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{word} = hard to understand, might be this

Student introduction: (Philosophy 58, April 15th, 1954.)

... the Bible, { } nearly always misunderstood, you can turn which way you want. After the last meeting, I received a question from one of you: How can you treat the Bible scientifically? And I said, "Verbal, verbal," because I was so totally exhausted, there were other men around. I had just talked for one hour and-ahalf, and I had really -- made an attempt not to say any more than I had to. So I received a very reproachful letter, because this word "verbal" had not been understood. What I tried to say -- and probably too briefly -- was that I did not have -- did not analyze the Bible last time scientifically at all. And that was just a verbal abuse of the term -- "scientific." That it was verbiage to call -- pin me down on "scientific." What I have tried to do is make you read the Bible. Now, if a child is reading Alice Through the Looking Glass, or Alice in Wonderland, and I'm trying to explain this by drawing the chessboard, as you know, which is in some books -- there's a picture -- that's not scientific. But that's just an attempt to -- to translate the book into terms a child can understand, that's all. So I tried to translate the Bible for you, because the Bible has to be translated to every generation afresh. That has nothing to do with what you call "science." I said it's a worldly book. It's a secular book. It has neither -- the Bible has nothing to do with what you call "religion," with pious hypocrisy, or going to church. But it is a true book of the people that have looked for being created in the future. As far as you still believe, although you go to church, that you will be created in the future, you are adherents of this Biblical tradition, which has been inculcated into the nations of the earth for the first time, then and there. Most of the churchgoers in the United States obviously don't wish to be changed at all. They want to be as old as Methuselem, backward, and no future. So of course these people may treat the Bible as a sacred book. Then they don't have to heed it. But if you treat it as a worldly book, gentlemen, that's not {treating} it scientifically. That's treating as a part of the oxygen which is in your s- -- air.

And let me therefore first give you some vital statistics on the Bible, because the last century has, in your own brains and the brains of your parents, and your grandparents, made a tremendous devastation about the Bible. And that has been done by science. And I'm trying to get you out into the open air where there is neither a sacred book, nor the battle against the sacred book. I'm not interested in either one. I'm not -- I think the Biblical criticists are insane, and the fundamentalists are lazy. That's by and large, the relation of their two minds. But they are not interesting. I have never understood how anybody could be interested in Biblical criticism, in the proof that the Jews didn't believe in one God, but they were just as stupid as we are, believing in hydrogen bombs instead. We

are idolaters. You live -- believe in the standard of living, of course. You believe in many gods. But the Jews certainly didn't. But now, for the last hundred years, there wa- -- has been a desperate effort by science to prove that the Jews were idolaters. That's your scientific analysis, by taking it for granted that the agnosticism of the scientists is the -- normal, and that the Jews are perverts, idiots, superstitious, primitive, what-not, tribal, naturalistic -- all the things you have learned in your life, and you are filled with prejudices and superstitions about the Bible.

Now gent- -- just let me put down something very simple. Then we'll talk about it. There is -- Moses is mentioned -- you take down, and make a little list -- statistics -- I get this from the famous Concordance, which is the most beautiful book next to the Bible. That's the list of all the places where one word or the other is used in the Bible. It's -- have you -- has anybody ever seen a Concordance? Very useful book. Most interesting for all studies in the history of the human spirit. And -- you will laugh, but it is true that you can -- recognize the character of this Bi- -- book, by taking down the following figures:

Moses is mentioned 952 times -- 952 times; in the New Testament, out of these 952, 80 times. David is mentioned -- the King David, 1134 times, out of which 57 concern the New Testament. Adam is mentioned 31 times. Abraham is mentioned 320 times. "Prophet" and "prophets" are mentioned 500 times. Bear with me. You cannot immediately see the usefulness of these figures. "Peace" is mentioned 400 times. "War" is mentioned 250 times. Egypt is mentioned 600 times. Earth, 1200 times. "The land," 1800 times. "The tribes," 400 times. "The heavens," 750 times. Did I say Solomon? Did I give you the figure on Solomon?

(No.)

Well, it's quite interesting. Solomon is 299 times. You see, one-quarter only of David.

Now the decisive terms for the book are -- Israel, that's 2,800 times; God, that's 4,600 times; and "the Lord," that's 8,841 times. Of course, this is eas- -- there are -- may be mistakes. It's doesn't matter, I mean, one or the other. But I have tried to be quite careful. Now don't laugh, gentlemen. The Biblical critics of the 19th century and of your own time, because you live far back in the 18th century with your mind -- all Americans do, that's why they are so obsolete; because anybody who believes in the latest news belongs to the year 1750, when people began to press for the latest news. Any serious person today is not interested in the latest news, because we know that the latest news are not the things that make the world. But you believe in the latest news, and therefore you are 200 years behind the times. And therefore, gentlemen, the great ambition of the people in 1750 and the next 200 years was to prove that the latest news are the best news, and there-

fore, the older back, the more stupid people had to be.

Therefore the Jews were stupid. And therefore, it had to be proven that Moses had not existed. Modern criticis- -- critics of the -- the chairs of theology in our universities all over the globe say, "Moses has never lived. He is an invention." The corresponding myth as -- with regard to the New Testament's scientific myth, the myth of -- fabricated for the conscience of the scientists themselves -- is that there were no four Gospels, but just one out of which all the other evolved. Mark is the source Gospel, and the others evolved out of this. John is put out of the way as very late, and Matthew and Luke are just derived from Mark. And it's a similar destruction. If there is only one Gospel, you see, one original Gospel, then the Bible of the New Testament is just a story, as any other -- as Herodot-- as Herodotus, or Virgil, or Dante. Because the whole miracle of the New Testament is that there are four Gospels. That is the miraculous story, that four people were of the same spirit, and that you don't have to look into the letter of any one Gospel, but that the spirit is between the four Gospels.

