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VOL. XXXV
HERFORD'S PHARISAISM
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_Descriptive Prospectus on Application._
PHARISAISM
ITS AIM AND ITS METHOD
BY
R. TRAVERS HERFORD, B.A.
AUTHOR OF
"CHRISTIANITY IN TALMUD AND MIDRASH"
WILLIAMS & NORGATE
14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON
NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
1912
PREFACE
Most of the contents of the following pages were given as lectures in
Manchester College, Oxford, in the autumn of 1911. I have thought it
better to confine myself within the limits of what I then said, rather
than to expand and recast the lectures into a complete monograph on the
Pharisees. My aim throughout has been to present and make clear the
Pharisaic conception of religion, the point of view from which they
regarded it, and the methods by which they dealt with it. It is far more
important that the reader, especially the Christian reader, should
understand the meaning of Pharisaism than that he should be presented
with a survey of all the details, theological, ethical, historical, and
other, included in the wide field of the Pharisaic literature. I am not
without hope that a small book may be read where a large one would be
passed by, and that the ends of justice--in this case justice to the
Pharisees--may thereby be the better attained. I have not sought to
write a panegyric on them, but, so far as may be possible for one who is
not a Jew, to present their case from their own standpoint, and not, as
is so often done, as a mere foil to the Christian religion. This is one
reason why I have not referred to the writings of other scholars, except
in the one case of Weber. He is typical of them all in their attitude
towards Rabbinical Judaism. Even the fine work of Oesterley and Box,
_The Religion and Worship of the Synagogue_, though it is written in a
spirit of courtesy, and with a sincere desire to understand the
Rabbinical position and to recognise whatever is good in it, yet judges
it by the standard of the Christian religion. Something was still left
to be done, by way of treating Pharisaism fairly, that is, without
either contempt or condescension; and that "something" I have tried to
do--whether successfully or not, the candid reader will judge.
In conclusion, I tender my thanks to the Hibbert Trustees, to whom I owe
the opportunity of delivering the lectures, and to the authorities of
Manchester College, Oxford, for the invitation to do so.
R. TRAVERS HEREFORD.
STAND, MANCHESTER,
_April 1912_.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
1. HISTORICAL SKETCH 1
2. THE THEORY OF TORAH 57
3. PHARISAISM AND JESUS 112
4. PHARISAISM AND PAUL 173
5. SOME POINTS OF PHARISAIC THEOLOGY 226
6. PHARISAISM AS A SPIRITUAL RELIGION 282
INDEX 336
PHARISAISM
CHAPTER I
HISTORICAL SKETCH
The subject to which in the following pages I shall invite the reader's
attention is one which may seem to promise but little of living
interest, and still less of religious worth. The Pharisees are presented
in the New Testament in no favourable light; and the average Christian
has not much further acquaintance with them. Yet, though the name be now
disused, the principles of Pharisaism have been maintained down to the
present day; and it is these, more than anything else, which have kept
Judaism as a living religion. That Pharisaism should wear an unpleasing
aspect in the New Testament is not surprising; for it was not in the
nature of things that the adherents of the old religion should
understand or be understood by those of the new, in the times when they
parted company. And there has not been much attempt at mutual
understanding in all the centuries since. Christianity could by no
possibility have remained in union with Pharisaism; what Jesus began,
and what Paul completed, was a severance as inevitable as it was
painful. But it was painful because it was the dividing, not of the
living from the dead, but of the living from the living. The Judaism of
the Pharisees, from which Christianity tore itself away, was no obsolete
formalism, but a religion having the power to satisfy the spiritual
wants of those who were faithful to it. The form in which its religious
ideas were expressed is peculiar, and to Christians by no means
attractive. While, therefore, the Christian has usually but little
inclination to inquire into the real significance of Pharisaism, and but
scanty means of informing himself even if he were so inclined, the fact
remains that such knowledge is necessary if he would rightly understand
the attitude of the New Testament to the older religion.
Pharisaism is usually judged from the outside, as seen by not very
friendly eyes; and, even of those Christians who have studied the
Pharisaic literature and who thus know it to some extent from the
inside, there are few who seem able to imagine what it must have been to
those whose real religion it was. No one but a Jew, of whom it may be
said that the Talmud runs in his blood, can fully realise the spiritual
meaning of Pharisaism; but sympathy can show even to a Christian much of
that meaning, and it is on the strength of that sympathy that I rest my
hope of carrying out my present task. Briefly, I wish to show what
Pharisaism meant to the Pharisees themselves, as a religion having a
claim to be judged on its own merits, and not by comparison with any
other. The knowledge thus obtained will throw light upon many passages
in the New Testament; but it will be chiefly valuable if it helps the
reader to realise that the Pharisees were "men of like passions with
us," men with souls to be saved, who cared a great deal for the things
of the higher life, men who "feared God and worked righteousness," and
who pondered deeply upon spiritual problems, though they did not solve
them on Christian lines, nor state the answers in Christian terms.
It ought not to be impossible to do this in compass of a small book; and
I hope that, when I have done, I shall have left with the reader some
clear idea of who the Pharisees were and what they stood for, and a more
just appreciation of them than is indicated by the word "hypocrites." I
can at least say how they appear to me, as the result of exploring their
literature, which has been to me the fascinating study of thirty years.
In this first chapter I shall survey the history of the development of
Pharisaism, from its source in Ezra to its final literary embodiment in
the Talmud. The following chapter will deal with the theory of Torah,
and Pharisaism as the system intended to put that theory into practice.
Then I shall consider Pharisaism in reference, firstly, to Jesus, and,
secondly, to Paul. Some general points of Pharisaic theology will be
dealt with in the fifth chapter; and in the concluding one I shall try
to present Pharisaism as a spiritual religion.
I proceed now to the historical survey of the development of Pharisaism.
