CHAPTER 2. THE MlSHNA AND THE GOSPELS AS BASED ON ORAL
TRADITION.
WHAT has already been said of the Mishna, as the result
of oral tradition, suggests one broad ground of comparison
with the Gospels.
According to the most probable view* of the origin of the
Synoptic Gospels, they too are the result of oral tradition.
Indeed according to any view they must be so to some extent,
but the view in question lays special stress on this
feature. It is supposed that the written Gospels were
derived directly from the preaching of the Apostles. The
substance of this preaching was the history and sayings
of Christ. In time the contents of their message shaped
themselves by a kind of natural selection, certain of the
sayings, certain portions of the history appealed more readily
and with more effect to the Apostles' audience. Then when
the demand arose for a written Gospel, this Gospel would be
simply the record of the preaching of the Apostles, in the
form determined by much experience among many peoples.
* Westcott, Introduction to the Gospels, ch. III.
Without entering into the controversies as to the authorship
of the Gospels and while accepting the ordinary views
it is easy to point out the oral nature of their sources. As
far as we know Christ wrote nothing, His disciples committed
none of His sayings to writing during His life. His teaching
consisted of spoken sayings doubtless often repeated, and
fixing themselves in the memory partly by the force of
Christ's enthusiasm and the commanding influence of His
character, partly by the striking nature of the sayings themselves,
partly doubtless by frequent repetition.
In some such way would S. Matthew come to remember
the sayings of the Sermon on the Mount and at last after
years of preaching commit them to writing in their present
form.
In the case of S. Mark the tradition would not be so
immediate, we have no reason to believe that he was a
constant hearer of Christ. Early Christian writers speak of
him as recording the substance of S. Peter's preaching. So
that here S. Peter hears from Christ and S. Mark from
S. Peter. S. Luke again is said to have followed in his
Gospel the preaching of S. Paul. At any rate he professes
to be indebted in his narrative to 'eyewitnesses and
ministers of the word.' If he derived anything from S.
Paul, e.g. the account of the Last Supper, it would imply at
least two links in the chain of tradition between S. Luke and
Christ. S. Paul himself must have been indebted to some
eyewitness, directly or indirectly, for his account.
It will be obvious that the essential fact of oral tradition
is not affected, if we refuse to accept the statements as to
the dependence of S. Mark and S. Luke on S. Peter and
S. Paul. For these evangelists, not being themselves eyewitnesses,
would depend on what they heard from those
whose connection with Christ was closer and more constant.
Another reference to the handing down of truth by word of
mouth occurs in Hebrews 2:3, where the writer speaks of the
confirmation of the promise of salvation to his readers and
himself by those that heard Christ. Moreover the early
Christian writers appeal rather to a still living tradition than
to written Gospels.
* Westcott, Introduction to the Gospels, ch. III.
This method of preserving and communicating truth was
exactly that ot the Jewish Schools, and the committing to the
writing of the Gospels under the pressure of possible lapse of
tradition is very similar to the committing to writing of the
Jewish tradition in the Mishna. One difference is that the
Christians broke loose from the prejudice against a written
Gospel much sooner than the Jews and anticipated them by
more than a century, or perhaps by several centuries.
In the Mishna we have the sayings of the editor himself,
just as in the Gospels we have the comments of their authors.
We have the sayings of Simon, son of Gamaliel, whom
Judah himself had heard, as S. Matthew and S. John had
heard Christ. We have traditions at third and fourth hand
as in S. Mark and S. Luke, and then the tradition stretches
away into the more remote past. There are also in the Mishna
as we have it sayings added by teachers who succeeded Rabbi
Judah. It is as if some one had gathered up the floating
traditions of the second century, some few possibly authentic
fragments of which still survive, and had incorporated these
floating traditions in a new edition of the Gospels. Nor are
there wanting critics who would have us believe that our
present Gospels are a comparatively late recension of that
Gospel, which formed the substance of the Apostles' preaching.
In fact there is a controversy as to how soon the
Gospel was committed to writing, just as there is a controversy
as to how soon the Mishna was committed to
writing. The arguments by which Jewish writers maintain
that the Mishna, if only committed to writing at a late date,
faithfully reproduces the earlier traditions; these arguments
will also tend to prove that, even if the Gospel was transmitted
for a century by oral tradition, it yet faithfully reproduces
the earlier preaching.
The unhesitating acceptance of the record of tradition
by the Jews in the case of the Mishna helps us to see that
all who shared their habits and training would be prepared
to accord a similar recognition to the record of Christian
tradition in the Gospels. When a new work appears now-adays
we ask on what evidence of documents or monuments
or coins the book is based: the Jew asked from whom the
speaker or author had heard what he asserted or recorded.
If the answer was 'Rabbi Gamaliel' or 'Rabbi Akiba' he
was satisfied, and doubtless equally so if it was Rabbi Dosithai
in the name of Rabbi Meir or Rabbi Simeon ben
Judah in the name of Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai. So the
Christian Jew might ask concerning the account of the Magi 'Who taught this?'
The answer would be 'the Holy Apostle Matthew': or again he might ask as to the parable of the seed growing secretly and the answer would be 'the
Evangelist Mark in the name of the Holy Apostle Peter.'
To the Jew such answers would be natural and satisfactory.
Then too the principles which determine the contents of
the Mishna and of the Gospels are in part the same. In
each case the vitality of the tradition was tested by years, in
some cases by generations, of teaching. The ultimate record
only contained that which survived the test. Of course the
main tendency would be to neglect and forget that which
did not prove itself practically useful; and yet in many cases
sayings and stories will be remembered and recorded for no
apparent reason but simply because of some special working
of the laws of association in the minds of those who handed
on the tradition. It will be plain that the working of these
common tendencies will still leave wide room for differences
in the character of the contents of the Mishna and the
Gospels, and indeed there are enormous differences. The
causes to which these differences are due will be obvious to
anyone.
But to return to the influence of the process of tradition on
the contents of the Mishna and the Gospels; to us it may seem
that minor truths and transient interests occupy too large a
space, some things may seem irrelevant and some unintelligible.
Much that we expect to find is absent. We should not
willingly lose a word that throws light in any way on the
life and teaching of Christ, and yet some might think that
less might have been said of the traditions of the Pharisees
and more of the great evangelical doctrine of justification by
faith or that the principle of apostolic succession might have
been set forth more clearly. We may wonder at what seems
to us the involved vagueness of the prophecy of 'the last
things'; we may not understand how an obscure incident
like that of the 'young man 1' with 'a linen cloth cast about
him' (Mark 14:51,52) is relevant to the general narrative.
If we turn to the Mishna we shall find that the same
process of natural selection by oral tradition has destroyed
in a much greater degree the symmetry and coherence of
the record. There it seems as if the popular taste and the
atmosphere of the schools had chosen to have hardly anything
but minor truths and transient interests; the traditions
of the Pharisees drive the great truths of morality
and religion into odd corners. It is difficult to point out
special examples of irrelevancy in the Mishna, because after
reading a few sections the student gets a general idea that
everything is relevant to everything else, and it seems
almost natural to discuss in a treatise on the new year
the reason why we are not told the names of the elders
who ascended Sinai with Moses. (Rosh Hashanah 2.9; Exo 24:2)
The reason is that the
Mishna wanders on like a man thinking aloud in a desultory
fashion and gives the chance links in the train of
thought, while the Gospel constantly omits them.
The same facts help us to understand the difficulty in
either case of finding a scientific or chronological arrangement.
Events and sayings were remembered and finally
recorded as they were associated together and suggested
each other in the minds of those who remembered them.
They might be associated because of their connection in
time or because they were similar in subject, but men's
reminiscences are grouped according to many less obvious
laws than those of connection in time or similarity in
subject.
In the Mishna a long discussion about the payment of
tithes for land in Ammon and Moab interrupts the rules for
purifying the hands; and again the account of the signs of
the coming of the Messiah occurs in the treatise on the
'Waters of Jealousy.'
Similarly in the Gospels the arrangement does not always
admit of easy explanation, and different Evangelists connect
the same sayings with very different contexts.
Again, in the Gospels, much is common to the three
Synoptic Gospels and is called by many the Triple Tradition.
Yet there is much not contained in this Triple
Tradition, but preserved by one or two Evangelists. In
a somewhat similar manner the Mishna may be supposed
to represent the main stream of Jewish tradition. But
there are other works, the 'Tosifta' and 'Bereitha', for
which some claim an equal antiquity and to which the
Jews accord a modified authority, and these preserve supplementary
traditions.
Also it may be noticed that, while separate Gospels seem
to present discrepancies, the Mishna does not hesitate to
record the varying decisions or reminiscences of different
authorities. For instance the Rabbis disagree as to whether
Ecclesiastes and Canticles render the hands unclean, i.e. are
canonical books. (Yadaim 4.5)
CHAPTER 3. THE MISHNA AS ILLUSTRATING THE GOSPELS GENERALLY.
So far the grounds of comparison may be considered certain,
both Mishna and Gospel are due to tradition. The traditional
character of the Mishna is universally acknowledged
and is proved by both internal and external evidence. In
the case of the Gospels there is at any rate a strong element
of tradition.
But we wish to use the Mishna to illustrate not only the
method of composition of the Gospels but also their subject
matter. Before we can do so it is necessary to enquire how
far the customs, feelings and doctrine of the Jews as given in
the Mishna are similar to those of the Jews in the time of
Christ.
On the one hand we have to remember that a period of
from 150 to 200 years had elapsed between the death of
Christ and the publication of the Mishna, and that during
this period the Jews had been crushed by two disastrous
wars; their capital and its temple had been destroyed;
and Jerusalem had been replaced by a new city Aelia
Capitolina, from which the Jews were excluded.
At first sight a period so long and eventful might be
expected to work much change in the customs of social and
religious life. If we look back 150 years to the reign of
George II., or 200 years to that of Charles II., and remember
the wars and constitutional changes of the period, the progress
in science, the railways, telegraph and penny post, we
might be tempted to say that a student would find little in
English life and literature of to-day to illustrate English
life of 150 or 200 years ago. But a moment's thought shows
us how much still remains the same. For instance the
Prayer-Book is almost identically the same, and many of the
forms of social and commercial life, many of the ceremonies
of Parliament and the law courts are the same. Then too
the principles and position of the High Church party of today
illustrate those of the High Church party of the time of
Laud; and the spirit of 'No Popery' survives to help us to
understand the long maintenance of the penal laws against
the Catholics.
If all this is true in Western progressive England, how
much more so in the changeless East, in a nation that clung
tenaciously to the past, governed by scholars whose whole
theory of learning was to remember, to reproduce, to interpret
what had been handed down, as they believed, even
from Moses. If to-day, after the lapse of eighteen centuries,
the dresses, customs and language of the East still afford
material for illustrating both Old and New Testament, how
much more a book compiled not later than the middle of the
third century after Christ and professing to contain traditions
of teachers from Ezra to its own time? Men in those days
did not ask continually: 'Who will shew us any new thing?'
New things meant revolutions or calamities,* the new things,
the revolutions of the Jews had been disastrous, and they
tried to maintain all that linked their life with older times.
For these older times, especially when remembered after
many years of misfortune, were more glorious or at any rate
more peaceful.
* Is. 15:9. 'Added things', i.e. according to some, 'new
evils'; cf. 'res novae' for 'revolutions.'
The changes that have altered our life and language are
not so much our wars and revolutions as the railways, the
telegraph and the postal system, the increase of intercourse
between men and nations, and the immediate knowledge of
contemporaneous history all over the world far and near. It
is true that the unity of the Roman Empire led to much
intercommunication between its parts and that the Jews and
the Roman officials were perhaps the greatest travellers of
their day. It is true too that the Jews then as now corresponded
with one another and knew each other's doings
better than any other set of people. But at their best the
opportunities for intercommunication afforded by the Roman
Empire were far inferior to those of modern civilisation.
Moreover the Jews lived in the world and were not of the
world, and had no sympathy with heathen life and its
customs. And the Rabbis consciously and strenuously resisted
all influences from the Gentiles and doubtless even
from the Jews of the Dispersion. The Dispersion was to
humbly accept the law from them, they would not learn
from the Dispersion. Now the Mishna belongs to the Judaism
of the Rabbis.
The chain of Rabbinical succession seems to have been
unbroken. The Sanhedrim is said to have left Jerusalem
before the final siege and to have established itself at
Jamnia. Nor did the Romans molest them till the revolt
of Barchochabh. Even then the Rabbis in defiance of
Roman decrees appointed successors to their office and provided
for the transmission of the tradition.
There is too a certain local continuity about the Judaism
of the Mishna. The seat of the patriarchate at this time
was Tiberias in Galilee, and before that had been Sepphoris
in Galilee. Judah Hakkadosh spent the later years of his
life at Sepphoris. Neither Tiberias nor Sepphoris suffered
much in the first Jewish war. Sepphoris first obtained
permission from Josephus to protect itself with walls and
then submitted to Vespasian before he entered Palestine
and received from him a Roman garrison. Tiberias was
spared through the intercession of Agrippa. (Vita Josephi, Sect. 65)
The records of the war of Barchochabh are too scanty
to enable us to say whether these cities suffered during his
revolt. If they escaped a second time they were exceptionally
fortunate. But at any rate we find Jewish communities
at both Sepphoris and Tiberias soon after the revolt. (Jost, Bk XIII. ch. 13) Thus the Mishna was compiled in a district where the practice of
Jewish customs had gone on for centuries almost without
interruption.
We have therefore to take into account the attachment
of the Jews to their past, their trustful reverence for traditional
teaching, the mutual hatred between Jew and Gentile
and the consequent estrangement of the Jew from all
sympathy of life and thought with the Gentile: we have to
bear in mind the unbroken chain of Rabbinical succession
and the comparative tranquillity of the seats of Rabbinical
learning, whereby the Eastern tendency to the maintenance
of old customs was allowed fair scope. Then, though in the
most careful and laborious oral teaching there must be something
lost in course of time, and though even in the conservative
and stationary East, a school of learning can
scarcely busy itself with one subject for generations without
adding much by way of development or interpretation, yet
we may conclude that in substance and spirit the position of
the Jews in the Mishna is that of the Jews of the first
century. Especially as the Mishna is essentially a law-book
and law is conservative, and the forms and records of the law
are a perfect repertory of the manners and customs and ideas
of the past.
Many of the sayings of the Mishna are expressly ascribed
to well-known teachers, and we may fairly suppose that
within certain limits the ascription is correct. It is not too
much to suppose that sayings might be transmitted with
fair accuracy from the time of Christ to the end of the
second century. People would be more scrupulous about
altering the sayings of Gamaliel than they would be in
modifying an anonymous tradition. Where the teachers in
question lived later than Christ, the probability that their
words are accurately reported is increased, and yet it is not
likely that they are essentially different from previous
teaching. Much of the Mishna is anonymous, and no doubt
received its present form from Rabbi Judah, or those who
somewhat later put the Mishna into its present state. Here
too there must have been some development since the time
of Christ, but such development by no means robs the
Mishna of its value as illustrating the New Testament.
What took place was not alteration but development, and
that development not of any new features of Judaism, nor
yet of any spiritual or esoteric teaching; but of the elaborate
ceremonial and oppressive formalism that Christ continually
denounced. Possibly slight tendencies that in the time of
Christ could only be discerned by a prophetic instinct, by the
time of the Mishna had asserted themselves in evident law
and custom. We may understand the tendencies all the
better by studying them in a later stage, the full-grown tree
may help us to understand the sapling.
Both the Gospel and the Mishna were written in a sense
without bias. Jost says of the Mishna that it is not written
to support a teacher or a party, nor is it written to prove
any particular views of truth, but its object is to preserve
practical truth felt to be important. Probably any candid
reader will agree with Jost in this, and might even go further
and own that only the strictest sense of duty would have
induced anyone to undertake so laborious and monotonous
a task. Nor can one believe that Rabbi Judah expected
that the Mishna would attract anyone to the doctrines or the
practice of Judaism.
Thus the Mishna has a special value for the illustration
of the Gospels, because we are sure that it has not been
adapted to the Gospels. When we read in early Christian
writers of Jewish manners and customs illustrating the New
Testament we are sometimes tempted to suspect that the
illustrations have been invented or modified to suit that
which is to be illustrated, but no such suspicion is possible
in the case of a Jewish book, handed down by Jews.
There are indeed two tendencies which detract from our
confidence in the historical accuracy of the Mishna. One of
these is the very natural desire to emphasise the former
glory of the nation and this leads to exaggeration. In some
cases the exaggeration is obvious, especially where it strays
into the region of the absurdly supernatural. For instance
we must attribute the statement that the opening of the
gate of the Temple was heard at Jericho (Tamid 3.8) rather to patriotic
imagination than to accurate memory. In other cases where
the Mishna enlarges on the wonders and magnificence of the
former dispensation we may consider that there is fair ground
for suspicion. However to illustrate the Gospels we have
rather to attend to what is said of the sin and folly of the
Jews, we are not so much concerned with the splendour of
the Temple services.
