Eliot, George | An autograph manuscript, evidently unrecorded, by George Eliot on the history of Jewish philosophy

Eliot, George

Autograph manuscript titled "Historical Sketch of Philosophy among the Jews"

14 pages (197 x 127 mm) on 8 leaves of lightly ruled paper, partly written in French, first and final pages unrelated texts, the first a fragment, the last a partial text on astrology, the whole manuscript perhaps more of a highly finished notebook than a continuous essay, very neatly written with few revisions or emendations, each leaf inlaid to a slightly larger sheet and evidently disbound from an album or binding.

George Eliot is well known as the most sympathetic of Victorian authors towards Judaism and Zionism. Eliot's attitude was likely formed by her friendship with Emanuel Deutsch, an assistant in the library at the British Museum, who supplied Eliot with books about the Talmud and many other Jewish topics. Eliot's late novel Daniel Deronda is recognized for being one of the earliest affirmative and compassionate portrayals of a Jewish character in English literature.

The present manuscript shows the effects of Eliot’s study of the texts supplied by Emanuel Deutsch: “It was from the Greeks that the Jews contracted the taste for metaphysics.” She compares the “The graco-oriental philosophy” to the Book of Wisdom, which she describes as “An eclectic philosophy, of which the elements are borrowed from the Greek systems & contain certain oriental theories disseminated among the Hindu philosophers. Essentially pantheist, it nevertheless asserts the free will of man. The Alexandrian Jews cultivated this phily. with so much success that they came afterwards to be regarded as original thinkers. The fables reported by various Jews on the relation existing between the Greek philosophers & the Jewish sages had not their source in the national pride of the Rabbis. Josephus & Eusebius cite a passage of Clearchus, a disciple of Aristotle, where it is said that Aristotle had made the acquaintance of a Jew in Asia, who, he said, could teach him more philosophy than he had to give in return. … The Jews of Palestine partook of the same civilization, being for nearly a century after 301 B.C. under Egyptian dominion. Afterwards under the Kings of Syria Greek manners & ideas threatened to predominate over the Jewish religion till the tyranny of Ant. Epiph. Caused the reaction under the Maccabees.

"Essenes—probably from the Syriac word asaya, physicians, being probably modelled on a Jewish association in Egypt bearing the name Therapeutiae, of physicians of souls. … After the disastrous attempt of Barcochla, when it was manifest that Jerusalem could no longer be the national centre, there came the need for strengthening the ties which might unite the Jews of all nations as a religious society. Then came the Mischna & the Talmud, & the vast labours on the critical preservation of the biblical text."

An autograph manuscript, evidently unrecorded, by George Eliot on the history of Jewish philosophy.