Therefore the -- the New Testament critics fight against the Holy Spirit. And the Old Testament critics fight against the children of Israel as the chosen people. So Moses has to go, in the Biblical criticism of the antiquity, because if there is no Moses, then, gentlemen, what is the consequence? Then the Jews are a preEgyptian primitive tribe, which is the general assumption, which you hear in all your traditions now. Then they didn't supersede the Egyptian empire. They didn't go beyond the pharaohs, as I have tried to show you. But they fell behind. They just went into the desert, like the Bedouins around Egypt, of which I have spoken to you, like the nomads with the totem pole, and circumcision, and orgies, and initiation, and warpath, and constant war. And the general attempt has been to throw the Israelites before the times of Egypt, and to show they are just tribes -- 12 tribes, yes -- but very primitive, to be neglected, and nationalist- -- nationalistic Semites or what-not. The very term "anti-Semite" is, of course, really an anti-Semitic term, in the sense that the Jews are -- cease -- cease to be interesting if they are Semites. They are only interested -- -ing, if they are more than Semites, because the Arabs are Semites, gentlemen. The Assyrians are Semites. The Babylonians are Semites. And the Jews are the Jews, despite the fact that they are Semites. The invention of the name "anti-Semites," by the so-called scientific school in the 19th century, is really the destruction of the Bible and the position of the people of the Bible, because as the people of God -- the people of the Bible are the people to be created in the future. And as Semites, they are the 12 tribes out of which this material people -- race came in which was to be the kernel of the future kingdom of Heaven on earth. You must understand that the word "anti-Semite" already -- or "philo-Semite," for that matter -- already shifts -- begs the question. Anybody who says that he is an "anti-Semite" has abolished Judaism, Israel, the Bible, revelation, and the story of the unification of the

human race. Very clever. You can be an anti-Israelite, but that's more complicated. Most people are ashamed of that. That you can be. But you cannot be an antiSemite, because the Jews have nothing to do with the Semites. Sem in the Bible is, as Japheth and as Ham, the father of any number of Gentile nations. And the Jews are the terrible group that was not even Semites, but declined to be either Semites or Japhethites or Hammites. That's the whole problem. That's why they- 're called the fighters for God, Isra-el.

Now, as to this statistic, gentlemen. If you break out the person of Moses, as you see, you {elimit} thousand -- 1,000 places of the Bible. That's quite a number. But if you then say that the -- originally the Jews were just as superstitious as the Egyptians or their neighbors, the Canaanites, the Philistines, et cetera, you take away the cause for which the Bible is written, the cause of the Lord. You cannot eliminate 15 -- 13, as I count, more than 13,000 places in the Old Testament and the New Testament in which the word "Lord" and "God" occurs, and the word "people." The word "people" occurs, as you have seen, 2,300 times; "God," 4,600 times; and "Lord," 8,800 times, which together is 15,000, if I have guessed right, isn't it?

In other words, gentlemen, because of these three terms, the book is written. It is written for no other purpose. And if you take that out, it would be just as funny as if you would take out of The Iliad the name Achilles, and out of The Odyssey the name Odysseus. It would be exactly the same. You must put on the left-hand side of your ledger the Bible -- Old and New Testament -- and on the right-hand side The Iliad and The Odyssey, and you must admit that The Iliad and The Odyssey are humanistic songs on two great heroes. And the Bible is the two epics of the acts of God with men. And if you eliminate God, you have no story. And you cannot have Dante's Divine Comedy without Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. If you take that out, and say, "Dante wrote a story, and belatedly the theologian -- or a theological superstition introduced then the notion of Hell and Purgatory and Heaven," you make yourself ridiculous. Now if you say that the Bible was written as a chronicle of the tribes who came to -- into Canaan by some mystical reason and later the word of the one God and the Lord was introduced -- or of Moses -- you make yourself -- or of "people," you make yourself ridiculous.

But that's what the insanity of the agnostic, college mind has done. You people of this -- these colleges of West- -- the Western world have done this. And can you be surprised that the answer is Bolshevism. Your science, your belief has produced Bolshevism. After all, who are the Russians? The Russians were people who a hundred years sent their students to colleges in the Western world because they had no decent schools of their own. Then these tur- -- people turned tail and made a revolution in Russia. And now we deplore their actions. And

they do exactly what every natural scientist on the Western world has preached for the last hundred years. We are the Bolsheviks, and now we are very rueful about it. We sold our poorest enlightenment to the Russians. They aren't any worse than Benjamin Franklin in their stupidity of enlightenment, in their rationalization, in their ridicule of all revelation. Do you think Mr. Benjamin Franklin had more -- to say about God than -- than Mr. Lenin? Much less. And here, you hear even the president of the United States said they are atheists. Well, atheism was the fashion in America for the last 200 years. The people who did believe in God were called fundamentalists. I am a fundamentalist. Much better -- a fundamentalist than to be a liberal.

But you haven't to be either. These parties are just nonsensical, gentlemen. They have nothing to do today with -- with the real situation. We are either a people that is still waiting for being created, gentlemen, or we are a tribe, or we are an empire. As an empire, we must go with General Motors and live for the standard of living. And as tribes, we must go with Gerald K. Smith, and be antiSemites. And as a people, we have the greatest responsibility on the globe, because we must lead the way into some unity of the human society. Now take your pick.

But I -- what I was going to say, gentlemen, is that I am not scientific when I talk this way of you to Bible. I tried to say what these strange people wanted to undertake. And I tried to show you that if they speak of the Lord, and God, and themselves as the people, or His people 15,000 times, that they obviously meant it, and that all your delightful scientific objectivity and criticism is ridiculous, because it says that the Jews can be understood without God. That's the whole story of Biblical criticism. Let's see how far we can go to explain Israel and Judaism on -- from economic conditions, from their environment, from their so-called background, you see. And the fatality about a messianic group is that they are everything despite their background, you see. If you look at St. Paul, you would not expect that he ever became an Apostle to the Gentiles, because you -- he didn't look Jewish. And certainly Our Lord did. They always paint them as a -- as a Nordic-race man. Don't be betrayed, you see. He had no comeliness, and no beauty. You would have not greeted Him on the street. It's very complacent, I mean, very easy to say that he was -- looked beautiful. It's the only thing He didn't.

Here in town, we had a minister who -- of whom the children said, "That's the way Christ must have looked," so that was the end of Christianity, and the minister now gets a divorce.

And I have -- old people that say admiringly, "Oh, if he only were this way. Isn't it beautiful that the children say so." Well, children know nothing of Christ,

and of the crucifixion, and of the passion.

