PHARISAISM AND JESUS
It is from the New Testament that the ordinary Christian reader gets his
ideas about the Pharisees. There is mention in the Gospels of frequent
encounters between Jesus and the Pharisees; and the Epistles of Paul
contain much severe comment on the Pharisaic conception of religion. No
one, who desires to understand what the Pharisees themselves meant by
their religion, can afford to pass by, without careful examination,
these records of unfavourable criticism; and he must enter upon such
examination not by any means with the preconceived intention of
confuting the critics or of agreeing with them, but simply for the
purpose of getting to know why there was such criticism, and what truth
lay on each side in the controversy. With this object, I shall devote
one chapter to the study of the opposition between the Pharisees and
Jesus, and another to that between Pharisaism and the teaching of Paul.
Incidentally, it will be possible to find room for various points which
bear upon what has been said in the foregoing chapters.
It will be admitted that to discuss the relation of the Pharisees to
Jesus is to tread upon delicate ground; for, whatever Jesus was, the
place which he holds in the thought and reverence of Christians is
shared by no one else; and it is less easy to say the right thing when
he is regarded as a party in a controversy than when he is contemplated
as in himself supremely great. It is less easy, because the controversy
was one in which sharp and bitter things were said on both sides; and to
regret that they were said, and still more to suggest that they were
said without sufficient warrant, is to cast inevitable reflections on
those who said them. It is easy to say that the Pharisees were
wrong--that is only what is expected of them; it is another thing to say
that Jesus was wrong, that even he did less than justice to his
opponents, and, in his intercourse with them, showed upon occasion
qualities which were extremely human but not obviously divine. I yield
to no one in my reverence for Jesus; he is, to me, simply the greatest
man who ever lived, in regard to his spiritual nature. Some may think
that too little to say of him; others may think it too much. I do not
stay to argue the point; I only wish to make clear, beyond any
misunderstanding, my own position. What I have to do at present is to
deal with the fact that between Jesus, being such as I have indicated,
and the Pharisees, there was an opposition of thought and principle too
great to be resolved into harmony; and I wish to study that opposition,
so as to judge fairly--that is, without prejudice one way or the
other--the real meaning of it. If, on the one side, the verdict is
expressed in the phrase, "Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites," on the
other it is summed up in the assertion, to be found in the Talmud,
"Jesus practised magic and led astray and deceived Israel" (b. Sanh.
107^b). To say offhand that one of those assertions is true and the
other false is merely to beg the question. It is more to the purpose to
understand how it came about that they were said. That such a statement
should be made about Jesus is to Christians hard to endure. They feel it
to be unjust and untrue. That such a statement should be made about the
Pharisees is to Jews hard to endure. They feel it to be unjust and
untrue. They are the weaker party, and they have the right to be heard.
In view of the sharp contrast expressed in the two sayings just referred
to, it might seem that the Pharisees and Jesus had nothing in common.
And indeed the final breach was inevitable and irreparable. Religion as
the Pharisee conceived it could not come to terms with religion as Jesus
conceived it. As to that I will say more presently. But it is well to
bear in mind, and even to emphasise, the fact that there was
nevertheless a considerable amount of common ground between them, much
more than is usually supposed. With a great deal of what Jesus said
about God, and about man's relation to Him, no Pharisee would feel
disposed to quarrel, or, so far as the evidence goes, ever did quarrel.
The discussions in the Gospels did not turn, for instance, on the
question whether Jesus should or should not have referred to God as the
Father in Heaven, or whether forgiveness was God's sure answer to
repentance. No Pharisee ever challenged him on either point, or on many
another of the directly religious and ethical sayings which he uttered.
A Pharisee could not so have challenged him without disowning his own
religion. Modern Jewish historians not unnaturally lay much stress upon
the similarity between the teaching of Jesus and that of the Rabbis, at
all events the best of them; and that similarity cannot be denied,
whatever may be the explanation of it. Moreover, it is not merely a
similarity of phrase, though no doubt in some cases it is nothing more.
That proverbial sayings should be used alike by Jesus and the Rabbis is
not wonderful. Such were, for instance: "It is enough for a disciple to
be as his master" (b. Ber. 58^b); "With what measure ye mete, it shall
be measured to you again" (Sot. i. 7); "Sufficient unto the day is the
evil thereof" (b. Ber. 9^b); "Physician, heal thyself" (Ber. R. xxiii.
4), which Jesus himself mentions as a familiar proverb (Luke iv. 23).
