Archives for Mosaical Metrology and Mosaistics, AMMM Vol. II, No.
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Archives for Mosaical Metrology and Mosaistics, AMMM Vol. II, No.
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“The Jews are a people of
philosophers!”
Theophrastus of Eresus (372–287 B.C.E.), the successor to Aristotle as head of the Peripatetic school, and as historiographer the authority on pre-Socratic philosophy. The Impact of Israel on Western Philosophy* by Dr. Ed Metzler
in ancient Greece with men like Thales of Miletus and Pythagoras. Yet, their dependence on Jewish thought as well as the cultural impact of Israel on Greece during its formative period generally, remained shrouded in mystery as long as no exact information was available about the central cult –––––––––––––– *Dedicated to Prof. Dr. Phil. Johann Knobloch, Professor Emeritus of General and Comparative Linguistics at the University of Bonn, Germany, who proved to be a good friend in hard times. [3]
object in the Holy of Holies of the First Temple, built by King Solomon in Jerusalem as depository for the Ark of the Covenant with the two stone Tablets of the Law of the Torah of Moses from the Sinai. As a legal scientist I discovered in 1983 all I ever wanted to know about the Mosaical Tablets of the Law, thus shedding new light on the impact of Israel on western philosophy, as I already mentioned in my last book entitled “DISCOVERING MOSAISTICS, Introduction to the Scientific Study of the Law of Moses and Mosaical Antiquity.”1) § 2. Under these circumstances, it appears legitimate for a lawyer to inquire into the origins of western philosophy.2) My discoveries in the –––––––––––––– 1) Cf. Ed Metzler, DISCOVERING MOSAISTICS, Intro- duction to the Scientific Study of the Law of Moses and Mosaical Antiquity, Cumulative Reprint of AMMM (Archives for Mosaical Metrology and Mosaistics) vol. 1, nos. 1–5 with forewords by the Rt. Hon. Lord Hailsham of St. Marylebone, KG, CH, FRS, DCL, formerly Lord High Chancellor of England, and by Professor Emeritus Dr. Johann Knobloch, University of Bonn, Germany (Herborn 1989) p. 26 Note 25. 2) It is legitimate anyhow, as exemplified by the great philosophers Francis Bacon and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who were jurists by profession. For an excellent history of western [4]
field of legal history led to the complete recon- struction of the Mosaical Tablets of the Law, including the graphical details of their inscription, and the original alphabet, in which it was written, their geometry, and their exact weights and measures.3) This important source of ancient law, which I once called the Magna Charta of antiquity, exerted an influence on western culture that went far beyond the proper sphere of law.4) Being deposited in the Holy of Holies of the Solomonic temple in Jerusalem, the Mosaical Tablets of the Law were transformed from a legal document into an object of religious worship, and it was –––––––––––––– philosophy see Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York 1964), who was a mathematician. In Comparative Law the contrast between Anglo-American and Continental European legal philosophy is obvious, and has its analogy in Comparative Religion, cf. Ernst Troeltsch, Empirismus und Platonismus in der Religionsphilosophie, Gesammelte Werke (Tübingen 1922) vol. 2, pp. 364–85; and Ewald (Ed) Metzler, Die Emanzipation vom Kulturinfantilismus bei Comenius, Comte und Freud, in Archives for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (ARSP), vol. 58 (Wiesbaden 1972) pp. 97–122. 3) Cf. Ed Metzler, Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) pp. 22–25. 4) Ibid. p. 50 Note 47 and p. 192 Note 8. There is a time-lag of about 500 years between the golden age of Israel under King Solomon (ca. 950 B. C. E.) and the golden age of Greece under Pericles in Athens (ca. 450 B. C. E.). During this period a strong [5]
in this mystified form that they were to inspire the philosophy of future generations, both in Israel and abroad.5) as the Jewish Blueprints of Pythagorean Philosophy § 3. According to Hermippus of Smyrna Pythagoras owed all of his theories to the Jews.6) Best known are the Pythagorean theorem and –––––––––––––– cultural and genetic influx from Israel must be expected, especially among the Ionian Greeks on the Mediterranean coast of present-day Turkey, reached when sailing northward along the shore from Israel. An appalling thought for a modern philhellenic anti-Semite, who would prefer to see Greek culture arising out of nowhere as an original creation by the Aryan genius of a racially pure Greece, the light of Israel which was shining upon the gentile world as an Or la-Goyim (Isaiah 49, 6) is readily obscured by the assumption of the so-called Dark Ages of Greece (ca. 1200–700 B. C. E.), covering some 250 years before and after King Solomon’s reign, see below Notes 24 and 26. 5) The deification of the Tablets of the Law resulted from their accommodation in the temple almost 500 years after Moses had made them, thus idolizing the very same stone that prohibits idol worship, and naming Israel’s god YaHUH after its first two words, cf. Ed Metzler, Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) pp.  139–46.
