Page 204 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Old age and the future

were being held to the central point of religion, which was wrapped
up in the Hebrew language.
The Jewish religion did not start out with mythological stories of
gods and goddesses and all those illegitimate children, some by incest
and some by animals participating in the affairs. No, it had its
inception, from the very beginning, in a single creator of the cosmos,
without any collaboration. The angelic idea, in other religious
systems—even among those few existing in the present day—was
never mentioned in the early record of the biblical narration of the
creation. The names of angels mentioned in Jewish liturgy and
prayers are products of early Babylonian origin. The Talmudists who
lived in Babylon from the first captivity stated that the Jews who
returned to Israel by invitation of the Persian king Cyrus to rebuild
the temple and the cities were so assimilated that they brought back
with them the names of angels that the Babylonians had worshipped.
The primitive nations as well as the advanced ones like the Greeks
and Romans were steeped in idolatry. The modern Jew and many
non-Jews have criticized the Bible on account of the sacrificial laws
given by Moses and the priestly organization and ceremonies in their
service, like the story of the sacrifice of a red cow, the sacrifices on
mounts Ebal and Gerizim, and others of that nature. Those critics,
born in the nineteenth century, when writing of history and its people
and events, compare them with our mode of life and our times
without considering the influence of the former times’ surroundings.
The Jew—or, rather, all the humans at the early beginnings of man’s
development—had none of the conceptions and experiences that we
have, accumulated in many thousands of years.
But how many of us have accepted the theory and knowledge of
empiricism? Hundreds of millions wearing modern dress, living in
modern homes, working in modern industries, using modern
transportation and healing processes, still believe in miracles, in
divine intervention by a god-ordained person, and even sacrifices of
human blood in some countries. The lawgiver and founder of human
liberty, the one who condemned slavery and forbade the return of a
fugitive slave to its master, he knew human nature and knew that
man cannot be changed overnight from his inborn animalism to an
observing and thinking being.
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