THE THEORY OF TORAH
In the preceding chapter I sketched the historical development of
Pharisaism from its source in the work of Ezra to the time when it had
found its literary expression in the Talmud and the Midrash. I said that
from first to last what was developed was the religion of Torah. It is
therefore essential to the understanding of Pharisaism that the reader
should, first, obtain a clear conception of the meaning of Torah, and,
second, that he should bear that conception always in mind in his
further study of Pharisaism. It will be my task in the present chapter
to show what Torah meant, and what form the religion of Torah actually,
and perhaps necessarily, assumed. If I succeed, then the reader will
understand how it was that Rabbinical devotion to Torah could express
itself quite naturally in terms which to the unenlightened Gentile
appear to be extravagant--as, for instance, when it is said that God
studies Torah for three hours every day (b. A. Zar. 3^b).
There would be no particular difficulty in understanding what is meant
by Torah, if it were not that it is commonly supposed that the word
"Law" is the just equivalent of it. The Greek, alike of the Septuagint
and of the New Testament, renders "Torah" by νὁμος; and while
the translators of the New Testament rightly rendered νὁμος by
"Law," they nevertheless perpetuated what was a misconception on the
part of those who used the Greek word to represent "Torah." It is to
avoid that misconception that I have already used, and shall continue to
use, the word "Torah" untranslated, as a technical term whose full
implication cannot be expressed in any one English word. It is true that
the word "torah" is simply and correctly translated by the word
"teaching"; but, as used in the later Judaism, it denotes a particular
kind of teaching, and also the sum-total of what was taught as well as
the vehicle or medium by which it was given. It further denotes any
particular portion of that teaching. In short, it is a word into which
the Rabbis compressed more meaning than can be found in any other word
in their language; and we shall more readily grasp that varied meaning
if we keep to the word Torah, as being unspoiled by erroneous
associations.
The original meaning, then, of the word Torah is simply "teaching," any
kind of instruction given by any person to any other person; for
instance, Prov. i. 8, "Forsake not the 'torah' of thy mother." More
specifically, it was religious teaching, conceived as given either by
God to Israel, or by man to his fellow-man. Thus, Isa. li. 7, "the
people in whose heart is my Torah" (where the speaker is God); and, for
human instruction, Deut. xvii. 11, "according to the tenor of the
'Torah' which they shall teach thee," "they" being the priests. This
last passage gives the clue to the further developments of the word. It
had been for ages the custom in Israel for the priests to give
instruction to the people upon matters connected with religion,
explanations of duty, decisions of disputes, intimations of the will of
God. This was, of course, Torah; and it was Torah which was regarded as
being given by God through human agency. The Torah which the Lord gave
by the hand of Moses would not originally imply any code or book, but
simply such ancient sayings, precepts or otherwise, as were
traditionally ascribed to Moses as the great teacher of Israel in the
days of old. The connection of Torah with Moses, though others might
have given Torah as well as he, had this result, that gradually a body
of traditional teaching was accumulated, ascribed to him and bearing his
name; and the several attempts to collect and codify these are to be
seen in the various strata of the Pentateuch. They are mostly in the
form of precept and command, as was only likely, since they were
intended for the guidance of conduct. But that was not why they were
called Torah. If Moses had taught something that was not commandment at
all, it would still have been Torah, because it was taught.
In this sense, Israel had never been without Torah; and the prophet no
less than the priest owned that in it God had continually taught His
people. Prophecy itself was only a form of Torah, for the prophet spoke
the word of the Lord.
Now, whatever else Ezra introduced that was new, it was not Torah. If he
had religious teaching to give, as of course he had, he only followed in
the train of the prophets and priests from Moses downwards. And when he
offered Torah to the people, they knew what he was referring to. Nor did
the novelty consist in the fact that Ezra made known to them a larger
body of Torah than they had previously been acquainted with. It does not
greatly matter, for the present purpose, whether the book which Ezra
read to the people was the Priestly Code, or the whole Pentateuch
substantially, though not finally, complete. For even if the earlier
documents had not been as yet welded into one whole with the Priestly
Code, they were nevertheless in existence, and were already owned as
Torah of Moses.
What Ezra did was to lay a much greater emphasis upon the need of
obedience to what was contained in the book of Torah (or the books) as
being the duty of every Israelite. What was in fact the collected
accretions of centuries, was regarded by Ezra, and by all Israel, as
Torah from God communicated by Moses, and therefore entitled to
precedence over any Torah imparted to anyone else. The book, or books,
in which it was recorded contained all that God had chosen to reveal for
the instruction of His people. The five books of Moses were the written
form of the Torah. They were not the Torah itself. It is only for
convenience that the Pentateuch is often called the Torah. The two are
not identical. The Pentateuch differs from the Torah as the vessel
differs from its contents, even though there be but one unique vessel in
which those contents are preserved. Ezra, then, offered for the
acceptance of Israel, in the book that he read to them, what he believed
to be the full revelation which God had made. But he went beyond those
who had preceded him, beyond even those who had carried through the
reform of which the book of Deuteronomy is the manifesto, by reason of
the stress which he laid upon personal and individual acceptance of it.