These were part of the common stock of daily speech, and are no evidence
either for or against a similarity between the ideas of Jesus and those
of the Pharisees. But when Jesus said, "Repent, for the Kingdom of
Heaven is at hand," he was referring to what was already familiar to his
hearers, and had been, long before John the Baptist had begun to deliver
his message. And when the Sermon on the Mount was first spoken, it was
not all strange and new to the hearers. The general character of the
sayings there grouped together is thoroughly Jewish; so much so that one
could hardly imagine a Greek saying them. There are differences,
certainly, between the sayings contained in the Sermon on the Mount and
the Rabbinical parallels to them; and for some of them no Rabbinical
parallels can be found. But, take it altogether, the Sermon on the Mount
would seem to a Pharisee to be very like what he believed already. Even
the Lord's Prayer would not be wholly new. Certainly some of its phrases
can be paralleled in the Rabbinical literature; though no less certainly
there are others which cannot. For the prayer as a whole, there is no
parallel in Jewish sources--a very significant fact. But "Our Father
which art in Heaven" is Jewish; so also, "Hallowed be Thy name. Thy
Kingdom come"; "Give us this day our daily bread"; "Forgive us our
debts"; "Deliver us from the evil." I am not sure about "Lead us not
into temptation." And if "Thy will be done" means the same in the
Lord's Prayer as it meant when uttered in Gethsemane, there is no
parallel to it in Jewish sources.
This carries us into the very heart of the religion of Jesus. And in
regard to these fundamental beliefs there was no disagreement between
him and the Pharisees. I am perfectly well aware that the Rabbinical
parallels, even those most complete, are found in literature which is
later than Jesus, and I shall rightly be challenged to show on what
ground I hold that these later Jewish dicta represent the beliefs of the
Pharisees in the time of Jesus. I do not agree with Jewish scholars who
say that Jesus borrowed them all from the Rabbis of his time. A man of
such independent thought as Jesus certainly was, would hardly need to go
in search of such ideas, as not having them already himself. It is
inconceivable that Jesus should never have thought of calling God "Our
Father in Heaven" until Hillel or Shammai had instructed him to do so.
The point scarcely needs to be laboured. I put on one side altogether
the theory that Jesus was indebted to the Rabbis of his time for the
beliefs, and the verbal forms of them, which he shared with the
Pharisees.
But with no less decision must the theory be rejected according to which
these various beliefs and phrases were borrowed from Jesus. If they had
been, _i.e._ if Pharisees who heard Jesus say these things had adopted
them as their own, and even to some extent made them current in their
own religious teaching, it is perfectly certain they would never have
been allowed into the Talmud. Suppose, for instance (which is what a
great many people suppose), that Jesus had been the first to use the
phrase, "Our Father which art in Heaven," so that to Jewish ears that
had been entirely unknown until he used it. In that case, the origin of
the term would have been perfectly well remembered; and the feeling
against Jesus in Pharisaic circles was far too strong to allow, for a
moment, the use of a phrase known to have been coined by "the Sinner of
Israel." The earliest occurrence of the term in the Mishnah, so far as I
know, is at the end of chapter ix. of the treatise Sotah; and there the
person who uses it is R. Eliezer b. Horkenos. This particular Rabbi is
very well known. He lived at the end of the first century of our era. He
got into trouble on one occasion; and the reason of his trouble,
according to his own admission, was that he had unwittingly praised
something that was told him, and which he afterwards learned was a
saying of Jesus. He was filled with horror at the thought that he could
ever have approved anything which had emanated from that teacher. Now R.
Eliezer himself was probably too young to have seen and heard Jesus; but
his old master, R. Joḥanan b. Zaccai, was a contemporary, and must have
witnessed the tragedy in Jerusalem. If Jesus had invented the term, "Our
Father in Heaven," that fact would be well within the knowledge of R.
Eliezer, and he would have cut off his right hand sooner than have used
the phrase. Instead of that, he used it with devout intention: "Who is
there on whom to lean, except our Father who is in Heaven?" It was a
phrase which expressed the ground of trust in God. And neither to
himself nor to anyone else did it occur that he was using a phrase
either recent or suspicious in its origin.[4]
[4] To this may be added the fact that certain phrases, apparently
harmless, were forbidden to be used in the Synagogue, because they
were in some way heretical (M. Meg. iv. 9). Christianity is not
directly mentioned, but there is good reason to suppose that
Christianity is intended.
All this goes to show that there cannot have been any borrowing from
Jesus on the part of those who recorded in the Talmud sayings similar to
his, or who used phrases implying similar beliefs. It is just
conceivable that slight and unimportant sayings of his might have been
picked up and made current amongst the Rabbis. But that phrases so
important and so numerous as those which are offered as parallels to the
teaching of Jesus, should have been borrowed from him, is, to anyone
who knows the Talmud at all, a sheer impossibility.
