of delicious wines, fruits and honey to the four corners of the earth. In the space of a few years fruitful and promising colonies have been formed by their labor out of the sand, as at Rishon le Zion in the South, out of the swamps as at Sichron Jacob (Samaria) in the west; out of the rock, as at Rosh-Pinah in the north. About thirty of such centers of effort and improvement have been formed in half as many years; and though many of these were sparsely populated, and had to encounter all the troubles and trials of new settlements in a neglected and a deserted country, they satisfied themselves that the Palestinean soil is far from sterile and they brought a promise of hope and happiness to those who are still steened in npaunerism and distress.
One point, however, has been raised by Mr.
Levy which is more or less correct, and namely,the opposition of the wealthy Jews to the movement. But Mr. Levy is mistaken if he believesthat this opposition is able to crush the movement. While it is true that their support wouldremove many obstacles, their opposition cannotundo the movement or prevent its realization.Since when have persecuted and oppressed peoples been saved by the rich? The rich and thepowerful have always been known to favor thestatus quo. They can afford to wait. The redeeming to be effective must come from themasses. The redemption of a people must beginfrom within. And so it does in the case of oppressed millions of the Jews.
LEON ZOLOTKOFF.
Koheleth and his Egyptian Prototype
A FEW REMARKS ON AN INTERESTING PARALLELISM
MANY dissertations have been 'written by ancient philosophers and theologians anent the physical and moral ills to which humanity is heir. The problem why we must undergo continual physical or moral suffering supplied the author of the Book of Job with material for one of the grandest poems of ancient times.
Here I wish to draw a parallel between two books of antiquity which, although written by different persons at different periods, often have a close connection in the philosophy which they teach us. And, what is more curious, both were once on the point of being rejected as containing heretical doctrine, and both were saved by the same means.
The author of Ecclesiastes, or Koheleth, who began his philosophical pamphlet with the famous “Vanitas vanitatum” (הבל הבלים) taught us one of the noblest lessons in life when he exclaimed (Ecclesiastes III: 22): “There is no better thing for man than to enjoy himself in all his actions, for who can bring him to look with pleasure on what will be after him ?” A hieroglyphic elegy covers the sarcophagus of an Egyptian priest, who was named Nefer-Hotep. * In it the Pharaohic poet laments bitterly, like Koheleth, the vanity of man’s ambitions and aspirations. Suddenly, the Egyptian poet exclaims with optimistic effusion: Leave behind thee all afflictions, remember only the day of departure cometh, of sailing to that land that loveth silence.
Why trouble our minds with useless melancholy, means the Scribe of Mizraim, instead of enjoying ourselves in this world? Do we not forget that sooner or later will come the gloomy day of departure, when we will set out to the region of dread, the land of Seker or sombre silence? Let us be happy, or rather let us imagine that we
*) The reproduction of this elegy was first made known in the "Zeitschrift fuer Egyptische," 1873.
are happy, as long as we must live—that is the optimistic lesson taught both by both Egyptian and Hebrew thinker and may be taken as an earnest protest against the dreary philosophy taught by the author of Job, the Schopenhauer of the Bible.
Such views of life are not rare in hieroglyphic writings. We find similar advice in the papyrus Prisse (plate XIV I 13-13) which dates about 300 years before the Christian era. We read there the remarkable outcry of another Egyptian Koheleth of the old Empire : Whiten thy face [with joy] whilst thou livest, for has any one ever issued from the coffin having once entered therein? I give here the literal translation:
"Whiten face thy, whilst of living thou, did issue from coffin one who entered in?" I have already used this hieroglyphic sentence of the papyrus Prisse in my "Philosophical Dialogue between a god and a pessimist," a poem written in the old Pharaohic language, which appeared in the Journal of the Franklin Institute, May, 1887. I presume that had the author of the Ecclesiastes known Egyptian, he would have translated the above hieroglyphic advice into Hebrew as follows :
הִיה שׂמֵחַ וְטוֹב לֵב בְּאַרְצוֹת הַחַיִּים כִּי לֹא תָּשׁוּב מִקִּבְרְךָ אַחֲרֵי מִתְהַלֵּךְ —
which would certainly not have disfigured Ko- heleth's style. The Talmud tells us that the book of Koheleth was deemed by the doctors "best to be concealed," because of the heretical doctrine it contains; the book was finally saved from inquisitorial destruction by the religious appeal in the last verse. The Egyptian philosophy, too, would have been destroyed by the priests, if not for the interpolation at the end of the poem — "All that is begotten must direct itself to thee, O Sun-God Ra!" That is exactly as our own Koheleth is supposed to have terminated his masterpiece. G. SELIKOVITCH