Deuteronomy, no doubt, contained over and over again the demand, "Thou
shalt observe to do" according to all these commandments, and it
enforced the demand by the appalling catalogue of curses upon the
disobedient which may be read in the 28th chapter. But Deuteronomy was
written before the Exile, and Ezra lived after it. The priests had given
Torah, and the prophets had proclaimed God's revelation of His nature
and of man's relation to Him and consequent duty. They had been
pre-eminently preachers of righteousness. But yet, in spite of the zeal
of the prophets and the teaching of the priests, the bitter lesson of
the Exile had proved that Israel had not served his God as he ought to
have done. It was Ezra's function to apply the lesson of the Exile and
to direct the religious life of Israel into such lines that no similar
disaster should again be experienced; or rather, that no such sin should
again be committed as had led to that disaster. Ezekiel, indeed, had
been the first to perceive the necessity of a change in the direction of
Israel's life; but he had lived at a time too early for a real beginning
to be made. Yet it can hardly be doubted that the seed, which Ezekiel
sowed among the captives in Babylonia, bore fruit in the ideas which
underlay the reformation of Ezra. When Ezra came forward with the book
of the Torah, he did so not in any sense as an opponent of the prophets,
or as making a breach between their ideas and his own. He came forward
to enforce their teaching, to apply it, and to get from it a larger
result of practical righteousness than it had produced in their time. It
was just because the prophets had so splendidly revealed God to Israel,
had proclaimed to him the full grandeur of his privilege, that Israel
must now be taught to do his part as he had never done it before. The
greater the privilege the greater the responsibility. So far from being
at variance with the ideas of the prophets, Ezra was the one to complete
them, or at least to put his people in the way of completing them. There
is a difference of method between Ezra and the prophets; there is no
difference of principle. And as the Pharisees and the later Rabbis did
but carry out the method and the principle of Ezra, they stand in the
same line with him as the legitimate successors and continuators of the
prophets.[2] It may be said with truth that of the later types of
Judaism--Hellenism, Apocalyptic, and Rabbinism--the last, and only the
last, carried on and handed down the inheritance which the prophets had
left. What Hellenism and Apocalyptic had to give went to Christianity,
so far as it survived at all.
[2] This claim is made in the Talmud, b. B.B. 12ª, where it is said
that prophecy was taken from the prophets and given to the Wise,
_i.e._ the Rabbis, and that it has not been taken from them.
The purpose of Ezra was to lay stress on the embodiment, in the
practical life of the individual Jew, of the teaching of the prophets
(including Moses) concerning God and Israel. The main point for Ezra was
that God had taught certain things--knowledge of Himself, knowledge of
His will. What had been taught must be learned and taken to heart, and,
so far as it was of the nature of precept, must be carried out in
practice. It was not enough to _know_; the Israelite was required to
_do_ and to _be_.
The practical application of this idea needed the acceptance of it on
the part of the people, and further, a definite undertaking to make
certain changes in their manner of life. And, before all, it was
necessary that they should, so far as possible, separate themselves from
the "peoples of the lands" in whose midst they found themselves, on
returning from the Exile. This is, of course, the meaning of the putting
away of the foreign wives, and the forbidding of such marriages for the
future. The general programme of the reform is set forth in Neh. x.,
which is nothing more than the logical corollary of the acceptance of
Torah. Among the points there specified, besides the prohibition of
intermarriage with foreigners, are the observance of the Sabbath, the
payment of the tax for the service of the house of God, and the duty of
bringing first-fruits and tithes. Of course these provisions do not
cover the whole duty of the Jew, and they were not intended to do so.
Their purpose was to set up the Jews as a closed corporation, distinct
from the surrounding peoples, and to provide for the maintenance of the
Jewish cultus. Within the limits thus drawn, this enclosure marked off
from the Gentile world, the Jew was to live his whole life, and the
Torah was to be his guide in doing so. The limits were drawn in order to
make it possible for the Jew to live up to the Torah. The limits
themselves are not part of the Torah; and hence it follows that a Jew
could live with complete loyalty to the Torah, and yet be but little
conscious of the limits within which he enjoyed his spiritual freedom
and privileges. Unless occasion reminded him of the fact of separation
between him and the Gentiles, he could give his whole mind to the
immediate concerns of his religious life--meditation, prayer, and the
doing of his duties towards God and man. His thought was not taken up
with a painful study of precepts, but was free to range over the whole
relation in which he stood towards God. The Torah was his guide to the
_whole_ meaning of that relation, not merely to the performance of
specified duties. And therefore, when Ezra prevailed on the Jews to
become a separate community, he was not condemning them to a life of
barren legalism, cutting them off from a free communion with God; he
was providing for them a means whereby they could enjoy that free
communion, defended against the dangers which, in the past, had been so
disastrous to the religious life of the people. It is, of course, true
that in doing so he was at the same time cutting the Jews off from free
intercourse with their fellow-men of non-Jewish race, and thereby
restricting their development as human beings. And the Jews ever since
have paid a heavy price for that separation. But in Ezra's time free
intercourse with non-Jewish peoples did not seem at all a desirable
thing, if the Jewish people were to survive. It is indeed difficult to
believe that they would have survived, if the policy of Ezra had not
been carried out. And if they had not, what would have become of the
Jewish religion? And how would the great spiritual treasure of the
prophets (to say nothing of the Torah itself) have become available for
those who, in a later age, were to depend so largely upon it? Whether
the policy of separation is to be for ever kept up, is a question which
the future must decide. But that Ezra saved the Jewish religion and the
Jewish people is hardly open to dispute.
Ezra, then, provided for the Jews an enclosure, marked off from the
Gentile world, within which to live their religious life; and he gave
them the Torah, as being the full revelation which God had made through
Moses, for their guide in the life they should thenceforth live there.