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the Pythagorean numbers 3, 4, and 5, forming a right triangle. But absolutely nothing was known about Jewish mathematics at the time of the destruction of the First Temple (586 B. C. E.), – when Thales lived and Pythagoras was born, – until I discovered the three-dimensional structure of the Ten Commandments.7) As a legal scientist, convinced that Jewish legal and scribal tradition would not change one jot or tittle of the law of the Torah of Moses from the Sinai, I found the distribution of the letters on the original stone inscription.8) They were entered into squares like those of a crossword puzzle, which disclosed the –––––––––––––– 7) “There are no passages of any significant mathematical interest in the Bible,” is the expert opinion, now obsolete of the article on Mathematics in the Encyclopaedia Judaica of 1974 (vol. 11 at 1121) written by Barry Spain, Head of the Department of Mathematics, City of London Polytechnic; but see Ed Metzler, Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) p. 24 Note 18, p. 38 Note 16, p. 81 Note 35, p. 135 Note 16, and p. 195 Note 18, as well as the diagram on p. 21 infra.8) The Jewish attitude concerning the Letter of the Law is well summed up by Jesus of Nazareth in the gospel according to Saint Matthew (5, 18): “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law (min ha-Torah), till all be fulfilled.” In our time, this has been confirmed by the Dead Sea Scrolls, cf. Ed Metzler, Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) p. 65 Note 4.[7]
proportions of the Tablets of the Law containing the Pythagorean numbers, as did their box, the Ark of the Covenant.9) § 4. Of course, Pythagoras might have gotten his theorem somewhere else, if it were not for his other teachings, which make him look like a man of weird idiosyncrasies.10) However, the bond which ties his various theories together is the fact that they all refer to the Tablets of the Law in the Holy of Holies of the First Temple in Jerusalem, such as the holiness of the ten spheres (Decalogue), the Tetraktys (Tetragrammaton), and the so-called Pythagorean numbers 3, 4, and 5 of –––––––––––––– 9) This point was emphasized by Prof. Dr. Johann Knobloch in his foreword to Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) pp. 9 and 11; see Ed Metzler, ibid. pp. 77 and 135: Each tablet is
1 by 1.5 cubits(below p. 21), and consists of 150 squares of 0.1 cubit, which is also the thickness of the tablets, yielding 150 cubic letter-units. As a new source in the history of mathematics, my reconstruction antedates the Babylonian clay tablet Plimpton 322, cf. Ed Metzler, ibid. p. 27 Note 26, and p. 28 Note 30. 10) Bertrand Russell (N. 2) p. 31 calls him “a combination of Einstein and Mrs. Eddy”, the founder of Christian Science, and speaks of his “very curious
psychology”. Similarly, Kabbalahappeared to be an incoherent bunch of topics, until I discovered that it is a mystification of the various graphical details of the Mosaical Tablets of the Law, cf. Ed Metzler, Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) pp. 152 and 153 Note 53.[8]
the tablets and their box.11) The Pythagoreans swore their holy oath by the Tetraktys, i. e. by the Tetragrammaton Y.H.W.H. or YaHUH (Yahuweh), “by him who has given to our people the Ten Commandments”, the ten boustrophedon lines (Devarim “logoi” or Sephirot “spheres”) of the Torah “theoria” of Moses, – as the Jews even today bless “him who has given the Torah to his people Israel.”12) § 5. Obviously, Pythagoras was a convert to Judaism, as already suggested by his name, “Pytha-” standing for Israel in the land of Canaan or “Put” (= Phoenicia), and “-goras” for “Giyora” meaning a Ger or proselyte.13) He taught in Greek –––––––––––––– 11) Cf. Ed Metzler, Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) pp. 26–27. 12) See the Siddur on the order of Reading the Law; and on the Pythagorean oath Jaap Mansfeld, Die Vorsokratiker (Stuttgart 1987) pp. 146–7, who translates hameterai geneai as “dem Men- schengeschlecht”, i. e. “to mankind”, whereas it literally means
other pyramid has the four-letter name of Israel’s god YaHUH at its base, and the Hebrew letter Yod (Greek Iota) = 10 at its top. 13) The first three letters of Pythagoras are Peh-Waw-Tet in [9]
what he had learned in Hebrew about a kosher life-style, reminiscent of the vegetarianism of his biblical contemporary Daniel in Babylon, about the geometry of the Mosaical Tablets of the Law, and the mystification of their graphical details known as Kabbalah, which likened the inscription on the tablets to the creation of the world and their ten lines to the celestial spheres.14) Hence Pythagoreanism derives from Judaism, namely from an early stage of Kabbalah, that was still closer to its Mosaical roots, especially with respect –––––––––––––– ancient Hebrew-Phoenician script spelling Put (by assimilation of the “n” from Egyptian Punt “Phoenicia”), which is another name for the land of Canaan, whose firstborn was the city of Sidon (Genesis 10, 6 and 15), whence the god of the Phoenician seafarers is Poseidon (apo Sidon) in Greek, and Neptunus (by metathesis from e Punt-nus in Latin as well as the Pythian Apollo, who is the Phoenician (Puntian) ha-Baal, cf. Ed Metzler, Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) pp. 177–8 Note 37; and Idem, Conflict of Laws in the Israelite Dynasty of Egypt, (Herborn 1991) p. 10 Note 13. 14) The Pythagorean music or harmony of the spheres has its origin in the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue or 10 Sephirot, and that is why even the word “music” derives from Mosheh(Greek Musaeus), the author of the Mosaical (“musical”) Tablets of the Law: If a string has the length of the tablets (1.5 cubits) subdivided into 15 vertical letter-units of 0.1 cubit (supra Note 9), and produces the musical note c = 15/15, then 14/15 = c sharp; 13/15 = d; 12/15 = e; 11/15 = f; 10/15 = g; 9/15 = a; 8/15 = b; 7.5/15 = c’; 7/15 = c’ sharp; 6/15 = e’; 5/15 = g’; 4/15 = b’; 3/15 = e’’; 2/15 = b’’; and 1/15 = b’’’. [10]