But gentlemen, the Biblical criticism have been very successful. Here today we have Maundy Thursday and we have college classes. And tomorrow is Good Friday, and we have college. And Monday is Easter Monday and we have classes, so {I think} atheism has conquered. Nobody any -- believes anymore either in the exodus of the Jews, which is on this Friday, or in the crucifixion, which the -- and the Maundy Thursday, the -- the transfer of the Easter festival, the Pesah festival -- the Pesah lamb to the Lord Himself on today and tomorrow. I'm ashamed of myself. It's a -- strange how this country has really mastered the Bi- -- {Biblical criticism} to get rid of the Jews and the Christianity in the same -- at the same time.

It is astounding. I haven't yet found out when it really happened. It's -- it's not older, I think, at Dartmouth College than 35 years, that the last vestige of the calendar of the Jews and the Christians has been abolished. I don't think it was true in the 19th century, because we had still -- chapel service. Now if you have chapel service every day, I suppose, there would also have been some mentioning of Maundy Thursday and -- and Good Friday.

Now today, gentlemen, is such an important day because, as you know, very rarely this is the case -- is at the same time today the Jewish Easter and the Christian Easter. And this exodus from Egypt, with which the whole story of the unifying human race stands and falls, has been eliminated by the Biblical critics, because they say it has never taken place.

I -- I bought, unfortunately on my own -- for my own money, I should never have done this -- the last three books, the best books, scientific books on the history of Israel. And in all three books, the pretension is that Moses has never lived, that the -- on the Sinai the Ten Commandments were not given, or if they were given, that's the wonderful -- speculation of one of these gents, that is, then the 72 elders of Israel obviously went up to the mountain without Moses. There was no necessity for one man leading the 72. Can you imagine 72 people of some unit that doesn't exist, according to these critics, you see, which is just some Bedouins, you see, walking up to Sinai to get the Ten Commandments, only from hatred against the tradition on Moses, to destroy the fact that 72 people certainly have to be led by a dictatorial person, because otherwise there is no discipline among the 72 elders. It is such a fantastic speculation. You just read any one of these things, and it's just to be laughed at. They are funny. But unfortunately you people were delighted -- I mean, as representing the average American free mason -- they were delighted, because you could whip your minister. You could whip your priest. You could slap them in the face for their superstition. You got rid of authority. Especially divorced people love that, because if -- if the priest

can be shown that his Bible is not valid, of course, he has no right to say, "There shall be no divorce." Very simple, because then the Ten Commandments go, too.

If you find people over 25, and they rant against the Church, always ask, "Are you divorced?" And younger men, as you know, have also very good reason in a similar direction, to deny the existence of God.

That's how you can divide men -- humanity, by and large, in these two groups: the unmarried for their troubles, and the married for their troubles, and they have all -- every reason to say, "There is no God." It's too cheap, gentlemen, to -- to discuss these things on this level, but I must mention them, because you -- most people discuss the existence of God on this cheap level, of their own personal fear that they might be found out. They don't know that God is very indifferent to their troubles at 14, their troubles at 21, their troubles at 28, in this respect. He has made us troublesome in this part of our body, so probably He is not against it.

Gentlemen, the story of the 7 and the 12 I used last time as an example for the way in which the Bible tries to cure men from their {two of} superstitions of ancestor-worship and mother's apron strings, the Oedipus complex; and on the other hand, of their astrological complexities, of 12 months and 365 days, and the zodiac, and "don't go on the Thursday into the cellar, because otherwise the cellar door will fall upon you," I mean, as all these wonderful columns in the newspapers read.

The -- the atrocities of Egypt, and the atrocities of the {Scythes}, as the Bible calls them, the Sioux, you would say, the Apaches, the -- Shawnee -- Indian, of the Indian, the red man, you see, those two atrocities are fought by the Bible, throughout. And so I suggest that you read the Bible as polemics. You can only understand the Bible if you understand that it is polemical. To give you an example: Noah comes after a great flood. The pharaoh governs after the flood, and on the basis of the flood. In Babylon, the same was done in the empire of the two rivers, Euphrates and Tigris, and it was the same in China: the authority of the emperor rests on his understanding when the floodwaters will reach their high mark, and when they will begin to ebb. In all these cases, a priesthood has to be appointed, which watches the stars, and the movements in the skies, over hundreds and hundreds of years. Now the first thing you find in Israel is that there are no priests of this caliber. There is nobody who has to observe and to keep records.

The only thing the Jews believe in is the present-day sign. And the extrem- -- extreme case of which scientific people always boast, because they don't understand it, is the famous story of Joshua, for whom the sun stood still, and the

moon, and the day was prolonged. What it means, gentlemen, is that all the festivals of the Jews rested on observed new events. The Jews are the people of real history, of experienced events; whereas the Egyptians are the people of scientific calculation and prediction. The sorcerers of pharaoh said, in 1460 years, you remember, the Great Year would recur. And it did recur, in the { }, in 1321, you remember, and in 139 of our own era, the Great Year of 2780 B.C. did recur. Mind you, that's some ach- -- feast, some positive thing.

Now the Jews celebrate Easter, gentlemen, I don't know the details, on an observed date of the New Moon, but they had horsemen, on the New Year Day in Jerusalem, waiting till the new sickle of the moon appeared, and then sending out these horsemen all into the Diaspora of Judaism to tell them: this moon, which is really there. This was their means of fighting astrology, that they waited actually because, perhaps, the Lord, in His all-powerfulness, did decide to {disaver}, to disavow the priests, because God is the m- -- god of the future. And so serious were the Jews in every detail, in every feature, concerned with his newness, in his futurism, in his futurity, that you could not pin him down on any law that had gone on before.

Now you may have heard that the most modern physicists have discovered that they cannot predict the future. You hear perhaps that they now say it's only probable. But you are not sure. They have given up prediction. They say there is no natural law in the sense in which you believed -- believe in it. It's very strange that they have come back to this deep reverence for the freedom of the future. God is free. Jewish Easter, gentlemen, is different from every Egyptian or naturalistic harvest festival or holiday, because it waits until it has happened. The Jews have created, gentlemen, the sequence of unbelievable facts which we call history, and of which I have tried to tell you in the first two meetings here. I said, "History is the sequence of the unbelievable events," you see. Egyptian astrology is the story of the predictable events. And the tribal history is the history of loyalties, unchangeable loyalties where the past must explain the present and the future. But gentlemen, you and I know that the future explains the past and the present. If you have graduated after having flunked 50 courses, and stayed on for four more years than originally planned, then you have suddenly the meaning and the key of your life so far. Well, I mean, any failure, any trouble you go through is only explicable by its outcome. There are fruitful failures, as you know, failures that are inevitable and desirable. And there are useless failures, and we only know from the end. That Jesus didn't die in vain on the Cross, we know today. He didn't. That's why He was -- desperate. So there was the Resurrection.