Clearly, no one would enter that enclosure, or remain within it, unless
he really and seriously meant to live on the lines of Torah. And that is
why, from the time of Ezra, the importance of Torah becomes so marked,
and insistence on it so emphatic; why, in short, from that time, the
Torah dominates the whole field of religion for those who followed the
lead of Ezra. They virtually declared that they would stand or fall by
the Torah. For them, the Torah was the medium through which religion
became real to them; as it were, the glass through which they viewed
all the dealings of God with their own race in the past, and with
mankind in general. This will be more fully seen when we come to what
the Talmud has to say about Torah. But that is only the expansion in
detail, as pious imagination dwelt upon the theme, of the idea which
Ezra planted in the mind of his people, that of the supreme importance
of Torah as the revelation which God had made, the perfect guide, the
source of all that could be known or required to be known, by him who
would "love God with all his heart, and with all his strength, and with
all his might."
The Jew who followed the lead of Ezra was, as before, a member of the
community of Israel; but he was, in a far greater degree than before,
aware of his own responsibility for the right living of his life in
relation to God, the doing and the being of what was pleasing to Him.
The Torah was given to Israel; but it was none the less addressed to
each Jew. And that, not merely in regard to particular precepts but in
regard to the religious teaching as a whole. It may be true that
nothing in the Pentateuch rises to the height of spiritual grandeur
attained by the great prophets. It may be true that their free
inspiration denoted a power and fulness of religious life greater than
could be developed by the Torah as a body of teaching, or even regarded
as a final revelation. But however sublime the religion of the great
prophets had been, the religion of the ordinary Israelite had by no
means attained to the same degree of power and fulness. If it had done
so, there would not have been the collapse of national religious life
which brought about the Exile. The effect of making the Torah the guide
of life, the seat of authority in religion, was to deepen the spiritual
life of the ordinary Jew; it gave him a stronger sense of personal
responsibility, and opened out to him regions of religious experience of
which he had seldom if ever been aware. The effect of thus exalting the
Torah was not, as it is so often said to have been, to cramp and harden
the spiritual nature of the Jew, by confining it within definite limits
and oppressing it by precise commands. I would not say that this never
happened; because it is not wise to assert a universal negative. But it
certainly was not the primary or the usual effect. The Torah made the
religion of Israel personal and individual to a far greater degree than
it had been before; and it did so by conveying to the individual Jew not
merely the legal precept but the prophetic fervour, the joy and the
inspiration of personal communion with God as well as the high privilege
of serving Him. The introduction of the Torah was not the signal for a
decline in the national religious life, but the beginning of a new and
strenuous advance; and whereas, before, the prophets had towered high
above the mass of the people, who had remained at a comparatively low
level of spiritual attainment, henceforth there is a great development
of the spiritual nature of the ordinary people, the individual Jew.
There were no more prophets, because there was no further need of any
prophets. Their work was done; and in respect of that part of their
work where they had failed, Ezra and his followers succeeded. The
prophets had declared the full meaning of the religion of Israel, its
glorious hopes, its triumphant certainties, its boundless possibilities.
The people had heard, but had too little heeded. Ezra, by means of the
Torah, and expressly and intentionally by that means, drove all this
home to the heart of the individual Jew, and so wrought it into the very
texture of his religious nature that it has remained there ever since.
It is high time to put away altogether, as one of the exploded errors of
history, the notion that Ezra, by the exaltation of the Torah to the
supreme place in Jewish religion, set that religion upon the down-grade.
I believe it to be nearer the truth to say that after Moses, and Isaiah
(or perhaps Jeremiah), Ezra is the third greatest man in the Old
Testament.
It can scarcely be too often repeated that the Torah, as Ezra understood
it, meant divine teaching upon all and everything that concerned
religion. It was not confined to commands, positive or negative, but
included everything that bore upon religion at all. This is evident on
the face of it; because the contents of the Pentateuch (which is the
written embodiment of the Torah) include much else beside precept. As a
Rabbi pointed out, long afterwards, if the Torah had been only precept,
it would have been sufficient to begin it at Exod. xii. 2, where the
first precept occurs. "And why was it written (Gen. i. 1), 'In the
beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, etc.'? To show the
power of His might" (R. Jitzḥak, in Tanḥ 4ª). The meaning of which is
that the Torah is a revelation of more than the divine will.
The view that the Torah, as recorded in the Pentateuch, is the supreme
revelation which God made to Israel, and that it covers the whole extent
of the religious life, theoretical as well as practical, is implied in
the position which it held in Judaism from the time of Ezra onwards, and
underlies all that the Talmud says about it. There is no point in the
long line from Ezra to the closing of the Talmud, at which it can be
said: "Here the conception of the Torah was narrowed into the meaning of
mere legal precept." It was at no time thus narrowed. And if, as is
often admitted, Judaism, after Ezra and before Christ, allowed of a
considerable degree of spiritual attainment on the part of those who
were under the Torah, there is no ground for denying the possibility of
such spiritual attainment on the part of Jews in or after the time of
Christ, because the conception of the Torah remained the same in
essence. What change there was, between Ezra and the Pharisees and the
later Rabbis in the Talmud, was in the opposite direction to that of
restriction of its meaning. They realised far more than Ezra did, or
could do, the fulness and richness of the Torah as a divine revelation;
and while they took a delight in glorifying it on its imperative side,
as embodying divine commands, they never dreamed of saying that the
Torah was precept and nothing more.
In his well-known book, _Die alt-synagogale Theologie_, p. 24, Weber
says: "If we have to admit that this praise of Torah (in the Talmudic
literature) is entirely in accord with similar praise of Torah in the
Psalms, we must nevertheless not forget that here (_i.e._ in the Talmud)
the Torah is praised as Law, while in Scripture the conception of Torah
is wider and includes all revelation, alike of law and of salvation."