A great Rabbi, Resh Lakish, who lived in the third century A.D., uttered
the saying that, "when the Torah was forgotten, Ezra came up from
Babylon and re-established it; when it was forgotten again, Hillel came
up from Babylon and re-established it; and when it was forgotten again,
R. Ḥija and his sons came up from Babylon and re-established it" (b.
Succ. 20ª). The meaning of that remark is that _Pharisaism_ traced its
origin back to Ezra; for it was the Pharisaic tradition which counted
Hillel, and R. Ḥija, and the Talmudic Rabbis generally amongst its
exponents. And while no one would say that Ezra was a Pharisee, it is
true that he was the spiritual ancestor of the Pharisees more than of
any other element in post-exilic Judaism. In the time of Christ, Judaism
was represented by Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Apocalyptists,
Hellenists; and all could claim a share in the inheritance of Israel.
But the Sadducees had little reason to set up a descent from Ezra; and
what was peculiar to Apocalyptists and Hellenists (two terms which of
course overlap) was entirely unconnected with him. Pharisaism alone was
the result of his work; and Pharisaism alone survived, to carry down
through the centuries the spiritual treasure of Israel. Moreover, of all
the elements in Judaism, Pharisaism is the one which was least affected
by foreign influences. What it borrowed, from Greece or Rome, from
Persia or Egypt, it fused into its own mould, or merely treated as
unimportant curiosities; it never wavered for a moment in its
allegiance to its own ground principle, never swerved from the line of
development of which Ezra had marked the beginning, and for which he
might be said to have stated the formula. The Talmud shows the traces of
contact with Greek language and Roman law, gives glimpses of men of many
nations, from Babylonians to Goths and even Germans (j. Jom. 45^b). But,
from one end to the other, it is the embodiment of a principle which
Ezra was the first to introduce; and like a huge tree it has all grown
from the seed which he planted. If Ezra could have looked forward and
seen what the Talmud became, the vision would have filled him with
delight; also, with deep thankfulness to God that he had been the means
of giving to Israel what Israel needed.
I will reserve for the next chapter the explanation of the theory of
Torah, which is the key to the whole system of Pharisaism in general,
and to the work of Ezra in particular. But without some reference to
that theory I cannot show what it was that Ezra did, and that the
Pharisees carried on. If some of the statements I make appear to be
unfounded or improbable, I ask the reader to suspend his judgment on
them till I come to the theory which, as I believe, justifies them.
Ezra was the first who seriously took in hand the problem of the future
of Israel after the great convulsion of the Exile. For nearly a century
after the time, 536 B.C., when liberty to return had been given, the
small band of Jews in and around Jerusalem had maintained with
difficulty their place as a nation and the religion of their fathers.
Subjects of the Persian king, like their neighbours, they were exposed
to dangers, both political and religious, against which they were ill
able to guard. They had the Temple as the central point of their
religion; but the Temple was no protection against the influence of
contact with "the peoples round about," nor did the performance of its
ritual give any lead in the direction of a new religious development.
Till Ezra came, the Jews did hardly more than mark time, if indeed they
were not gradually losing ground. If Ezra had not come, it is
conceivable, and indeed highly probable, that Judaism would have
disappeared altogether.
The significance of the work of Ezra is this, that he stopped the
process by which the religious vitality of Israel was draining away, and
he gave a lead, opened a new line of development, turned the thought and
energy of his people into a direction where progress was possible almost
without end.
His reformation was carried out with a severity which would have been
impossible unless he had had the support of Nehemiah, armed as governor
with the authority of the Persian king. And the success he achieved was
only won in the face of bitter opposition, and at a cost of domestic
suffering and heart-burning which still makes one shudder as one reads
of it in the book which bears his name. It was a case in which "diseases
desperate grown, by desperate appliance are relieved." Ezra had it
clear in his mind that if Israel was to survive at all, it must
resolutely cut itself off from all possible contact with what was not
Israel. It must become a closed corporation, a community occupying not
merely a political but much more a religious and social enclosure of its
own, within which it could work out its own salvation. In the
catastrophe of the Exile, Ezra read the lesson that indiscriminate
association with neighbouring peoples had corrupted its religious life,
and brought upon a faithless nation a deserved punishment. If now Israel
let itself relapse into the old way of intercourse and alliance with
non-Israelites, the result would be the final extinction of Israel.
Such a prospect might have been tolerable if there had been nothing left
for Israel to do. Some of those who opposed Ezra may well have thought
that there was nothing which could demand so hard a sacrifice as that
which he would force upon them. Why should they not live in peace with
their neighbours, and do as they did? And why could they not keep their
old religion, without making it a source of enmity abroad, and a cause
of grief at home?
But Ezra had a clear perception of what there was for Israel to do. That
religion, which in former times had been mainly the collective
expression of the nation's relation to God, must now be realised as the
personal concern of each individual. What the prophets had taught about
God had so far produced no corresponding result in personal piety and
conscious service. What had been declared by Moses as the will of God
had been by no means fully taken to heart and wrought into the acts of
daily life. There was divine teaching in abundance, and had been for
centuries; now, the task must be seriously taken in hand of applying it,
so that each individual might feel that he had a responsibility for
doing the will of God, and might know what that will was. The great
declaration: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God the Lord is one," was
immediately followed by: "and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." If Israel now
asked how he was to do this, Ezra's answer was that God had taught him
in the Torah, contained in the five books of Moses. Henceforth let
Israel "observe to do all that is written in this book of the Torah."
That solemn promulgation of the Torah, described in the book of
Nehemiah, is the central point of the reformation of Ezra, whether it
were only the Priestly Code which was then introduced or whether it were
the Pentateuch substantially complete. What Ezra did was to set up a
written authority as the guide of personal conduct for each individual
Jew. His demand was for the acceptance of this authority on the part of
the nation, and a determined loyalty in carrying out the commands of God
which would shrink from no sacrifice. It was, no doubt, the severity of
this demand which for thirteen years delayed its acceptance; and the
opposition was only crushed by the strong hand of Nehemiah. Whatever
one may think of the method, the result was that Ezra gathered to him
those who were prepared to do most and to sacrifice most for the sake of
their religion; he had weeded out the weak and the faint-hearted, the
indifferent and the lazy, and kept those who could be fanatics, heroes,
martyrs, if the occasion should arise.
