r
the silence of the Hebrew legislator on the immortality of the soul.
According to Michaelis, "Moses wrote as an historian and as a lawgiver;
he regulated the ecclesiastical discipline, rather than the religious
belief of his people; and the sanctions of the law being temporal, he
had no occasion, and as a civil legislator could not with propriety,
threaten punishments in another world." See Michaelis, Laws of Moses,
art. 272, vol. iv. p. 209, Eng. Trans.; and Syntagma Commentationum, p.
80, quoted by Guizot. M. Guizot adds, the "ingenious conjecture of a
philosophic theologian," which approximates to an opinion long
entertained by the Editor. That writer believes, that in the state of
civilization at the time of the legislator, this doctrine, become
popular among the Jews, would necessarily have given birth to a
multitude of idolatrous superstitions which he wished to prevent. His
primary object was to establish a firm theocracy, to make his people the
conservators of the doctrine of the Divine Unity, the basis upon which
Christianity was hereafter to rest. He carefully excluded everything
which could obscure or weaken that doctrine. Other nations had strangely
abused their notions on the immortality of the soul; Moses wished to
prevent this abuse: hence he forbade the Jews from consulting
necromancers, (those who evoke the spirits of the dead.) Deut. xviii.
11. Those who reflect on the state of the Pagans and the Jews, and on
the facility with which idolatry crept in on every side, will not be
astonished that Moses has not developed a doctrine of which the
influence might be more pernicious than useful to his people. Orat.
Fest. de Vitae Immort. Spe., &c., auct. Ph. Alb. Stapfer, p. 12 13, 20.
Berne, 1787. ----Moses, as well from the intimations scattered in his
writings, the passage relating to the translation of Enoch, (Gen. v.
24,) the prohibition of necromancy, (Michaelis believes him to be the
author of the Book of Job though this opinion is in general rejected;
other learned writers consider this Book to be coeval with and known to
Moses,) as from his long residence in Egypt, and his acquaintance with
Egyptian wisdom, could not be ignorant of the doctrine of the
immortality of the soul. But this doctrine if popularly known among the
Jews, must have been purely Egyptian, and as so, intimately connected
with the whole religious system of that country. It was no doubt moulded
up with the tenet of the transmigration