The opposition here alleged does not exist; and the statement that it
does is the cardinal error of Weber's mischievous book. For the right
understanding of Pharisaic Judaism, the fact that Weber is the usually
accepted guide is well-nigh fatal. It will be observed, however, that
Weber admits the wider conception of the Torah in the later books of the
Old Testament, especially in the Psalms; and that is all that matters at
present. It is of importance to realise that the spiritual life of
Israel not merely ought to have done, but actually did increase and
develop under the influence of that Torah which Ezra had exalted to the
supreme place. There are two very important indications of the truth of
this statement; one is the rise of the Synagogue, and the other is the
growth and completion of the book of Psalms. It will be no digression,
but an appeal to evidence directly bearing on the subject, to speak at
this point of both these.
The origin of the Synagogue is to this extent unknown, that no precise
date can be assigned at which it was first instituted. But it did not
appear in Palestine before the time of Ezra, and it was already ancient
and immemorial in the time of the Maccabees. It is possible, and even
probable, that it arose amongst the captives in Babylonia. It is certain
that it spread through the whole Jewish community in Palestine when it
was introduced. The Synagogue, Beth-ha-keneseth, "meeting-house," was a
place where Jews assembled for religious purposes. It is reasonable to
suppose that what first led to the establishment of such places, by the
captives in Babylonia, was the fact that they were cut off for an
indefinite time from their native land, and the Temple of their God. It
was not only that they were prevented by distance from "going up to the
Temple to pray"; it was that the Temple itself was destroyed, and its
services no longer performed. There was thus no national worship of God
at all. Yet God was still there, to be worshipped. Trust in Him had not
died out from Jewish hearts when Jerusalem fell. What more simple and
natural, for all that it was in fact an unheard-of innovation, than that
here and there a company of brothers in exile should meet together, and
pray to the God of their fathers? So far as I know, there had never
been, in the world's history, any form of congregational worship till
the Synagogue appeared. Till then, worship had usually been performed in
some temple or local shrine, and consisted in the offering of some gift
or sacrifice, usually through the medium of a priest, and accompanied no
doubt by some prescribed prayer. This was done in the Temple in
Jerusalem, while the Temple yet stood. And the Synagogue did not set out
to do the same thing on a small scale, but to do something entirely
different. The time came when the Temple service was restored, and the
ancient sacrifices offered again with the fullest pomp of ritual. But
the Synagogue did not on that account suspend its operations, or show
the least sign of declining in popular favour.
The idea of the Synagogue was twofold; it was a place of worship, _i.e._
congregational worship, and it was a place of teaching, _i.e._ religious
teaching. It has kept that twofold character ever since, or at all
events kept it till long after the Talmudic period. For the Synagogue
had come to stay, and it has continued down to the present day. Of all
the institutions that man has ever devised, the one with the longest
continuous history is the Synagogue. And that it answers to a real and
permanent religious need is shown by the fact that the Christian
religion took over both the idea and the form of the Synagogue, in
organising its own meetings for worship, and has retained them ever
since; except where sacrificial ideas, derived partly from the Temple
worship and partly from pagan ritual, have interfered with and spoiled
the simplicity of the Synagogue type of service. It is highly remarkable
that the same elements which are familiar in Christian worship--hymn,
prayer, Scripture reading, and sermon--are found in the earliest
Synagogue services so far back as the records go. And the reason why
they have been retained, practically unaltered, is surely this, that
they have been found to answer their purpose so well that no change was
felt to be needed. Whoever first devised the form of the Synagogue
service came, no doubt unconsciously, upon one of the fundamentals of
the spiritual nature of man, made one of the discoveries which determine
the future development of the race for all time. The Synagogue perhaps
grew up rather than was intentionally created; and it was accepted
because it so exactly met the needs of those who first made use of it.
During some twenty-three centuries it has served the purpose of common
worship, both in its Jewish and its Christian form; and when it is
considered how enormous has been the influence of the practice of
meeting for common worship, such as the Synagogue first provided and
made possible, then it becomes highly significant that the Synagogue
appeared in close connection with the labours of Ezra and the new
emphasis laid on the Torah. Whether, on the supposition that the
Synagogue arose on Babylonian soil, it owed its origin to the conception
of Torah as Ezra understood it, we have no means of knowing. But it is
certain that its rapid spread in Palestine took place when the idea of
Torah was already made dominant. And the Synagogue was naturally adapted
to embody that idea. As the Torah was the revelation which God had made
to Israel, the study of it and the practical application of it were
both associated with the "house of meeting." To study it was to ponder
the meaning of the revelation. And to practise it was, amongst other
things, to worship the God who had given it. The Synagogue was intended
to develop through religious fellowship the whole nature of those who
met there, spiritual and moral, and by no means only intellectual. And
even if the Torah which they studied had been nothing but precepts, yet
these included a personal devotion to the service of God which was
practically unthinkable without worship of Him. It was as natural that
those who met in the Synagogue should join in prayer together, as that
they should read or hear the book of the Torah, and should edify one
another by expounding its contents. That is what they did; and the
Synagogue did not fail to become a most important factor in deepening
and strengthening the spiritual life of the people at large.
Now if the effect of the exaltation of Torah, due to Ezra, had been, as
it is usually said to have been, gradually to harden and cramp the
spiritual freedom of the Jewish mind, then either the Synagogue would
have ceased to minister in any way to spiritual needs, or else it would
have represented a protest against the deadening influence of Torah. But
in actual fact there has never been, at all events till quite recent
years, any such opposition between the Synagogue and the religion of
Torah. On the contrary, it was precisely the religion of Torah which the
Synagogue, through all these centuries, has existed to promote; and it
was the Synagogue, so inspired, which served as the type and model of
Christian worship. The Synagogue is one of the first-fruits of that
Judaism which, under the lead of Ezra, took its stand upon the Torah.