The Jewish community having accepted the policy of Ezra, was in this
position:--it was separated by its own act from all avoidable contact
with those whom we may now call Gentiles; and, within the enclosure thus
as it were railed off, it was free to work out its national life on the
lines of the religion of Torah, free also to interpret that religion of
Torah in such ways as it might see fit. Ezra had secured for it a field
of action and given to it the task it should perform there. If I say
that Ezra was the second founder of the religion of Israel, I do not
mean to imply that everything in the later Judaism owed its origin to
him, still less that what survived from the pre-exilic Judaism was only
what he endorsed and gave out again. The older religion had come down
from a far-distant past; the ancient writings, prophetic, historical,
legal, were witnesses of God's former dealings with His people; they
still had the memory, as they renewed after the Exile the practice, of
the ancient customs and religious rites. And the later Judaism could,
and did, develop in several directions, taking up, as it were,
suggestions from the older religion, and not confining itself to the
line which Ezra more especially marked out. But the work of Ezra is
practically the only channel by which whatever survived from the ancient
religion passed into the later, and became the Judaism which is properly
so called.
In some of its representatives later Judaism departed widely from the
principles of Ezra, and Christianity may be said to be in part a protest
against and a revolt from those principles; but nevertheless, if it had
not been for Ezra there would have been no Judaism sufficiently alive to
protest, or sufficiently vigorous to produce revolt. Ezra saved the
life of the Jewish people, none the less that in later times there were
Jews who cherished ideals which were far different from his.
I am concerned here only with one particular line of development of the
later Judaism, the one which in an especial degree was originated by
Ezra. This is the line of the religion of Torah strictly so called,
meaning by that the religion which found expression in the intention of
fulfilling, as a personal duty, the commands of God set forth in the
Scriptures, and especially in the Pentateuch. This is not a full or an
exact statement of the meaning of the religion of Torah; but it will
serve for the present purpose, and I shall go into detail about it in
the next chapter. Judaism, as the religion of Torah, required that every
Jew should be in a position to know what was contained in the Torah and
what it meant. There must be someone whose business it was to study the
Torah and explain its contents, and to show how the precepts it
contained were to be applied to cases not directly provided for.
Teaching of that kind, to the extent at all events of giving instruction
in moral and religious duties, had been given from time immemorial, and
mainly by the priests. And there were still priests who could, and
probably did, perform the same function. But the case was now different
when every Jew was expected to know the commandments of the Torah, and
was directly concerned with their bearing upon his own actions. This new
necessity of the time was met by the labours of a new class of men, viz.
the Scribes (Sopherim). It is significant that Ezra himself is called
"the priest the _Scribe_." It is also significant that the men who
assisted him by "explaining the sense," when he first read publicly the
book of the Torah, were not priests but Levites. It is natural to
suppose that many Levites chose to take up the important, honourable,
and sacred work of the Scribe, the interpreter of the divine teaching,
rather than to perform the menial duties of serving the priests in the
Temple. Whether Ezra definitely organised and founded the order of the
Scribes, I do not know; but the appearance of them is a necessary result
of his policy, and may well be attributed to him. The term Sopherim is
vouched for, as extremely ancient, in certain phrases mentioned in the
Talmud.
The duties of the Sopherim would be, in the first instance, to study the
Torah themselves, then to teach it to others, then to act as
interpreters and judges in cases where appeal was made to them to know
how, under such and such circumstances, the divine command was to be
fulfilled. Now it is scarcely conceivable that each individual Scribe
would feel himself at liberty to expound the Torah entirely according to
his own judgment, without reference to what other Scribes might teach;
or that such unfettered liberty would have been allowed to him if he had
tried to use it. There must have been some amount of consultation of the
Scribes with each other; and there must have been some kind of tribunal
to which appeal could be made, some central authority whose decision
would be recognised as final. Otherwise, the whole attempt made by Ezra
would have ended in failure almost at the outset; and it did not end in
failure. Now the Talmud contains some scanty references to an assembly
called "The Men of the Great Synagogue," to which were attributed
certain ancient institutions and sayings. That the statements in the
Talmud about the Great Synagogue are all historically trustworthy is by
no means the case. But the Rabbis who are responsible for those
statements may well have been right in the main fact, though not in the
details. The Great Synagogue, as they represented it, is clearly based
upon the description of the assembly in Neh. x. And there is nothing to
show that that assembly, or anything like it, became a permanent
institution. But an assembly of some kind, a council of men "learned in
the law," is the most natural form which would be taken by such a
central authority as the system instituted by Ezra required for its
successful working. It must remain an open question whether such a
council was permanent, its members being chosen for life, or whether it
was such an assembly as might be called together, _ad hoc_, from time to
time, whether the number of its members was fixed, and on what
conditions and by whom they were appointed. Upon these points the Rabbis
of the Talmud had no certain tradition, perhaps no tradition at all.
That the conception of the Great Synagogue was modelled upon the pattern
of the Assembly in Neh. x. only means that the Rabbis had no better
guide for their imagination in reconstructing what nevertheless must
have been. And the same reason which prompted the calling of that
historical council, under Nehemiah, would suggest that the natural
tribunal from time to time would be a similar council of elders and
learned men. This is all that is required to give a historical basis to
the traditions concerning the Great Synagogue. Less than this leaves the
facts unexplained; more than this opens the way for the discrepancies
which have been used for discrediting those traditions altogether. I
believe we are therefore warranted in retaining the name of the Great
Synagogue, to mean in the first instance Ezra and those who supported
him, and then those who in later times exercised authority on his lines
and in his spirit.
