If, however, it be the object of the drama to divert, then it occupies a
wholly different ground from the Bible. If it merely gratifies curiosity
or enlivens pastime, if it awakens emotion without directing it to
useful ends, if it rallies the infirmities of human nature with no other
design than to provoke our derision or increase our conceit, it shoots
very, very wide of the object which the sacred writers propose.

It is worthy to be remarked, that the Jews had no drama, or nothing that
answers to our idea of that term at the present time; they had no
theatres, no writers of tragedy or comedy. Neither are there any traces
of the dramatic art among the Egyptians, among whom the Jews sojourned
four hundred years, nor among the Arabs or the Persians, who are of
kindred stock with this people. On the other hand, by the Hindoos and
Chinese, the Greeks and Romans, histrionic representation was cultivated
with assiduity.

How shall we explain this national peculiarity? Was it because the
religion of the Jews forbade creative imitation? Is it to be found in
the letter or the spirit of the second commandment, which interdicts the
making of graven images of any pattern in earth or heaven? We should
hardly think so, since the object of this prohibition is rather to
prevent idolatry than to discourage the gratification of taste. "Thou
shalt not bow down to them nor serve them." The Jews did have emblematic
observances, costume, and works of art. Yet, on the other hand, the Jews
possessed something resembling the drama, and that out of which the
dramatic institutions of all nations have sprung. The question, then,
why the Jews had no drama proper, and still preserved the semblance and
germ thereof, will be partially elucidated by a reference to the early
history of dramatic art.