And fruitful failure, gentlemen, is the content of the Jewish and the Christian story. "By their fruits, ye shall know them," the Jews say. Science says, "By their

causes, ye shall know them." That's the opposite. If you -- we should know all of you by your causes, gentlemen, not one of you would be found to merit, to deserve survival. But we all hope for your fruits, so we give you a time of grace. We are all spared, because we still may bear fruit. "By their fruits you shall know them" is the opposite judgment from what the -- world, the Gentiles, the heathen, in your own heart always do. You always judge people by their family background, or the bank account, or their noses, or what-not. But God seems to judge us by our fruits. And so He gives us time, gentlemen. From the very day of birth, we are on probation. And nothing will be held against us, of our background, of our environment, if the probation period proves that we can make good. And that's, I think, the very generous treatment given to most people in this country. That's why it's still a very good country, gentlemen. It is -- we are God's country as long as this is done. America is God's country as long as Mr. Oppenheimer is judged by his fruits, and not by his association.

This is a very practical measure, gentlemen. In Egypt, and in the tribe, everybody is judged -- just judged by his ancestors, or by the stars under which he is born. Don't you understand this? This is very practical. And the stars are just his environment, his class, his grouping, his caste, his profession, where he is found. You all do this, but you know better. I mean, most of you have this strain of the -- in you -- true Israel in themselves, that you are able to forget how a man looks, and to forget what you know of this man, and to wait for he's going to do. Give the man a chance. Give him an opportunity. Isn't that true? Gentlemen, that was unheard before the Jews left Egypt. Unheard. It seemed to be impossible that the future could ever win out over the past or the present. And yet, that's the whole story. We mean by revelation, gentlemen, something so simple that it has completely lost your -- the orbit of your mind.

You live without revelation. It has no meaning, this word, for you. Now put in the word "veil" instead. The Jews say that God has veiled the past and the fu- -- present before it is unveiled by the future events. That Bill Mitchell was right was revealed, unveiled by the second World War. Isn't that true? Nobody can know it beforehand. And you are so impatient that you want to predict it and to know it beforehand. Most of you have no -- no patience and no perseverance with this, what Winston Churchill always in his memoir and his books on the World Wars called "the unfolding" of the story. The unfolding of the story. If people -- you don't know of any unfolding. You want -- you know how they write these paragraphs in these newspapers. You learn it even as creative writing, I think, that you have first to tell the whole story in the beginning, and then you enlarge it, and then you have to enlarge it once more. You have no patience, you see. You give away the whole secret at once. God doesn't. He creates a baby. And in the cradle you have no idea what this child is going to do. Savior of the world? Ridiculous. Just one more child in Bethlehem. Have him be killed. So his

parents have to intercede and say, "This child is more important than all the other children of Bethlehem. If Herod is going to kill this child -- the other children, we are sacrificing our homeland, and my profession, and my Social Security number, and we are going to Egypt." And that's how the New Testament starts: with the importance of one child, in the cradle, you see, just wetting its -- its pants. And it is important, if somebody loves you so much that he imparts importance to you. The -- child -- the child Jesus is only important because He has two special parents. His foster father and His mother are better than the others, because they sacrifice more for the child. That's the whole story. Otherwise He wouldn't have survived in the first place.

You never read this Bible however with -- except with these rosa glasses. It's all wonderful. Gentlemen, it isn't wonderful. It's a very terrible story, that the poor parents, in order to save this one child's life, had to get out of their country, you see. Statue of Liberty in reverse. They want their -- come to the promised land of liberty, you see, with their forefathers from Egypt and now they went back into Egypt to save the savior of the world. Isn't that a ridiculous sarcasm, irony?

To give you an example, gentlemen, of the problems now of the Jews, to wait for the observable event. We may say then, gentlemen, that the tribes are for the facts. "Fact" is a word of the past, what has happened before. And the Jews are the people of the fiat. Fie-at, you say, or fiat?

(Fiat.)

Wie?

(Fiat.)

You see? Let there be light. Fiat lux. That's from which this word f-i-a-t, fiatmoney for example, is taken. We only use it for money today. Fiat-money and the government prints notes, you see, and gives us -- benefits of an inflation, which we have today. That's fiat-money, nothing behind it. Just puffed up. But fiat in the Bible is the creative act of God which is unique.

So gentlemen the word "event" is the backbone of all history. And the word "fact" is the backbone of old science. Facts are repetitive. Events are unique. The story of the Bible is the chain of unique events. And therefore, gentlemen, God can only appear in oneness. It is very strange to you to think that the oneness of God should be connected with the human self-cognition, self-knowledge of you and me. You always think that this is an abstract discussion, to discuss God, or the gods. I have tried to show you that the heathen, the Gentiles had to have

many gods, because the pharaoh had to be a member of the divine family. The Greek gods also had to form a family, so that the king could be Zeus-born. The family the -- of the polytheistic civilization, gentlemen, is a necessity. Otherwise the ruler cannot be one of them. And I tried to show you that the ruler is the one double-star who can go from south to north, you see, and add to the divine powers the one feature no star in Heaven has. You remember this? In the same manner, the Jews -- because seeing all men eventuated, waiting for being created -- can only think of the power of the next step as the one thing necessary -- the uno necessario in the Bible -- the one thing that is to solve the dilemma, and the chaos, and the war, and the revolution: the peacemaker, the power that can take the next step. If you think of your own future, gentlemen, and your own past, you will agree with me that your past looks checkerboard-like, as I -- I put it here like a feather, many-fold. You went to the West, and you went to Europe, and you had to cele- -- celebrated your father's birthday, celebrated your mother's birthday, you went to one school, and you went to this football match, and you met this girl. This is all polytheistic. Many stories to be told. On one day, you go to the toilet, you go to the dinner table, you go to the bath -- under the shower, you go to the classroom, it's just incredible the variety of environments in which you find yourself, when you look back. But at this moment, when I ask you, "How do you bring on the future?" you can only do it by one act. The next act is always that narrow gate, you see -- as in the hourglass, through which this grain of sand has to pass, otherwise you can't reach your own future.