There is also the tendency to invent details. Anyone
who is familiar with modern commentators knows how upon
one or two vague hints and upon the very silence of the
narrative an ingenious and learned critic will build up a
complete biography of a man of whom really nothing is
known but the name. A more imaginative and poetic age
invented with greater boldness and the necessary terseness
of oral tradition would soon convert conjecture into statement.
We can scarcely help believing that as new exigencies
arose, new rules to meet them were supplied at times
from an artificially stimulated memory and that gaps in antiquarian
records would be supplied by the imagination.
There are however limits within which these disturbing
forces do not act. In the Mishna and the Gospel we have
two independent witnesses, witnesses too that are in the
main honest; the Mishna rather exaggerates than perverts.
They are independent, neither has been modified so as either
to confirm or contradict the other. Hence where they agree
we have the coincidence of two independent witnesses, and
such agreement is always acknowledged to afford a strong
presumption of the truth of both.
If too either of our authorities explains the other, either
the Mishna the Gospel, or the Gospel the Mishna, such
explanation also is a sign of accuracy in both. A clumsy
mistake is often obscure, and may become obscurer every
time it is repeated, but one clumsy mistake cannot explain
another. Again an obscurity which arises out of a mistake
may be explained and made to seem accurate by statements
specially concocted with a view to their bearing on the mistake.
But no one would suspect the Mishna of aiming at
making clear what is obscure in the Gospels. For instance
the Mishna tells us that there was a golden vine over the
doorway of the Temple (Middoth 3.8); we at once think of the parable of
the vine, and are perhaps willing to believe that the parable
was suggested by this vine. If so the Gospel narrative
would be made more vivid for us. We are at any rate sure
that the record of the parable and the statement in the
Mishna are independent and we feel that in some degree the
undesigned coincidence is a proof in favour of the authority
of both the Jewish and the Christian witness.
There is, however, another tendency in the Mishna which needs
to be taken into account. The Jewish Rabbis seem
to have been possessed by a sort of antiquarian enthusiasm in
for the study of obsolete laws. A recent Jewish writer says:
'They studied with as much zeal the laws concerning
the perverse and rebellious son, which according to the
Talmud were never applied, as those which were in daily
use.' (Klein, La Verite sur le Talmud, p. 14.)
Very different results might spring from this tendency;
on the one hand this antiquarian interest would preserve
the memory of manners and customs that might else have
been forgotten. On the other hand we cannot be certain
that manners and customs treated of at length in the
Mishna were not obsolete even before the time of Christ.
We are told that the use of the Waters of Jealousy was
done away with by a contemporary of Christ, and yet the
whole subject is discussed at great length and in minute
detail in the section Sota. These academic discussions on
obsolete law could not be checked or controlled by the
necessity of practically applying the decisions arrived at.
Hence it is likely that many of the cases dealt with are
mere subtleties of theory, and never had any counterpart in
the actual life of the Jews.
Summary. Recurring to our original question as to how far the
customs, feelings and doctrines of the Jews as given in the
Mishna are similar to those of the Jews in the time of
Christ. We have said already above that in substance and
spirit the position of the Jews in the Mishna is that of the
Jews of the first century after Christ. We may now add
that in some cases we may use the Mishna as a diagram on
a large scale of somewhat microscopic tendencies in the Jews
of the Gospel, and that details wherein both coincide or
wherein the one explains the other may fairly be considered
accurate. Beyond this our ground is very uncertain,
and the estimate of the value of the Mishna as representing
Jewish life in the time of Christ will depend very much
on subjective considerations.
CHAPTER 4. THE PHARISEES.
IN making use of the Mishna, we have to ask which side
of Jewish life or which party in Jewish teaching or politics,
as they existed in the time of Christ, the Mishna represents?
The Gospels recognise Herodians, Sadducees and
Pharisees; Josephus adds Essenes. As will be seen later
on, the teaching of the Mishna connects itself with that of
the Pharisees, variously described as Pharisees, scribes and
teachers of the law.*
* Not all Pharisees would be scribes or teachers of the
law, but these two latter classes seem included in the party of the
Pharisees.
We next ask how far the Rabbis of the Mishna resembled
the Pharisees, how far in recounting the traditions
of earlier times they acknowledge or imply that their predecessors
the Pharisees correctly held and worthily represented
the teaching of their tradition?
It is true that we find in the Mishna and Gemara half
contemptuous satire and even direct attack on the Pharisees.
'The wounds of a Pharisee' incurred according to the commentators
in his anxiety to avoid looking at a woman, 'are
among the things that overthrow the world.' (Sota 3.4) Elsewhere,
however, the views of Sadducees and Pharisees are discussed
with a marked preference for those of the Pharisees (Yadaim 2.6-8), and
the authorities quoted in the Mishna are mostly known as
Pharisees. (eg. Simon, son of Gamaliel)
Besides this the Mishna mostly either coincides with or
is in harmony with what we know of the teaching of the
Pharisees. It does not speak of its traditions definitely as
those of the Pharisees, nor does it speak of them as differing
from Pharisaic teaching.
Probably even in our Lord's time the leading teachers
were far from countenancing all the extravagancies of their
followers. And then as time went on the nomenclature of
parties would change. The Jewish teachers are not spoken
of in the Mishna as Pharisees but as Rabbis, and collectively
as 'the Sages'. And the 'Chaberim,' or 'Associates,' are
spoken of as careful observers of the Oral Law as distinguished
from the 'Am-Ha-Arez, who seem to have been
very lax in their observance. Probably the more intelligent
teachers dropped the title Pharisee, and the more
old-fashioned clung to it and exaggerated in their conduct
some of the more objectionable features of Pharisaic practice.
Those of the party who had adopted new names, and
as it were a new dress, might feel some contempt for those
who affected the old costume.* This feeling, together with
some censure of leaders on unworthy followers, and possibly
an element of playful self-satire, may account for the critical
remarks of the Mishna on the Pharisees, without
assuming any vital difference of opinion between the two
parties.
* Cf. the slighting way in which some Radicals speak of Whigs.
We may say therefore that Christ, in His controversies with
the Pharisees, came into contact with the principles
expressed in the Mishna. What then were the relations
between Christ and the Pharisees? We find Him as a
lad in the temple seeking to understand them and their
teaching. He arouses in them curiosity and astonishment.
Later on they and their emissaries follow closely and watch
carefully both John the Baptist and Christ. At last they
decided against both. (John 9:24, &c.; Luke 20:5) Herod relieved them of any anxiety as to John; but they were left to compass the ruin of Christ
for themselves. From the time of their decision their opposition
became more bitter and more conspicuous, and was
probably not lessened by the conversion of Nicodemus and
other Pharisees and rulers. The Pharisees of the Synoptists
and the corresponding 'Jews'* of S. John's Gospel meet
Christ at every turn with carping criticism and insidious
plots, and throughout the Gospels they are scarcely ever
mentioned by Christ except to be condemned.
* Westcott on the Gospel of St John. Introduction 1.1.i.a.
Herein lies a difficulty, the Christian reader of the Mishna
is tempted to look upon the book as a literary Antichrist
and to consider it his duty to find there nothing but falsehood
and folly as exemplified by the sins and vices of the
Pharisees.
It is not difficult to find such, but it must be remembered
that the popular manifestation and application of the teaching
of the schools often exaggerates its worst points. Christ
would largely come in contact with such popular Pharisaism.
Among the Pharisees there may have been men as different
from the fanatics whom Christ denounces as Cardinal Newman
is from some ignorant Catholic priest or as Matthew
Arnold is from ignorant and violent sceptics. Between the
time of Christ and that of Judah the Holy the Jews had
undergone the discipline of severe suffering, and many of
the teachers quoted in the Mishna had been martyrs and
confessors of their faith. All sects have their striving after
truth and holiness, the Pharisees and the Rabbis are no
exception. The Rabbis of the time of the Mishna were
probably of a somewhat higher type than the popular
Pharisee of the Gospel.
The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat, their teaching
is to be observed, 'these ought ye to have done,' but
the example of their life is to be avoided. Christ and the
Pharisees clash on the importance of forms, it is not so much
that the Pharisees challenge His general teaching or that
He condemns altogether their forms in themselves, but He
challenges their slavery to form and they His neglect of
form. Moreover an attack on a system must be practically
on its incarnation in the life of a people, wherein oftentimes
the better features of a system are lost or have so little
influence that it scarcely falls within the province of a
reformer to notice them.
We may now proceed to illustrate from the Mishna some
of those peculiarities of the Pharisees which are so well
known from the Gospels. On some more important matters
we will treat more at length in separate chapters, but it
will be convenient to group under this head many of our
illustrations on minor points.
These peculiarities of the Pharisees may be summed up
in formalism, exclusiveness and hypocrisy.
(i) Formalism: consisting in an excessive devotion to a multiplicity
of forms, many of them very minute. One
leading instance of this devotion is found in their attitude
to the Sabbath, but this we reserve for a special chapter.
Another instance is their scrupulous attention to legal
purity. On one occasion they assail the disciples and on
another Christ Himself for not washing before a meal.
We read in the same connection of their frequent washings
of pots and vessels, and of their carefulness as to 'meats.' (Matt 15:2, 23:25; Mark 7:2-4; Luke 11:38)
To this subject of legal purifications is devoted that one
of the six great divisions of the Mishna called the Seder
Taharoth. This division contains twelve treatises, and of
these there are four which deal with 'Vessels,' 'Liquors,'
'Hands,' 'Stalks,' respectively.
The treatise Yadaim or 'Hands' contains regulations
for purifying the hands from uncleanness. Maimonides in
his commentary on this treatise* tells us that the custom of
washing the hands before meals was instituted by the scribes,
when or by whom is doubtful. The object was to make sure
that the hands should not be unclean and so render the food
unclean, and for greater security the hands were always
to be washed before meals even when it was not known that
any uncleanness had been incurred. **A quarter of a log
of water is to be poured on the hands. It must be poured
out of a vessel and not from another man's hand; it must
not have a bad smell nor have been used for any other
purpose; but anyone may pour water upon another man's
hands, even an idiot or an ape.
* See Lightfoot, Horae Hebraicae, on Matt. 15:2.
** For what follows on this subject, see Yadaim.
If a man pours water on one hand first and before
pouring water on the other rubs the two together, the one
hand again becomes unclean. The marginal rendering of
the Revised Version of Mark 7:31 ('up to the elbow')
is supported by the
references of this treatise to the practice of washing the
hands up to the wrists.
The hands might be rendered unclean if merely put
inside a house infected with leprosy. The question was said
to have arisen as to whether they did not become unclean
if put in the empty space of an unclean vessel. Moreover
they were rendered unclean by touching any portion of the
canonical scriptures. This last was an artificial regulation
to prevent the careless handling of sacred books. It might
seem to us more reasonable if they had been required to
wash their hands before touching their Bible. We are told
that persons who ate with unwashen hands were troubled
with a particular class of devils.* Rabbi Akiba, when in
prison and suffering from thirst, used what little water was
at his disposal to wash his hands before prayer.**
* Lightfoot on Matt. 15:2.
** Jost, Bk. XIII, ch. 12.
The treatise Kelim or 'Vessels' discusses at great length
the liability of vessels of different kinds to contract uncleanness;
what precise closeness of contact, with what
precise amount of an unclean thing will render vessels unclean;
how far the tendency to uncleanness is affected by
a vessel having rims, or handles, and many other questions
of like importance. As the law lays down that a vessel
contracting legal impurity is to be washed (Lev 11:32,33); it is easy to
see that as the cases of legal impurity were multiplied so
would be the washings.
The treatises 'Maksheerin' and 'Oozekin,' 'Liquids' and
'Stalks,' deal with the legal purity of food.
'Maksheerin' is an expansion of Leviticus 11:38,
'But if any water be put upon the seed, and any part of their
carcase fall thereon, it shall be unclean.' The question is
discussed as to what liquids when 'put upon'
grain or herbs render it liable to become unclean. The list extended
amongst other things to dew and honey.
'Oozekin' lays down the rule that if the stalk or shell of
fruit touch anything unclean, the uncleanness is communicated
to the fruit and vice versa.
Fasting was general in those days, the prophetess Anna
fasted, both the disciples of John and the Pharisees fasted
often, and Christ Himself sanctions the practice. (Luke 2:37, 5:33; Matt 6:16, 17)
There is a treatise 'Taanith' or 'Fasting,' which is
largely taken up with the subject from which it is named.
It alludes to the yearly fasts but dwells specially on the
arrangements for fasts in case of calamity. A cumulative
system is prescribed in case of drought, fasts of increasing
severity were to be observed till either the rain came or the
harvest was hopelessly spoilt. It may be noticed that while
Christ commands the faster to anoint his head and wash
his face (Matt 6:17), the Mishna* says that 'During the week in which
the 9th of Ab happens it is prohibited to a person to shave
himself or to wash his clothes.'
* Taanith 4.7. On the 9th of Ab a fast was held in memory of the
destruction of the Temple.
Two references are made in the Gospels to the minute
care with which the Pharisees paid their tithes; in Matthew
23:23 they are spoken of as 'paying tithes of mint and
anise and cummin'; and in the parable of the Pharisee and
the Publican, the Pharisee makes it his special boast that he
pays tithes of all he possesses.
Three treatises in the Mishna deal with the question of
tithes.
The treatise Maaseroth and Maaser Sheni are on what
are called the First and Second Tithes respectively.*
* These tithes are the subject of much controversy, but the question
belongs to the Old Testament and not to the New.
The general law of tithes is laid down thus:
'Everything that is eaten and is kept and has increase from the earth is
liable to tithes.' (Maaseroth 1.1) That is to say, everything that grows out
of the earth and is edible and is of sufficient value to be
kept. It is plain that this general definition would include
'mint and anise and cummin.' Lightfoot in his Horae
Hebraicae on Matthew 23:23 quotes from the Mishna
passages in which each of these herbs is spoken of as liable
to tithes or other legal dues. He also quotes the Talmud
Babli to the effect that the tithing of herbs was instituted
by the Rabbis. He proceeds thus, "This tithing was added
by the Scribes and yet it was approved of by Christ, when
He says 'These things ought ye not to leave undone.'
Hearken to this, thou who dost not believe in tithes."
The treatise Maaseroth gives long lists of articles to be
tithed, and of the circumstances under which they are or are
not liable for tithes.
For instance; a man brings figs into his house, presumably
from his own garden and untithed, his children and
household servants may eat them without breaking the law;
workmen whom he employs may eat of them also, unless he
finds them in food. (Maaseroth 3.1)
Again, when the time of tithing draws near a man must
not sell his fruit to anyone who cannot be trusted to pay
tithe upon it. (Maaseroth 5.3) It is further laid down (Maaser Sheni 4.11)
that if a man finds
a vessel with the letter Mem (m) on it, he is to consider this
tithe and hand it over to the proper authorities, because
presumably Mem is put as the initial of Maaser, tithe.
Rabbi Jose however seems not to concur in this decision and
suggests that the Mem may be the initial of a man's name.
But the strictness of the Pharisees on the subject of
tithes is most forcibly shown by the treatise Demai.
This treatise discusses the case of a strict Jew, who finds
himself in possession of that which should have been tithed,
but, as far as he knows, may not have been tithed. For the
purposes of this treatise the people are divided into Chaberim
or Associates, who strictly observe the law, and the 'Am
HaArez or common people, who do not. It is laid down
that if the former buy titheable articles from the latter, they
cannot depend upon the 'Am HaArez having paid tithe
and so must pay tithe themselves. Also the Chaber is to be
exceedingly careful that he does not lead others to eat that
which has not been tithed. If he is carrying herbs and
wishes to throw some away to lighten his burden he must
not do so without tithing them, lest any one finding them
should eat them untithed. If he find fruit by the wayside
and takes it up to eat it and changes his mind he must not
throw it away without tithing it. (Demai 3.2,3)
It is evident that the same or even greater caution will
be needful in the case of that which is purchased from a
Samaritan or a heathen. He that buys wine from Cuthaeans*
is to say: 'The two logs I am going to put aside are for
heave offering and ten for tithe and nine for second tithe,
and then he may begin to drink.'
* i. e. Samaritan and possibly sometimes Gentile. Lightfoot, Horae
Hebr. on John 4.1; Matt. 10:5.
(ii) Exclusiveness. This feature of the Pharisaic character
is implied in their name, which signifies
'separated.' They
withdrew within narrowing circles, shutting out from their
fellowship first Gentiles, then Samaritans, then the common
people.
As the scene of action of the Gospels is almost exclusively
in Palestine, Christ is scarcely brought into contact
with the Gentiles. However it is recorded that a significant
reference to the exceptional favour showed to Gentiles like
Naaman the Syrian and the widow of Zarephath called forth
the indignation of the Jews, who heard it, and no doubt
when Christ said to the Syrophenician woman 'Is it meet
to cast the children's bread to the dogs?' He wished to
remind her how an earnest orthodox Jewish teacher would
have viewed her request. In the Acts the idea that Jews
must not eat with Gentiles has its influence in the Christian
Church.