Now it is nowhere stated in the Rabbinical literature, so far as I know,
that the Sopherim of the early times were identical with the Men of the
Great Synagogue. But they are closely associated, they seem to stand on
the same level of antiquity, and, what is still more important, no
distinction is drawn between their several functions, except that the
Men of the Great Synagogue ordained (_tikkĕnu_) certain things, while
the Sopherim only taught and expounded. As just stated, there is no
agreement amongst scholars upon the question whether the Great Synagogue
was a real body or not; but of the existence of the Sopherim there is no
room for doubt. And the Sopherim are the key (if I am right) to the
meaning of the term, "Men of the Great Synagogue." That term represents
the Sopherim acting together as a council to decide religious questions;
a council not necessarily permanent, but called together from time to
time as occasion might require. But it would be a council of Sopherim,
_not_ of all the leading men of the nation. The authority in public
matters was, under the Persian governor, in the hands of the priestly
aristocracy, whose interests lay in other directions besides that of the
study of Torah. What was done by the Sopherim, and those with and for
whom they worked, was done privately and without official sanction. The
Rabbinical tradition which mentions the Zūgōth, or pairs, and calls one
the Nasi and the other the Ab-beth-din, and implies that the one was
president and the other vice-president of the _Sanhedrin_, is certainly
incorrect. The Nasi was never the president of the Sanhedrin, in times
when the Sanhedrin was still the great council of the State. But it may
very well have been the case that in the meetings of the Sopherim, in
other words, the Great Synagogue, there were a president and a
vice-president; and that the names recorded in pairs in the Talmud are
the names of some of the later of these officers. I should add that this
explanation of the meaning of the term, "Men of the Great Synagogue,"
and the identification with them of the early Sopherim, is only a theory
of my own; but it is the result of long consideration of the problem.
In an often-quoted passage from the treatise of the Mishnah called the
Pirké Abōth, three sayings are ascribed to the Men of the
Great Synagogue: "Be deliberate in judgment; make many disciples; make a
hedge for the Torah." It will be of use at this point to consider these
sayings, because they throw light upon the development of the religion
of Torah in the particular direction indicated by the name Pharisaism.
To prove that these dicta were actually uttered by the Men of the Great
Synagogue is impossible. But it is admitted that they are very ancient;
and the tradition which places them at the forefront of the development
of Rabbinism has this much in its favour, that they logically belong
there. Either they date from a time not remote from Ezra, or they
express the opinion of some later teacher as to the aims and methods of
those who in that early time were responsible for the training of the
people in the religion of Torah. This latter interpretation is possible;
but the form in which the brief statement is made clearly shows that the
Rabbis who compiled the Mishnah had no suspicion that the dicta in
question were the utterances of a later teacher. If they had had such a
thought they would have expressed it thus: "Rabbi so-and-so said that
the Men of the Great Synagogue had said, etc." There is no hint that the
three maxims are anything else but an old tradition; and the fact that
these and no more are ascribed to the Men of the Great Synagogue
indicates, by its very moderation, some reason for so ascribing them. A
capricious inventor would have attributed much more to so ancient an
authority, in order to obtain for his inventions the sanction of high
antiquity. There is really nothing improbable in the transmission, even
from the time of Ezra, of these bare fragments of ancient teaching.
Their contents are in keeping with this supposition; and, if they were a
later invention, they nevertheless accurately describe what the men of
Ezra's time must chiefly have had at heart. They are instructions to do
certain things, and are addressed to persons who had some special
responsibility in reference to the Torah. We have seen that the central
idea of Ezra's reformation was to make the Torah the inspiring and
controlling influence in Jewish life, both national and individual. To
this end it was needful that the people should be taught, that they
might know what was in the Torah, _i.e._ what God had given for their
instruction; also that they should be able to appeal to competent
authority for the settlement of doubtful points. The Torah was the
source of divine truth and divine justice, and both must be made
accessible to those whose life as a conscious service of God depended on
them. The shrine in which the divine treasure was contained must be kept
safe from injury, as if it were protected by a fence.
The three maxims, ascribed to the Men of the Great Synagogue, were
intended, as it would seem, for the guidance of teachers and expounders
of Torah. They were the lines which the Sopherim collectively agreed
upon, for their own practice as interpreters and judges. Deliberation in
judgment is the key to the casuistry of the Talmud, and in the main
justifies that casuistry. For what does it amount to except the desire
to study a question from every possible point of view, and to take into
account every possible, even though improbable, contingency?
To make disciples, in the sense of imparting knowledge of Torah, has
always been the aim and the practice of Rabbinical Judaism; a fact to
which the Talmud bears ample witness. The names, Torah, Talmud, Mishnah,
Midrash, all imply the idea of teaching and learning--study as regarded
either by the student or the instructor. In this larger relation, the
minor one of discipleship to a particular teacher holds but a small
place. Equally the ancient Scribe or the later Rabbi was enjoined not to
make adherents of himself, but to impart to all whom he could influence
the knowledge of divine truth which he possessed.