The next thing in the future, is always one. God then in Israel, and for all {living} believers today, is that narrow pass of events with -- who -- to -- all taken together are the history of God with men. And therefore, gentlemen, will you take this down? Nobody can ever speak of God without at the same time defining man. And nobody can speak of man without at the same time defining God. If you believe in many men, you must believe in many gods, which most of you do. It's very difficult to believe in one god, because God obviously created the Russians, and yourself, and Mr. McCarthy; and that's not so easy to understand. One god is really quite an imposition. Very few people can believe in one god all their lives. They may talk about it. I mean, they may use some abstract formulas. But gentlemen, can you -- do you really know that the worst command ever given to man is that you -- thou shall love God with your whole heart, your whole soul, and all your powers? That means that you only can at any one time love whole-heartedly one, that neighbor which is sent to you by God for this moment to be loved. You all quote always the second half of this, the Jewish command. You know, that's in the Old Testament, the command I'm quoting now, that thou shall love your -- the Lord your god, with your whole heart, your whole power, and all -- and your whole soul; and your neighbor as yourself. But you always very sentimentally quote this, that you should love your neighbor as yourself, and the -- most good people in this country think that this means they

must never love themselves. But at least, you must love the -- yourself as much as your neighbor. We would have less hysterical -- less with nervous breakdown if there weren't so many of you trying to love their neighbor more than themselves. The vice of America is not that people love their neighbor less than themselves. They -- most -- most people really try to love their neighbor more than themselves, especially parents their children. That's why the children are all degenerate, because the parents try to love their children more than themselves. That's bad. Never asked by God. Never do that. Spank them.

The children have no more right before God than you have. But they -- that's the -- the morose humanitarianism of Mrs. Roosevelt, and see the outcome.

But gentlemen, we must love God with our whole heart, soul, and power, something you cannot do, because you do not even know you have a soul. You deny it. You say, -- I -- in psychology, that's -- is the description of man without a soul, which it is. Psychology is the science of man without a soul, just with a psyche. So most of you don't believe in the soul anymore. And it's much more interesting, by the way, if you watch people, to find out if they believe in the soul, or if they believe in God. I mean, most people don't know whether they believe in God or not. I mean, they talk about it, but they have no idea what it really means. But if you catch them, gentlemen, that they only believe in the human mind, and not in the soul, that's verifiable. That means that they have withheld one great part of their being when they follow their star, as we say today -- with an Egyptian notion -- and as the believers say, when they believe -- try to believe in God.

If you say you have no soul, you omit, obviously, one important part of the Biblical tradition by which you should love God. You know what the soul is? It's the power in you and me by which you can overthrow your mentality. The Jews had to overthrow the mentality of the tribal chieftain, when Abraham did not sacrifice Isaac. I tried to tell you this. And the -- Moses had to overthrow the mentality of his professorship and Ph.D. business in Egypt when he said, "I do not care for the business cycle, and for the standard of living, and for the fleshpots of Egypt. And I am leading people in the desert, because the desert is infinitely better than the fleshpots of Egypt. The standard of living must be destroyed." And he called this the golden calf. The standard of living is -- stands in the way of a man's relation as a free soul to his god, because the soul is the unlived part of you and me, by which you can smash your own mental idols. And I tried to tell you last time that certainly the first mental idol of this country is the standard of living. Nobody can be heard in public who says, "I don't care for the standard of living." He can never be elected to public office. A man who says this is just out in this country. He's an out -- outcast. He -- you cannot say it here. No minister is allowed to say in the pulpit, "Down with the standard of

living." And yet that would be the old -- the old Gospel truth, you see, that the human soul may demand from you that you forego all these -- these things, these items. And the whole nation may have to forego it.

But they -- when you ask the American people by plebiscite: third World War or standard of living? They'll all accept the third World War, gladly, in honor of the standard of living. All. Imagine this. And -- please take me to task if I'm wrong. If you put this question to the electorate today, they'll say we must defend the standard of living, even at the expense of the hydrogen bomb. Isn't that true?

It's very strange. Peace is not the goal of any worldly civilization, but one of these idols. Not peace.

[tape interruption]

... that's what I want -- meant -- mean to say. I love all these gadgets, but I try to live, and I think you must try to live, too, in such a way that it makes no difference whether you have them or not. That's all. They aren't important. They're very nice, because the soul, gentlemen, is the discovery of the Jews as something opposed to the mind and the body. These -- ancestral worship of the tribe is through the body. The tribe is a tattoo-carrying civilization, you remember, and the holy writ of the tribe is on every warrior's body. And he expresses then, he represents, as we say, he embodies -- you know -- he embodies the order of the tribe by his body.

In Egypt, the mind of the priest, the wisdom of the Egyptians, the calendarlore, the astrolog- -- the astrology, the science of Egypt embodies in the hieroglyphs of the temples the truth about Egypt. But in Judaism, gentlemen, who embodies Israel? The heart of man. The heart of. This organ, which is abolished, as you know, in sociology and psychology -- which are the two Egyptian sciences of our days -- they are two sciences which have tried to describe humanity without speaking of soul and God. They are very significant. It's a pre-Jewish, a pre-revelation science. They say we can know of man without taking account his soul and his heart. The same with psychoanalysis. In psychoanalysis, you have only gen- -- genitals. That's all. And in psychology, you only have a brain with certain nerve reactions, a central spinal system. And in both cases, you have no heart, because what is the heart, gentlemen? The heart, if it is in you and me, the delegation, the messenger of the whole. Your heart is in the left place, here, eccentrically, to yourself, to tell you whether you are in harmony with the rest of the universe. Not -- that's not a thought, gentlemen. But that's -- your conscience tell you so, as you well know. Very much against all your mental programs and systems. You know very well if you allow the heart to speak whether

all your systems are not cruelty and just ridiculous, pride, arrogance, what-not. The human heart, gentlemen, overthrows the -- mental and the bodily passions. The heart overthrows, or jettisons, or emancipates you and me from our mental and physical passions. You cannot forego sensuousness, gentlemen, for the mind. The rationalists are always the most sensuous people. If you only have mind and body at the moment, you have to go to plenty of women. But if you have a heart, it's enough that one nice girl smiles at you and you are addressed. More is not necessary. The heart puts the body and the mind in place.