Further evidence in the same direction, namely, that the tendency of the
religion of Torah was not towards spiritual decline, is afforded by the
book of Psalms. That evidence would be more cogent than it is, if it
were possible to fix with certainty the date of every Psalm. That
cannot be done; but the fact remains that the collection of the Psalms,
and the use of that collection as a lyrical expression of devotion,
belong to the time after, and not before, the age of Ezra. It is often
said that the book of Psalms is the hymn-book of the second Temple; and
I do not challenge the general correctness of that statement. But some,
at all events, of the Psalms seem to be less adapted to the Temple
service than to that of the Synagogue. I mean that those utterances of
intensely personal devotion which make the Psalms so wonderful a
treasure of spiritual experience, are much more in keeping with the
simple worship of the Synagogue than with the stately and official
celebrations of the Temple. It might indeed be said that some of the
Psalms are too personal even for the congregational worship of the
Synagogue, if we did not know, from common usage, that hymns of that
character are constantly sung in Christian worship. There is hardly any
one of the Psalms which could not have been quite well sung in the
Synagogue; while there are many which have no obvious fitness for the
service of the Temple. But, in any case, it was not until after Ezra had
made Torah the dominant factor in Judaism that the book of Psalms was
collected and arranged, and in part composed, as we have it now. It
contains hymns of an older date, in some cases perhaps a much older
date. And it is possible that some smaller collections had been made in
times before Ezra. But there are several Psalms which quite clearly owe
their origin to the idea of Torah as the supreme revelation, besides
others which bear witness to the influence of that idea; while the
collection of the whole is best explained as due to the need, first
brought to the Jewish consciousness by the Synagogue, of some means of
giving united expression to the thoughts and feelings of a worshipping
multitude. Of course it is not here implied that the collection or
production of the book of Psalms took place immediately after the time
of Ezra. The collection may have only been completed as late as the
first century B.C. But the point is that the whole was collected, and
much of it composed, under the influence of the religious ideas
associated with Ezra and the Torah. And it should be observed that the
later be the date assigned to the composition of some of the Psalms, and
the final collection of the whole of them, the stronger is the evidence
that the religion of Torah was not the unspiritual formalism that it is
often supposed to have been.
I shall have more to say about the Psalms, as evidence for the meaning
of the religion of Torah, in the last chapter, in which I shall deal
with Pharisaism as a spiritual religion. For the present enough,
perhaps, has been said to show that the Judaism to which Ezra gave its
distinguishing character by raising the Torah to its supreme place
there, was thereby enriched and not impoverished on its spiritual side;
it did not sink but rise, it became not more shallow and poor, but more
full and deep, with greater power than it ever had before as a
determining factor in individual life.
It may be objected, at this point, "All this may be very true, in regard
to the religion of Ezra, as conditioned by Torah; but does it hold good
in regard to the religion of the Pharisees, of whom, in this chapter,
nothing has as yet been said? Ezra may have been such as has been
described; but it is the Pharisees who are commonly said to have been
mere legalists in their ethics, and formalists in their worship." I am
quite ready to meet that challenge; and it was for the purpose of
preparing to meet it that I have been so careful to make clear the
conception of Torah implied in the work of Ezra, and its effect upon the
religion of those who followed his lead.
As has been said already, there was no divergence in principle between
Ezra and the Pharisees. Both accepted with entire assent the conception
of the Torah as the supreme revelation made by God to Israel; and they
owned in like manner, with entire assent, the duty of conforming in
thought, word, and deed to the divine teaching therein contained. In
what, then, did the Pharisees differ from Ezra? In what directions was
development possible from the idea of Torah as he conceived it? And in
particular, what line of development was still open to the Pharisees
when they first became a distinct element in the Jewish national life?
In the time between Ezra and the Maccabees that provision had been made
of the Synagogue worship, to which reference has already been made; and
within the lines of a liturgy whose simple beginnings are ascribed to
the Men of the Great Synagogue, and which was further enlarged by the
piety of later generations, that piety continued to find expression in
public worship. Private prayer never confined itself to stated forms;
and private prayer was always an essential element in the religion of
Torah. It must never be forgotten, that in all the developments of
Pharisaism and Rabbinism on the lines of theology and the practical
conduct of life, the spiritual and devotional side is always involved.
The men who built up the huge fabric of Talmudic casuistry were men who
prayed to their Father in Heaven (calling Him by that name), and who, in
simplicity of heart, "worshipped him in spirit and in truth." If this is
challenged, (though it would not be challenged by anyone who really
knows the Rabbis), then I ask, were the great men who built up the
equally huge fabric of Christian doctrinal theology men in whom the
spiritual nature was atrophied? Let Augustine answer for his brethren
among the Christians; and if his answer be allowed, (and no one who has
read the _Confessions_ will dispute it), then let it be allowed that R.
Akiba, a double-dyed Pharisee if there ever was one, and a master of
Halachah, may also have known "the deep things of God," and "walked in
the light of His countenance."
The development of the religion of Torah from Ezra to the Pharisees, and
on to the Talmud, took place along two main lines, it being understood
that through all the spiritual and devotional side was ministered to.
The two lines of development are indicated by two words, of which I have
just mentioned one--Hălāchah and Hăggādah. To grasp the significance of
these terms is essential for the right understanding of Pharisaism. I
will not give a definition of them, just at this point, but will rather
describe the two methods by which the Torah was interpreted, and for
which these two names were chosen.
