the message of these books; but mine, I claim, is the truest. Wisdom calls for duty: duty necessitates discipline. Again and again that truth is asserted and that note struck. Sometimes Ben Sira carries the call for discipline to undue length, in connection with the upbringing of children, for example, as did Solomon the King when he advised that unsparing use of the rod which our fathers took too literally; but, justly, these writers, knowing the people of their and our days, insist on the absolute necessity of discipline in every walk of life. The writer of _The Wisdom of Solomon_--loftier and deeper was he than Ben Sira--goes further yet, for, after saying that Wisdom “is radiant and fadeth not away,” he proceeds to assert that “her true beginning is desire of discipline.” The pupil must wish and seek as well as the master teach; and then, the reward, “All the gold of the earth in her presence is a little sand,” and “in kinship with wisdom is immortality.” The immortality promised in the Apocrypha is, however, only a flicker and vague, yet is it something considering the time of the writing, for from the feeblest sparks may spring, as from those sparks there sprang, consuming flames and light, life-giving.

There is a side to the teaching of _Ecclesiasticus_ which is not to be ignored, as it represents the duller facets of the great jewels of eastern wisdom. Ben Sira abused woman badly. She was to him, as she is still to others not only in the unmoving orient, a chattel for degraded uses; a chattering burden; untrustworthy, mischievous; a hewer of wood and drawer of water for her generous master, man. He bluntly represents a woman’s wickedness as wickedness at its worst. His advice of how to treat a daughter is, to put it mildly, unpleasant. As for the nagging housewife--were the tents and habitations of Israel so heavily afflicted?--the nuisance inspired him to a simile, “As the going up of a sandy way is to the feet of the aged, so is the wife full of words to a quiet man.”

To pass to lesser things, Ben Sira could not suffer fools gladly. The fact that so few Jews fail in the characteristics of shrewdness and practical common-sense must largely be due to the harsh, ironical things said of fools again, again, and ever again, in their much-studied literature. “The discourse of a fool is like a burden in the way.” One can almost hear the sage yawning at the close of a bout of boredom. “The life of a fool is worse than death.” This is final enough. So, also, of the man, too talkative. “Contend not with a man that is full of tongue, and heap not wood upon his fire.” The spirit and picture in those words--there are many such sayings in these ripe and stimulating books--are vivid: they fit these our times as they did the days of Jesus, son of Sirach. Indeed, there is nothing new! The ninny, the bore, the nagging wife, the man of empty tongue, Paul Pry, Sir Peter Pomposity--these and many others, a tiresome company, are of the eternal people, they who can never die. Ben Sira shows that he knew them well. So also--so alas!--do we.

Of various aspects of work he speaks: the dignity of labour was hardly realised in those very pre-Carlylean days. His advice to masters is shrewd--“Be not as a lion in thy house, nor fanciful among thy servants”--and (probably with the prototype of Jeames in his mind’s eye) contemptuous. “Fodder, a stick and burdens for an ass; bread, and discipline and work for a servant”--which is reminiscent of the sea-captain who, to keep his crew from grumbling in idleness, set them in spare hours to scrape the rust from the anchor-chains. There is, however, a broader spirit and more humanity in his consideration of the workers in the fields and their aristocratic brothers in industry, the artisan-artists, makers of the useful and beautiful, the graver, the smith, and the potter. Of them he points a contrast which indirectly exalts what we call the glory of the work. Here are words shrewd, pregnant with meaning, worthy to be noted and kept in remembrance:

“The wisdom of the scribe cometh by opportunity of leisure, and he that hath little business shall become wise.

“How shall he become wise that holdeth the plough, that glorieth in the shaft of the goad, that driveth oxen and is occupied in their labours, and whose discourse is of the stock of bulls?”

(Ecclus. xxxviii.).

I need quote no more of this passage, as it is to be read in the pages that follow. It is but one instance, of many, showing the insight and truth, applicable to all times, of Ben Sira’s philosophy.

In the small affairs of every day these sages can help us: and they--especially the writer of _The Wisdom of Solomon_--are not unmindful of the larger life, the lighted truths, the eternal verities. These wisdom-books taken together, as we are taking them, give helpful, strengthening counsel on the great and the little troubles, fears, comforts, questions which--all in a tangle and somehow--comprise human life.