Everybody knows this, but nobody's allowed to say these things in this country. Very strange. Because psychologists say there is no such liberating power. And the sociologists the same. You are always under the impact either of mental crazies or cultural lags, or any one of these nonsensical things which are good for animals, but not for you and me. Your heart and mind is at every one moment able to throw itself into the future. That's what we call the soul. The soul is the heart's power which can crush mental and bodily passions. Now, gentlemen, it isn't good to call this just the heart, because the heart, as a physical, anatomical unit, you see, so to speak, is without connection with the mental and physical passions. We call this "soul," the heart's energy, efficacy, operations, so to speak, you see, when we see the heart getting involved with the contradictions of our body and of our mind. But on the other hand, it is just an operational or functional term for the human heart. Heart and soul, as used in the Old Testament, are there used as, so to speak, starting point and -- and function, you see. The heart is the -- the substratum, the substance, and the soul is the operative -- operative process of the heart.

But gentlemen, you can't get out of this. People who deny the soul, as I said, are much more representative of our civilization than people who deny God. Under the modern set-up in America for the last two years, people are very hazy now about God. I mean, they -- they are evasive, and the -- or they invoke the Fifth Amendment. But with regard to the soul, they are still quite insipid, and they say, "No, it hasn't been proved. There is no soul." Gentlemen, there never is a soul, because that's just like the people and like God. Of the soul you can only see -- say, it shall be as it shall be. What Moses heard of God in the burning bush, gentlemen, that God was He who shall be who He shall be, or who He will be, just as you please, that you can also say of the human soul. The human soul is that in you and of you that shall be as it shall be. And the human mind is that which just is, as an Egyptian mind, as a doctor -- doctor, Ph.D. He has a mind. { }.

And -- and the -- and your -- our bodies, that's just as we have received it. If you have a hunchback, you have a hunchback. If you have blue eyes, you have blue eyes. I mean, nothing you can do about it. That's just your background,

your past.

You see, the terrible thing that has happened to you and me is that you call now "background" your social and spiritual in- -- heritage; the church, for example, from which you come. And that you call not the body your background. But the body is our background. In order to have a nobler race, you have to marry, if you do -- are not satisfied with your physical appearance. But in order to have a beautiful, divine soul, you don't have to wait for the next generation. This is still within you. The soul, gentlemen, is which -- that which you can realize. The body is that which you can only realize in the next generation. Now you have a strange idea of the opposite. You think that physically, by exercise and training and so on, you can do much about your looks. And the background? That's what your parents are, and the social register said about you. It's the other way around, gentlemen. What the social register one day will tell -- say about you, that depends on you. But physically, I mean, here I am. I am not six feet eight. Can't do anything about it. It doesn't matter. I am the embodiment of the past, you see. But my soul is going to incarnate in generations to come. That's the relation, by and large, of embodiment and incarnation, gentlemen. That's -- I have to tell you, because in Judaism, the whole problem was to make adamantly and unmistakably clear that the soul was not to be identified with the embodiment that had already occurred. Neither the Egyptians nor the tribes were good enough for the Israelite faith. The Israelites live on the faith of things -- not yet seen -- to come.

So gentlemen, the -- Abraham lives on faith alone. When he had no son, and Sarah is 90, the gods speak -- said -- the gods come and say, "You will have a son and in he there shall be blessed all the generations of -- and all the nations." Ridiculous, you see. But St. Paul says of Abraham, "Abraham was justified by faith alone." There was nothing to be seen. No embodiment. And I really challenge you, gentlemen. Embodiment is always pluralistic, is always pluralistic, because it is always a thing of the past. The soul is not yet embodied. Now Christianity later comes and says, "We must take the Jewish promise out and say it has already begun to be incarnated, and there is more incarnation to come." That's a later item. I won't go into this. But I want to warn you that if you only get embodiment, as you believe in, then you do not understand this problem of revelation, that there are yet futurities, where the -- germ even of future embodiment hasn't been laid. We call the soul the seed of future embodiments. And we call these future embodiments the process of incarnation. And the word "incarnation" is -- I think, in your own -- ear you can hear the difference -- "incarnating," "incarnation" is a process; embodiment is a fact. And in this there is some wisdom, I embody somebody; I haven't been asked to do this. But if the soul of Christ incarnates in {His} Church, that means that His soul preceded, and His body then follows. Therefore we call incarnation the relation of soul and of body

to come. Can you see this?

And Israel is the attempt of gathering enough free soul, enough free soulenergy. It's like now producing this new energy, atomic energy, gentlemen. Israel is a very sober, scientific event or action, undertaking. Israel is an attempt to dam up free-flowing ener- -- soul-energy for allowing a new start, a new incarnation, the next incarnation, for allowing God to find people who can do His will, and not saying, "I must do my will." The whole content of revelation is the projection of free human energy into a future which can dictate to this free energy, because it is not yet under dictation. It is not yet pre-formed. Can you see this? Any question, please about this? It's a difficult concept for you.

But I want you to -- I want to stress, gentlemen, that Israel is a very sober process. The Jews are really there. They are now there for 3,500 years. It's a long time. And the Christians are really there. And they have this problem of forming a free substance out of the human-coined racial matter, which can enter new alloys, new orders, new things. And all your liberal arts education, gentlemen, is an attempt to free you from your pre-formed prejudices, attitudes, obviously, gentlemen, to make you part of this new Israel, to make you maleable, to make you carriers of the substance we call "soul," and to make you independent of your mental and physical passions. Can you see this? The whole educational process, gentlemen, is a question of melting you down from pre-conceived notions, and pre-conceived superstitions, and pre-conceived narrownesses. It isn't enough to be your parents' son, gentlemen. You have to become man- -- God's son. And that takes some maleability. And you have to be exposed, therefore, to an attack on your mental and physical prejudices and passions. And under this attack, you may then become able to listen to the future, to the promise that not everything is as it is -- should be.

If we do not re-create this at any one moment, there is no history of the human race, gentlemen. It's all accident. If you are not entering into this melting pot, into this freedom, if you do not take again possession of this power -- which Moses created first, I suppose, or Abraham, but I think in Moses it became much more powerful -- then the whole story of the human race is lost. At any one generation, gentlemen, this exodus on Easter Day must occur again. Believe me, this is -- that's why we celebrate it. We don't celebrate Easter for the Easter eggs. And you don't celebrate the New Testament without the Old Testament. Jesus went out of Israel, and the Israelites went out of Egypt and that's one and the same act, because it means that the chosen people had left the fleshpots of Egypt, and when their own shell threatened to become a fleshpot, then one of them had also to leave Israel. And then -- only then, had all men inherited freedom. Can you see this? The group -- the Israelites leave Egypt in order to establish the soul. The soul in Israel had also to assert its freedom from Israel, after having asserted

its freedom from tribes, and clans and empires; from tribes and Egyptians.