It is evident that the regulations for legal purity would
prevent the Jews from free intercourse with Gentiles, and
especially from eating with them. Besides this it was necessary
to avoid any implication in their idolatry. Rules as to
intercourse with idolaters are laid down in the treatise
Abodah Zarah: "Three days before the feasts of the idolaters
it is forbidden to deal with them, to lend to them or borrow
from them, to pay them, to take payment of them. Rabbi
Judah said, 'It is allowed to take payment from them, since
it is disagreeable to the idolater.' The Sages answered him
'Though it is disagreeable to him now, he rejoices afterwards.'" (Abodah Zarah 1.1)
The object of these restrictions would be to avoid having
any share in providing for a heathen festival. It is interesting
to notice that authorities are agreed on the desirability
of annoying the heathen, though they differ as to
the most effectual method.
Again it is said, 'Men must not let to them buildings in
the land of Israel and it is needless to say fields.' (Abodah Zarah 1.10)
'No man should be alone with them, because they are apt to shed
blood.' (Abodah Zarah 2.1) In these rules there is a spirit of suspicious exclusiveness, but it is only too certain that there was much
to justify such a spirit.
In the matter of wine the Israelites were much hampered
in their dealings with the heathen. The Jew felt that if he
drank from a barrel or pitcher of wine, from which a libation
had been poured out to an idol, that he was implicated in an act
of idolatrous worship. Hence such decisions as these: 'A man
dines with an idolater and leaves a flask of wine on the table
and one on the sideboard, and left them and went out. The
flask on the table is forbidden to be used, but that on the
sideboard is allowed.' (Abodah Zarah 5.3) This must be explained thus; the
absence of the Jew gives the idolater an opportunity of
pouring out a libation to some idol-God without the Jew
knowing of it; so that the Jew if he drank out of that flask,
may be drinking wine from which a libation has been offered.
But it is supposed the Jew is not away long enough to give
the idolater an opportunity of pouring a libation from the
flask on the sideboard and therefore that wine may be used.
Similarly, (Abodah Zarah 5.4) 'If foreign robbers have entered into a city in
time of peace, no barrel of wine which was open at the time
may be used' because the foreigners may have poured libations
from them.
It will be plain from such instances how difference of
habits and mutual suspicion together with the anxiety of the
Jew to be legally clean and his hatred of idolatry would
bring about and find expression for a spirit of rigid exclusiveness
in the case of Gentiles.
In the case of the Samaritans the common element of
Jewish and Samaritan religion would at times draw them
together, but oftener tend to embitter the dislike and
suspicion derived from their differences. Religious animosity
is acknowledged to be most bitter when the disputants have
much in common.
There are in the Gospels several instances of mutual
hatred between Jews and Samaritans.
Christ Himself seems to recognise that for practical purposes
the Samaritans are on the same level as the Gentiles
and that it is necessary to exclude them for the present
from His work. In sending forth the Twelve (Matt 10:5) He bids them
not to go in the way of the Gentiles nor to enter into any city
of the Samaritans'. Three times Samaritans are spoken of
in a way that seems to imply special reproach to the Jews.
In the case of the 'Woman of Samaria' (John 4), the 'Good Samaritan'
(Luke 10), and the solitary leper out of the ten healed of whom
it is recorded 'and he was a Samaritan' (Luke 17), there underlies the
narrative a consciousness of the contempt and hatred felt by
the Jews for the Samaritans. 'If these Samaritans whom
you hate and despise surpass you in faith and good works,
ought you not to be ashamed alike of yourselves and of your
hatred?' When the Jews want to vent their spleen upon
Christ to the uttermost, the worst they can find to say about
Him is that 'He is a Samaritan and has a devil' (John 8:48).
In one instance we have an illustration of the hatred felt
by the Samaritans, for on His last journey from Galilee they
would not receive Him because His face was as if He were
going to Jerusalem. (Luke 9)
Later on circumstances somewhat mitigated their mutual
hatred. During the Jewish war of Titus and Vespasian, the
Samaritans assembled in arms and seemed about to revolt,
but were forthwith crushed by the Romans.* Common
danger and common suffering seem for a time to have
brought about a partial reconciliation between Jews and
Samaritans, but when danger and suffering gave place again
to peace and security the old hatred and jealousy were renewed.**
* Joseph. B. J. 3.7.32.
** Jost, Bk. XIII. Ch VIII.
The Mishna, being compiled at a time when feeling
had passed through these various phases, bears traces of
them all.
We read of ancient acts of hostility on the part of the
Samaritans. How the news of the appearance of the new
moon used to be communicated by beacon-fires on the
mountains. But the Samaritans kindled misleading fires
on the wrong days and the practice had to be given up. (Rosh Hashanah 2.2)
If an Israelite says grace the rest must say Amen, but
if a Samaritan says grace the rest must only say Amen if
they have heard the whole of the blessing. (Berachoth 8.8) An Israelite
might safely say Amen to any grace of an Israelite, but
a Samaritan grace might contain something heterodox or
even blasphemous.
All legal documents, on which the attestation of a Samaritan
witness appears, are void, bills of divorce and deeds of
manumission excepted. (Gittin 1.5) These rules point to a certain
intimacy of intercourse between Jews and Samaritans, but
also to much suspicion on the part of the Jews as to the
honesty of the Samaritans. The latter regulation may
possibly be due rather to anxiety that no technical informality
should stand in the way of divorce or the manumission
of slaves rather than to any confidence in the honesty of
Samaritans in these special cases.
Other sayings of the Mishna point to a more irreconcilable
hatred and a more complete separation between the
two peoples. It is said of the daughter of a Sadducee who
treads in her father's footsteps that she is no better than
a Samaritan. (Niddah 4.2) A saying which reminds us of the Pharisees'
taunt 'Thou art a Samaritan.'
Rabbi Eliezer says that he who eats the bread of the
Samaritans is as he who eats swine's flesh. (Shebiith 8.10).
We next have to show how far a spirit of exclusiveness
divided the Pharisees or more strictly orthodox Jews from
various classes of their own countrymen.
We are familiar with their attitude towards 'Publicans
and sinners.' The crime of the former consisted partly in
their being the officers of a foreign power, and so the hatred
of the Publican is partly hatred of the foreigner.
The Pharisees come to the disciples with the indignant
enquiry 'Why eateth your Master with Publicans and
sinners?' (Matt 9:11) Christ Himself says that 'The Son of Man' was
called 'a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of Publicans
and sinners.' (Matt 11:19)
In the Mishna Publicans are classed with murderers and
other bad characters as persons to whom vows need not be
fulfilled. (Nedarim 3.4) Money coming from Publicans was not to be
received that alms might be given from it. (Baba Kama 10.1) A house is unclean
if a Publican enters it. (Taharoth 7.6)
While it seemed a patriotic duty to stand aloof from the
Publican, enthusiasm for orthodoxy divided them somewhat
from the Sadducees. In the Gospels this opposition scarcely
comes into notice. Christ and His teaching seem to have
been objectionable to both parties. In the Acts however
their differences tempted S. Paul to seek for safety from
their dissensions. (Acts 23:6-8)
As has been already said the Mishna accepts the views
of the Pharisees and mentions those of the Sadducees in
order to make light of them and reject them. Since the
Sadducee did not accept the oral law there was a danger
that vessels might be rendered unclean by his presence. (Erubin 4.2)
The method prescribed for the preparation of the ashes of
the red heifer, involved an undignified skipping on the part
of a ram which was employed. Rabbi Jose said 'You should
not give the Sadducees an opportunity for scoffing.' (Parah 3.3) Thus
with the Pharisees the Sadducee represents the 'enemy'
who will take advantage of any 'occasion to blaspheme.'
From such facts as these as well as from the well-known
doctrinal differences, we come to understand that it was no
ordinary hatred towards Christ and no slight sense of danger
that united parties having so little sympathy one with the
other.
We pass on to the attitude of the Pharisees towards the
common people. If a Pharisee could have been brought to
understand the state of things now-a-days, he would probably
have felt that the 'common people'
corresponded more or less to the 'lapsed masses.'
Even in times when rigid
orthodoxy is dominant and strictness of life strenuously
insisted on, there is always a large class who admit with
reluctance the necessity of the orthodox religious observances
and do not pretend to carry them out with any degree of
thoroughness. Now it was just this 'common people' who
heard Christ gladly, while the Pharisees enquired indignantly
'Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on
Him?' The support given to Christ by the common people
was easily disposed of, 'This mob that knoweth not the law
is cursed.' (John 7:47-49)
The Mosaic Law invested the person of the priest with
a special sanctity and imposed upon him special and additional
rules with a view to his legal purity. The Mishna
distinguishes different grades of sanctity within the priesthood
and divides the people into Pharisees and Am HaArez,
the latter corresponding roughly to the 'common people' of
the Gospels. Contact with the garments of one of the Am
HaArez defiles the Pharisee; contact with the garments of
the Pharisee defiles those who eat the heave-offering;
contact with the garments of those who eat the heave-offering
defiles for eating holy flesh; contact with garments
of those who eat the holy flesh defiles for the sin-offering.*
* Hagiga 2.7. To eat of the various offerings was a privilege of the
priests and their dependents.
As has been said already the Pharisees were not allowed
to assume that the 'common people' had paid their tithes,
so that they could scarcely eat with them for fear they
should be eating that which had not paid tithe. If they
bought of the 'common people' they had to pay tithe on
what they bought.
All these restrictions would limit freedom of intercourse
between the Pharisees and the 'common people' and tend to
do away with any sympathy between them. The exclusiveness
of the Pharisees in different instances may be assigned
to different causes; in the case of Gentiles and Publicans
to national pride; in the case of the Sadducees to pride of
orthodoxy; in the case of the 'common people'
pride of learning and of social position; but in all these cases allied
with the special causes there was the one dominant cause,
the necessity for legal purity.
(iii) Hypocrisy. We have taken this for a title under
which to group some of the characteristics of the Pharisees,
because hypocrisy is always spoken of as one of their chief
faults, and Christ Himself addresses them as 'hypocrites.' It
is probable that the application of the English word in its
ordinary acceptation to the Pharisees is misleading. The
conventional idea of a hypocrite is that of a man who does
not mean what he says and yet says it with the intention
and in the hope that people may believe him, and of a man
who tries to appear good and to get credit for being so while
he lives as wickedly as he can without being found out. In
this sense of the word there is very little deliberate hypocrisy,
and of conscious hypocrisy there is even less. The
conscious stage of hypocrisy is very transient, for it is essential
to hypocrisy as to all forms of deceit that sooner or later
and for the most part sooner the deceiver deceives himself.
Especially there is seldom to any great extent deliberate and
conscious hypocrisy on the part of a class. For it is an
established law of general morality that a man's own class,
who for him are the one source of public opinion, may
decree that certain words and phrases are to be understood
in a sense different from their ordinary meaning or are to be
understood as meaning nothing at all. When this is the
case the individual feels that he cannot be charged with
hypocrisy for using words thus.
So in the days when the religion of Rome had lost its
hold on the educated classes, Cicero and Seneca went through
religions and ceremonies and pronounced religious formulae
and had no consciousness of hypocrisy, because everybody,
that is everybody worth considering, every educated man,
understood that such ceremonies and formulae were partly
a political expedient and partly a meaningless farce. But
it may be doubted whether the Pharisees used formulae and
ceremonies they did not believe in. Their hypocrisy was
rather one of life and conduct than of words. They professed
to follow after holiness and to carry it out into all the minute
details of life. Their hypocrisy consisted in the fact that
with them holiness of form and ritual had become largely dissociated
from holiness of character, justice, mercy and love;
their control of minute details broke down in many points,
and instead of frankly admitting their incapacity to deal, by
means of precise rules, with all the exigencies of life, they
strove to hide their failure with the quibbles and evasions of
a feeble and dishonest casuistry.
At first sight this may seem far too mild a statement of
the case against the Pharisees. Christ seems to accuse them
of open immorality, they are devourers of widows' houses,
full of extortion and excess. He accuses them of utter hypocrisy
in religion, it is for a pretence that they make long
prayers. He sums up their character by calling them
'children of the devil'—'children of Gehenna.' Surely Lightfoot
is right when he says that 'the best of the Pharisees
would be certainly the worst of men'?*
* Horae Hebr. on Matt. 3:7, optimi Pharisaeorum, certe pessimi hominum.
But a man might be guilty of all the sins with which
Christ charges the Pharisees and yet not be considered
either by himself or by others disreputable or irreligious.
There have been in all ages legal and respectable ways of
devouring widows' houses. A profession of special interest
in particular religious views may be believed to be due to
political or ecclesiastical partisanship and yet those who
make the profession are not scouted as hypocrites. Great
preachers in days when plain speaking was more in fashion
have addressed congregations in language almost as strong
as that used by Christ of and to the Pharisees. As for their
murder of Christ it was to them simply a political necessity;
Christian prelates and sovereigns usually cut short the career
of obnoxious religious teachers much more promptly. The
special misfortune of the Pharisees that has made their
name a by-word was that their formalism and insincerity
were contrasted with the simple earnestness and straightforward
honesty of Christ.
Crimes doubtless the Pharisees as individuals were guilty
of, and probably their peculiar system had much to do in
determining them to such crimes; but it would be as useless
to look in the Mishna for the authorisation of wholesale
robbery, fraud and hypocrisy as such, as it would be to seek
in the canons of the Church of Rome for any official justification
of the murders of Borgia or the vices of his cardinals.
Having thus tried to guard against an over-estimate of
the sins of Pharisees, we may point out certain traces of
these sins which are to be found in the Mishna. Christ
charges the Pharisees with insincerity in their religious observances,
with avarice and with an undue thirst for social
and scholastic preeminence. Insincerity in religious observance,
making long prayers for a pretence, fasting and
giving alms that men may see and admire, these faults are
the natural outcome of that excessive formalism already
noticed. It inculcated the observance of a multiplicity of
forms, it laid stress on the observance of these forms while
little or nothing is said as to their inner or spiritual meaning.
It became easy to forget that there was any meaning and
forms of prayer and worship might be treated like the incantations
of a magician. If a multiplicity of forms was an
essential of religion, he who observed most forms surpassed
others in religion, and he who desired a reputation for holiness
was tempted to make an extensive display of such
observances, without any reference to real worship.
For instance, in the matter of Prayers, there is a treatise
called 'Blessings' which lays down minute rules as to prayers.
It was the duty of men among the Israelites to repeat
morning and evening the Shema, i.e. the passage beginning
'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.'* Exact
rules are laid down as to the times from which and up to
which the Shema may be said ; also as to whether it is to
be said standing or reclining, whether it may be said on the
top of a tree or on a wall. Later on the question of 'Blessings'
is discussed at length. After eating figs, grapes
and pomegranates three blessings must be said according to
Rabban Gamaliel, but according to the Wise Men only one.
He who sees a place where signs were wrought for Israel is
to say 'Blessed be He who wrought signs for our fathers in
this place.' On comets, earthquakes, lightnings, thunder and
tempests, a man is to say 'Blessed be He whose strength
and might fill the world.' Many other such blessings are
given, so that in many places and on many occasions the
strict Jew would have an opportunity of displaying his
careful obedience. Here and there in this mass of minute
rules something is said that might suggest the necessity of
earnestness and sincerity in prayer; it is said 'Man is bound
to bless God for evil, as he is bound to bless Him for good.'
It is said elsewhere 'When thou prayest, make not thy prayer
an ordinance, but an entreaty before God' (Pirke Aboth 2.17), which is thus
explained: 'Prayer is not to be said merely at set times
and as a duty, but is to be the expression of a heartfelt
desire.'*
* Christ speaks of this as the first of all the commandments, S. Mark
12:29.
** Taylor, Sayings of the Jewish Fathers, p. 52.
It may not be fair to measure the relative interest felt
by the Rabbis in the forms and in the spirit of prayer
by the space they devote to these several subjects; but it
is certain that people in general would pay more attention
to the copious directions as to the form than to the
very occasional sayings on the spirit, and the result would
be insincerity.
It is also said of the Pharisees that they were avaricious. (Luke 16:14)
Possibly the Mishna does not directly and specially illustrate
the avarice of the Pharisees. It is difficult to see on what
grounds rules could be laid down which should secure special
pecuniary advantages for a particular sect or school of religious
thought. But from the close connection in the
Gospels and elsewhere between priests and Pharisees we
gather that the priests were mostly of the Pharisaic party,*
and so the Pharisees in caring for the interests of the priests
would be consulting their own interests. The Mishna is
very careful of the interests of the priests, it enforces the
payment of the tithes which they were to receive and also
of their other dues. The heave-offering if offered by a man
living near the priest, so that the offering would not have
time to go bad, was to be taken from the best, but otherwise
from that which would keep longest. (Terumah 2.4) It is said that
the rich brought firstfruits in gold and silver baskets which
were given to the priests. (Bikoorim 3.8) Moreover the fulfilment of any
vow which was to the disadvantage of a priest might be
hindered by force. (Nedarim 11.3)
* During the period of the Acts, the High Priest and his kindred were
Sadducees; but it is not necessary to suppose that their example was followed
by the other priests.