The Torah, as recorded in the Pentateuch, was set up by Ezra as the
supreme revelation made by God to Israel. It was Teaching intended to be
learned. Now one of the first things that must be learned by any man who
would serve God is _How_ he shall serve Him. What shall he refrain from
doing? How shall he know, if he is in doubt, whether he ought to do
_this_ or _that_? And again, many things are done as being customary;
there are usages, observances, ceremonial acts of which the origin is
not known. Are these to be approved or condemned, when tried by the
standard of the right service of God?
On the lines laid down by Ezra, and followed by the Pharisees and the
Rabbis, the answer to questions such as these was to be sought in the
Torah. Answers to some of them were found at once. In many passages, the
words were explicit: "Thou shalt do _so_," or "Thou shalt not do _so_."
In other passages, minute directions were given for the performance of
certain acts. But cases would arise which were not expressly dealt with
in the written Torah; and in such cases it became the duty of those who
had most deeply studied it, to give a decision according to what they
believed to be the intention of the Torah. They would infer from what it
enjoined in a given set of circumstances, what it would enjoin in a
somewhat different set of circumstances. This is what the early Sopherim
did, and probably Ezra himself. And these decisions were on the one hand
interpretations of the Torah, and on the other hand rules of conduct,
to be applied as occasion might require. On both accounts they were
carefully handed down, for the guidance and instruction of posterity.
This is the Tradition of the Elders, and it extends from Ezra to the
closing of the Talmud.
Now let us examine that tradition at some suitable point, say the
beginning of our era, when Pharisaism was fully established. The
Tradition of the Elders had become by that time a considerable body of
decisions, originally given by way of interpreting the Torah so as to
apply it in particular cases. These decisions were not written down, but
preserved in memory. A Pharisee would say that all these were part of
the Torah. They were not something added on to it, of merely human as
opposed to divine authority. They were successive unfoldings of what had
been hidden in the Torah from the beginning. The particular teacher who
had given such and such an interpretation, thereby rendered explicit
what had till then been implicit in the Torah. The Torah was not merely
the written word of the Pentateuch, but the divine thought behind it.
And to interpret the Torah was not to read something fresh _into_ the
written word, but to get something fresh _out_ of it. If a Pharisee were
asked, Where is the Torah to be found? he would answer: "The written
word and the unwritten tradition together make up the Torah." And he
would further say that the unwritten was more important than the
written, because the unwritten unfolded what was concealed in the
written, and extended its application. But it was all the Torah; and
however far the process might be extended, however detailed the
interpretation might come to be, it would still all be the Torah. For
the Torah was in itself inexhaustible, being the full revelation that
God had made. And all the drawing forth and unfolding of its meaning was
but the bringing into the consciousness of men what was and had been in
the Torah from the beginning. This is the theory of Torah, as it was
certainly held by the Pharisees, and embodied in the Talmud. Whether
Ezra himself held it, there is no evidence to show, and I do not claim
that he did. But it is clear that once the Torah is made supreme, this
is one of the possible lines along which that idea could be developed.
There are no doubt other lines; but the main characteristic of the
Pharisees and of the Rabbis is that they followed this line, and no one
can say that they did not do their work thoroughly.
What it amounts to is this, that the Torah was to be made, not merely in
theory but in practice, a complete guide to life. The aim was to learn,
from what God had revealed, His will in regard to every slightest action
that a man might do. That could be learned from the Torah; and if it
could be, it ought to be. No amount of study was too great, if, by that
means, something more might be learned of how God willed that a man
should live. Every fresh interpretation of the Torah, when once accepted
as valid, was an extension of its meaning, or rather a transference of
its meaning from the region of the unknown to the region of the known.
The result of this process was a detailed statement that such and such
and such actions were to be done by anyone who would rightly serve God,
because they were what God Himself had taught in the Torah, as being His
will. This detailed rule of right conduct is what is denoted by the name
_Halachah_.[3]
[3] The meaning of the other term mentioned above, namely,
_Haggadah_, will be explained hereafter. See Chapter V.
Halachah is the most conspicuous element in Pharisaism, partly because
it was the object of its authors' most close and continuous thought, and
partly because its results were immediately visible in the actions which
it prescribed. It was the Halachah which gave rise to the common opinion
that Torah is the same as Law. It is the Halachah which has laid the
Pharisees open to so much misrepresentation and obloquy. And, if there
was one thing more than another that a Pharisee would extol as divine,
it was the Halachah; because it was to him the express direction of God
how rightly to serve Him.
Evidently the greatest care would be needed in the interpretation of the
Torah, to draw from it the right conclusion. If the result--the
Halachah--was to be accepted as the divine teaching, made explicit upon
such and such a point, it could not be left to chance or caprice to
determine the form in which it should be expressed. It was not open to
any teacher to give his own interpretation upon some point and
straightway to say, "This is the Halachah," _i.e._ this is the Torah
made explicit upon this subject. What was to be regarded as Halachah was
only determined after careful deliberation, guided by the recorded
opinion of earlier teachers, where known, and also by recognised rules
of interpretation. The end proposed in such discussion was either to
define in minuter detail some general rule of conduct derived from the
Torah, or else to connect some already existing usage with the Torah so
as to show that it had divine sanction. The masters of Halachah were not
engaged upon the construction _de novo_ of a system of ethics or a
system of law. They were engaged in adjusting to the standard of Torah
all the actions of life, so that in every one of them the divine will
might be carried out. And when it appeared that such and such was the
real meaning of Torah upon a given point, the Halachah ascertained by
valid methods, then they were not free to decide otherwise upon that
point. Which is only to say, what everyone must say, that he is not
entitled to go against the authority which he personally regards as
supreme.