Gentlemen, it is very simple to you, and it's very complicated, because it's terribly difficult to bring to your attention, even, that possibility which all your scientific training denies. Therefore you don't know today of Maundy Thursday, and you don't know of Good Friday, practically, in this college. It's accidental if some of you know of it. But most of you just go through the motions. Therefore I have to tell you in class. Somewhere this creative action has to take place again. And so I think that I have not treated the Bible scientifically. Is that true? Then we have to have a break.

[tape interruption]

... has the task to re-write the previous story of mankind in the light of the newer discovery of a free choice. The chosen people now are free to choose. That's a very strange paradox, gentlemen, that if you serve the spirit of freedom, you are -- yourself free. If you serve the business cycle, you are yourself the slave of the business cycle. We always -- gentlemen, you must know this -- our gods make us and we make our gods. The rationalist of the 19th century, with its small logic, has always said, "Ah. We people -- people -- God is an invention of man." But the power that drives us, gentlemen, to be -- to depict God is God. If you worship numbers, the god of numbers is behind you. You are possessed by the Devil. His name is legion, in the Bible, as you know. "Legion" means numbers. People in this country are -- possessed by the dollar, believe in numbers, in figures. Their name is legion. Their god is legion; "legion" meaning just any number, untold numbers. Very strange that the New Testament just settles the issue very simply. "His name is legion," the Devil's name. It's a wrong god.

Gentlemen, anybody who serves his god then also begins to give this god features for other people to recognize. You can recognize in other people's face which god they serve. And in this sense, we make our gods palatable, understandable, translatable to others. But they say, "Oh, this man just invented God." The story's, however, complicated. God makes us, and then we build Him temples { } If you believe in fertility and wealth, you will make a -- a monument to the golden calf. And so you can say that the people of Egypt made golden calves. They made these gods, but obviously they were driven, or possessed by this thirst for work, this thirst for fertility, for bread, for storehouses of Egypt, this tremendous social security, which they were craving, as I told you, the standard of living as expressed by the golden calf. Now a person who believes in the standard of living is also creating the symbols of this belief -- the stock exchange, and the highways, and the many cars, and {such}, the gadgets -- expression of a standard of living. But it is much more complicated than the cynic thinks. God makes -- our God makes us.

If you have some experience, you know which gods have formed the face of a woman or a man whom you meet. You can see this quite well, which passion, which divinity has had sway out of the many gods, which most people worship. And if you find a man who believes in one god, which is very rare, you also can see it. If you see -- meet a good woman who is at peace, you feel that she has never been swerved from doing the next necessary thing. That's a religious person, the person who has walked humbly with his Maker, as the Psalm says. You can't do more. Because in walking humbly with your Maker, you discover every day what is now the one thing asked from you. And if you listen to this carefully and obediently, you will remain in contact with the mainstream of life. If you are ever ruled -- are over-ruled by a fanaticism or one thing only all your life, you will probably go on a bypath of the divine, and will also be divine, but separated from the mainstream and thereby -- affect you and mankind quite diabolically.

The transformation, gentlemen, of the traditions of mankind into a beginning of the future, that is the Old Testament. The transformation of the traditions of the human race into the beginning of the future. You remember, it's just what I tried to tell you at the beginning of this course, that the past is that part of the future which already has come to pass, which therefore is already part of our story, because we depend on it in order to be able to do anything ourselves. This is -- therefore it has been rightly said that Israel has created the notion of history. The Bible is the first historical book. This has tremendous consequences. All events in the Bible only happen once. The cycle is reduced to a minimum, whereas in Egypt, and in the ancestors -- groups, you remember, the return is eternal. The grandson is called after the grandfather, because the grandfather comes to life again in the -- his very soul in the grandson. It's the same what happened in the past. And as the Egyptians believe in the Great Year, in the Bible, it is reduced to next to nothing in the No- -- story of Noah. If you read the story of Noah, it is an attempt to accept the great feats of the temple builders and the priests, and to reduce it to a minimum of enslavement. That's the meaning of the story of Noah. The flood is not annual. It happens only once. The result is not enslavement by the fleshpots, but a gladdening of the heart. The curse is taken from when -- which was according -- when E- -- after he had left Eden. For the Jews, you see, for the Old Testament, they didn't have to wait for Christ to do away with the fall of man. Noah reconciles man to God. You must not forget this. This is not -- unknown in Christian tradition, strangely enough. But for the Jew who reads the Bible, the story of the fall of man is lifted, or is reconciled, or is redeemed by the Great Flood. You cannot do more than kill everybody, can you? So Noah is a just man, so if you read the story of yourself with open eyes, you must understand that since all the rest of mankind is annihilated, obviously the curse of the children of Adam is redeemed. Makes no sense otherwise. But if I hear my Christian minister friends talk -- preach, they -- they always forget that

there was already redemption in the -- in antiquity. And the first redemption of man was when man left the jungle and began to settle, and to recognize the great bliss of the calendar cycle. And so we go to Genesis, and you look up the -- the story of Noah. God blesses Noah: "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease." That's Verse 22 of Chapter 8 of the Genesis, gentlemen, in which the whole superstitions of Egypt are blown to smithereens. In this one verse, the Old Testament keeps the good side of the Egyptian tradition, of the imperial traditions. And it says, "Here it is. There is a certain regularity in climate and seasons. But man is not his -- its slave." And so there is no story of wheat, of bulls, of the castration of bulls, and the raising of herds, and the producing of milk and cheese. They did all this, the Jews, but you know with Noah is connected with the Dionysian freedom of man to get drunk. The great story in the Bible, which is a very worldly story -- you see, the Jews were not Methodists -- they loved wine. And God even obviously was a smoker, you see, Lucky Strike, because he loved incense. That's tobacco smoke, after all. The -- God -- certainly the god of the Old Testament wouldn't understand the -- the abstemiousness of people who don't smoke and don't drink, and have orange juice for the Communion supper. Because there was a pro -- a propagandistic, aggressive attitude against the Egyptians. It was not the enslavement of flesh, and meat, and bread, which is important, and beer -- the Egyptians had beer -- but it is the extraordinary praise of the Lord when you drink wine in His spirit, and rejoicing over his great acts. It is that God created out of the jungle the good earth, which -- what Pearl Buck has called "the good earth," you see -- that is celebrated in the vineyards of Noah. So man, whenever he takes a step into creation and makes some more -- better use of it, he praises the Lord, in the gladness of his heart. That is, by and large, the connection of the Bible with which it -- you see, does a tremendous service. Neither is man by the discovery of the natural laws now their slave and has to build pyramids in order to get all -- you see, to follow the slavishly the movements of the stars, nor is he Promethean, like a Greek and says, "I buck the gods. I am against them. I am -- I am obstinate not only, but I am -- " how do you say it? What is the Promethean attitude? Balking; protesting, you see; resisting and challenging the gods.