to the geometry of the Tablets of the Law, and what seemed Pythagorean in Kabbalah is genuinely Israelite in origin.15) from Israel to Greece under the House of David-Thutmosis I § 6. As we learn from Eupolemus, it was Moses who invented the alphabet in the Sinai, and taught the people of Israel, the Phoenicians got it from the Jews, and the Greeks from the Phoenicians.16) Educated in Egypt, he was familiar –––––––––––––– 15) Cf. Ed Metzler, Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) p. 138 Note 24, and p. 149 Note 46 as well as the accompanying text. Pythagorean phrases like “all things are numbers” (kol-Davar Sephirah), are “infinite” (Greek apeiron or Hebrew en-Soph), and “emanate from God” (Yatzo’ wa-Shov) refer to the graphical details of the Decalogue, the ten words or “things” (Devarim), which are Sephirot “written lines” (from Sopher “scribe”) with “no end”, i. e. tacked together in an uninterrupted chain of letters proceeding or “emanating” from ANKIAHUH (Anokhiyahuweh) “I shall be”, later reinterpreted as “I am YaHUH (Yahuweh)”, the first two words (8 letters) of the Ten Commandments (above Note 5); Ibid. p. 27 Note 27, p. 136 Note 18, and p. 146 Note 40. 16) See Encyclopaedia Judaica (German 1930) vol. 6 at 836. [11]
with the 24 one-consonant hieroglyphs, which are often wrongly called an “alphabet” and are not what he invented, but they inspired the invention of simpler phonetic scripts by eliminating the multi-consonant hieroglyphs.17) This was done by the Midianites and Israelites, two Semitic peoples who lived together in the Sinai at the time of the Exodus (1441 B. C. E.), whence the Midianites migrated south along the eastern shores of the Red Sea, leaving the Thamudic inscriptions behind which developped into ancient south Semitic and modern Ethiopian script, both non-alphabetic in the strict sense, although often wrongly called “alphabets” even by experts.18) –––––––––––––– 17) Cf. Sir Alan Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar (Oxford 1982) p. 26 § 18 and p. 27, who misuses “The Alphabet” as heading with no qualifications, but should have made it sufficiently clear that the conventional order of one-consonant hieroglyphs in Egyptology is modern and non-alphabetic; see Bundesdruckerei, Alphabete und Schriftzeichen des Morgen- und des Abendlandes (Berlin 1969) p. 9. The adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter, “Moses was learned in all the wisdom of Egypt” (The Acts 7, 22). 18) It is a conceptual monstrosity, when Joseph Naveh, Early History of the Alphabet (Jerusalem 1982) p. 51 speaks of “the Ethiopic alphabetic order”, which is no alphabetical order at all, so that the question of its origin is avoided, cf. Ed Metzler, Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) p. 193 Note 12. [12]
§ 7. When and where the alphabetical order in the strict and proper sense of the word was introduced, does not concern hieroglyphic and south Semitic scripts, who do not have it, but only Hebrew-Phoenician script which takes its proper name “alphabet” from its first two letters Alef and Bet.19) The people of Israel carried the two stone Tablets of the Law of the Torah of Moses from the Sinai in the Ark of the Covenant northward to their Promised Land of Canaan or Phoenicia on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea, and with it the alphabetical order, as I was able to prove.20) The reason for placing the letters –––––––––––––– 19) Doubtless, Hebrew and Phoenician script are identical in the first two centuries of the first millennium B. C. E., during the golden age of Israel, when the empire of King David and Solomon extended from the Euphrates to Egypt, until it disintegrated with the Assyrian conquest of Israel in 722 B. C. E., and the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B. C. E., cf. Joseph Naveh (N. 18) pp. 54–57 and 65–78. 20) This view was shared in antiquity by Eupolemus (N. 16), and in modern times by Hubert Grimme, late professor of Semitic languages at the University of Münster, Germany, and specialist of proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, cf. his monograph “Die altsinaitischen Buchstabeninschriften” (Berlin 1929) pp. 21–22 and 100–109. Contra, Joseph Naveh (N. 18) pp. 26 and 65, who assumes that the Hebrews arrived in Canaan as illiterates adopting the art of writing from the Phoenicians. [13]
Alef and Bet at the top of the alphabetical order, and thus the very name of the alphabet results from the Ten Commandments, for their first line begins on face A of the first stone tablet with the letter Alef, and their second line on face B with the letter Bet.21) § 8. At the time of Moses Hebrew still had a “th”-sound, represented by the letter Tzadi, as attested by the Zakhor-Shamor divergence in the text of the Ten Commandments, which changed into an “s”-sound toward the end of the ancient Israelite republic.22) This fact serves –––––––––––––– 21) Cf. Ed Metzler, Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) pp. 89–90. By paying attention to the fact that the Ten Commandments begin with the letter Alef, while the story of creation in the Hebrew Bible begins with the letter Bet, as do the New Testament and the Koran as well as the Sefer Yetzirah, marking them all as secondaryliterature in comparison to the Tablets of the Law, I discovered that their second line began with the letter Bet, – and given a well- preserved text like that of the Ten Commandments (Note 8 supra), this turned out to be the key to reconstructing its distribution on the Tablets of the Law. Already Hubert Grimme, Aussehen und Aufschrift der mosaischen Gesetzestafeln, in Nieuwe Theologische Studien vol. 25 (1942) pp. 81–90 worked at this problem, but failed because he neglected the geometry of the tablets and their box as well as the alphabetical order, characteristic of the people of Israel rather than the Midianites who migrated south.22) See Ed Metzler, Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) pp. 87–91 on post-Mosaical changes in Hebrew phonology and palaeography. [14]