To "make a hedge about the Torah" is a famous phrase that has been much
misunderstood. It certainly does not imply any intention to make a rigid
system of precept in which all the spiritual freedom enjoyed by the
enlightened soul in communion with God should be lost. The Talmudic
Rabbis, who entirely endorsed the maxim, never read in it any such
intention, and never supposed that they suffered any such loss of
spiritual freedom. As in fact they did not. The notion that they did is
an idea which only exists in the minds of Christians, misreading an
experience which, as Christians, they have never known. What was always
understood by the "hedge about the Torah" was the means taken to keep
the divine revelation from harm, so that the sacred enclosure, so to
speak, might always be free and open for the human to contemplate and
commune with the divine. And, so far as the Torah consisted of precepts,
positive and negative, the "hedge" was of the nature of warnings whereby
a man might be saved from transgression before it was too late. The
detailed mass of precept elaborated in the course of centuries, known as
the Halachah (see Chapter II.) or rule of right conduct, and finally
embodied in the Talmud, was part of the Torah itself made explicit, the
divine teaching so far as it related to such and such departments of
conduct. And even if the Halachah were the rigid and oppressive system
which it is often supposed to have been, but which those who devised it
and lived under it did not feel it to be, it was not itself the "hedge
about the Torah." The religious guides of the Jewish people, from the
early Sopherim to the latest Rabbi whose words are incorporated in the
Talmud, did make a "hedge about the Torah"; and did their work so well
that, whatever else was torn from Israel in the course of cruel
centuries, the Torah remained, and still remains, the peculiar treasure
of the chosen people.
I have dwelt at this length upon the consideration of the work of Ezra,
and of those teachers closely associated with him known as the Sopherim
or Men of the Great Synagogue, because, when once that is clearly
understood, all the subsequent developments are easy to follow. I have
not yet mentioned Pharisaism, except here and there in passing. But,
given such a principle as is contained in Ezra's conception of the
religion of Torah, Pharisaism was certain to appear sooner or later, and
the Talmud itself was the implied, though distant, result of the
process by which that conception was to be worked out.
Devotion to Torah, and the duty of regulating life, whether individual
or national, according to its precepts, were of the essence of the
Judaism which took its character from Ezra. This was the principle; and
those who adhered to it sought to apply it over the whole range of
action, public as well as private. The Sopherim would have their opinion
as to the way, for instance, in which the Temple ritual should be
performed; but it is likely enough that the priests would keep the
control of such matters in their own hands, so that the Sopherim would
have their main influence as the teachers of the people in the ordinary
walks of life. Through the Synagogue, of which I shall have more to say
in the next chapter, the Sopherim came into close touch with the
individual Jew in his private capacity, and acquired there an influence
which was never afterwards shaken. In this way, the religion of Torah,
on the lines of Ezra, was made the religion of the majority of the
nation. And, while it was held with varying degrees of understanding and
attachment, we may note that there were two institutions or usages which
mark the points where the religion of Torah took deepest and strongest
hold upon the national mind. These were the rite of circumcision and the
observance of the Sabbath. I do not mean that circumcision had not been
practised, nor the Sabbath observed, in times previous to Ezra, but that
these became especially prominent after his time as the _sine qua non_
of Judaism, essentials to be maintained at any cost. The institution of
the Synagogue provided a means of developing the spiritual life of the
people in a way that the Temple ritual hardly could and certainly did
not do. And although, as long as the Temple stood, that was regarded as
the most sacred shrine and most glorious embodiment, or rather
culmination, of the national religion, yet the religion of Torah learned
to do without the Temple, but it never dreamed of doing without the
Synagogue. With the Synagogue were associated the devotional outpourings
of the Psalmists, and the earliest liturgy, also the regular reading of
the Scriptures. These, together with exhortation or instruction, gave
substance and meaning to the idea of public worship, which, in a form
hitherto unknown in the ancient world, was in itself one of the most
important of Jewish institutions. The study of Torah produced in course
of time new practices which became traditional, or gave a new sanction
to old ones; while the principles of exposition by which these results
were produced--in other words, the teachings of the Sopherim--were
accepted and recognised as legitimate by those for whose guidance they
were given.
So far as the religion of Torah is concerned, the process of its
development may be conceived to have gone on with no interruption, upon
such general lines, during the centuries between Ezra and the Maccabees.
When that period was reached, 167 B.C. and onwards, the main lines of
Judaism were clearly defined, and the chief things known which were
incumbent upon the Jew if he would be true to his religious profession.
He knew not only what he should do, by way of service to God, but why he
should do it. The ideal before him was the thought of that service, not
as an irksome task imposed on him, but as a willing and glad devotion of
himself and all his powers to God. That every individual Jew could or
did rise to the height of that ideal, no one would maintain. In the
nature of things the spiritual energy, which was mighty in Ezra, could
not continue with unimpaired force through the centuries after he was
gone. In fact, there is no one to compare with him in this respect until
R. Akiba, at the end of the first Christian century. But it is far from
true to say that the spiritual meaning of the religion of Torah, as
above described, was lost sight of, or even greatly obscured, in the
generations which succeeded Ezra. If that had been the case, there
would have been no Maccabean revolt. For the tenacity of adhesion and
the fierceness of resistance cannot be explained merely by blind loyalty
to a tradition whose inner meaning was no longer understood and its
spiritual power no longer felt. There must have been a real allegiance
to the religion of Torah, in principle though not extending to minor
details, on the part of the majority of the nation, a conscious
acceptance of the essentials, though often without the zeal or perhaps
the power to follow out those main principles to their conclusion. There
would naturally be considerable difference in the degree of attachment
to the religion of Torah, on the part of different individuals or
sections of the nation, varying from enthusiastic devotion to a
careless, almost nominal allegiance, that could easily transfer itself
to some other religion whose demands were less severe and whose worldly
advantages were greater than those of Judaism.
For a considerable time after Ezra, the nation was, in regard to its
religion, homogeneous in this sense, that there was not, unless in
individuals here and there, any question of another religion than
Judaism. While the Jews were under Persian rule, the Persian religion
may have influenced the Jewish religion in some respects; but there was
never any question of a secession from Judaism to the religion of
Persia. Within the range of Judaism the worship of the God of Israel was
the only worship; and while some might be zealous and others lukewarm,
some might be more concerned with the pomp and circumstance of the
Temple, and others with the more homely piety of the Synagogue, yet all
alike owned the religion of Torah as their religion, and felt themselves
united as brethren in spite of fraternal discords.