It is easier to find striking illustrations of the appetite
of the Rabbis for fame, their tendency to seek
honour of men, the first seats at feasts and in the synagogues,
greetings in the market place and the salutation
'Rabbi.'
The exhortation 'Get thyself a master' is often repeated
in one form or another. (Pirke Aboth 1.4,7,17) Again it
is said 'Let the fear of thy master be as the fear of heaven.'
(Pirke Aboth 4.17) The possible arrival
of a 'Wise Man' or 'Teacher' is considered likely to be the
occasion of special arrangements for going out to meet him
on the Sabbath. (Erubin 3.5) It is also laid down that he who takes
the Nazirite vow in the faith that the Wise Men can absolve
him from his vow is to be absolved, but Rabbi Simeon
dissents from this decision. (Nazir 2.4)
We have thus shewn that the picture of the Pharisee as
given by the Gospels in its leading features of formalism, exclusiveness
and in a special sense hypocrisy is borne out by
the Mishna. Other less prominent characteristics, such as
their views on divorce and on the resurrection will come
more conveniently under other heads. What there is in the
Mishna of purer and more spiritual teaching will also be
better treated separately.
CHAPTER 5. THE SABBATH.
OF those matters of form and outward observance on which
Christ and the Pharisees clashed the Sabbath came into
question oftenest, and it was on this point that Christ
wounded most deeply the prejudices of the Pharisees.
Out of some thirty-three recorded miracles, seven were
wrought on the Sabbath.* In two cases only out of the
seven, the healing of the demoniac at Capernaum and the
healing of Peter's wife's mother, did He fail to excite the
severest criticism, and after the healing of the man with the
withered hand, the Pharisees planned His death. One of
the leading motives of the Pharisees in desiring His death
was that He persistently set Himself against the observance
of the Sabbath as they understood it.
* The Healing of the Impotent Man at Bethesda, S. John 5. The
Demoniac at Capernaum and Simon's Wife's Mother, S. Luke 4. The
Withered Hand, S. Luke 6. The Man born Blind, S. John 9. The Woman
with a Spirit of Infirmity, S. Luke 13. The Healing of the Man
with a Dropsy, S. Luke 14.
It is perhaps easiest to state the Pharisaic view of the
Sabbath by a slight exaggeration and to say that they held
concerning the Sabbath exactly what Christ denied, namely,
'That man was made for the Sabbath,' and it is interesting
to find in the Book of Jubilees* the statement that the
Sabbath was ordained before the Creation and that Israel
was chosen to keep it.
* A Jewish work assigned by different authorities to various dates from
100 B.C. tO 100 A.D.
The Sabbath appears to have been for the Pharisees
chiefly a day when you must not do things, the things in
question being numerous and extending into minute details
of life carefully and exhaustively denned. The Fourth Commandment
was not supposed to be sufficiently intelligible to
ordinary common sense, nor was it interpreted according to
the spirit and intention but according to the letter. Moreover
while some allowance seems to be made for works of
beneficence and necessity, yet this was grudgingly conceded
and carefully limited.
Some of the points on which the Pharisees attack Christ
are the veriest trifles. For instance a man carries the rough
mat that formed his bed (John 5), this comes under the head of
carrying burdens. Indeed this was no trifle to the Pharisees,
for take illustrations of their idea of burdens: milk equal to
a mouthful, ink enough to write two letters, paint enough to
dye one eye, reed sufficient to make a writing pen, or bone
enough to make a spoon. (Sabbath 8) Moreover they discussed carefully
what instruments might be carried without being considered
burdens. A tailor may not go out with a needle nor a scribe
with a pen (Sabbath 1.3), but a cripple may go out with crutches, though
R. Meir and R. Jose are at issue as to whether he may go
out with a wooden leg. (Sabbath 6.8) It is also a grave question as to
where the line is to be drawn between ornaments or articles
of dress and burdens. A woman may go out with plaits of
false hair, but it is a question whether she may go out with
a false tooth. (Sabbath 6.5) A woman may not wear a frontlet on the
Sabbath unless it is sewn to her cap. (Sabbath 6.5) Now a bed, even the
rug of the Easterns, was very clearly larger than the reed
sufficient to make a pen. It was not an instrument necessary
for walking like a crutch, nor yet on any ground an
article of dress, to carry it was a clear and gross transgression
of the law.
At another time the indignation of the Pharisees was
aroused, because the disciples plucked ears of corn on the
Sabbath day and rubbed them in their hands. (Luke 6 and parallel) Among the
principal works which are forbidden on the Sabbath are
reaping, threshing, winnowing, sifting and grinding. (Sabbath 7.2) There
is no exact definition given of these kinds of work as there is
of building. It is indeed a question whether a man does
not break the Sabbath if he plucks anything from a flower
in a pot. (Sabbath 10.6) It is laid down also that 'Men must not squeeze
fruits, so as to extract the juice, and if it ooze out of itself it
is forbidden to use it. Rabbi Judah says "If the fruits are
for eating, the juice which oozes out may be used, but if the
fruits are for beverage, the juice which oozes out is forbidden
for use."' (Sabbath 22.1)
In the light of these restrictions and remembering the
way in which the term 'burdens' is understood by the
Pharisees, it becomes evident that the disciples had been
guilty of a very complicated crime. They had been plucking
ears of corn, probably not two or three, but handfuls. This
was reaping. Then they had rubbed it in their hands,
which would be equivalent to winnowing and sifting, and
might even be considered an attempt at grinding.
In healing the man born blind, Christ made clay and
anointed his eyes. (John 9:6) The making of clay is evidently an important
point, for when the man is asked how his eyes were
opened he says 'The man called Jesus made clay and anointed
my eyes,' and the Evangelist is careful to tell us that it was
on the Sabbath that Jesus made the clay and opened the
man's eyes. This making of clay might be considered kneading,
which is another 'principal work' not to be done on the
Sabbath. But even as the preparation of a dressing it would
be forbidden. For instance a man must not prepare brine
on the Sabbath (Sabbath 14.2); and though a child may be circumcised
on the Sabbath (Sabbath 19.2), yet if oil and wine have not been already
mixed on the Sabbath eve, they must be put on separately;
a proper dressing may not be prepared on the Sabbath, but a
linen rag may be tied on the wound. (cf. John 7:22,23) Circumcision had to
be performed on the eighth day and yet the rules for the
Sabbath are only reluctantly and partially set aside: a blind
man might receive his sight any day, there was no excuse
whatever for preparing a dressing in his case.*
* It has also been pointed out in this connection that at sunset, when
the Sabbath ended, sick folk were brought to Christ. Their friends had
evidently waited till the Sabbath was over. S. Mark 1:32
There remain three other cases in which Christ incurred
the censure of the Pharisees by healing on the Sabbath: the
healing of the man with the withered hand, the healing of
the woman with a spirit of infirmity, and the healing of the
man with a dropsy. His guilt in these three cases must
have been simply that He healed the sufferers. It is true
that He laid His hands on the afflicted woman and commanded
the man with a withered hand to stretch it forth;
but it could scarcely be called work or a violation of the
Sabbath to touch any one or to stretch forth one's hand.
In all these three cases Christ appeals to the charity and
humanity of the Pharisees and points His appeal by reminding
them of the works of mercy they permitted in the case
of animals. 'What man shall there be of you, that shall
have one sheep, and if this fall into a pit on the Sabbath
day will he not lay hold on it and lift it out? How much
then is a man of more value than a sheep?' (Matt 12:11,12; cf Luke 14:15)
'Hypocrites, doth not each one of you on the Sabbath
loose his ox or his ass from the stall and lead him away to
watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of
Abraham, whom Satan had bound, lo, these eighteen years,
to have been loosed from this bond on the day of the Sabbath?' (Luke 13:15,16)
With regard to the raising of an animal from a pit, Lightfoot*
gives quotations from the Gemara and Maimonides
which are not quite consistent. The Gemara says that if a
beast and its young fall into a pit, the beast may be taken out
with a view to killing it and must be killed, while the young
may be supplied with food in the pit. It mentions however
that Rabbi Joshua says that the intention of killing the
beast need not be carried out and that the young may
be taken out. The quotation from Maimonides which is
well known from commentaries says that if a beast fall
into a pit or pool of water, the owner may give it food, if
he cannot do this, he may place rags and planks to support
it and if these happen to enable the beast to get out, it
may get out.
* Horae Hebr. in loco.
The Mishna itself contains many provisions for the care
of cattle on the Sabbath. Straw may be untied for cattle,
pumpkins may be cut up for them and carrion for dogs. (Sabbath 24)
Men may cleanse the crib for a stalled ox, at least so Rabbi
Dosa says, but the Wise Men forbid this. Men may move
fodder from before one beast to put it before another on the
Sabbath. (Sabbath 20.4) Also arrangements are made for taking animals
to wells on the Sabbath and giving them water. (Erubin 2.2)
But in spite of these reasonable arrangements for cattle,
concessions to men in suffering and sickness are very slight
and jealously restricted. He who has toothache must not
rinse his teeth with vinegar.* He who has pains in his loins
must not rub them with wine or vinegar, but may anoint
them with oil, except it be rose oil. (Sabbath 14.4) Anointing with oil it
must be remembered was a regular practice and therefore
not specially medicine. Men must not close the eyes of the
dead on the Sabbath. (Sabbath 23.5) The priests in the temple may
replace a plaster on the Sabbath, but must not do so in the
country. It is forbidden either in the temple or in the
country to put the first plaster on a wound. A priest, who
hurts his finger, may bind it up with reeds in the temple on
the Sabbath, but not in the country. (Erubin 10.13,14)
* It is interesting to know that Rabbi Judah himself is said to have been
much afflicted with toothache. Jost, Bk. XIII Ch. X.
There are other restrictions to which there is no reference in
the Gospels. There are numerous rules about the lighting of
lamps, the burning of which was regarded as a sacred duty.
Of course no cooking may be done on the Sabbath, an egg
must not be put by the side of a hot kettle. But the reader
may ask how can there be a hot kettle on the Sabbath? A
kettle may be boiled on the Sabbath-eve and kept warm under
garments or feathers. As man must not pare his nails, a
woman must not dye her eyebrows on the Sabbath. (Sabbath 10.6) Building
of course is forbidden. 'He who builds how much must
he build to become guilty? Whoever builds at all, whoever
chops a stone, strikes with a hammer or uses a plane, or
bores a hole.' (Sabbath 12.1)
It is forbidden to write two letters of the alphabet on the
Sabbath, or to weave three threads. Labourers must not be
hired on the Sabbath. Also there are many other restrictions
of no special interest, which are sufficiently illustrated
by the above instances.
One great rule as to the Sabbath is the subject of a whole
treatise, Erubin, and that treatise is largely an account of
expedients by which the strict observance of the rule may
be evaded.
It is written 'Abide ye every man in his place, let no
man go out of his place on the seventh day.'* A man's
place was understood to be the city where he lived together
with a belt of country round the city 2000 cubits or about
six furlongs broad; so that a man could on the Sabbath start
from his house, go to the boundary of the city and proceed
further any distance not greater than 2000 cubits.
* Exo 16:29. Originally this seems to have referred to going out of
the camp to gather manna, but the Jews held it to be of perpetual obligation.
Again, the last of the thirty-nine 'principal works' which
are forbidden on the Sabbath is the carrying of anything
from one house or set of premises* to another.
* Any place surrounded or inclosed by a wall, or a ditch
ten hands wide and four deep; also the ditch itself; any
city encompassed by walls that are closed at night. Introduction
to treatise Sabbath in RR. de Sola and Raphall.
The former rule gave rise to the well-known 'Sabbath
Day's Journey.'
The latter is illustrated by the following example: A
mendicant stands outside and the master of the house
inside the house; should the mendicant put his hand into
the house and put anything (possibly his wallet, so RR.
de Sola and Raphall) into the master's hand, or take something
out of the master's hand and draw his hand back,
the mendicant is guilty, but the master of the house is free
from blame. Should the master put his hand outside the
house and put his gift into the hand of the mendicant, or
take the wallet out of it and draw his hand back, the
master of the house is guilty, but the mendicant is free
from blame. Should the mendicant put his hand inside
the house and the master take the wallet out of it or put
his gift into it, and the mendicant draw his hand out, both
are free from blame. Should the master stretch out his
hand and the mendicant take the gift out of it, or put his
wallet into it, both are free from blame.
In the first of these four cases the master is entirely
passive and the mendicant is the sole agent in transferring
a burden from the inside of the house to the outside, and so
bears the blame; in the second case the master is the sole
agent, and he bears the blame. In the last two cases the
act of transfer is divided between the two, neither is guilty
of a complete act and neither is to blame.
Obviously these two rules would often be very inconvenient.
The Sabbath was a day largely devoted to social
intercourse, and it might chance that neighbours and friends
lived just outside the Sabbath day's journey; or some need
might arise for travelling somewhat further on the Sabbath.
Then, too, it would often be natural and reasonable that
the mistresses of neighbouring houses should lend or borrow
and render neighbourly help. This would be impossible
without carrying burdens from one house to another, and
would therefore be prohibited if the second rule were made
absolute and invariable.
In order to afford some relief from the stringency of
these rules, recourse was had to the method of Erubin or
mixtures. By this method one house was 'mixed'
or combined with another so as to form one, and then anything
might be carried from house to house; also one Sabbath
day's journey was combined with another, and a man was
enabled to go 4000 cubits on the Sabbath.
The principle upon which this method is based is that
'where a man's meat is there is his house.' Thus courts
are combined by all the householders of the court uniting
to place some article of food in a given place, by doing so
they, as it were, form themselves into one family, and all
the dwellings of the court become for the time one general
and common abode for all its inmates, who thereby become
entitled to carry and convey from one house to another
within the limits of the court on the Sabbath.
He who wishes to combine one Sabbath day's journey
with another so as to be able to go two on the Sabbath,
must, before the coming in of the Sabbath, deposit food for
two meals in any particular place within the original limits
of the Sabbath day's journey. This place now becomes his
home, he is allowed on the Sabbath to go home and then
2000 cubits beyond it.* A man might deposit food in two
places and avail himself of whichever suited him. He may
say, 'If foes come from the east I will avail myself of my
deposit in the west to go westward and flee from them; if
they come from the west I will avail myself of my deposit
in the east. If they come from both sides I shall go in
which direction I please.' (Erubin 3.5) There are also conventions by
which adjoining towns may be treated as one town.
* RR. de Sola and Raphall, introduction to treatise Erubin.
A man who, by any accident, is taken or goes out of
the due limit on the Sabbath, finds himself in a very
awkward predicament. If foes or an evil spirit have caused
a man to go out beyond the Sabbath limit, he must not
move further than four cubits. If they have carried him
into another town and put him into a prison or fold for
cattle, he may, according to Rabban Gamaliel and R. Eleazar
ben Azariah, go about throughout its whole extent; but
R. Joshua and R. Akiba maintain that he must not move
further than four cubits. It once happened that these four
Rabbis came together from Parendisim and their vessel kept
the sea on the Sabbath (so that they were carried more than
the prescribed distance). Rabban Gamaliel and R. Eleazar
ben Azariah walked about throughout the whole of the
vessel; but R. Joshua and R. Akiba did not move beyond
four cubits, as they wished to observe the law with rigid
accuracy. (Erubin 4.1)
We may notice some other slight relaxations of the strict
rules of the Sabbath. If a fire occurs on the Sabbath sacred
writings are to be saved, also food for three meals, also a
basket full of loaves, a fig cake, a cask of wine. It is lawful
to call to others to save what they can for themselves. A
man may carry out all vessels required for his meals that
day. He may dress himself in as much as he can put on
and gird about him as much as he can. R. Jose saith he
must not put on more than eighteen garments, but he may
go back and dress himself in another eighteen and get others
to do the same. (Sabbath 16) These expedients enable the man to save
his wardrobe and other portions of his property without
incurring the guilt of carrying burdens on the Sabbath; for
to take up his property and carry it out in a straightforward
way would be carrying burdens.
An Israelite may take advantage of work done by a
heathen on the Sabbath, provided the work has not been
done at his request. For instance, if the heathen comes to
put out the fire he is not to be told to extinguish the fire
nor yet to be forbidden to do so. The Israelites are not
bound to make him keep the Sabbath. If a heathen lights
a candle, an Israelite may use the light unless it has been
lighted on purpose for the Israelite; if a heathen has drawn
water for his cattle to drink, the Israelite may give his cattle
to drink after him, unless the water has been drawn on
purpose for the Israelite. If a heathen has made a step to
descend from a ship, an Israelite may descend after him,
unless the heathen made it on purpose for the Israelite. It
once happened that Rabban Gamaliel and the elders arrived
in a ship, and a heathen made a step by which he descended
and Rabban Gamaliel and the elders descended after him. (Sabbath 16)
These rules made it obviously convenient to be in the
neighbourhood of heathens on the Sabbath day, and ought
to have done something to create a kindly feeling on the
part of the Israelites toward the heathen. How the feelings
of the heathen would be influenced it is difficult to say.