Death these writers could contemplate with a resignation which challenges comparison with the attitude of Omar, who was, before all else, anxious to squeeze wine from the grapes and to take and give kisses while still the sun was shining; he knowing full well that in the emptiness and darkness to come there could be no joys of company, no laughter, wine, or love such as he lived for: a sorry delight wedded to a sorrier expectation, given to us, as it is, in verses so moving and sweet that they accentuate the sadness ever brooding. “Fear not the sentence of death, remember them that have been before thee and that come after,” is a far nobler appeal to those who tremble at the thought of the coming of the grey angel. And still there is God. “The Eyes of the Lord are ten-thousand times brighter than the sun.” He is omniscient and rules with beneficence; that confidence which the Jews in their religion created was not extinguished, despite past trouble and great national disappointments. As to the manner of travelling along the road of life, between the dim but certain gates of birth and death: “One praying and another cursing, whose voice will the Lord listen to?” These sayings show how well they view man in the individual and the abstract: for what always tells is character. “A man’s attire, and grinning laughter and gait shew what he is,” and--this to be remembered by the public man whose heart is breaking from the ingratitude of those he serves, whose shoulders are galled by the thankless burden which duty has compelled him to bear--“The man of low estate may be pardoned in mercy, but mighty men shall be searched out mightily.” On that true note--a strengthening message from the east to the duty-doers of all times--it is well to close.

THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON

=1= Love righteousness, ye that be judges of the earth, think ye of the Lord with a good mind, and in singleness of heart seek ye him;

Because he is found of them that tempt him not, and is manifested to them that do not distrust him.

For crooked thoughts separate from God; and the supreme Power, when it is brought to the proof, putteth to confusion the foolish:

Because wisdom will not enter into a soul that deviseth evil, nor dwell in a body that is held in pledge by sin.

For a holy spirit of discipline will flee deceit, and will start away from thoughts that are without understanding, and will be put to confusion when unrighteousness hath come in.

For wisdom is a spirit that loveth man, and she will not hold a blasphemer guiltless for his lips; because God beareth witness of his reins, and is a true overseer of his heart, and a hearer of his tongue:

Because the spirit of the Lord hath filled the world, and that which holdeth all things together hath knowledge of every voice.

Therefore no man that uttereth unrighteous things shall be unseen; neither shall Justice, when it convicteth, pass him by.

For in the midst of his counsels the ungodly shall be searched out; and the sound of his words shall come unto the Lord to bring to conviction his lawless deeds:

Because there is an ear of jealousy that listeneth to all things, and the noise of murmurings is not hid.

Beware then of unprofitable murmuring, and refrain your tongue from backbiting; because no secret utterance shall go on its way void, and a mouth that belieth destroyeth a soul.

Court not death in the error of your life; neither draw upon yourselves destruction by the works of your hands:

Because God made not death; neither delighteth he when the living perish:

For he created all things that they might have being: and the generative powers of the world are healthsome, and there is no poison of destruction in them: nor hath Hades royal dominion upon earth:

For righteousness is immortal:

But ungodly men by their hands and their words called death unto them: deeming him a friend they consumed away, and they made a covenant with him, because they are worthy to be of his portion.

* * * * *

=2= For they said within themselves, reasoning not aright, Short and sorrowful is our life; and there is no healing when a man cometh to his end, and none was ever known that gave release from Hades.

Because by mere chance were we born, and hereafter we shall be as though we had never been: because the breath in our nostrils is smoke, and while our heart beateth reason is a spark,

Which being extinguished, the body shall be turned into ashes, and the spirit shall be dispersed as thin air;

And our name shall be forgotten in time, and no man shall remember our works; and our life shall pass away as the traces of a cloud, and shall be scattered as is a mist, when it is chased by the beams of the sun, and overcome by the heat thereof.

For our allotted time is the passing of a shadow, and our end retreateth not; because it is fast sealed, and none turneth it back.

Come therefore and let us enjoy the good things that now are; and let us use the creation with all our soul as youth’s possession.

Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and perfumes; and let no flower of spring pass us by:

Let us crown ourselves with rose-buds, before they be withered:

Let none of us go without his share in our proud revelry: everywhere let us leave tokens of our mirth; because this is our portion, and our lot is this.

Let us oppress the righteous poor; let us not spare the widow, nor reverence the hairs of the old man gray for length of years.

But let our strength be to us a law of righteousness; for that which is weak is found to be of no service,

But let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is of disservice to us, and is contrary to our works, and upbraideth us with sins against the law, and layeth to our charge sins against our discipline.

He professeth to have knowledge of God, and nameth himself servant of the Lord.

He became to us a reproof of our thoughts.

He is grievous unto us even to behold, because his life is unlike other men’s, and his paths are of strange fashion.

We were accounted of him as base metal, and he abstaineth from our ways as from uncleannesses. The latter end of the righteous he calleth happy: and he vaunteth that God is his father.