to prove whether and when the alphabet was borrowed from Israel by Greece and the Phoeni- cians of Ugarit, who must have gotten it from a Semitic people that no longer had a “th”-sound at the time, when the borrowing took place, i. e. the early monarchy of Israel.23) Since Ugarit borrowed its cuneiform alphabet at this time, eighteenth-dynasty Egypt, – being contemporary with Ugarit, – is not only contemporary with the golden age of Israel under King Solomon and his Egyptian wife and sister Queen Hatshepsut-Sheba, but the Thutmosids are also identical with the House of David-Thutmosis I.24) –––––––––––––– 23) Cf. Ed Metzler, Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) p. 99 Note 5, p. 112 Note 33, and p. 113 Note 34. Similarly, the systemof Mosaical metrology with its distinctively Israelite fingerprints came from Israel to Greece and Ugarit (Ibid. pp. 52 and 184). 24) Cf. Ed Metzler, Conflict of Laws (N. 13) Notes 6–18 and 44–49. The name of Israel’s god YaHUH (Yahuweh) or Ehiyeh “I shall be” (Exodus 3, 13–15) was translated into Egyptian by the verb Kheper “to become”, and is part of the prenomen of almost all the pharaohs of the eighteenth or Israelite dynasty of Egypt, cf. Jan Assmann, Ägypten – Theologie und Frömmigkeit einer frühen Hochkultur (Stuttgart 1991) p. 76. Thus, the prenomen of Thutmosis III, the son and successor of King Solomon-Thutmosis II is Men-Kheper-Re, which if translated back into Hebrew yields Hezekiah or Ezekiel, since Men is ancient Egyptian for Hebrew Chazak “firm”, and “R” (Re) stands for “L” (El), so that [15]
and Mythology from Prometheus to Thales of Miletus § 9. In “The City of God” Saint Augustine writes that Prometheus lived at the time of Moses, an unususal thought at first sight, however a closer look shows the similarity of their stories.25) Both descendants of families with twelve children, the 12 children of Israel and the 12 Titans, Greek mythology ascribes to Prometheus the invention of the alphabet and the formation of man (Adam –––––––––––––– Kheper-Re renders YaHUH-El (Joel) or Eliyahu. In Ethiopian tradition King Solomon’s son and heir is correctly remembered by his prenomen as Menelik = Men(kheper)re, although he is not the son, but the son-in-law of his wife Queen Hatshepsut-Sheba of Egypt and Ethiopia, whom the Kebra Negast also remembers by her prenomen Maatkare-Makeda, cf.
Edward Ullendorff, TheQueen of Sheba in Ethiopian Tradition, in James P. Pritchard (ed.), Solomon and Sheba (London 1974) p. 110. 25) Cf. Aurelius Augustinus, De Civitate Dei (XVIII, 8): “Cum . . . natus est in Aegypto Moyses, per quem populus Dei de servitute Aegyptia liberatus est, . . . fuisse a quibusdam creditur Prometheus, quem propterea ferunt de luto formasse homines, quia optimus sapientiae doctor fuisse perhibetur.” With other words, Prometheus is said to have made “men out of dirt”, because he is believed to have been the best teacher of wisdom, as Moses is also known for his teaching or Torah from the Sinai, see Ed Metzler, Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) p. 22 Note 12. [16]
Kadmon) out of dirt, while Jewish mysticism in “The Book of Formation” likens the inscription on the Tablets of the Law in the original alphabet by Moses to the creation of the world.26) The wife of Prometheus was “Asia”, as Herodotus recounts, and the alphabet was invented by pro-Methe-us in Asia, whose name is not Indo-European and yields Moses, if stripped of its Aryan prefix and suffix, for the “th” in Methe becomes “sh” in Hebrew Mosheh, one of the children of Isra-el, Asherah and El, Uranus and Gaea.27) –––––––––––––– 26) See “The Book of Formation” or Sefer Yetzirah (1, 1); and Ed Metzler, Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) p. 146 Note 39. Thetransmission of the Hebrew-Phoenician alphabet (above Note 19) from Israel to Greece is correctly ascribed by Herodotus, Histories (V, 58–61) to Kadmos (from Hebrew Kadmon “ancient”) and the first Phoenicians, who founded the Polis (from Baalut “dominion”) of Thebes, named after the city of David-Thutmosis I, the capital of the Israelite dynasty of Egypt, cf. Ed Metzler, Conflict of Laws (N. 13) Note 18. Hence Linear B was gradually superseded by
thealphabet in the first quarter of the first millennium B. C. E. without the ridiculous relapse into illiteracy known as the Greek Dark Ages, sic Yves Duhoux, Mycénien et écriture grecque, in BCILL vol. 26 (1988) pp. 31 and 40. 27) The motive of a sexual union between Heaven (Uranus) and Earth (Gaea) is present in Israel’s dream of the ladder to heaven (Genesis 28, 12–19), and in the biblical etymology of Israel’s night of wrestling with a heavenly being (Genesis 32, 25–33; 35, 10–15), cf. Ed Metzler, Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) p. 145 Note 37. On Prometheus and Asia, see Herodotus, Histories (IV, 45). [17]