Another rule implies much simple trust on the part of the
Israelite toward the heathen. It was forbidden to carry
money on the Sabbath, so the Israelite who on the Sabbath-eve
was overtaken by the dusk on the road was to give his
purse to the heathen.
Another principle of the Mishna is that if any work
gets done without its being intended to be done advantage
may be taken of it. He who has strained his hand
or foot must not pour cold water on it; but he may wash
it in the usual way; and if he does get cured he does
get cured. (Sabbath 22.6) He who has the toothache must not rinse
his teeth with vinegar, but he may wash them as usual,
and if he does get cured, he does get cured. (Sabbath 14.4) It is also
laid down that work done unintentionally on the Sabbath
may be taken advantage of, but if done intentionally it
may not. (Terumah 2.3)
These regulations pave the way for evasions of the law; a
man's interests might lead him to affect ignorance of the
motives of the heathen or even forgetfulness of his own
intentions. Entirely opposed to this is the fragment found
in Codex Bezae after Luke 5:10 "On the same day seeing a
man working on the Sabbath, he said to him: 'Man, if thou
knowest what thou art doing happy art thou, but if thou
knowest not thou art accursed and a transgressor of the
law.'"
In all this there was the intention of glorifying God by
keeping His Sabbath, and in spite of all this heavy burden
of Sabbath keeping the day is spoken of as one of repose
and enjoyment. For it is said 'They did not fast on the eve
of the Sabbath, for honour to the Sabbath. Nor on the first
day, that they should not go forth from repose and enjoyment
to toil and fasting and death. (Taanith 4.3) Moreover we know
that feasts were given on the Sabbath. On the Sabbath
Christ goes to eat bread at the house of a Pharisee with a
company of Pharisees. (Luke 14:1-6) And yet in spite of all this the
Sabbath must have been to many a heavy burden, grievous
to be borne, though it is possible that those who were
skilled in all the niceties of the law might find many convenient
ways of avoiding troublesome restrictions.
Against this complicated system we have to set the one
positive utterance of Christ. 'The Sabbath was made for
man.' Even this is called forth by Pharisaic excess and is
rather a protest against the Pharisaic Sabbath than a conscious
and intentional statement of positive views. Elsewhere
the Sabbath has no place in the teachings of Christ,
except in so far as He rejects the Sabbath of the Pharisees.
Nothing is said about it in the Sermon on the Mount and
no parable illustrates its value. So too the Pharisees understood
Him. Dispensations from the obligation of the Sabbath
in particular cases, difference of opinion on special
points might be allowed to a prophet or rabbi and might
not invalidate his claim to orthodoxy or to authority. But
Christ's teaching was far more general, far more revolutionary.
Here as elsewhere Christ sought to substitute the
spirit for the letter and to do so was to strike at the roots of
the Pharisaic system.*
* What is said here is only intended to refer to the Pharisaic Sabbath.
It would be foreign to this essay to discuss the relation of the teaching of
Christ to the observance of the first day of the week.
CHAPTER 6. THE STATUS OF WOMEN.
THE bulk of the Mishna, as for instance the treatise on the
Sabbath, applies equally to both sexes, and where this is
not the case, the same treatise will deal with both. But
besides this, one of the six great divisions of the Mishna,
containing seven treatises, is devoted specially to the position
of women and its title is 'On Women.'* One treatise is on
the obligation of a brother to marry his deceased brother's
widow, another on betrothals, another on marriage settlements,
and another on bills of divorce.
* Cf. Taylor, Sayings of the Jewish Fathers, p. 29, note 12.
The Mishna deliberately and constantly places women on
a lower level than men both legally and socially.
'Women, slaves and children, are exempt from reciting
the Shema, and also from the phylacteries.' (Berachoth 3.3)
'Women, slaves and children, are exempted from the obligation of
living in booths during the Feast of Tabernacles.' (Succah 2.8) It was
the custom for the appearance of the new moon, and especially
of the new moon which began the new year, to be
proved by witnesses. Certain persons were not qualified to
act as witnesses. 'Gamblers, usurers, pigeon breeders, traders
in the produce of the Sabbatical year, and slaves. This is
the rule—all evidence that cannot be received from a woman
cannot be received from any of these.' (Rosh Hashanah 1.8) Again,
'All are bound to appear in the temple, except the deaf, an idiot,
a child and an eunuch, and women, and slaves who have not
been set free, and the lame and the blind, and the sick and
the aged, and the man who cannot go afoot.' (Chagiga 1.1)
Again, 'The observance of all affirmative precepts of the
law, the performance of which is limited to a certain time, is
incumbent on males, and not on females.' (Kedushin 1.7)
It is possibly because women are relieved from some of
the precepts of the law, that it is considered doubtful
whether they need be instructed in the Scriptures. We
certainly read that 'a man should teach his daughter the
Scriptures, lest perchance she be compelled to drink the
bitter waters of jealousy, in which case the fact that she has
studied the Scriptures will defer their harmful effect.'*
However upon this text the commentators gravely discuss
the question whether women should be instructed in the
Scriptures. (Sotah 3.4)
* Cf. Num. 5:11 31. It is assumed that she is guilty.
In other matters the rights of the woman are inferior to
those of the man. A man may devote his son as a Nazirite,
may sell or betroth his daughter; a woman has none of these
rights. On the other hand, a woman is in certain cases
treated more leniently than a man; she may not be hung,
nor may she be sold on account of theft, whereas a man may
suffer either of these punishments. (Sotah 3.8)
In all these cases the woman is treated as inferior to the
man, and while limited in privileges is also relieved from
responsibility.
The introductory section of the treatise on Betrothals
treats of women as property in much the same way as it
treats of slaves and cattle. A wife is acquired in three ways,
two of which are by money and by contract. (Kedushin 1.1) A Hebrew
slave is acquired by money or by contract (Kedushin 1.2); a Canaanite
slave by money or by contract (Kedushin 1.3); immoveable property is
acquired by money, moveable property by being removed by
the purchaser. (Kedushin 1.5) Large cattle are acquired by delivery of the
animal from the seller to the buyer. (Kedushin 1.4) All this, it must be
remembered, is the introduction to the subject of betrothals,
a sort of general treatment of the whole subject of acquiring
property before proceeding to the special case of women.
This particular species of property seems sometimes to have
been treated carelessly. 'When a father says, "I have
betrothed my daughter, but do not remember to whom,"
and a man comes and says, "You betrothed her to me," that
man is to be believed.' (Kedushin 3.7)
On the other hand, a woman is usually spoken of as betrothing
herself and not as being betrothed by her father (Kedushin 2.1),
except in the case of minors, and then provision is made for
the repudiation of the betrothal by the woman if she does
not approve of it. (Yebamoth 13.1,2)
The legal position of women is summed up thus: 'A
woman is always under the authority of her father until she
is placed under the authority of her husband.' (Ketuboth 4.3)
The betrothal was an introductory step to this transfer of
authority, was formally entered into by both parties, and
was important in point of law. The man and woman are
spoken of as husband and wife and a bill of divorce was
necessary to annul the contract. (Kedushin 4.9) Any breach of the contract
is virtually a breach of a marriage vow.
Hence, when Mary was betrothed to Joseph and was suspected
by him of infidelity, he proposed to put her away by
a writing of divorce.
A married woman had considerable rights of property.
Her Ketubah or marriage settlement is strictly guarded;
anything she inherits becomes her property, likewise a share
of damages awarded her for insult or injury (Ketuboth 6.1);
but the usufruct of all such property is given to the husband.
(Ketuboth 8) In
return the husband must maintain his wife, must ransom her
from captivity and must provide for her interment. He
inherits her property at her decease, and a widow must be
maintained out of her late husband's property but her Ketubah
goes to her heirs. (Ketuboth 11) In case she is divorced, without
sufficient cause, she takes her property with her.
The Mishna is also very explicit about a woman's house-hold duties:
'These are the kinds of work which a woman
is bound to do for her husband. She must grind corn and
bake and wash and cook and suckle his child and make his
bed and work in wool. If she brought him one bondwoman,
she needs not to grind, bake or wash; if she brought two,
she need not cook nor suckle her child; if she brought three,
she need not cook nor work in wool; if she brought four,
she may sit in her easy chair. R. Eleazar saith, Even
though she has brought him a hundred bondwomen, he can
compel her to work in wool, as idleness leads to unchastity.
R. Simon ben Gamaliel saith, in like manner, Should a man
by vow interdict his wife from doing any kind of work, he
is bound to divorce her and to pay her the amount of her
Ketubah, because idleness may lead to mental aberration.' (Ketuboth 5.7)
Polygamy is taken for granted in the Mishna, a man
may betroth himself to five women at once. (Kedushin 2.7) The various
complications arising out of a multiplicity of wives are fully
discussed. It is, however, supposed from the Gospels and
other writings of the period that the custom of polygamy
was dying out and the regulations of the Mishna may be
rather a formal completing of the theory of the ancient law
than intended for practical use at the time. It should,
however, be remembered that the Herods did not confine
themselves to one wife at a time. The discord in families
to which polygamy might lead may be illustrated by the
following provision; 'Everyone is deemed a trustworthy
witness to testify to a woman concerning her husband's
decease, except her mother-in-law, the daughter of the
latter, her own rival (i.e. her husband's other wife), her
sister-in-law or her husband's daughter (by another wife).' (Yebamoth 15.4)
To which de Sola and Raphall append the following note,
'Because these females are suspected of bearing her ill-will
and may wish to bring her to shame' (by giving her false
information, which may lead her to marry a second husband
while her first is alive).
Divorce, as is well known, was easy and frequent.
Herodias had divorced her husband Philip to marry Herod
Antipas. The woman of Samaria had probably been separated
from her five husbands by divorce. Naturally there
was much controversy as to what constituted valid grounds
for divorce. Christ gives His decision on this question in
two passages. The first is in the Sermon on the Mount. (Matt 5:31; Luke 16:18)
'It was said also, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him
give her a writing of divorcement: but I say unto you, that
every one that putteth away his wife, saving for the cause
of fornication, maketh her an adulteress: and whosoever
shall marry her when she is put away cornmitteth adultery.'
The second utterance of Christ on this subject was on
His last journey to Jerusalem. (Matt 19:3-12; cf. Mark 10:2-12)
The Pharisees came tempting Him and saying,
'Is it lawful for a man to put away his
wife for every cause? And He answered and said, Have ye
not read, that He which made them from the beginning made
them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man
leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife,
and the twain shall become one flesh. What therefore God
hath joined together, let not man put asunder. They say
unto Him, Why then did Moses command to give a bill of
divorcement and to put her away? He said unto them,
Moses for your hardness of heart suffered you to put away
your wives; but from the beginning it hath not been so.
And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife,
except for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth
adultery: and he that marrieth her when she is put away
committeth adultery.' Perhaps one of the striking proofs of
the extent to which loose views on marriage were adopted
is to be found in the comment of the disciples,
'If the case of the man is so with his wife, it is not expedient to marry,'
and the answer of Christ,
'All men cannot receive this saying,
but they to whom it is given.' Now the views of the
Mishna on this subject are far more in harmony with the
practice of certain American states than with the teaching
of Christ. The re-marriage of divorced wives and husbands,
as in the case of Herodias and the Samaritan woman, is
referred to as a matter of course (Gittin 4.8, 8;5,8) and no attempt is made
to limit the practice.
The grounds for divorce which the Mishna recognises as
valid are sufficiently numerous to justify one in saying that
according to the Rabbis divorce was allowable for any and
every cause.
(Ketuboth 7.6) 'The following women are divorced and do not receive
their Ketubah: She who violates the law of Moses or the
traditions of the Jews. What constitutes a violation of the
law of Moses? If she causes him to eat food that has not
paid tithe;... if she vows and does not keep her vow. What
constitutes a violation of the traditions of the Jews? If she
goes out with her hair loose; if she spins in the streets; if
she converses* with any man. Abba Saul saith, If she curses
his children in his presence. Rabbi Tarphon saith, If she
is a noisy woman. What is meant by a noisy woman? One
who speaks in her own house so that the neighbours can
hear.'
* RR. de Sola and Raphall interpret this as meaning 'flirts.'
'Beth Shammai* say: No man may divorce his wife,
unless he found in her scandalous behaviour, for it is said (Deut 24):
Because he found in her some scandalous behaviour; but
Beth Hillel say: Even if she spoiled his food. R. Akiba
saith: Even if he found one handsomer than her, for it is
said (Deut 24): If it happen that she found no favour in his eyes.'
* The members of the school founded by Shammai, so Beth Hillel of
that founded by Hillel.
It also appears that divorce might be a matter of arrangement
or the subject of a bargain between man and wife, for
we read: 'If he (the husband) says: Here is your bill of
divorce on condition that you give me 200 zooz; she is
divorced from the moment she accepts the bill of divorce
and is bound to pay the stipulated amount.' (Gittin 7.5)
RR. de Sola and Raphall however, in their note on the
decisions of Beth Shammai and Beth Hillel, state that
R. Akiba's decision is not accepted, and that neither Beth
Hillel nor R. Akiba would intend to apply their decision to
practical life. They also state that the Talmud always discourages
divorce and only permits it under peculiar circumstances
and for a legal object. They quote the concluding
words of the Gemara on the treatise Gittin. R.
Eleazar saith, "Even the altar drops tears when a man
divorces the wife and companion of his youth, for thus (Mal 2:13,14)
is it written, 'And this have ye done again covering the altar of
the Lord with tears, with weeping, and with crying out...
Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the Lord hath been
witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against
whom thou hast dealt treacherously, although she is thy
companion and the wife of thy covenant.'"
It is possible that these teachers did not intend their
extreme doctrines to be acted upon, but it is pretty certain
that these doctrines would serve as excuses for evil-disposed
persons, and it is clear from the Gospel narratives and other
authorities that this was the case. Take for instance the
following statement of Josephus in his autobiography (Sect 76), 'And
at this time I divorced my wife, the mother of three children,
because I was not pleased with her manners.' A few
lines further down he tells us that he married again. RR.
de Sola and Raphall themselves tell us that it is mentioned
in the treatise Baba Kama, that the priests were often in
the habit of divorcing their wives in sudden fits of passion,
and repented soon after; when, as priests, it was unlawful
for them to take them back, after having been once divorced.
To meet this difficulty a special form of bill of divorce was
devised which could not become valid till after some delay.
It was hoped that this delay might give time for the priests
to become calm that they and their wives might be reconciled.
Here the behaviour of the priests seems to indicate
that they at any rate carried out practically what R. Akiba
and Beth Hillel taught.
Much has been made of a story quoted in Lightfoot*
of a certain Rabbi Nachman, who on arriving at a village
to spend the night there, used to send round a herald for
a wife for the time of his stay. Surely the prosaic literalness
of Western criticism goes too far when it supposes that
this was intended for history. It is probably one of the
grim pleasantries with which the Rabbis delight to bewilder
and confound their readers. Amidst all this laxity as to
divorce it is curious to find extreme strictness on other
points; it seems to be implied (Kedushin 3.10) that if a man has been
betrothed to a woman and the betrothal has not been completed
by marriage, the man is not allowed to marry any
of the woman's relatives.
* Hor. Hebr. Matt 19:3.
If a woman were left a widow without children, the law
of Moses directed that her husband's brother should marry
her. Copious directions intended to exhaust all possible
cases are given in the treatise on this subject. One case
may remind us of the story by which the Sadducees tried to
puzzle Christ, the story in which a woman was married to
seven brothers one after the other. The case is as follows:
'When a man, who had received information of his wife's
death, married her sister from the father's side only, and
upon receipt of intelligence of the death of this latter,
marries her maternal sister; and on the news of the decease
of the last mentioned, marries her sister from the father's
side; and, finally, on the reported death of this latter,
marries her maternal sister. It turns out that the information
has in each case been incorrect and all the five
women are alive.' (Yebamoth 10.5) The passage goes on to explain, which
are his wives and which of them his brother would be bound
to marry in case of his death.
From all that has been quoted on this subject it will be
gathered that the Jews of this period were seriously tainted
with the immorality that was eating away the vigour of the
Roman Empire. Indeed Roman and Greek writers tell us
that the Jews were notorious as taking a leading part in
the infamous trade in vice. And the Mishna itself tells us
that because of the increase of murderers the ceremony of
the Heifer for the expiation of uncertain murder was abandoned, and because of the increase of adultery the ceremony
of the waters of jealousy was abandoned. (Sotah 9.9) The latter fact
throws some light on the feigned zeal for morality on the
part of the Pharisees in the case of the woman taken in
adultery.
A less disagreeable question in connection with the
status of women is that of the extent of freedom of social
intercourse allowed to them. It is evident from the Gospels
that we cannot ascribe to Jewish women that seclusion of
the harem, that jealous life-long imprisonment, which is
said to be the lot in the present day of Eastern women
of the middle and higher classes. They appear in public,
are present at feasts at any rate to serve the guests, and
some even follow Christ from place to place with the other
disciples. Probably the Pharisees disapproved of this. Even
the command that the women should keep silence in the
churches implies considerable liberty.
