Heaven-inspired code; and, while Greece was fast progressing towards
ochlocracy, Judaea remained a theocracy.
The Greek was an egoist. He disliked uniformity. Although in the
direction of his private life he voluntarily submitted to a variety
of state regulations such as the citizen of a modern country would
resent as an irksome interference with the liberties of the individual,
yet, judged by the standard of antiquity, the Greek was anything but
amenable to control, and, as time went on, his attitude became little
better than that of a highly civilised anarchist. There were limits
beyond which the Greek would never admit his neighbour’s right to
dictate his conduct any more than his thoughts. He suffered from an
almost morbid fear of having his individuality merged in any social
institution. He would rather be poor in his own right than prosper
by association with others. Discipline was the least conspicuous
trait in his character and self-assertion the strongest. The Greek
knew everything except how to obey. The Jew, on the other hand, found
his chief happiness in self-effacement and submission. His everyday
life, to the minutest details, was regulated by the Law. He was not
even allowed to be virtuous after his own fashion. The claims of the
individual upon the community were only less great than the claims of
the community upon the individual. The strength of Hebraism always lay
in its power of combination, the weakness of Hellenism in the lack of
it.
Equally striking is the contrast discerned between the aesthetic ideals
of the two races. Much in Hebrew imagination is couched in forms which
would lose all their beauty and freshness, if expressed in colour or
marble; much that would look grotesque, if dragged into the daylight
of pure reason. Its effect depends entirely on the semi-darkness of
emotional suggestion. Now the Greek hated twilight. He had no patience
with the vague and the obscure in imagination any more than in thought.
Hence artistic expression was nothing to the Jew; everything to the
Greek. Judaism shunned pictorial representation; Hellenism worshipped
it. And, as art in antiquity was largely the handmaid of religion,
this diversity of the aesthetic temperament led to an irreconcilable
religious antagonism. The Jew looked upon the pagan’s graven images
with abhorrence, and the pagan regarded the Jew’s adoration of the
invisible as a proof of atheism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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