§ 10. Greek mythology begins with Pro- metheus-Moses, as the Bible (Genesis 1, 1) begins with the creation of the “world” (Hebrew Olam), which is a mystification of the foundation of the ancient Republic (Hebrew Ol Am) of Israel:28) In the beginning God (Hebrew Elohim, by haplo- logy from El ha-Elim “highest leader”) or rather the first supreme judge Moses created “the heaven and the earth”, Uranus and Gaea, Asherah and El, contracted into Israel.29) After the Exodus of the Israelite pyramid builders from Egypt, who were called Titans and believed to be giants like the makers of Cyclopian masonry, at the end of the Middle Kingdom in 1441 B. C. E. Moses founded –––––––––––––– 28) Cf. Isaiah 63, 11: Yemey Olam Mosheh Amo, literally “the days of the Republic of Moses and his people,” long ago or “days of old” for Isaiah, who lived 700 years later. 29) The deification of the Mosaical tablets (Note 5 supra)led to the mystification of their graphical details (above Notes 10 and 15) as well as the theological reinterpretation of their juridical text, especially the proper name of Israel’s god YaHUH (Note 24 supra), which did not exist before the tablets were made (Exodus 6, 2 and 3). Likewise, the generic Hebrew term for “god” Elohim originally meant the pre-monarchic head of state, the President of the ancient Republic of Israel, and its Commander-in-Chief of the Armies (Elohey Tzeva’ot), cf. Ed Metzler, Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) p. 85 Note 44;
Idem, Conflict of Laws (N. 13) Notes38–39.[18]
the popular “rule” (Ol) of his “people” (Am) of Israel (Asher ha-El) by means of the ten words (Decalogue) of his teaching (Torah), that is the ten lines of his Tablets of the Law, by which the world was created.30) § 11. Thales of Miletus probably was a Jew, because his name means a Jewish prayer shawl, and Herodotus reports that he was a Phoenician by descent, who simply was quoting the Torah (Genesis 1, 1 and 2) when he held that “in the beginning” (Greek en Arche or Hebrew be-Reshit) was the water, as did Saint John when he wrote many centuries later that “in the beginning” was the word or “logos” of the Decalogue.31) The same –––––––––––––– 30) Cf. Avot 5, 1: “With ten words (Decalogue) was the world (Republic) created;” similarly the Sefer Yetzirah (1, 1): He inscribed (Chakak) the Tablets of the Law, and “created his world” (Bara’ et-Olamo), his democracy or rule (Ol) of his people (Amo), see above Note 28; and Ed Metzler, Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) p. 196 Note 21. The Jewish era of creation beginning 3761 B. C. E. is also a mystification of the actual date of Exodus and Decalogue (1441 B. C. E.), cf. Ed Metzler, Conflict of Laws (N. 13) Note 37.Before the Exodus the people of Israel served El Shaddai, the god of Fayoum (ancient Egyptian Shedet), the Shedetite (Exodus 6, 3), whence they left on the Fayoum Exodus Route, see Ed Metzler, Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) p. 37 Note 14, and p. 180 Note 43.31) See Herodotus, Histories (I, 170), for whom the Jews [19]
is true of his geometry concerning right triangles in a circle, its diameter, and the isosceles triangles formed by its radius, which as with Pythagoras is the geometry of the Mosaical Tablets of the Law and their box, the Ark of the Covenant.32) Hence, “the Jews are a people of philosophers” in the opinion of Theophrastus of Eresus, the father of the history of philosophy, who knew the libraries of Plato and Aristotle on pre-Socratic philosophy, that have long since been lost.33) –––––––––––––– are those Phoenicians (above Note 13) who, by their own account (Haggadah), migrated to Canaan (Phoenicia) from the Red Sea (Ibid. VII, 89), for Hebrew and Phoenician script are as identical (Note 19 supra) as Hebrew is the language of Canaan (Isaiah 19, 18), although in the Persian period, treated by Herodotus, the Jewish returnees from the Babylonian Exile used the Aramaic (Syrian) language and alphabet, so that Herodotus rightly calls them “the Syrians in Palestine.” Both Thales and Hebrew Tallith “scarf” are spelled with an initial Tet (Greek Theta). On Saint John (1, 1), cf. Claus Schedl, Zur Theologie des Alten Testaments (Vienna 1986) p. 34, who points out that his Logos is not a Greek concept, but refers to the Decalogue and the story of creation. 32) See Jaap Mansfeld (N. 12) pp. 48–9, 52–3, and 168–9. After the deification of the Mosaical tablets (cf. Notes 5 and 29supra) the Ark of the Covenant, in which they were carried, became the divine chariot (Hebrew Merkavah) of Jewish mysticism, whence the Pythagorean harmony (from Greek harma “chariot”) of the ten spheres, Sephirot or Decalogue (Idem pp. 162–3). 33) Cf. Encyclopaedia Judaica (German 1931) vol. 7 at 664. In epigrammatic brevity, the neo-Platonist Numenius of Apamea is also right in calling Plato “a Greek-speaking Moses” (Encyclopaedia [20]
[The printed graphics were replaced by their equivalents from this website]  The rectangle ABCD represents the Ark of the
Covenant ofYaHUH (Yahuweh), which is a box made out of acacia wood at the time of the Exodus of the people of Israel from Egypt in 1441 B. C. E. (1. Kings 6, 1) for transporting the two stone Tablets of the Law of the Torah “theoria” or teaching of Moses from the Sinai to the Promised Land. The Bible gives its precise measurements: “two cubits and a half was the length of it, and a cubit and a half the breadth of it,” (Exodus 37, 1). In it is the circle later named after Thales of Miletus touching the short sides of the box in the middle at points E and F, while cutting its long sides at points K, L, M, and N. The rectangle KLMN represents the
MosaicalTablets of the Law lying side by side, divided in two by line OP. The four right triangles KLM, KLN, KMN, and LMN make use of the later so-called Pythagorean numbers 3, 4, and 5 divided by two (3 : 4 : 5 = 1.5 : 2 : 2.5), each of the Tablets being 1 by 1.5 cubits. [21]