Nor are there in the Mishna traces of seclusion. It is
true that it is matter for grave suspicion if a woman is seen
conversing with a strange man in the street. (Ketuboth 1.8) A woman
is not to keep a school, for fear of scandal arising through
the visits of the parents of the scholars. (Kedushin 4.13) There are also
cautions against talking too much with women, which may
help us to understand the astonishment of the disciples
at finding Christ talking to a woman. (John 4:27) Jose ben Jochanan
says, 'Prolong not converse with a woman,' and a gloss adds,
'His own wife is meant, much less a neighbour's.' (Pirke Aboth 1.5,6) All these
precautions tend to shew that women had opportunities
of meeting with men, a certain freedom of social intercourse.
It is also likely that in general the actual position of
women was better than the legal provisions on the subject
might lead us to suppose.
CHAPTER 7. ETHICS AND DOCTRINE.
THE Mishna is too much occupied in attempting to apply
the Law and the Tradition to all the possible contingencies
of daily life to have much time to spare for general principle.
At least the kind of general principle worked out in the
Mishna is, as before stated, fairly illustrated by
'Thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed,'
'Thou shalt not carry burdens on the Sabbath.' Out of the abundance of the
heart the mouth speaketh, and if the Pharisees left undone
the weightier matters of the law, judgment, and mercy, and
faith; the Mishna says very little about them.* What little
there is said is mainly collected in one treatise out of the
sixty, 'Pirke Aboth' or 'Aboth,' 'Fathers,' or as it is sometimes
called in English, 'Sayings of the Fathers.'
* It is true that the Hagadic writings deal more with spiritual matters,
but the pre-eminent position assigned to the Mishna justifies what is said
in the text.
The treatise Aboth is unique in the Mishna, here and
elsewhere the manifold elaboration of ritual or moral minutiae
is broken by a doctrinal or ethical saying, but the treatise
Aboth stands alone in being made up of such. The gathering
together of these into one treatise reminds one of the
grouping of Christ's sayings in the Sermon on the Mount,
and one might say that the Aboth is to the Mishna as the
Sermon on the Mount is to the Gospel, or as the Epistles to
the Seven Churches are to the Apocalypse, or as the twenty-sixth
chapter of Leviticus is to the book of Leviticus; only
the difference between Aboth and the rest of the Mishna
is much more striking than in the other cases.
This treatise being for all other than antiquarian purposes
by far the most profitable and interesting part of the
Mishna is often published alone, it is the storehouse from
which many writers draw their gems of Talmudic wisdom,
but it is not to be supposed that Aboth or any set of quotations
from it is a fair specimen of the Mishna.
It consists chiefly of a series of short paragraphs, each
containing from one to half-a-dozen sayings, attributed to
some one of the successive teachers who in their turn received
and transmitted the tradition from Ezra to Rabbi
Judah himself. For instance, the Gamaliel of the Acts is
represented by the following saying, 'Rabban Gamaliel said,
Make to thyself a master, and be quit of doubt; and tithe
not much by conjecture.'
Thus in a few pages we have the selected wisdom of
centuries of orthodox Jewish thought.
Possibly in each case the sayings preserved were favourite
truths of the Rabbis to whom they are ascribed. The
Rabbis often repeated them till their hearers remembered
them and learnt to associate them with those particular
teachers. Thus the Seven Sages of Greece are remembered
by a saying apiece. Had Jesus of Nazareth been an
orthodox Rabbi, He might have been represented by some
such sayings as these: 'He that hath ears to hear, let him
hear' (Matt 11:15, 13:9,43; Mark 4:9,23, 7:16, 8:18; Luke 8:8, 14:35),
'Many that are first shall be last' (Matt 19:30, 20:16 and parallels),
'Many are called but few are chosen.' (Matt 20:16, 22:14)
It is true that if we remember the main characteristics
of the Mishna, which are those of a law-book, these sayings
seem out of place. But their position here serves to illustrate
the determined recognition on the part of the Jews
of the union of social and legal with ethical and religious
teaching. This is also illustrated in something the same
way by the contents of the Pentateuch and the prophecies of
Ezekiel; but in neither of the latter are primary truths thrust
into the background that minor truths may be painfully
worked out and often distorted by being considered apart
from their relations to the greater truths on which they rest.
It will follow from the fragmentary character of this
teaching that there is no regular development, no scientific
statement of principles or doctrines. We may however
quote to shew how Jewish teachers summarized in proverbial
statements the truths which underlay the system of
the Mishna. As a rule the truths are better than the
system.
i. The Law. As we might naturally expect we find
a great deal on the value of the Law or of 'instruction,'*
the duty of studying it, and the fruitful results thereof.
* Cf. Taylor, Sayings of the Jewish Fathers, p. 119.
According to Simon the Just the world rests on three
things; the Torah, the Temple service, and the bestowal
of kindnesses. (1.2) Simeon ben Gamaliel however says, the
world stands on three things; judgment, truth, and peace.* (1.19)
Man is created for Torah** (2.9), and Torah is one of the five
possessions of God. (6.10) There are three crowns, the crown of
Torah, the crown of Priesthood, and the crown of Royalty;
but the crown of a good name is above them. (4.19) Elsewhere
it is said that the Torah is greater than the priesthood and
the kingdom. (6.6)
* The quotations in this chapter are mostly from the section Aboth.
** Cf. Nedarim 3.11, where it is said the world was created on
account of circumcision. In Christian writers the world is said to be created
on account of the Church.
If three eat at one table, and have not said over it words
of Torah, they are as if they had eaten the sacrifices of the
dead. (3.5) Where there is no Torah there is no culture. (3.26)
If there is much Torah, there is much reward (1.19), for Torah
gives life in this world and in the world to come. (6.7) The
observance of it brings honour and wealth (4.10), if a man
neglects it he comes to poverty. (4.13) He who takes upon him
the yoke of Torah is relieved from the yoke of royalty and
worldly care. (3.8) The Shekinah or Divine Presence is with
those who occupy themselves about Torah. (3.1)
'He that profanes things sacred, and contemns the
festivals, and annuls the covenant of Abraham our father,
and acts barefacedly against the Torah, even though he be
a doer of good works, has no portion in the world to come' (3.17, 2.2),
but on the other hand it is said, 'All Torah without work
must fail and occasion iniquity.' Torah almost seems with
the Rabbis to occupy the place of faith with S. Paul and
S. James, for with them without faith works are dead, and
without works faith is dead.
'Whosoever is busied in Torah for its own sake merits
many things; and not only so, but he is worth the whole
world: he is called friend, beloved: loves God, loves mankind:
pleases God, pleases mankind. And it clothes him
with meekness and fear, and fits him to become righteous,
pious, upright and faithful: and removes him from sin, and
brings him towards the side of merit...And he becomes
modest and long-suffering and forgiving of insult.' (6.1) So
that Torah is like that 'love' in the great thirteenth of
First Corinthians, love which suffereth long and is not
puffed up; and reminds one also of 'faith' in the eleventh
chapter of the Hebrews; so that one feels that the whole
matter is fitly summed up by Ben Bag Bag, when he says
of Torah, 'Turn it and again turn it; for the all is therein
and thy all is therein; and swerve not therefrom for thou
canst have no greater excellency than this.' (5.32)
ii. Good Works. Some reference has already been made
to this subject in speaking of the Torah.
Submission to God is inculcated, but from somewhat
selfish motives.
'Do His will as if it were thy will, that He may do thy
will, as if it were His will. Annul thy will before His will,
that He may annul the will of others before thy will' (2.4); but
Antigonus of Socho, the founder of the Sadducees, says,
'Be not as slaves that minister to the lord with a view to receive
recompense.' (1.3)
Much also is said in praise of kindliness and beneficence
towards men. The good way that a man should cleave to is
a good heart, the evil way an evil heart. (2.12,13) Hillel said,
'Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace;
loving mankind and bringing them near to the Torah.' (1.13)
The bestowal of kindnesses is one of the three things on
which the world rests. (1.2) It is also said,
'Let the needy be thy household' (1.5),
'Repentance and good works are a shield
against punishment.' (4.15) So in case of a fast an aged man is
to say, Brethren it is not said for the men of Nineveh, 'And
God saw their sackcloth and their fasting' but 'God saw
their works, that they returned from their evil way,' and it
is said, 'Rend your hearts and not your garments, and turn
unto the Lord your God.' (Taanith 2.1)
The necessity of supporting mere knowledge of truth by
practical holiness is enforced thus:
'Whosesoever wisdom is in excess of his works, to what
is he like? To a tree whose branches are abundant, and its
roots scanty; and the wind comes, and uproots it and overturns
it. And whosesoever works are in excess of his wisdom,
to what is he like? To a tree whose branches are scanty,
and its roots abundant; though all the winds come upon it,
they stir it not from its place.' (3.27; cf. Matt 7:24).
It is interesting to find among all this praise of the Torah
and of its teachers the following tribute to a virtue often not
sufficiently appreciated. It almost seems as if the teachers
sometimes wearied their scholars. Simeon son of Gamaliel
said, "All my days I have grown up amongst the wise, and
have not found aught good for a man but silence; not learning
but doing is the groundwork; and whoso multiplies
words occasions sin." (1.18) Compare with this the saying of
Rabbi Akiba, "A fence to wisdom is silence." (3.20)
Sincerity and the Doctrine of Intention.
From what has been said about Good Works it will be
evident that the Mishna is not wanting in exhortations to
practical morality; the sincerity of profession is to be guaranteed
by performance. There are also sayings which lay
stress on the necessity of spiritual earnestness as well as of
accurate ceremonial. "Men are not to stand up to pray
except with profound humility. The pious men of ancient
days used to pause a full hour before they began to pray, in
order to direct their minds to the Deity." (Berachoth 5.1) A similar spirit
is manifested in the following comment on Exodus 17:11,
"When Moses held up his hand then Israel prevailed, &c."
"Could the hands of Moses animate the contest, or cause it
to cease? But it was thus: whilst Israel looked to heaven
for aid, and subjected their will to their heavenly Father,
they prevailed, but when they ceased to do so, they failed."
Again on Numbers 21:8, "Make thee a fiery serpent, and set
it on a pole, and every one that is bitten, when he looketh
upon it shall live." "Could this serpent kill or bring to life?
But it was thus: when the Israelites looked to heaven for
aid, and subjected their inclination to the will of their
heavenly Father, they were cured, but when they did not,
they perished." (Rosh Hashanah 3.8) It even seems that a silent intention to
pray was valid, even if it found no outward expression. We
read, "If one who is reading in the Law when the time
comes for praying intends it in his heart? He is free. But
if not? He is not free." (Berachoth 2.1) The meaning of this passage
seems to be that if anyone is reading the Law at the time
when the Shema should be pronounced and, rather than
interrupt his reading, silently directs his thoughts to the
Shema, he is to be considered as having discharged the obligation
of repeating it.
This care for inward sincerity may if pressed become
mechanical. In the Mishna we find the Doctrine of Intention
fairly anticipated. (Chagiga 2.6) In order that a ceremony performed
by a private individual for his own benefit may be
effectual thereunto, every stage of the ceremony must have
been gone through with the intention that it should be a
part of that particular ceremony. If a man washes himself
with the intention of eating ordinary food this washing does
not purify him for eating of tithes. (Chagiga 2.6) The Passover lamb
must be slaughtered with the intention that it shall be for
the Passover and with the intention that it shall be for a
definite company (Pesachim 6.6), otherwise it is unlawful.
According to the Council of Trent the failure of a right
intention in the officiating priest destroys the efficacy of the
sacraments. A similar result seems to follow from the rules
of the Mishna as to the necessity of a right intention on the
part of the High Priest in discharging his duties. This
necessity is specially insisted on in the case of the Passover (Pesachim 5.2)
and the ceremony of the Red Heifer. (Parah 4.1, 12.2,3)
In laying stress on a right intention in the case of certain
actions an inevitable danger is incurred. In judging of his
intentions a man is judge, jury, counsel, witnesses and a
party to the suit all in one and must often be tempted to
persuade himself that his intentions were such as they
should have been. He will often succumb to the temptation.
In addition to such cases as the above there are others
in which the inducement to hypocrisy would be peculiarly
strong. Work done on the Sabbath unintentionally may be
made use of. Are there not many odd pieces of work that
a man might do almost by accident and afterwards persuade
himself that it was quite by accident?
iii. The Divine Sovereignty. According to Josephus*
the Pharisees taught that all things happened by divine
decree, but yet they did not deny the free will of man.
Rabbi Akiba states the same truth thus: 'Everything is
foreseen; and freewill is given. And the world is judged
by grace; and everything is according to work.' (3.24) Again
S. Paul, the pupil of Gamaliel, applies the same apparent
paradox to practical life thus: 'Work out your own salvation
with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you
both to will and to do of His good pleasure.'
* Antt. 18.1.3; B. J. 2.8.14.
There are a few practical remarks which may perhaps
be traced to a belief in the Divine Sovereignty and in these
the Rabbis are happier than is their wont. Man is to bless
God for evil as well as for good.* (Berachoth 9.5)
* The subsequent explanation of this saying is rather unfortunate.
It is also said, and the saying is virtually an assertion of
the all-controlling wisdom of God, 'Despise not any man,
and carp not at anything; for thou wilt find that there
is not a man that has not his hour, and not a thing that has
not its place.' (4.6) We are also reminded that our lives are
part of a great plan and that our share in it is assigned
to us by God, and that it is beyond us to say what our work
shall be, to what extent we shall be allowed to complete
it, or when we may lay it aside; for it is said,
'It is not for thee to finish the work, nor art thou free
to desist therefrom.' (2.19) A sterner aspect of the same truth is given in the
following saying, 'Let not thine imagination assure thee
that the grave is an asylum; for without thine own consent
thou wast framed, and without thine own consent thou
livest, and without thine own consent thou diest, and without
thine own consent thou art about to give account and
reckoning before the King of the kings of kings, the Holy
One, blessed is He.' (4.32)
iv. The Future Life. The Acts of the Apostles says
of the Pharisees that they believed in the resurrection, in
angels and spirits, while the Sadducees believed in none
of those things. (Acts 23:8) Josephus also tells us that the Pharisees
believed in a future life,* and in one place speaks of the
soul as passing into another body;** which might seem to
imply the transmigration of the soul. But as this doctrine
is not elsewhere ascribed to the Pharisees, it is possible
that it may be a somewhat awkward equivalent of our
phrase 'resurrection of the body.'
* Antt. 18.1.3.
** B. J. 2.8.14.
In S. John (5:39) the Jews, that is to say, the Pharisees, for
all really orthodox Jews were Pharisees, are spoken of as
thinking to find 'eternal life' in their Scriptures.
The doctrine of the future life is clearly laid down in
the Mishna, the phrases 'the world to come' and the 'life to
come' occur frequently, sometimes in opposition to 'the
world.' (2.8,19; 4.3,24; 6.7; Sanhedrim 10.1) The 'Garden of Eden' is spoken of as the reward of the righteous. (5.29,31) In one passage (Berachoth 9.5) the opposite doctrine is distinctly controverted. It is said,
"All the seals of the
blessings in the sanctuary used to say, 'from the עולם.' But since the Epicureans perversely taught there is but one
עולם, it was directed that men should say, 'from עולם
to עולם.'"
The word עולם is represented in Greek by αιων. Its original meaning is 'age' and then 'world,' then the phrase
'from the age' came to mean eternity. The Epicureans,
that is to say, heretics, caught up the words 'the age' and
used it as a proof that there was only one 'age,' one 'world,'
one state in which men lived, and to meet this trivial and
frivolous argument, the formula was changed so as literally
to imply the existence of two worlds, a future life as well as
a present.
In the face of this it is rather strange to read, 'The death
of the wicked is pleasant for them and pleasant for the
world; but the death of the righteous is evil for them and
evil for the world.' (Sanhedrim 8.5)
It almost seems as if the doctrine of the future life was
not yet clearly understood, and its consequences were not
properly worked out.
The mystical and miraculous are a much more prominent feature
of the Gemara than of the Mishna; but still they are
sufficiently marked in the latter. In the Gospels we read
that Christ at His Baptism, at the Transfiguration and shortly
before His Passion (John 12:28) was addressed by a voice from heaven.
A 'voice from heaven,' the 'Bath Kol' or 'daughter of the
voice,' is frequently referred to by Jewish writers. Thus
'Every day Bath Kol goes forth from Mount Horeb, and
makes proclamation and says, Woe to the creatures for
contempt of Torah.' (6.2)
According to the Mishna the temple services were the
occasion of a numerous set of regular miracles. On the Day
of Atonement a scarlet thread twisted on the door of the
Sanctuary turned white when the scape-goat arrived in the
wilderness.' (Yoma 6.8)
'Ten miracles were wrought in the sanctuary.' (5.8) Among
these were the following: 'The holy meat never stank...a
fly was not seen in the slaughterhouse; and a defect was not
found in the sheaf; nor in the two loaves; nor in the shewbread.'