The Halachah covered part of the ground which is usually occupied in a
nation's life by the civil and criminal law. And this is another reason
for the common identification of Torah with Law. Law there must be for
the regulations of social life, the performance of contracts, the
prevention of crime, and the like. The Jews needed a civil and criminal
law, as any civilised people needs it. And though in certain respects
they were subject to the Roman law, (at all events in the time of the
Pharisees and the Rabbis), yet they devised a system of their own,
because they would have their law based on the Torah. The Roman
government they obeyed from compulsion; to the Torah they gave the full
allegiance of heart and will. The Halachah accordingly is, to a large
extent, a system of civil and criminal law based upon, or derived from,
the Torah, and resting for its sanction upon the divine revelation
therein contained. And if the Halachah, in dealing with such subjects as
must be dealt with in a code of civil and criminal law, goes into minute
detail, makes subtle distinctions, draws very fine lines between what is
and what is not lawful, it only does what any adequate system of law is
bound to do. And to say that the mass of detail and minute precept of
the Halachah was, or must have been, oppressive to the ordinary Jew, is
as true, or untrue, as to say that the ordinary Englishman is oppressed
by the mass of detail and minute precept in the body of statute and
common law by which his actions as a citizen are regulated, and which he
is presumed to know. In the one case, as in the other, certain lines are
defined by a recognised authority, for the regulation of action; but for
any given person, it is seldom that he will be in a position to feel the
constraint, or expressly to seek the permission, of the greater number
of the laws under which he lives. If he is in that position, then the
Englishman under the statute and common law, equally with the Pharisee
under the Halachah, acknowledges a rule of conduct having authority over
him, and not to be disobeyed with impunity. And the main difference is
that, to the Jew, the authority of the Halachah was the authority of the
Torah, and the Torah was the revelation of God. So that, to the Jew, the
code of civil and criminal law was specifically sacred in a way that it
is not to the Englishman.
But the Halachah, as the reader will wish to remind me, came very much
more closely home to the Jew than a code of civil and criminal law could
do. It was the rule of his private and domestic life, it defined his
conduct both towards God and his fellow-man. Certainly it did. And the
Pharisee would say, "Why not? Do I not need to serve God in everything I
do, however small? And if the Torah can teach me exactly--yes, very
exactly--what is most pleasing to Him, shall I not thankfully receive
that teaching, and the more of it the better?" On this theory, it can
easily be seen that there is no real distinction of great and small,
important and trivial, in the things that are done in accordance with
Halachah, because, in each case, what was done was regarded as a doing
of God's will. In themselves, and apart from that, actions were trivial
or important, great or small, and the Pharisees knew perfectly well that
they were. But the Pharisee never regarded the mere doing of the action
as sufficient; in all and every case there must be the purpose of
serving God, the intention of pleasing Him. If he were assured that God
had directed such and such a thing to be done, in a given case, then he
would not say, "This is a trivial thing," or "This is a great thing";
but, "This is precisely what God would have me do at this moment and
under these circumstances," and he felt a joy in doing it as exactly as
he could. All this is widely different from what Christians are
accustomed to, in determining their actions; but my object is to make
clear the point of view of the Pharisees, and to show that on the lines
of their theory they were perfectly justified in those precise
definitions of conduct, even in matters which on other lines would be
considered trifling. However small might be the details upon which the
Halachah was defined, it was still Torah that enjoined the doing of the
action in this way and not in that way, though, on the face of it, there
might seem to be no reason to do it in one way rather than another. And
the authority of Halachah was the will of God. It is easy to pick out
from the Mishnah instances of minute regulation upon points of no
apparent importance--such, for instance, as the rules for dealing with
an egg laid upon the Sabbath. If a Pharisee were challenged upon that,
or any similar case, he would say: "The Torah, the divine revelation,
extends over the whole of life; and its principles, when drawn out and
applied to that particular case, yield the results stated in the
Halachah, bearing thereon. The divine will is taught me in regard to
that; and what concerns me is the doing of the divine will, and not the
smallness of the occasion in regard to which I do it."
The duties enjoined in the Halachah were called "Mitzvōth," _i.e._
commandments. And the essence of a "mitzvah" was that it was a thing
which God willed to have done. It was an occasion of service, a means
offered to man by which he could in a given instance please God.
Therefore the Pharisee delighted in being able to perform a "mitzvah";
and it never occurred to him that he was burdened by the weight or
oppressed by the number of them. "The 'Mitzvōth,'" said a famous Rabbi,
"were only given in order to purify Israel. The things commanded made no
difference to God" (Rab, in Ber. R. § 44, p. 89ª). They were so many
opportunities given, by the sheer kindness of God, for man to do his
Maker's will. Why God should be pleased to direct that such things
should be done just in that way and in no other, it was not for man to
inquire. All that he had to do was to take the opportunity, and serve
God in the manner which God enjoined. Merely to do the action, without
the conscious assent of his will and the devotion of his heart, was no
fulfilment of his duty; for what God desired was the harmony of the
human soul with Himself in willing obedience, and not that, for
instance, just 2000 cubits and no more should be the extent of a Sabbath
day's walk.
R. Joḥanan b. Zaccai, a contemporary of Jesus, was once asked what was
the reason for performing all the ritual of the sacrifices, and the
other minutiæ of the ceremonial law. He answered: "A corpse does not
defile, and waters do not cleanse. But it is a decree of the King of
kings. The Holy One, blessed be He, hath said, 'I have ordained my
statute; I have decreed my decree. Man is not entitled to transgress my
decree.' As it is written (Num. xix. 2), 'This is the decree of the
Torah'" (Pesikta 40^b). That is a far-reaching saying, and gives the
clue to the whole meaning of the Halachah, as the rule of right conduct
deduced from the Torah, and applied by the Pharisees.