the Jewishness of the Empiricism of Francis Bacon § 12. The Mosaical ban on idolatry, which occupies considerable space in the text of the Ten Commandments, is so central to Judaism that the Talmud calls him a Jew “who rejects idol worship”, and, therefore, a philosophy is truly Jewish, if the rejection of idolatry is its central theme.34) This happens to be the case with the philosophy of Francis Bacon in particular and Puritanism in general, which owes its very name –––––––––––––– Judaica, ibid. at 673), since Platonism is in essence Pythagoreanism, as Bertrand Russell (N. 2) p. 37 remarks, and Pythagoreanism is but a Greek version of Judaism, as Hermippus of Smyrna claimed, and I was able to prove. Besides Thales and Pythagoras, of course, other philosophers from Ionia (above Note 4) were likewise influenced by Jewish thought, such as Anaximander’s infinite worlds or spheres (cf. Note 15 supra), and Anaximenes, who like Thales was quoting Genesis 1, 1–2, when he held that “in the beginning” was the air or wind (Hebrew Ruach), which blew “upon the face of the waters,” as well as the monotheism of Xenophanes, see Jaap Mansfeld (N. 12) pp. 70–1, 88–9, and 224–5. 34) Cf. Exodus 20, 4–6 (= Deuteronomy 5, 8–10); Daniel 3, 12–18; Talmud, Meg. 13a: “He who denies idols is called a Jew;” and the Supreme Court of Israel, who ruled in the Rufeisen case of 1963 that a convert to Roman Catholicism no longer is a Jew. [22]
to the “purity” from pollution by the filth of Roman Catholic idol worship, – but apparently the Jewishness of the empiricism of Francis Bacon has never been claimed.35) By incorporating the whole Hebrew Bible into the holy scriptures of Christianity, the church also swallowed the two stone tablets of Moses, which proved indigestible and incompatible with Greek Orthodox or Roman Catholic idolatry, inherited from the paganism of its Graeco-Roman past.36) § 13. One of the idols rejected by Puritanism as opposed to the less radical Protestantism of the Lutheran and Anglican church, who had already –––––––––––––– 35) See for instance Bertand Russell (N. 2) pp. 541–5, who does not even mention his Puritan background (below Note 41);and Encyclopaedia Judaica, which has no entry on Francis Bacon, but mentions under English Literature (vol. 6 at 776) that Bacon’s “The New Atlantis” (1627) describes the utopian Pacific island of Bensalem, where the Jewish colonists have a college of natural philosophy called “Solomon’s House” and are governed by rules of kabbalistic antiquity. Similarly, John Amos Comenius speaks of Solomon’s House (Proverbs 9, 1–6) in his “Praeludium Pansophiae” (Oxford 1637) chapter 37, and calls science based on experience (Autopsia) Solomonic, its opposite vain and gentile, cf. Ed Metzler, Emancipation from Cultural Infantilism (N. 2) p. 107. 36) Neither Jesus was responsible for his own deification nor was Moses for that of his tablets (Note 5 supra), which took
placein the centuries after their death, and violated the ban on idolatry. [23]
done away with the authority of the Pope, and refused to worship any of the Catholic saints, such as Saint Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ as the “Mother of God” or the “Queen of Heaven”, is Saint Thomas Aquinas, the official philosopher of the Roman Catholic church, who virtually made a Christian saint out of Aristotle, although this pagan philosopher lived in the fourth century before the Christian era.37) While Lutheran and Anglican philosophy shared the neo-scholasticism of the Roman Catholic church, Puritan philosophy was fiercely anti-Aristotelian.38) Its champion was the French Huguenot Petrus Ramus, who taught –––––––––––––– 37) Cf. Bertrand Russell (N. 2) p. 162, who describes Aristotle’s metaphysics as “Plato diluted by common sense,” and observes (p. 452) that “the Stagyrite has, among Catholics, almost the authority of one of the Fathers.” This explains his rejection by radical Protestantism, see Hugh Kearney, Scholars and Gentlemen, (Ithaca 1970) p. 50: “Where Saint Thomas baptized Aristotle, and the Jesuits canonized him, Ramus exorcized him.” 38) After the defeat of the Armada in 1588 (Note 44 infra) a repressive period began for Puritanism accompanied by the revival of scholasticism, cf. Christopher Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (Oxford 1965) p. 32; and Hugh Kearney (N. 37) pp. 77–90. On Germany see Ernst Lewalter, Spanisch-jesuitische und deutsch-lutherische Metaphysik des 17. Jahrhunderts, ein Bei- trag zur Vorgeschichte des deutschen Idealismus (1935), which has kept its repressive touch (below Note 54).[24]
at the University of Paris, where he was murdered for his Protestantism on August 26, 1572 in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.39) § 14. By distinguishing four kinds of idols Francis Bacon outdid Moses who had only three, but whatever their number, the point is that one should not bow to their authority nor serve them as a slave, least of all the scholastic Aristotelianism of Saint Thomas Aquinas.40) There is no doubt that Bacon got the Jewish concept of idolatry from the Puritan biblicism of his home as well as the Puritan philosophy of Cambridge University, which was a stronghold of Ramism in the fifteen- seventies, when he attended it.41) Even though –––––––––––––– 39) See Petrus Ramus (Latinized from Pierre de la Ramée), Collectaneae Praefationes, Epistolae, Orationes (Marburg 1599) p. 194, where he writes in a letter to the Aristotelian philosopher Schegk in Tübingen: “hardly any idolatry is more worthless in my judgement than your idolomania of Aristotelian sophisms;” and Christopher Hill (N. 38) p. 292. 40) Whatever kind of idols, of which Bertrand Russell (N. 2) p. 544 has even five: “Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them!” (Exodus 20, 5 = Deuteronomy 5, 9). 41) Cf. James Spedding et al., The Works of Francis Bacon, (London 1858–74) vol. VIII pp. 2–5, who mentions the “puritanic fervour” of Bacon’s mother; and William Rawley, who writes in his biography (Ibid. vol. I p. 4) that when Francis Bacon was at the [25]
