"
"Dear me!"
Mr. van Koppen, a tactful person, scented danger ahead. He remarked:
"I did not know Italians read the Bible. Where did you become
acquainted with it?"
"In New York. I often amused myself strolling about the Jewish quarter
there and studying the inhabitants. Wonderful types, wonderful poses!
But hard to decipher, for a person of my race. One day I said to
myself: I will read their literature; it may be of assistance. I went
through the Talmud and the Bible. They helped me to understand those
people and their point of view."
"What is their point of view?"
"That God is an overseer. This, I think, is the keynote of the Bible.
And it explains why the Bible has always been regarded as an exotic
among Greco-Latin races, who are all pagans at heart. Our God is not an
overseer; he is a partaker. For the rest, we find the whole trend of
the Bible, its doctrinal tone, antagonistic to those ideals of
equanimity and moderation which, however disregarded in practice, have
always been held up hereabouts as theoretically desirable.
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