But when, after the fall of the Persian Empire (332 B.C.), the influence
of Greek ideas and practices began to be felt, a serious danger arose
which threatened the very existence of Judaism. Whether it was the
Syrian or the Egyptian king who for the time held possession of Judea,
the result was the same in giving a strong impetus to the adoption of
Greek civilisation. Greeks settled in the chief towns in large numbers,
either as officials of the government or for trade. Greek art and
learning had their representatives. Greek builders erected temples and
theaters to be the visible symbols of a foreign religion, and of
practices alien to Jewish ideas of morality. The Greek met the Jew at
every turn; and the Jew would not have been human if he had been wholly
unaffected by that close association. The brilliance of Greek culture
made it attractive both on its good and on its bad side, its exquisite
sense of beauty and its shameless gaiety of vice. Its natural
fascination was increased by the fact that it was actively promoted by
the influence of the court. The road to royal favour and civil
advancement lay through the adoption of Greek manners and customs, and
even dress. A Greek sovereign might think it prudent to tolerate the
peculiarities of his Jewish subjects; but he had no sympathy with them,
and could not understand them. He would welcome every indication of a
desire to replace Jewish ideas and practices by Greek ones, and would
use his influence accordingly.
During the hundred and sixty years from the fall of the Persian Empire
to the revolt of the Maccabees, the virus of Hellenism was infecting the
Jewish nation; perhaps for good, certainly for evil. Probably no class
of society was wholly immune from it. Its effects were most conspicuous
in the ranks of the wealthy and powerful, the nobles and the priestly
aristocracy who came into closest relations with the court and depended
most upon the royal favour. But Hellenism had its attractions for all,
high or humble; its outward signs could be seen all over the land,
inviting a comparison between the gaiety and freedom of Greek life and
the moral restraints and sober seriousness of the Jewish.
What gradually resulted was, _not_ a division between the upper classes
and the lower, as if all the former went over to Hellenism while all
the latter remained faithful to Judaism, but a decline towards
Hellenism, on the part of a minority in which all classes were
represented. Probably the number of those who went entirely over to
Hellenism was only small, compared with the whole Jewish population. But
there were many whose hold upon Judaism was more or less weakened; and
there were only a few who remained unflinching in their loyalty to the
ancestral faith. That this was really the case, is shown by the fact
that a special name was applied to those who thus rigidly adhered to the
principles and maintained to the fullest extent the practices of Judaism
as the religion of Torah. If they had been the majority of the nation
they would not have needed or received any special name. These faithful
few were the Ḥasidim, the Assideans of the Books of Maccabees. Thus
Hellenists and Ḥasidim represented the Extreme Left and the Extreme
Right of the Jewish nation, with moderates of various shades in
between. The name Ḥasid, which is a common word in Hebrew, indicates a
type rather than a party.[1] The use of the word in the Psalms, where
most of the instances of its occurrence in the Old Testament are found,
does not warrant us, other reasons apart, in assuming that there is a
special reference in those passages to the men who became conspicuous
under Judas Maccabæus.
[1] A close parallel to the term Ḥasid, as denoting a type rather
than a party, is afforded by the term Saint in the language of the
extreme Puritans in the time of Cromwell.
The rebellion against Antiochus Epiphanes was, of course, in the main a
religious revolt, and, as such, it had the support of all in the nation
except the avowed Hellenists. But there was this difference in the
motive of the insurgents, that Mattathias and his sons, who started the
rebellion, were fighting for political freedom as well as for their
religion. The Ḥasidim only fought for their religion. It was dire
necessity which turned them from passive resisters into active fighters.
They joined Mattathias and his companions because only by fighting
could the Torah now be defended, for whose sake hitherto they had been
willing to suffer and die. Mattathias rebelled because the royal power
was being used to undermine the national religion, and he wished to
throw off the royal power. He would not have been content with
permission to practise his religion undisturbed. He was as staunch,
though not as strict, an adherent of the religion of Torah as any of the
Ḥasidim; but he would have the Jews free to serve God, independent of
any permission from a foreign ruler.
In the earlier stages of the war the political and the religious motives
were too closely blended to be distinguished. But it is to be noted that
the Ḥasidim were the first to desire peace (1 Macc. vii. 13). And later
on, when the Maccabean princes reaped the fruits of the war in
successful sovereignty, they were regarded with increasing ill-will by
those to whom the religion of Torah was of supreme importance.
I cannot, of course, attempt to follow in detail the history of the
Jewish people under the Maccabean princes. But the significance of the
rebellion for my present purpose can be very soon explained.
The result upon the Jewish people generally was to renew its hold upon
the religion of Torah. Hellenism for a time was greatly weakened. There
was now at the head of the Jewish state a Jewish prince, able to hold
his own against foreign powers. The religion of Torah was, nominally at
least, the religion of all Jews, from the palace to the cottage; and it
should be observed that the special name of the Ḥasidim dropped out of
use.
But gradually a divergence appeared, not wholly unlike that which had
led to the rebellion. The princes of the Maccabean house naturally
looked for their supporters in the great families to whom belonged the
chief positions of rank and wealth, especially those connected with the
Temple. The religion of Torah was mixed up with politics to a degree
which displeased those who did not belong to the governing class. There
was, therefore, again a movement towards a stricter interpretation of
the Torah and a more thorough-going obedience to its requirements, on
the part of a minority on the one side, to correspond with the movement
towards what might be called "worldliness" on the part of a minority on
the other side. These two extremes had names by which they were
distinguished. Those who formed the governing class, the great families
and the chief priests, were the Sadducees. Those who maintained the full
strictness of the religion of Torah were the Pharisees. They were
virtually the Ḥasidim over again, under another name. They were in a
minority, when compared with the whole nation; but the sympathy of the
people in general was with them as against the Sadducees.
The particular reason why they were called Pharisees (_Pherūshim_,
separated), was that they formed themselves into separate societies
pledged to observe certain rules in the matter of meat, drink, clothing,
etc., according as these were clean or unclean, allowed or forbidden.