Francis Bacon did not like the Ramist method of dichotomizing, his philosophy constitutes an eloquent restatement of Ramism: The very idea of writing a New Organum was prompted by the attacks of Petrus Ramus against the old Organum of Aristotle and his Metaphysics, that were to be replaced by a more modern and useful philosophy based on experience.42) as Democratic Substratum of Western Philosophy § 15. In politics the rejection of idol worship meant the right of resistance against tyrants, as it did already at the time of the Exodus of Israel –––––––––––––– University of Cambridge, “about sixteen years of age, (as his lord- ship hath been pleased to impart unto myself), he first fell into the dislike of the philosophy of Aristotle.” During this period, “the list of Cambridge Ramists reads like a list of the most radical Cambridge Puritans” according to Hugh Kearney (N. 37) p. 61. 42) On the empiricism of Petrus Ramus, cf. his “Scholarum Dialecticarum seu Animadversionum in Organum Aristotelis, libri [26]
from Egypt, when Moses liberated the Hebrew slaves from their house of bondage, and wrote his ban on idolatry into the Ten Commandments of his Torah.43) The idol worship of the Roman Catholic church went hand in hand with political oppression by the Catholic kings of Spain, whose tyranny William of Nassau-Orange resisted in the Dutch war of independence, and whose Armada was defeated by England in 1588.44) The right of resistance as practised by William of Orange was justified in political theory by Johannes Althusius, a Ramist law professor at the Calvinist university of Herborn in Nassau, where he published in 1603 –––––––––––––– XX,” edited by Johann Piscator, head of the University of Herborn from 1584–1625 (Frankfurt 1594) pp. 250–51: “Utinam literis aureis, atque amplis et illustribus, pro foribus scholarum omnium, vel potius firma et stabili intelligentia memoriaque in mentibus magistrorum, duo ista verba essent inscripta et impressa: EMPIRIA, HISTORIA!” In his view empiric research, which should be written in golden letters over the doors of all schools, is the cause and origin of all true and useful knowledge. On what Ramus had to say about metaphysics, see Hugh Kearney (N. 37) p. 49, and on Bacon’s dislike for dichotomizing, Idem p. 99, although mathematicians such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz also liked the binary system, cf. Jaap Mansfeld (N. 12) p. 103 Note 5. 43) See Jan Assmann (N. 24) pp. 25–35 on the interrelation between slavery and idolatry in ancient Egypt (cf. Note 30 supra). 44) On July 10, 1584 William of Orange was assassinated in [27]
his “Politica Methodice Digesta”, which inspired the political thought of the Puritan revolution and the Pilgrim Fathers.45) § 16. Another giant of the Herborn School was John Amos
Comenius, whose pedagogicalrealism like the empiricism of Francis Bacon had its roots in Ramism, as we can see from his Herborn thesis of 1613, written under his teacher Johann Heinrich Alsted.46) The latter’s encyclo- paedia as well as other books published at the Herborn University Press played an important role –––––––––––––– Delft, and in the same month the University of Herborn opened, which was founded by his brother John VI of Nassau-Dillenburg, and consisted of a college (Paedagogium) and four graduate schools, Theology, Jurisprudence, Philosophy, and Medicine, until it was closed by Napoleon in 1812, cf. Johann Hermann Steubing, Geschichte der Hohen Schule Herborn (Hadamar 1823) pp. 36, 68–73, and 237. Besides John Amos Comenius, other
well-knownscholars were educated in Herborn, such as the great Hebraists Johannes Buxtorf, the elder in Basle, Cort Aslakssen from Bergen in Norway, later Copenhagen, and Giovanni Diodati of Geneva, the famous translator of the Bible into Italian. 45) Cf. Johannes Althusius, Politica Methodice Digesta atque exemplis sacris et profanis illustrata (3rd ed. Herborn, Nassau 1614) chapter 38 “De tyrannide eiusque remediis” p. 908 § 55, translated by my Dallas friend Frederick S. Carney, The Politics of Johannes Althusius (Boston 1964) p. 188. The great jurist Otto von Gierke rescued Althusius from oblivion in 1880, who was republished by my Heidelberg teacher Carl Joachim Friedrich at Harvard in 1932. 46) It bears the title “Sylloge Quaestionum Controversarum [28]
in Puritan America, where Governor Winthrop tried to make Comenius President of Harvard College, and when Puritanism got the upper hand in the sixteen-forties and fifties, Comenius visited his fellow Puritans in England (1641–42), whose efforts resulted in the resettlement of the Jews in England under Oliver Cromwell.47) The Glorious Revolution of 1688 made William of Orange III King of England, and the philosopher John Locke returned from his exile in Holland, summing up the Puritan school of thought.48) –––––––––––––– e Philosophiae viridario depromptarum” (Herbornae Nassoviorum 1613) p. 7, where he answers question no. 2, “Omnisne cognitio a sensu incipiat?” as follows: “Concludimus ergo nihil cognosci, nisi beneficio sensuum.” In the previous year his teacher Alsted had published his “Philosophia Digne Restituta” (Herborn 1612) with an impressive dedication to the University of Cambridge, the other stronghold of Puritanism and Ramism besides Herborn, and in it he quotes literally the Dialectics of Petrus Ramus on "EMPIRIA, HISTORIA!" (p. 148), see above Note 42.47) The English Comenian John Dury, a diplomatic agent of Oliver Cromwell, was first to work for admitting Jews to England, and corresponded on the subject with Menasseh ben Israel
inAmsterdam, cf. Christopher Hill (N. 38) pp. 100–109. It was also due to him and other English Comenians that plans were made which finally led to the foundation of the Royal Society, to whom John Amos Comenius dedicated his “Via Lucis” in 1668, that he had already written during his stay in England, see Ed Metzler, Emancipation from Cultural Infantilism (N. 2) pp. 102