There remains, accordingly, this alternative, that such phrases
represent what was familiar to and accepted by both Jesus and the
Pharisees, as ground truths about which there was no dispute. Jesus did
not explain, as he had no need to explain to his hearers, why he called
God the Father in Heaven. He took it for granted that they knew whom he
referred to and what he meant. And no Scribe ever asked him to explain
his meaning. It is clear that, wherever it came from, the term "Father
in Heaven," as applied to God, was not new in the time of Jesus. It was
part of the common stock of religious ideas, a natural element in the
Jewish religion of that time. When and how it first came into use I do
not know. It is not found, in so many words, in the Old Testament or the
Apocrypha, though there is a broad hint of it in Isa. lxiii. 16, "Surely
Thou art our Father, etc." If it be (and who will deny that it is?) one
of the great watchwords of spiritual religion, then observe that it can
only have come into use in the time between the Maccabees and Jesus; and
no other source for it can be deemed so probable as the Synagogue, the
home of the religion of Torah.
And much the same argument applies to the rest of what can be shown to
be similar in the religious ideas of Jesus and those of the Rabbis. They
cannot have been borrowed from Jesus. They were known in his time
because he gave utterance to them, and was not challenged for doing so.
They were known and devoutly believed by the Talmudic Pharisees; there
is no indication of their being a novelty. They must therefore represent
substantially what was held and believed by the Pharisees in and before
the time of Jesus.
It may, of course, be argued that Jesus put a deeper meaning into the
common terms than the Pharisees did. But this is extremely difficult to
prove; and merely to say that he did is to beg the question. Who would
venture to say that all Christians put precisely the same meaning upon
the common terms which they employ, or that a given term will not mean
to a deeply spiritual Christian much more than it would to a shallow and
frivolous one?
I do not contend that all the Pharisees, or any of them, were the equals
of Jesus in spiritual depth, just as I would not contend that all
Christians, or any of them, were his equals in that respect. But there
is certainly no warrant for saying that all Pharisees understood the
common phrases of their religion in a low and narrow sense, as compared
with the sense in which Jesus understood them. To say that "Our Father
in Heaven" meant for the Pharisee only that God had chosen Israel to be
His own people, and that the name Father "did not in the Jewish theology
lead to a deeper insight into the nature of God as Love," is one of the
flagrant misrepresentations with which Weber's book abounds (Weber, p.
150). There may have been Pharisees to whom the phrase meant nothing
more; there certainly were Pharisees to whom it meant that God was near
to each one of His children, in love and mercy and personal care. That
the Pharisee thought of God only, or even mainly, as distant and
inaccessible, or as a taskmaster whose service was hard, is a baseless
fiction. Even, then, allowing that Jesus, by the depth and power of his
own spiritual nature, did read into the common terms of Jewish religion
a fuller meaning than had been previously found there, he nevertheless
used those terms because they served to carry that meaning, as they
stood and without alteration.
We have, then, reached this position, that both Jesus and the Pharisees
shared in common a Judaism expressed in the terms of a spiritual Theism,
developed in the Synagogue and the home, and learned there alike by the
Pharisees and by Jesus. It was certainly not the creation of the
Scribes, _quâ_ Scribes, so that Jesus, or anyone else, would need to
have sat at the feet of some Gamaliel in order to learn it. It was the
spiritual inheritance of the Jew, into which he entered by natural
piety, and from which neither the simple and unlearned nor the Scribe
versed in the subtleties of the Halachah was excluded. I shall have more
to say about this in the concluding chapter.
Such, then, was the common ground which Jesus shared with the Pharisees.
We have now to study the opposition between them, which finally drove
them apart in irreconcilable antagonism. The true nature of that
opposition, the cause and ground of it, did not appear at the outset.
Indeed, it may be questioned whether either the Pharisees or even Jesus
himself ever fully and consciously realised the inner meaning of it.
That the Pharisees knew why they distrusted, feared, and finally helped
to destroy Jesus, is true enough. And Jesus expressed, in the plainest
terms, the ground on which he denounced the Pharisees. But whether on
either side the real significance of the struggle was clearly seen, is
to my mind doubtful. Jesus may have seen it. I do not think the
Pharisees did, or ever have done, from that day to this. To bring out
that meaning, or what seems to me to be that meaning, will be the point
to which I shall lead up in the remainder of this chapter; and with that
in view I shall survey the main incidents of the controversy as they are
recorded in the Gospels.