They thereby "separated" themselves from such as were less strict, or
who at least did not take their pledge as a guarantee of strictness. But
it is clear that there was practically nothing new in what the Pharisees
did or in the religion they held, except the mere fact of association in
pledged companies. The religion which they thus set themselves to
realise in its full extent was essentially the religion of Torah as Ezra
had moulded it. Successive generations of Sopherim had worked out into
fuller detail the implicit contents of the Torah, as changing
circumstances called for further interpretation of the original
precepts. But there was no breach of continuity between Ezra and the
Pharisees, either in principle or even in the means by which that
principle was worked out. For there were in every generation the
teachers and expounders of the Torah, as there were always those who
depended on the guidance of such teachers. The name of the Men of the
Great Synagogue had passed out of use, as it was believed that the
institution itself came to an end. But the Rabbinical tradition recorded
the names of those who successively handed on the teaching in which the
meaning of the Torah was unfolded, and its application to new conditions
indicated. The line of this descent is through the Pharisees and not
through the Sadducees. Not because the Sadducees did not care about the
religion of Torah; but because the Pharisees, strange as it may sound,
kept the religion of Torah as a living principle, capable of being
adapted and needing to be adapted to fresh developments of religious
life, while the Sadducees held to the letter of the original scripture,
and refused innovations. The practical bearing of this appears in the
fact that the Sadducees kept in their own hands, as long as they could,
not merely the governing authority, but the judicial power in criminal
cases. And the hostility between Pharisees and Sadducees was expressed
in a long struggle for the mastery. The Pharisees never obtained
permanently the political mastery. But they did gain, for some of their
representatives, a place in the Sanhedrin, the great assembly of the
leading men of the nation. And, what was more, they did obtain a control
over the Temple, to this extent that the ritual there was performed
according to the requirements of the Pharisees, the Sadducean priests
consenting to this as the condition on which they held their office. It
is stated in the Mishnah (Joma iii. 5) that representatives of the
Beth-Din, _i.e._ Pharisees, administered an oath to the High Priest on
the day of atonement, saying to him: "'Sir, High Priest, we are the
delegates of the Beth-Din, and thou art our delegate and the delegate of
the Beth-Din, and we adjure thee, by Him whose name dwells on this
house, that thou wilt not alter a thing of all that we have said to
thee,' and he departs, weeping, and they depart, weeping." A singular
touch, expressive, as it would seem, of mutual distrust.
The Pharisees also succeeded at last in wresting from the Sadducees the
power of judicial decision in criminal cases; and the ancient calendar,
known as Megillath Taanith, marks the 14th Tammuz (July) as a festival,
because on that day the Sadducean penal code was abolished. This same
calendar, which is a Pharisaic document, contains several other
anti-Sadducean references.
The Pharisees, then, represent that element in the Jewish nation which
was most zealous for the religion of Torah, and most thorough-going in
the application of its principles. So long as the Sadducees existed, the
name Pharisee also remained.
With the downfall of the Jewish state, after the war of A.D. 70, the
Sadducees disappear from history. The Pharisees remained, as
representing all that was left alive of Judaism; but the name was no
longer needed, and seldom if ever used. The Jewish remnant were not
indeed all Pharisees, in the strict sense of the term; but they were on
the whole in sympathy with them, as they always had been.
If I have clearly indicated the relations of the Pharisees and Sadducees
to each other, and to the mass of the nation, it will be easy to
indicate the place of two other classes of persons bearing well-known
names. The Essenes stand apart from the main body of the Jewish people;
they were ascetics and recluses, of more than Pharisaic strictness (for
asceticism was not a characteristic feature of Pharisaism either in
practice or theory), and they combined with the religion of Torah
certain mystical doctrines of their own. Whatever influence they may
have had upon other elements in Judaism, they had little if any upon
Pharisaism.
There remains the class called "Am-ha-aretz," or "the people of the land
"--the "people that knoweth not the law" (John vii. 49). This title
denotes, not a definite division, but simply those amongst the people
who in fact were least influenced by the Pharisees, and least drawn to
them. Such would be not only the careless and indifferent, but also
those who, for higher reasons, did not readily fall in with the
Pharisaic system, or to whom religion as presented by them was not
acceptable. It is these mainly who are referred to when it is said that
Jesus saw the people "as sheep without a shepherd" (Mark vi. 34). And it
is only likely that those would most gladly hear him who were least
inclined to follow the Pharisees.
From this sketch of the composition of the Jewish nation, in the time of
Christ and thereabouts, it will be seen that the main line of
development is represented by Pharisaism. It comes down from the time of
Ezra, as the religion of Torah, expounded and administered by approved
teachers, known from the first as Sopherim. The names Ḥasidim and
Pharisee denote its most zealous representatives at two different
periods; but they imply no change of principle, or even of method. What
change there was is seen in the growth of a body of teaching, the
decisions and interpretations of successive exponents of Torah, handed
on and repeated from memory, for the instruction of those who should
come after. This is what is known as the Tradition of the Elders,
referred to in Mark vii. 5 and elsewhere. And when I come to deal with
the theory of Torah in the next chapter, I shall show how this Tradition
of the Elders was a sign of the continued vitality of the religion of
Torah, not the gradual strangling of it. At present I am only concerned
with the fact, not with the meaning of it. The Tradition of the Elders
can be traced in the Mishnah up to the time of the early Sopherim, not
far distant from Ezra; it is the thread which binds together the
development, through Ḥasidism and Pharisaism, of the Jewish religion.
