The Inner Life, v. II/Sixth Section/XI
THE JEWISH RACE
The peculiar conditions of the Jewish race exist primarily because at this particular stage the Manu needs them for the proper training of some of the egos under his care. We can only guess at the racial karma which made those conditions possible. Perhaps the explanation is to be found in the fact that the Jewish race is descended from those Atlantean Semites who were drawn away into Arabia, apart from their fellows, by the Manu of the Fifth root-race when he was making his first segregation. That first attempt was not wholly successful, and a second segregation took place into the Gobi district, from which in due time was produced the first sub-race of the new root-race. When a second sub-race was needed, the Manu sent emissaries to the descendant of those who had been left behind in Arabia, hoping to mingle with theirs the blood of the new root-race; but they were so strongly impressed with the idea (which he himself had originally implanted in them) that they were a chosen race, set apart from the world and forbidden to intermarry with others, that in the name of his own teaching they now rejected his overtures, and he had to seek elsewhere for what he wanted.
The particular sub-race from which the Jewish nation is directly descended had moved across from Arabia to the Somali Coast, in order to avoid conquest by those who followed the new teaching of the Manu. They then split off even from that dissenting band, and made their way along the shores of the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, until they entered upon the territory of Egypt. The Pharaoh of the time received them hospitably, and assigned them a tract of land on which to dwell, and they settled down there for some centuries; but as a later Pharaoh sought to levy from them some impost to which they objected, and also to force them to perform for him certain unpaid labour, as his other subjects did, they protested against his claims, and continued their migration by crossing the Sinaitic desert and settling themselves in southern Syria, dispossessing, after much fighting, other robber tribes of much the same blood as themselves.
The karma of that rejection has left them ever since a race apart, the same egos to a large extent incarnating again and again in that line instead of passing from race to race in the usual way. Whether some blind perception of this difference may help to account for the treatment they have received at the hands of other races I cannot definitely say, but it may also be partially due to the fact that because of the tradition of that original selection by the Manu they have always had a feeling somewhat similar to that of the Brahmans — that they are superior to all the rest of the world; and the rest of the world has not always appreciated the attitude which they adopted in consequence of that belief.
They were originally a nomad tribe like the Bedouin Arabs, and lived largely by robbery, their deity being confessedly but a private tribal god who fought against the gods of other nations and was perpetually vaunting himself as superior to them, although it will be remembered that in one case he was not able to overcome certain other races “because they had chariots of iron” (Judges, I, 19). Just like all other elemental tribal deities, he required constant sacrifices of blood, and in order that he might receive plenty of these he was always exceedingly jealous lest any of his followers should desert him, and make their offerings to other deities. The requiring of blood-sacrifices is an invariable criterion as to the status of a deity; no entity in the least deserving of respect or worship ever made such an abominable demand. It will be found that he often suggested mean and dishonourable plans — which is quite a common thing for a tribal deity to do, but would of course be utterly impossible for any higher entity.
The carrying away into captivity in Babylon of a number of these turbulent people was quite the best thing that could happen to them. They then for the first time came into contact with a highly civilized race, and for the first time heard of a supreme God of whom everything was part. Then they characteristically tried to identify their own tribal deity with this Supreme Being, and so caused much confusion. When they returned from this captivity they rewrote their scriptures from the memory of the older men, and then they put into them a certain admixture the higher ideas about a supreme deity.
The Founder of Christianity took possession of a Jewish body; all the earlier teachers of the religion were of the same race, and so, unfortunately, they brought over into Christianity this mixed conception of a god who is full of irreconcilable characteristics, being at the same time jealous, cruel and revengeful, and yet omniscient, omnipresent and compassionate. Even at the present day the Christian church still reads in its highest service the ridiculous old Jewish commandments, with which is incorporated the statement of the jealousy of the deity, while in another part of the very same service she acclaims him as “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God.” If the Christians could only have left these primitive Jewish conceptions alone, and taken with reference to God the teachings of their Founder, who spoke of Him always as the Father in heaven, many of the troubles of the Church would have been avoided.