A special significance is also attached to certain seasons:
'The world is judged at four periods; at the passover, for the
growth of corn; at pentecost, for the fruit of trees; at new
year's day, when all human beings pass before Him like
lambs, as is said, "He fashioneth their hearts alike; He
considereth all their works"; and at the feast of tabernacles,
judgment is given for the rains.' (Rosh Hashanah 1.2)
It may however be doubted whether in these accounts of
miracles we ought to see anything more than a highly figurative
statement of certain moral and spiritual truths.
We also find traces of the ordinary belief in omens and
charms. If a man pray, and make a mistake, it is a bad
sign for him. If he be a representative of a congregation, it
is a bad sign for those whom he represents, for a man's
representative is like himself. They say of R. Hanina, son
of Dosa, that when he prayed for the sick, he used to say,
"this one will live," or "this one will die." They said to
him, "how do you know?" He said to them, "if my prayer
be fluent in my mouth, I know that he is accepted; but if
not, I know that he is lost." (Berachoth 5.5)
Among the things which may be carried on the Sabbath
are included according to some, 'an egg of a locust, and
a tooth of a fox, and a nail of one crucified, as medicine.' (Sabbath 6.10)
According to others it is forbidden to carry such things at all
'because of the ways of the Amorites,' i.e. because such
practices savoured of heathen magic.
The fifth chapter of the Pirke Aboth exemplifies the
tendency to attach special importance to certain numbers.
Omitting two or three short paragraphs, the chapter is
arranged thus; nine sets of ten, ten sayings by which the
world was created, ten generations from Adam to Noah,
&c.; three sets of seven; seven sets of four, mostly sets
of four characters; two sets of three.
CHAPTER 8. VOWS. THE POOR.
THE custom of making vows does not occupy any prominent
place in the Gospels. John the Baptist indeed is a
Nazirite, and Christ in His denunciation of the Pharisees
includes among their other sins the fact that they say,
'If a man shall say to his father or his mother, That wherewith
thou mightest have been profited by me is Corban, that is to
say, Given to God' and 'no longer suffer him to do aught for
his father or his mother; making void the word of God by
their traditions.' (Nedarim 1.4) There is a treatise in the Mishna on the
Nazirite vow and also one on vows in general. 'Corban' is
one of a group of words of similar meaning used in the
Mishna in the forms of vows. In one passage an opinion is
given as to the relative validity in such forms of 'Corban,'
'as Corban,' 'the Corban,' 'for Corban' respectively, and
some doubt seems to exist as to the validity of the last
phrase. (Nedarim 1.4)
The phrases too 'wherein I might be profited by you,'
'wherein you might be profited by me,' are among the
regular forms of vows. (Nedarim 8.7) We meet with two classes of vows
of this kind, vows by which a man binds himself either not
to receive any advantage from some one or not to do anything
that will be of advantage to the other party. It seems
that such vows were so frequent, especially in Galilee, as to
interfere with social life and cause serious inconvenience.
With a view to obviating this difficulty synagogues and
other public buildings are reckoned as belonging to the
prince that they may not be subject to such vows and so
may be freely used." (Nedarim 5.5)
The treatise on vows discusses with the usual minuteness
the particular forms of vows that are valid and in what
particular cases, also with what degree of rigour the words of
a vow are to be interpreted. For instance, if a man has
vowed not to eat beans, may he eat French beans or is he
only debarred from broad beans.* As oaths and vows cannot
easily be distinguished both are virtually discussed in the
treatise 'Vows.' Christ in speaking of oaths says,
'Swear not at all; neither by heaven, for it is the throne of God; nor by
the earth, for it is the footstool of His feet; nor by Jerusalem,
for it is the city of the great King.' (Matt 5:35) Now among the valid
forms of oath in the Mishna are the altar, the temple, and
Jerusalem, only Rabbi Judah says that if any man swears by
Jerusalem it is as if he said nothing. (Nedarim 1.3)
* This is only an imaginary example.
With this we have to compare Matthew 23:16-22,
'Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear
by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by
the gold of the temple, he is a debtor...Whosoever shall
swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear
by the gift that is upon it, he is a debtor. Ye blind: for
whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the
gift?' Between the Gospel and the Mishna as it now stands
there is a discrepancy, but the saying of Rabbi Judah suggests
the existence of a popular practice in accordance with
the words of the Gospel, but possibly disallowed in later
times. The saying 'the altar sanctifieth what belongs to it
(lit. is worthy of it),' occurs in another connection in the
Mishna. (Zebachim 9.1)
The provisions for absolving men from inconvenient vows
are as minute and elaborate as the discussion of the forms
and scope of vows. Four classes of vows need not be
observed, (i) Vows of persuasion, (ii) Hyperbolical Vows,
(iii) Vows as to which a mistake is made, (iv) Vows which
cannot be performed owing to adverse circumstances. Vows
of persuasion are illustrated by the oaths made use of in
negotiating a bargain. The seller swears he will not take
less than two shekels, the buyer swears he will not give more
than one. These incompatible vows are not allowed to put
an end to the negotiation, but may both be disregarded and
the buyer and seller may agree on an intermediate price.
Hyperbolical vows are vows in which the condition is impossible
in the nature of things, e.g. I will do so and so if I see
a serpent in the shape of a triangle. Mistaken vows are
those in which a man makes or breaks a vow under a false
impression, vows 'if I have eaten,' forgetting that he has
eaten, or 'if I shall eat,' and afterwards forgets his vow and
eats. Vows annulled by circumstances are those in which
the performance of a vow is not known to be impossible
when the vow is made, but is afterwards found to be so, as
for instance when a man vows to take a journey and afterwards finds that the floods are out and he cannot go. (Nedarim 3.1) There
are other curious regulations for the benefit of those who
made hasty vows or oaths. If a vow was made in the faith
that the Sages could absolve the man, he was to be absolved (Nazir 2.4);
and if a man made a vow that if a man were made scribe he
would do so and so; making the vow in the belief that the
man was not a scribe, and then found out that he was a
scribe, the vow was not valid. If the casuistry of the Mishna
is not exactly the same as that attributed to the Pharisees
by Christ it is very similar in character.
One of the leading features of the Old Testament is its
care for the needs of the poor. The legislation of the Old
Testament secures them many rights and provides for their
relief when in distress. The crime which the prophets
denounce most frequently and emphatically is the oppression
of the poor.
It is unnecessary to point out that Christ in this matter
fully endorses the teaching of the Old Testament. The
strongest proof of this is that He Himself was a working
man and chose His friends and disciples from the same class.
We read 'Blessed are the poor,' and it is hard for 'a rich
man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.' His command
is, 'Give to him that asketh of thee.' His invitation is given
to all who are 'weary and heavy laden.' Doubtless in all
these sayings there is a spiritual meaning, but the willingness
of Christ to relieve physical suffering warrants us in
including in them actual poverty and weariness of toil.
The Mishna in its own peculiar way is equally faithful
to the teaching of the Old Testament, and the rights granted
therein to the poor are carefully maintained. For instance
we read, 'When ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shall
not make clean riddance of the corners of thy field when
thou reapest, neither shalt thou gather any gleaning of thy
harvest: thou shalt leave them to the poor, and to the
stranger: I am the Lord your God.' (Lev 23:22)
A treatise of the Mishna is devoted to the subject of
this corner of a field. (Peah)
The difficulties arising out of the uncertainty as to
whether food had been tithed have been referred to. Special
license as to the use of food in such cases is accorded for
the purpose of entertaining a poor man on the Sabbath. (Demai 4.4)
All debts according to the Pentateuch were to be released in the Sabbatical Year, but labourers' wages are not released. (Shebiith 10.1)
A poor man lodging for the night or for the Sabbath
is to be supplied with meals. But anyone possessing fifty
denarii is not eligible for this relief. (Peah 8.7,9) Is it possible that He
who had not where to lay His head may sometimes have
availed Himself of this provision?
It is also commanded concerning 'the poorest in Israel'
that 'they must not withhold from him the four cups of
wine, even though he receive the weekly alms.' (Pesachim 10.1)
The Mishna contains comparatively little as to the position
of slaves. They were disqualified from discharging
certain legal and ceremonial functions. Gamaliel seems to
have had a slave Tabbi to whom he was much attached and
who possessed some knowledge of the law. (Succah 2.1)
The provisions on behalf of the poor are enforced by
solemn warning, 'At four seasons the pestilence waxes: in
the fourth year, in the seventh, in the ending of the seventh;
and at the ending of the Feast (Tabernacles) in every year. In the fourth
year, on account of the poor's tithe in the third; in the
seventh, on account of the poor's tithe in the sixth; and at
the ending of the seventh, on account of the seventh year
fruits; and at the ending of the Feast in every year, on
account of the largesses of the poor.'
In discussing this subject the well-known care of modern Jews for their poor should not be forgotten. Herein they are singularly faithful to the teaching of their traditions.
CHAPTER 9. RELATION OF THE MISHNA AND THE GOSPELS TO THE
OLD TESTAMENT.
IT is written in the closing verses of the Book of the
Prophet Malachi 'Remember ye the law of Moses my servant,
which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel,
with the statutes and judgments.' There follows the promise
that Elijah shall come before the great and dreadfu1 day of
the Lord, and so the book ends. Thus at the end of the
Old Testament as arranged in our English Bible, the last of
the prophets addresses to Israel as the last word of the
prophetic order an exhortation to remember the Law. The
Alexandrine school of Jewish thought as represented by the
Apocrypha and by Philo was not unmindful of this command;
but the Law is remembered most directly and
thoroughly in the Gospel of Christ and the Mishna of the
Rabbis. Each of these connects directly with the tendency
of Jewish thought, as we find it at the close of the Old
Testament Canon. So far as either is the result of previous
writings or teaching, it is the result of the Old Testament.
To the Mishna the Law is all and in all; Christ came to
fulfil the law giving the assurance, that not one jot or tittle
of it should pass away till all should be fulfilled.
The materials for historically connecting either Mishna
or Gospel with the Old Testament are scanty, we have no
literature which really links the closing books of the Old
Testament with the revived Jewish literature of the Gospel
or of the Rabbinical schools. Chronologically indeed the
Jewish literature of Alexandria* fills the gap, but the influence
of this literature on either Mishna or Gospel is very
slight. Alexandria indeed exercises some influence on the
Gospel through the Septuagint, but the Mishna seems to
show no traces of such influence. The Mishna gives a list
of names connecting Rabbi Judah with Ezra, and assigns
one or two sentences to each. It claims moreover to be in
the main a reproduction of oral teaching handed down from
Moses. So far the connection is complete, but we have
little but these sentences to show us when the minute and
detailed system of the Mishna arose, to what circumstances
it was due and through what forms the oral tradition passed.
The claim of the Jews on behalf of the Mishna that it dates
back to Moses necessarily involves the neglect or suppression
of any evidence that might have thrown light on its actual
origin. Obviously the Mishna links itself with parts of the
Pentateuch and Ezekiel and the later prophets, also with
the Books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. It is not unnatural
that the legal provisions and proverbial wisdom of the Old
Testament should have had their development in later
times. However much we may wonder at the extreme
form which the development takes in the Mishna, yet even
here its system is scarcely unique as a specimen either of
civil or ecclesiastical law. But the real phenomenon of
Jewish thought as illustrated by the Mishna is the failure
of the prophetic and spiritual elements of the Old Testament
to beget a derivative literature amongst Palestinian Jews.
This failure is illustrated and partly explained by the
position of authority accorded to the Mishna; for it was
the object of the Mishna to deal with the Law. Again the
fact should be noticed that what there is of more spiritual
teaching in the Hagada is largely grouped round the Mishna.
It may perhaps be possible to trace in the later books of the
Old Testament the beginning of this tendency to give an
undue prominence to legal ordinances.
* It must be remembered that we are dealing with the Gospels and not
with the New Testament as a whole.
It cannot be said that either the Alexandrine writings
or the Oral Tradition fill the gap in time between the
Evangelical teachings of the great prophets and its development
in the Gospels. In Stanley's Jewish Church the various
influences at work on the Jewish character are carefully
investigated, but there is little or nothing which indicates
any teaching transmitted through Jewish teachers, which
coming between the Prophets and the Gospels rises to
anything like the elevation of either. It is true that the
language and sayings of Christ seem to be influenced by the
older Rabbinical teachings, but the essential elements of
His teaching, so far as they rest on any original, go back
directly to the Old Testament.
The chief element in contemporary Jewish life and
thought, which may have supplied impulse, inspiration and
enthusiasm for new developments in Jewish literature was
the expectation of the immediate advent of the Messiah.
The Jewish communities were everywhere seething with
excitement and agitated by the wildest hopes. Hence the
Old Testament must have had a more living meaning and
excited a deeper interest, and those elements of Old Testament
teaching which appealed to men's highest hopes and
loftiest impulses might be expected to come to the front
and to have a dominant influence. This seems to have
taken place in at least three ways, according to the differing
character of men's highest hopes and impulses. Everyone
expected the realization of his ideal. Men of military and
patriotic ambition were kindled by the history of Israel's
ancient glory and by the seeming promise of empire. Perhaps
the rebellion of Barchochabh was the most mature result of
the Messianic hope in this direction, the most determined and
the most disastrous attempt to realize the ideal of an earthly
Messianic kingdom. The men of the schools in their turn
applied themselves with renewed vigour to adapt the ancient
law to the new condition of things, that the new kingdom
might be administered according to the divine will,
and Israel in her renewed empire be pure and blameless
before her God. But there was no such new kingdom or
renewed empire as the Rabbis had anticipated, and their
work has come down to us modified by the ruin and failure
of their hopes, and this work is embodied in the Mishna.
But there were others who sought for more than earthly
glory, for more than a perfect system of civil and ceremonial
law; there would be men who would be led by the awakening
of life and thought to dwell upon the spiritual and moral
beauty of the old writings, and to interpret the Messianic
hope as a promise that the manifest presence of God, the
inspiration of the ancient prophets, should be renewed for
them. Christ invited such to find in Himself the realization
of their ideal, and the Gospel is the history written by such
men of His claims upon their faith and their response to
these claims. But making allowance for the different influences
that gave rise to the Mishna and the Gospel, it is
yet important to remember that it is the same spiritual
revelation as contained in Law, Prophets, and Psalms, and
as illustrated by Jewish history, that culminated for the
Jews in the Mishna and the Talmud, and for us in Christ.
Rabbinical teaching and Christianity are two offshoots from
the same stock of ancient Judaism and we must not let the
vast difference between the two blind us to the fact. To
us it may seem that Christianity is the continuation of the
main trunk, and modern Judaism a side shoot, feeble and
stunted, but both have grown up from the same roots and
are nourished by the same spiritual life.
It has already been pointed out more than once that
the Mishna is specially and avowedly connected with the
Pentateuch and belongs, with portions of Ezekiel, to those
Jewish writings which deal with the Law. The Pirke Aboth
and what else of the same kind there is in the Mishna
connects itself in form and subject-matter with Proverbs and
Ecclesiastes. But while this sacred book of later Judaism
was thus content to rest almost entirely on only a part
of the Old Testament, the Gospels virtually connect themselves
with the whole; with the Pentateuch, notably in the
Sermon on the Mount, with the Prophets, especially in
St Matthew, who definitely writes on the principle that Christ
and His teaching are the fulfilling of the prophets; with
Psalms in frequent quotations; with Proverbs in those
sayings of 'worldly wisdom' that are not rare in Christ's
teaching. The relation of the Gospels to the historical
books of the Old Testament is brought out most clearly
in the speeches in the Acts, where the history of the Old
Testament is appealed to as leading up to the Gospel.
Moreover while the Mishna elaborates the Law with a
servile regard for the letter, tempered by an ingenious
casuistry, the Gospel uses the spirit of the Old Testament as
the means of advancing in the freedom of the Spirit to new
developments of higher teaching.
The difference as to the amount of the Old Testament
dealt with is carried out in quotations. While the Gospel
quotes nearly the whole range of the books of the Old
Testament with certainly no preference for the Pentateuch,
the Mishna rarely refers to anything else but the Pentateuch.
But the Canon of the Mishna and of the Gospels are
essentially the same, and identical with that of our Bible.
In both Mishna and Gospel the authority of the Old
Testament is rather taken for granted than definitely stated,
and both assume on the part of the hearer or reader a
considerable knowledge of scripture. The Mishna never states
the text it is discussing and assumes that the reader will be
so familiar with it as to know from the discussion itself what
point is under consideration.
With the above limitations we may say that the Mishna,
like the Gospels, has many ordinary straightforward
quotations, in which the Old Testament is appealed to as an
authority, or used to illustrate some point of doctrine or
ceremony.