The Jewish attitude is one that every progress of the human spirit leads to a greater elation in his recognition of the bounties created by his Creator. There is a complete harmony between the Creator and His creature, because God is delighted whenever His creature takes one more step into his freedom. It's a much more positive attitude, I think, than in the Promethean myth, where Zeus is so envious of Prometheus that he locks him, as you you know, to the Caucasian rock and has a -- an eagle eat out his liver over 5,000 years, Not a very agreeable situation.

That is the Greek pessimistic outlook on the gods. The Jewish outlook is that not the gods dictate, but the one god as appearing in a human soul allows man a free step, a free act, the discovery of the next. And He is glad, if man then praises Him for this discovery which he himself makes. It seems so simple, gentlemen, but I have to show you that it is who's aligned between the dilemma of the Promethean ferociousness and challenge to the gods, which is for children and students, and the Egyptian fatalism, which is today represented still in the Moslem world, that everything has to be done as Allah has -- has said it had to. You see, the fatalism on the one-hand side, and the Prometheism -- can you say so? It's a poor word. How do you call this Caliban attitude, or how do you -- this challenge to the gods, this -- ? You have it here with all these brazen people who say, "I'm independent. I'm independent. I'm independent."

(Defiance?)

Wie?

(Defiant?)

What?

(Defiance?)

Ja. That's -- thank you, good. Defiant. So Israel, in the Noah story, gives the clue to man's fruitful attitude to the creative history of mankind, gentlemen. In history, man -- the Creator wants us to take a free step, and the only condition attached is that we recognize us as His elements, the soul as a part of God in the process of this creation. Because the power to break away from the established order of mind and body and create a new future we should recognize as God's specific quality in us. Whereas the Promethean Greek mind says, "My mind invents this," the Jewish faith says, "My soul has been liberated from the fears of its neighbors and its enemies and has had the courage, the guts to stand up, stick its neck out," you see. So in -- with the Jews it's always the soul, and therefore the praising of the Lord. And with the Greeks, it is always the mind, and therefore the pride on your own genius. The Greek considers genius as against the gods, defying them. And the gods envious, not wanting, you see, nemesis, hubris: these are the terms of the Greek world. Man is the genius -- Prometheus -- who steals the fire, who acts against the will of the gods. In Judaism, it's very different. Man is only not pleasurable in the eyes of the Lord if he does what has been done before. But if he does that next thing which is necessary for the redemption of the humanity, then he is himself in God's place. Therefore no reason to be defiant. This is the great, gentlemen, tremendous difference between your belief in one god, and in gods. Since the Greeks still believed in many gods, they had to

be one more god, the next god. The Jew, knowing that all steps into the future were one spirit, could be satisfied that being this one soul, they represented one moment in the history of God with man. Can you see this -- the connection between polytheism and defiance. Perhaps this is the last I should like you to take down today. The Greeks must defy the many gods, because the many gods are all of the past and of the present. And the Jew doesn't have to defy his God, because with God's help, he himself discovers himself as a free agent of the future.

What I want to say, gentlemen, to you is -- will you allow me one more minute? It's too important to go by the clock -- as long as you discuss God and man as concepts, you'll never make any headway. It isn't worth the {candle}. Don't think they are concepts, but God and man are invocations to your own existence. You know very well, by the way, the difference. You know very well when a man in a fraternity speaks against some obscenity committed there, that he doesn't speak as a man, but that he is inspired to speak. Otherwise he wouldn't do it. And the more he speaks with a small, still voice, the more he will be able to impress on his -- on his fraternity, that they should really mend their way; because the smaller, the lower his voice, the less it is he himself, or his pride, or his Promethean defiance, with which he speaks, but the more he feels this is necessary. Otherwise this fraternity, and all fraternities should be closed. And they should be closed by -- as you know, in most cases. It is only these few righteous boys who save the fraternities from being abandoned, as being just dens of the Devil. It's always this one man who has this freedom of his soul, that he can speak not in his own name, gentlemen. And so what I want you to understand is that the discovery of the Bible, that man is always betwixt and between the gods and men, and God and man, that -- that nobody can do anything but be either on the side of the gods, that is the prejudices of the marketplace, the idol -- golden calf, you hear all the official talk today in Washington et cetera -- and all believe in his own gods, self-made men, defiant. Or he is a man following his routines, or he is on the side of God. These four points, so to speak, are his own movement through time. Any one of us commits, you see, the -- all the -- how do you say? Steps, or posits themself on all four points alternatingly. You cannot help being sometimes a Greek, and being sometimes a genius, and being sometimes tri -- a warrior of the tribe, just a loyal citizen, and being sometimes inspired. So the word -- terms -- take this down, gentlemen: men and God never are concepts with which you can manipulate. They are always the powers in whose name you act. And they are, therefore -- Judah, tribe, and Egypt, gentlemen, are older and more central than all the mentality of the schools and their conceptualism. You are -- live only by concepts. And you do not know that I can spot you, because you live by concepts. A man who lives by concepts acts in the name of science, or of logic, of reason. So I -- you are not interested individuals as long as you always are the slave of your own concepts, because then you are

conceptualists. That is, you are a man who only believes in the power of the mind. You don't believe in the soul. And as a student, you don't, in -- as far as you are just a student, or just a professor of philosophy. Let's hope that neither I nor you are just students or professors of philosophy.

Thank you.

Will you kindly bring to the next class a copy of The Iliad?