It is obvious that a theory like that lends itself to abuse, because it
makes a severe demand for constant devotion on the part of the man who
lives under it. Undoubtedly it could, and in some cases it did, lead to
that mere formalism and hypocrisy which have been charged upon the
Pharisees as a class. The Pharisees themselves were perfectly well aware
of the danger, and that it was not always successfully averted. But most
distinctly, such formalism and hypocrisy were only the perversion of
Pharisaism and not inherent in it. And not only so, but for the
Pharisees as a class, on their own showing in the Talmud, the Halachah,
with its abundant "Mitzvōth," was felt to be a help and
not a hindrance to him who would walk with God, a joy and not a burden.
The Pharisees, as was explained in the previous chapter, were those in
their time who interpreted most strictly the Torah which in some degree
all Jews recognised. It was they who worked out the Halachah, as it was
they who carried out its principle into the minutest details of
practice. On their theory of Torah, it was clearly their duty to be as
precise as they were in their food and their dress, in the "tithing of
mint, anise, and cumin," the wearing of their phylacteries just _so_ and
not otherwise, in their scrupulous regard to "clean" and "unclean,"
"lawful" and "forbidden," and the like. And it was only for the sake of
being in a position to carry out more fully what they deemed to be the
will of God, in all these and many other matters, that they separated
themselves from those who were less careful, and formed themselves into
groups, societies, companionships, as they called them (Ḥabūrōth). That
separation is indicated by the name applied to them, Pherushim
(Pherūshim), or Pharishaia in the common Aramaic speech. Their own name
for themselves and each other was "Ḥaberim," "companions," as they were
"banded together for a full obedience" to what God had enjoined in the
Torah.
It is easy to make Pharisaism appear ridiculous, a mere extravagance of
punctilious formalism. But that is only possible to those who look at it
from a point of view which is not that of its devoted adherents, or who
judge it by a standard which they never recognised. Pharisaism is
entitled to be judged according to what the Pharisees themselves meant
by it, and its worth to be estimated by what they found in it, without
comparison with other and widely different conceptions of the theory or
practice of the service of God. I shall make no such comparisons, either
now or later. My whole object is to present Pharisaism as I believe it
really to have been to the Pharisees themselves, who, whatever else they
were, were in deadly earnest about it all, and gave even to that
Halachah, which more than anything else has brought scorn and ridicule
upon them, the patient labour of at least six centuries.
I believe that, if the Pharisees had had nothing more than the Halachah,
they would still have made a religion out of it. I mean, if they had
developed from the Torah, which was to them the supreme revelation, only
its Mitzvōth, they would still have been able to find in it some
satisfaction for the spiritual wants of their souls. But they had much
else, as will be shown in more detail in subsequent chapters. It was
their task, or rather their absorbing delight, to elaborate the
Halachah, to make it an ever more perfect exposition of the divine will
in regard to the conduct at least of Israel; as it was their joy, in
the obeying of those precepts, to "walk humbly with their God," as they
certainly did. But it should be borne in mind that in addition to the
Halachah, with its strenuous and salutary discipline of thought and
action; there was the whole range of meditation upon divine
things--speculation, imagination, inquiry into the mysteries of nature
and human experience, devout wonder at the ways of God and the marvels
of His world, all, by the light which He had given in His Torah. For
great as the Halachah was, and divine and holy, the Torah was greater,
for in it God had given all that He had to give. "Greater," said a
Rabbi, "is one single word of Torah, than all the 'Mitzvōth' contained
in it." And another: "All the world is not equivalent to one single word
of Torah" (j. Peah. 15^d), meaning that the beholding of the perfect
revelation of God is more than the realisation in action of a part of
it. Again, extravagance, it will be said. Yet only the extravagance of
exalting in spoken word that which is owned as supreme in thought. The
phrases may be to non-Jewish ears devoid of serious meaning; but in that
way the Pharisees chose to express what in their hearts they owned as
fully and perfectly divine, that Torah which to them was wisdom from
God, the revelation of all truth, goodness, power, and love. It was to
them the very expression of the mind and thought of God; and that is
what they meant when they said that God looked upon the Torah when He
created the world (Tanh. 2^b), or that He Himself studies the Torah
every day. It is His self-communing made known to man.
All this, which covers the whole field that is occupied in other
religions by doctrinal and speculative theology, was included in the
Torah and formed part of the religion of those who owned it as supreme.
And all this had its place in their thought along with the Halachah.
And at the heart of those same Pharisees there was the piety which
sought and found God in the worship of the Synagogue and the home,
which looked to Him with love and humble trust, and knew Him to be not
far off but very near, no mere abstract power, no hard taskmaster, but
the Heavenly Father.
These things I believe to be true of the Pharisees; not of every
individual, just as one would not say of every Christian that the full
glory of his religion was realised either _in_ him or _by_ him, but true
as the full expression of what Pharisaism meant, and true in a larger
measure as the experience of those who professed it.
Beneath all that outward guise of unfamiliar phrase and uncongenial
method, so far removed from all that to Christians seems the natural
expression of religion, there was nevertheless the communion of living
souls with the living God; and however different was the way in which
they felt called to walk, from that in which other men walk, in that way
they steadfastly continued; and, knowing in their hearts that God was
with them, they "trusted in Him and were not ashamed."