But even in the New Testament there are quotations
where sentences are used without reference to their meaning
and context in the Old Testament because the words describe
or illustrate the New Testament. As for instance when the
words 'Out of Egypt have I called my son' are applied to
the return of the infant Christ from Egypt, though in the
original it applies to the children of Israel, and is part of a
reproach against their ingratitude. We shall see further on
that the Mishna is more systematically and dogmatically
indifferent to the context of its quotations so long as a
meaning can be extracted from the words.
Again, in the Gospels we find words and phrases of the
Old Testament constantly embedded in the language.
Naturally in the Mishna the influence of the Old Testament
on the language shows itself chiefly in the use of the terms
and phrases of the Law.
We find however in the Mishna much use of scripture of
a very artificial kind. Every word, every letter is considered
pregnant with meaning, the arrangement of the words, the
use of the singular for the plural, everything is full of meaning.
On the one hand we read in the Gemara 'There are no two
passages in the Law which repeat the same thing' (Sanhedrin Gemara, fol. 39, Klein) and on
the other, it is desirable to prove everything from the Law.
Hence the different forms of synonymous expressions are
pressed to give essentially different meanings, and the most
casual expressions in a simple narrative are treated as the deliberate
and permanently binding enunciations of important
truths. If this fails poetry is interpreted by mystical or allegorical
formulae. For instance 'I will bring your sanctuaries
into desolation'; the fact that in this sentence the sanctuaries
are spoken of and it is not expressly stated that they cease
to be sanctuaries is held to prove that they remain sanctuaries
even when desolate. (Megillah 3.3)
Then again it is desired to find scriptural authority for
the way of saying the Shema and it is found thus:
'Beth Shammai hold, that in the evening, men are to recline when
they say the Shema, and in the morning they are to stand
upright; for it is said, When thou liest down and when thou
risest up. But Beth Hillel hold that every man is to say it
in his own way, in what posture he pleases, for it is said
When thou walkest by the way. Such being the case why
then is it said, When thou liest down and when thou risest
up. The meaning is at the time when mankind usually lie
down and at the time when they usually rise up.' (Berachoth 1.3)
Reason for a liturgical practice is found as follows:
"The exit from Egypt is to be mentioned at night. Rabbi
Eleazar ben Azariah saith, Verily I am almost seventy
years of age, but have not succeeded in proving that the exit
from Egypt ought to be mentioned at night until Ben Zoma
expounded, That thou mayest remember the day of thy going
forth from the land of Egypt all the days of thy life.
'The days of thy life' would denote the days only; but the expression
'all the days of thy life' includes the night likewise.
But the Sages say 'the days of thy life' denote the present
state; whereas 'all the days of thy life' include the future
days of the Messiah." (Berachoth 1.5) Compare also the following,
'Whence know we that Achan's confession made atonement for him?
As it is said, And Joshua said Why hast thou troubled us?
The Lord shall trouble thee this day. This day art thou
troubled but thou shalt not be troubled in the world to come.' (Sanhedrin 6.2)
These are only one or two examples out of a large
number.
The Mishna in one or two instances uses a text to
suggest a new truth by altering some prominent word. 'And
it saith And the tables were the work of God, and the writing
was the writing of God, graven upon the tables. Read not
Charuth graven but Cheruth freedom, for thou wilt find no
freeman but him who is occupied in learning Torah.' (Pirke Aboth 6.2)
In the explanations already quoted of the Fiery Serpent
and of Moses' prayer at Rephidim we see traces of a rationalising spirit.
It is interesting to notice in what different ways the
Gospels and the Mishna supplement the Old Testament.
The Gospels add nothing to the history, or nothing
to ritual or legal observance, elaborates none of these, but
develops great principles, supplies additional motives and
inspires new hopes. The Mishna fills up and completes
with great elaboration the scheme of law, and even extends
its list of miracles into Old Testament times and tells of the
wonderful things which were created at the moment of
transition from the six days of creation to the first Sabbath.
CHAPTER 10. SUBSEQUENT HISTORY OF THE MISHNA AND THE GOSPELS.
IN tracing the subsequent history of the Mishna and the
Gospels, and noting such points in the history of each as
offer ground for comparison, we must remember that they
originated approximately in similar circumstances and the
same period of time. Both are in a measure due to the
inspiration of the Messianic age, but in very different ways.
The Gospels breath an atmosphere of success and are full of
undiminished hope. The Mishna as we have it succeeds to
the failure of attempts to realize the Messianic kingdom;
the hope within it is but faint and it has more of the stern
resolution that may be gathered from despair. Yet the
glories of Christianity ought not to make us altogether blind
to the invincible patriotism, the heroic pertinacity with which
the teachers of this ruined and scattered people renewed the
grasp of the Law upon the conscience of Israel and secured
the unity and persistence of Jewish life and worship.
The first prominent feature in the history of the Mishna
is the formation of a mass of literature relating to it. This
literature eventually was arranged as a kind of commentary
to the Mishna and appeared in two recensions known as the
Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmud respectively. As the new
matter was similar in character, equal in merit and often
superior in interest to the Mishna itself, it came to have
an almost equal authority, and the sacred book was not the
Mishna merely, but the Mishna and its commentary, i.e. the
Talmud. Henceforward the history of the Mishna is for the
most part the history of the Talmud. This new development,
together with the original Mishna, extends to six or eight
large folio volumes, and the style is at least as obscure as that
of the Mishna; so that it became simply impossible that it
should be used as a popular text-book, and its authority
served chiefly to increase the influence of the limited class
who had leisure and learning enough to study it. Now in
the case of the Gospels it is true that the Acts, Epistles and
Apocalypse were added to them and they became one book,
but these are in no way parallel to the Gemara. Another
mass of Christian literature arose dealing with the New
Testament, namely the Patristic writings, and these formed
a sort of Christian Gemara. In time a supplementary
authority was accorded to the Fathers as interpreters of the
New Testament; but their writings were different in character,
far inferior both in merit and interest to the Gospels;
their bulk became even more formidable than that of the
Talmud. Hence the New Testament has never had the
dead weight of the Patristic writings tied round its neck in
the shape of a commentary of coordinate authority published
with it; and the Churches of the Reformation have strictly
limited the authority to be accorded to the Fathers. Nevertheless
when we speak disparagingly of the Talmud, its
many volumes, its tedious frivolity of allegorical interpretation
and petty detail, its doubtful casuistry, we should
remember that the Fathers are not altogether free from
similar faults. Allegorical interpretation of the wildest
character is to be found in the Epistle of Barnabas and the
writings of Ambrose; the casuistry of Chrysostom is more
than doubtful at times, and Jerome distinguishes himself by
bitter and unscrupulous partisanship. From these a Jewish
writer might compile a selection of passages as absurd as
some of those popular sets of extracts from the Talmud,
which, to the mind of a Jew, might seem intended to pander
to Christian prejudices or to supply the perennial craving of
the human mind for trivial anecdotes. But however tainted
with such faults both Talmud and Fathers helped to
throw new light on ancient truth, and it is only the false use
which may be made of them which makes them stumbling
blocks to Jew and Christian respectively.
The Mishna being now absorbed in the Talmud, the latter
became the representative book of the Jews, as the
New Testament was of the Christians, and as both Jews and
Christians were emphatically what has been called religions
of a book, it was natural that the enemy of the religion
should seek to destroy the book. It is well known that the
last great persecution of the Christians, that of Diocletian,
specially aimed at the destruction of the New Testament,
and in the days of the Reformation and since a similar object
has been attempted by those who believed that a New Testament
in the vernacular was a dangerous and fatal book to
place in the hands of the laity. In like manner the enemies
of Judaism have again and again struck at the Talmud.
Justinian forbad the use of the Mishna.* Under Pope
Julius III. the Talmud was ordered to be burned.** At the
revival of learning at the Reformation, when printed editions
began to be issued and Reuchlin devoted himself to the
study of Rabbinical writings, a great outcry was raised both
against the writings and against the faithless Christian who
so far forgot himself as to study them. But fortunately
Reuchlin, aided by the influence of Erasmus, and protected
by the Archbishop of Maintz, was able more or less to hold
his own. Luther's advice was to take away all their Talmuds
in which are nothing but godlessness, lies, cursing and
swearing.***
* Milman, Hist. of Jews, III 75.
** III 343.
*** III 353.
By order of the Council of Trent subsequent editions of
the Talmud were purged of attacks on the Christians. It is
very much the fashion to speak of the absence of these
attacks from later editions as due to the anxiety of modern
Jews to suppress the evidence of former intolerance. This
motive may have its weight now, but it is only fair to
remember to whom the original expurgation was due.
It cannot be doubted that, as the persecution of Diocletian
helped to establish the authority of the New Testament, so
these efforts, on the part of the enemies of Judaism, to
destroy the Talmud only emphasized its authority and
secured for it the devoted attachment of the Jews.
But while these attacks were made from outside there
were not wanting Jews who protested against the authority
of this superadded mass of tradition. As in the history of
the Church we meet with occasional protests against the
authority of the Fathers, and later on against that of the
schoolmen, so from the eighth century the existence of the
Karaites* was a standing protest against the authority alike
of Mishna and Gemara. This sect of the Jews fell back on
the Old Testament as the Reformers on the New Testament,
but their influence was as limited though more continuous
than that of the pre-Reformation Protestants.
* Milman, Hist. Jews, III 126.
In spite of opposition both the Gospels and the Talmud
fulfilled their missions. As a product of a living hope and a
means of its fulfilment, the Gospels continually extended the
sphere of their influence; the hope had been an aggressive
one, and claimed that its influence should be world-wide.
The book succeeded in its mission. But the object of the
Mishna and subsequently of the Talmud was entirely different.
It was not intended to gather in converts to Judaism,
it was rather a means by which the Jewish people retired
still more within itself and drew around itself ever tightening
bonds, which while they secured the union of the people,
also shut out the Gentiles from them. It has been for centuries
entirely successful; absorbed in what seem to the
Christian the unattractive and multitudinous formulae of his
life and worship, the Jew has been continually reminded of
his unique position and special calling; he has remained
separate and preserved a national character.
Nor has the influence of the Talmud been confined to
the Jews. The Talmud exercised considerable influence on
and supplied materials for the Koran. The teaching which
was afterwards embodied in the Talmud even acted upon
Christianity itself through the medium of some of the Gnostic
sects. The Cabbalistic portions of the Talmud and other
Rabbinical writings had their share in the popular magic of
the Middle Ages. In our own days the Talmud is a storehouse
of quaint suggestions for poets and is used for the
illustration and interpretation of both Old and New Testament.
The influence of the Talmud was and to a very large
extent is even yet limited by the absence of translations.
As in the Church of the Middle Ages so among the Jews
the sacred books and the liturgies were hidden from the
laity under the veil of an unknown language. It is true
that Hebrew has always been known amongst the Jews to
a much larger extent than Latin amongst the Christians,
still there would doubtless be a proportion in old times as
there is a large proportion now, who could only understand
a Hebrew liturgy through a translation. Moreover the
language of the Talmud needs special study even in those
who are familiar with Biblical Hebrew. Thus just as the
Latin liturgies and the Vulgate were the mysterious and
magical weapons of a priestly caste and served to invest
their person and authority with a supernatural awe, so in
a smaller degree the Hebrew liturgies and the Talmud
exalted the Rabbis.
But the Talmud needs not only translations but
commentaries. What commentaries exist are chiefly on the
Mishna, they are comparatively few and aim rather at explaining
the text, than at preaching sermons on it. It is
needless to say that the older commentaries are in Rabbinical
Hebrew. As the Mediaeval Church looked on the
knowledge of the New Testament as an esoteric book to be
reserved for the study of the profound scholar or the privileged
ecclesiastic, so the study of the Mishna was not
intended for any but those sufficiently imbued with the
spirit of Judaism to be familiar with the Jewish language.
The general revival of learning at the Renascence
extended its influence to Judaism. Christians took up the
study of Jewish literature and gradually the Talmud was
made somewhat more accessible to the student. Buxtorf
published his great lexicon. And as the Renascence gave
rise to English and German translations of the Bible, so, only
considerably later, Surenhusius in the 17th century translated*
the Mishna and some of its commentaries (not the Gemara)
into Latin, and somewhat earlier a Spanish version was published.
In the seventeenth century the Mishna was translated
into German, and in 1845 eighteen treatises were
translated into English by Rabbis de Sola and Raphall, and
other portions have been translated. The Talmud is now
being translated into French by Moise Schwabe.
* It is said that the Talmud was translated into Arabic in the 10th
century, but the use of this would be limited. Milman, Hist. Jews, III
147.
How far the influence of the Talmud will survive the loss
of the safe shelter of an unknown language, how far it could
subsist by its own merits, if the belief on external grounds
in its divine authority were lost, a Christian is scarcely in
a position to judge. The New Testament can be read by
everybody in almost every language and still maintains its
influence even over those who deny its special claims to
divine authority.
Doubtless modern criticism makes the New Testament
more and more dependent on the inherent vitality of its
teaching as witnessed to and enforced by the Divine Spirit
in the human spirit, and similar causes are breaking down
the authority of traditional Judaism and of the Talmud
amongst the Jews. But the failure of the faith of the Jews
in Judaism is not due to any extension of the influence of
Christianity but to the working of those forces which attack
alike all revelations. Moreover it should be remembered
that the surrender of one faith is seldom the immediate
introduction to another. There seems good reason to suppose
that side by side in the future as in the past Christianity
and Judaism will bear their mutual witness to each other
and their common witness to the eternal working of the
Divine Spirit.
APPENDIX.
1. THE SECOND COMING OF THE SON OF MAN AND THE ADVENT OF THE JEWISH MESSIAH.
A comparison may be made between the signs of the coming
of the Son of Man as given by Christ and those of the coming
of the Messiah as given by the Mishna. The signs of the coming
of the Son of Man are these: 'There shall be great distress upon
the land, and wrath unto this people. And they shall fall by
the edge of the sword, and shall be led captive unto all the
nations; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles,
until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. And there shall be
signs in sun and moon and stars; and upon the earth distress
of nations, in perplexity for the roaring of the sea and the billows;
men fainting for fear, and for expectation of the things
which are coming on the world: for the powers of the heavens
shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of Man coming
in a cloud with power and great glory.' (Luke 21:23-27)
In the Mishna we read: 'Shortly before the advent of the
Messiah licence shall increase; prices shall be very high; the vine
shall bring forth fruit, yet wine shall be dear. And the kingdom
shall be overthrown by heresy and there shall be no reproof
and the territory of Judaea shall be desolate and its borders shall
be laid waste. Distinguished men shall go about from city to
city and shall meet with no kindness, the wisdom of the doctors
of the law shall grow rotten, they that fear sin shall be despised
and there shall be great lack of truth, youths shall put to shame
old men, old men shall rise up before youths. The son shall
provoke the father, the daughter shall rise up against her mother,
and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man's
foes shall be they of his own household. (Micah 7:6,7; Matt 10:35,36) That generation shall be shameless as a dog, nor shall the son respect his father.
Whom then shall we trust? Our Father who is in heaven.' (Sotah 9.15)
2. ILLUSTRATIVE QUOTATIONS.
- S. Matthew 6:3, 'When thou doest alms, let not thy left
hand know what thy right hand doeth.'
Shekalim 5.6, 'There was a chamber for secret almsgiving
wherein pious men put gifts for the nourishing of the deserving
poor.'
- S. Matthew 6:26, 'Behold the birds of the heaven, that they
sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and your
heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value
than they?'
Kedushin 4.14, "Rabbi Simeon ben Eleazar said, 'Didst thou
ever see any animal or bird exercise any trade or handicraft and
yet they are maintained without trouble or care; they were
created to serve me; would it not follow, that I, who was created
for the sole purpose of worshipping my Creator, should also find
my maintenance without trouble, if it were not that, through my
evil conduct, I have forfeited my maintenance.'"
- S. Matthew 7:2, 'With what measure ye mete it shall be
measured unto you.'
Sotah 1.7, 'With what measure a man measureth, with that
do they measure unto him.'
- S. Matthew 9:17, 'Neither do men put new wine into old
wine-skins: else the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the
skins perish: but they put new wine into fresh wine-skins, and
both are preserved.'
Yadaim 4.3, 'Let therefore one new regulation be subjected
to conclusions drawn from another new regulation; but let not a
new regulation be subjected to conclusions drawn from an old
established regulation.'
- S. Mark 5:25, 26, 'A woman, which had an issue of blood
twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians,
and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered but
rather grew worse.'
Kedushin 4.14, 'R. Judah says in the name of Abba Guriah
.....the best of physicians is destined for Gehinnom.'
RR. de Sola and Raphall are careful to note that this has
not the force of a law, but is merely an expression of private
opinion.
- S. Luke 1:21, 'And the people were waiting for Zacharias,
and they marvelled while he tarried in the temple.'
Yoma 5.1, 'He (the High Priest on the Day of Atonement)
.....offered a shorter prayer in the outer house, and he did not
prolong his prayer, lest he should excite terror in Israel.'
'Terror,' that is to say, lest some divine judgment had befallen
him.
This book is original to this site.
This book has been edited.
Copyright © 2008 JCR