And it marks the course of the main stream of Judaism far on through the
centuries. The Essenes vanished. The Sadducees were swept away when the
Temple was destroyed. It was the Pharisees who alone could or did
weather that storm, and carry the divine treasure of the religion of
Torah into safety. Already, in the time when Jesus was a boy, Hillel the
Babylonian had applied his genius to the interpretation of Torah in ways
which gave it a fresh power of ministry to spiritual wants. And when,
seventy years later, the catastrophe came, the man was ready who should
go forth from Jerusalem, and establish for the ancient religion a
"temple not made with hands." Joḥanan ben Zaccai was that man. When he
saw that the city was doomed, he went to the Emperor Vespasian, and made
his submission to the force that could no longer be resisted (b. Gitt.
56^b). The Emperor asked what he should give him, though he sought no
reward. "Give me Jabneh and its wise men"--Jabneh being a town on the
coast, where already there were some of the leading Pharisaic teachers.
The request was granted, and Joḥanan b. Zaccai gathered in Jabneh the
remnants of the learning and wisdom of Judaism. There he and his
colleagues repaired the shattered fabric of the religious life of their
people, and adjusted it to the new conditions. The Temple with all that
belonged to it was gone for ever. But the Synagogue and the College
remained, as the home both of worship and study; and the religion of
Torah probably gained rather than lost by being finally cut loose from
association with the Temple cultus. The assembly at Jabneh took up the
task of developing the religion of Torah, and carrying forward the
Tradition of the Elders, where it had been interrupted by the war. The
teachers to whose hands that task was now committed were henceforth
known as the Wise; the names Sopherim and Pharisee were seldom used, but
the essential features of their work remained unchanged, and it was
carried on in the ancient spirit.
In the interval between the capture of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 and the
almost greater disaster in A.D. 135, when the revolt of Bar Coch'ba was
stamped out, the assembly of the Rabbis met from time to time in
Jabneh, or Lydda; and even during the persecution which followed on the
failure of the last rebellion, when the Jewish teachers were hunted up
and down, and Akiba, the greatest of them, was tortured to death, there
were still left those who would carry on the tradition of their
religion. These were young men who received ordination as Rabbis, when
it meant death to be a Rabbi at all, if he should fall into the hands of
the Romans. It is told (b. Sanh. 14ª) of R. Jehudah b. Baba, that he
took six of his disciples into a secluded spot and there ordained them,
and that he had hardly finished before he was discovered by the
soldiers, and fell, stabbed with Roman spears. The six young men all
survived to become the teachers of the next generation. They handed on
what had been committed to them as a sacred trust, the religion of
Torah, and the tradition in which its meaning and contents were set
forth in growing fulness and clearness.
This takes us out of the period covered by the New Testament. But I add
the few words necessary to round off the bare account I have given of
the development of Judaism through the Pharisees.
The Tradition of the Elders, as I have said, increased in volume and
complexity as each generation of teachers added something to it. The
necessity, therefore, gradually made itself felt of arranging and
systematising the great mass of traditional matter. This was attempted
first by the R. Akiba just mentioned, then by R. Meir, one of the six
young men ordained in the time of the persecution. But it was only
carried to completion, after long years of labour, by R. Jehudah
ha-Kadosh, commonly called "Rabbi," _par excellence_. He collected all
that he could find of the decisions and opinions of earlier teachers,
sorted them out under different heads, noted those which were
universally admitted and those which were doubtful, and thus framed a
code of law for the guidance of all Jews. This collection is the
Mishnah; and the text as we have it now represents, in the main, the
code of Rabbi. There are, of course, interpolations and additions to it.
There is another great collection known as Tosephta, containing a good
deal of the same material; it is nearly contemporary, but it has never
had the same authority as the Mishnah. The date of the Mishnah can be
put at about the year 210. Rabbi died in 219. The Mishnah became in its
turn the subject of study in the Rabbinical schools, and two fresh lines
of tradition begin from this point, each of them starting with a
disciple of Rabbi. One of them is the line of development of the Mishnah
in the Palestinian schools, of which the chief seat was Tiberias; the
other was the line of development of that same Mishnah in the Babylonian
schools--Sura, Nehardea, Pumbeditha, and others. The result of each
process was a mass of commentary on the Mishnah, and not merely
commentary but accretions of every kind having any sort of connection
with Judaism as a living religion. This development of the Mishnah is
in each case called Gemara. And Mishnah plus Gemara is the Talmud. There
is only one Mishnah, but there are two Gemaras, differently named
according to the land of their origin. And it is usual to speak of the
Palestinian Talmud and of the Babylonian Talmud respectively.
Neither of these two was ever completed. The Palestinian schools, at the
end of the fourth century, had no one left who was capable of carrying
on the work; and in Babylonia, though much more was done, a final
completion was never reached. After the beginning of the sixth century
nothing more was ever added to the Talmud; and even of what was in
existence then, not all survives now.
In the Talmud is contained the main source for the knowledge of what
Pharisaism meant; because it was made the storehouse in which all, or
nearly all, that was held to be valuable in the Tradition of the Elders,
the explicit religion of Torah, was stored up. There is a huge
literature contemporary with the Talmud, to which the general name of
Midrash is given; all of it is traditional, and all of it bears on the
religion of Torah, in one way or another. This is the written deposit of
Pharisaism, the mark which it has left upon the literature of the world.
It is there, and not in the writings of those who did not understand its
ideals or share its hopes, that its real meaning can alone be found.
Those ideals and hopes first dawned in Jewish minds under the influence
of Ezra. The Talmud is the witness to show how some of his countrymen,
some of the bravest, some of the ablest, some of the most pious and
saintly, and a host of unnamed faithful, were true to those ideals and
clung to those hopes; and how, through good report and ill report,
through shocks of disaster and the ruin of their state, ground down by
persecution, or torn by faction, steadily facing enemies without and
enemies within, they held on to the religion of Torah. They have not
sought, and they certainly have not found, the praise of men for their
steadfastness. For these are the Pharisees, and the world has for them
only a contemptuous gibe. Who was it that said: "For every idle word
that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of
judgment"?