and 103.48) The father of John Locke was a Puritan just like Bacon’s [29]
§ 17. The French and American Revolution as well as their democratic and liberal philosophy of 18th century Enlightenment is deeply indebted to the Glorious Revolution and its philosophy of John Locke, and thus in final analysis to Puritan Protestantism and Judaism.49) But whereas the democratic ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence of 1776, and the Constitution of the United States of America are a continuation of the Puritan 17th century New England mind, this democratic substratum is lacking in France, where Protestant philosophy was imported from –––––––––––––– mother (above Note 41), cf. Bertrand Russell (N. 2) p. 604. While John Locke was in Holland, the Edict of Nantes was revoked on October 18, 1685, and during November and December of 1685 he wrote the “Epistola de Tolerantia” in Amsterdam, which was published in Gouda in May of 1689 after his return to England, see Locke’s “Letter on Toleration” edited by Raymond Klibansky, and J. W. Gough (Oxford 1968) pp. IX–XIX, and pp. 1–3 et passim. On the replacement of scholasticism by empiricism with the advent of John Locke and the Glorious Revolution, cf. Christopher Hill (N. 38) p. 126; and Hugh Kearney (N. 37) p. 160. 49) This applies even to the atheism and materialism of the French encyclopaedists as well as the positivism and pragmatism of the 19th and 20th century. Perceiving the interrelation of slavery and idolatry (above Note 43), Moses was opposed to any kind of idolatry, whether worshipping flesh and blood (Jesus) or wood and stone (YaHUH), cf. Notes 32 and 36 supra; Ed Metzler, Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) p. 199 Note 28. [30]
England by men like Voltaire and Montesquieu more than a generation after French Protestantism had been eradicated in 1685 by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.50) By relying on the Jewish rather than Graeco-Roman sources of Christianity Puritanism supplied modern Western Philosophy with its democratic substratum.51) § 18. What the Exodus of Israel from Egypt was all about, is the emancipation from slavery, the liberation of Hebrew slaves by Moses being the first great proletarian revolution in the world, which led to the foundation of the oldest republic on earth, the ancient Republic of Israel, and gave –––––––––––––– 50) Voltaire lived in England from 1726–29, Montesquieu from 1729–31, cf. Bertrand Russell (N. 2) pp. 605 and 642; and George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory (Lodon 1968) pp. 546–53 and 561–2. Baconian philosophy had its breakthrough only after 1640 with the rise of Puritanism, see Christopher Hill (N. 38) pp. 96 and 116. The triumph of John Locke’s philosophy is also the triumph of Puritan-Jewish philosophy. 51) The deification of the Mosaical Tablets of the Law had made Saul and David from generals “appointed by the commander- in-chief” (Elohey Tzeva’ot) of the Republic into kings “anointed by God,” see above Note 29. This divine right of kings reverted into the republican sovereignty of the people in the political theory of Puritan Protestantism as formulated by Johannes Althusius, and the great English Puritan John Milton, cf. Carl Joachim Friedrich, Preface to Frederick S. Carney (N. 45) p. XII.[31]
to mankind the Decalogue and the Alphabet that were to remain the democratic substratum of Western Culture.52) The philosophy of the Exodus as set forth in the Mosaical ban on idolatry of the Ten Commandments prohibits any return into submission to the authority of a master, whether in politics, economics or philosophy, which is the basis of modern liberalism and empiricism.53) Yet, the geometry of the Mosaical Tablets of the Law is also the basis of Pythagoreanism, and of the anti-democratic philosophy of the metaphysical school, whence the twofold impact of Israel on Western Philosophy.54) –––––––––––––– 52) The political desirability of the alphabet in a democracy was essential to its introduction at the time of the Exodus of Israel from Egypt, making literacy and learning available to everybody, cf. Ed Metzler, Discovering Mosaistics (N. 1) p. 120 Note 51, and p. 185 Note 54; see also above Notes 19–22. 53) In his Dialectics, the empiricist Petrus Ramus (N. 42) p. 30 remarks with respect to the medical empiricism of Galen, whom he considers the last to deserve being called a philosopher: “Servi deinceps, non philosophi fuere!” Cf. Ed Metzler, Emancipa- tion from Cultural Infantilism (N. 2) p.
100 Note 7.54) Servility to monarchic absolutism as well as dictatorial totalitarianism has characterized the metaphysical mainstream of German philosophy from the 17th century onwards (Note 38 supra)down to Hegel and Heidegger, cf. L. T. Hobhouse, The Metaphysical Theory of the State (London 1960) pp. 21–25. [32] |
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– at USA-$ 20.– per issue – Discovering the System of Mosaical Metrology AMMM
VOL. 1, NO. 1 = ISBN 3-924448-03-5 * Discovering the Three-Dimensional Structure of the Ten Commandments AMMM
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VOL. 2, NO. 1 = ISBN 3-924448-09-4 * The Impact of Israel on Western Philosophy AMMM
VOL. 2, NO. 2 = ISBN 3-924448-10-8 * The Mosaical Roots of European Musical Theory AMMM
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VOL. 2, NO. 4 = ISBN 3-924448-12-4 * inscription on the Tablets of the Law, and to prove the priority and centrality of Hebrew script in the world history of writing.” Bibliographical Quarterly of the Jewish Nationaland University Library in Jerusalem, Israel, VOL. 60, NO. 1–2 (1986) pp. 287–88, *3045–47. * ISBN 3-924448-10-8 |
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