The appearance of Jesus as the successor of John the Baptist, taking up
his message and proclaiming it with a force of his own, was enough to
draw immediate attention to Jesus, and to incline men to give him a
favourable hearing. This is to put the matter from the point of view of
the people in general, and the Pharisees in particular, who were in
possession of a settled religion, and to whom Jesus was an unknown man
who had to make his name. That he preached repentance, and proclaimed
the near advent of the Kingdom of Heaven, would be only a reason for
listening to him. No Pharisee, nor any other Jew, with the national
history behind him, would question for a moment that God might at any
time raise up some messenger to proclaim His will. What else had the
prophets been, in the old days? And had not John the Baptist been much
like one of them? That John, and after him Jesus, had called his hearers
to repent, was no reason whatever for resenting his boldness, or for
denying his right to speak. It was the natural thing for a prophet to
do; as, in much later times, it is natural for a revivalist to convict
his hearers of sin, and lead them to the mercy seat. They do not resent
being called sinners, and are only grateful for the glad tidings of the
mercy which saves them. So with the Pharisees; there would be no
disposition on their part to find fault with Jesus for coming forward as
a preacher of repentance, let alone a herald of the Kingdom.
The point at which distrust of, and uneasiness about, Jesus first
entered the minds of the Pharisees, is probably indicated by the saying
that "he taught as one having authority, and not as their Scribes"
(Matt. vii. 29).
To the conservatism which is commonly found in the adherents of a
religion long established and settled in its ways, there was added in
the case of the Pharisees a special veneration for the principle of
traditional authority. If at first they merely noticed that Jesus was
very independent, and wanting in the deference which was due to the
sages and elders of his people, they could not fail before long to
discover that this was something more than unconventional freedom of
speech and manner. If he had kept to his preaching of repentance, and
the announcement of the Kingdom of Heaven, that might pass; but he spoke
of other things besides repentance, and put forward views of his own as
to what the Kingdom implied. It would seem that he was assuming the
position of a teacher of religion in general, since he touched upon
subjects which were not specially connected with his mission. To the
Pharisees he appeared as a sort of unregistered practitioner, if the
comparison may be allowed. Much of what he said they could not but agree
with; but how came he to say it? Some things they did not agree with,
and what right had he to set up his own opinion against the teaching
commonly received and held? So they began to ask, "Whence hath this man
this wisdom?" and "by what authority doest thou these things?"[5]
[5] I only quote these questions as being what must have been asked
at a very early stage of the public career of Jesus: I offer no
opinion as to the chronology of the incidents in the Gospels in
connection with which those questions are introduced.
Christians are accustomed, and rightly, to regard it as one of the marks
of the greatness of Jesus that he did speak out of his own mind and
heart, as having his authority within himself. But I am trying to put
the case as it presented itself to the Pharisees, looking at it from
their own very different point of view. There was not amongst them any
office exactly corresponding to the position of a clergyman or a
minister. They were all laymen; and if the priests had special
functions, that was only in connection with the ritual of the Temple,
and not with the giving of religious instruction. After the Temple was
destroyed, the priest was only distinguished from the rest by certain
privileges of precedence, and certain disabilities: he had no
ministerial function as leader of a congregation. Neither in the time of
Jesus nor after it were the Pharisees a priest-ridden community.
Of far greater importance than the priest was the Scribe: but the Scribe
was only a layman. He was not consecrated to a sacred office, and to
that extent set apart from the rest of his fellow-men: he was indeed
chosen and appointed by those who were competent to do so, but, in
regard to what he might or might not do, he was in just the same
position as any Pharisee who was not a Scribe. What distinguished him
from the rest of his brethren was that he made it his special business
to study the Torah, both written and unwritten, and to qualify himself
to be a teacher of it. His proficiency was recognised and vouched for,
by those who were already accepted religious teachers, by some form of
ordination. To become a Scribe was not so much to take orders as to take
a degree, though that is not an exact parallel.
I have explained in the preceding chapter the way in which the Torah was
regarded as the embodiment of the full and final revelation which God
had made to Israel. It was the source of all knowledge, the supreme
authority, the regulator of all action. It included within its range the
whole duty of man, his entire relation to God and to his fellow-men. The
written Torah was contained in the Pentateuch. The other canonical books
of the Old Testament were to be read in the light afforded by the Torah,
and to be valued for the help they gave in illustrating its meaning,
making clear what had been left obscure in the Pentateuch. That there
could be any contradiction between the secondary scriptures and the
Pentateuch was in theory impossible. And when in the case of certain
books, namely, Ezekiel, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs,
contradictions were alleged, the alternatives were to explain away the
contradiction or to reject the books from the canon. The books were
retained, by an exercise of dialectic subtlety which is graphically
indicated in the statement that a certain Rabbi burnt the "midnight oil"
to the extent of three hundred barrels, in his studies to reconcile the
book of Ezekiel with the standard of the Torah (b. Shabb. 13^b).
The unwritten Torah was the explication of what was implicit in the
written Torah, the unfolding into fuller detail or greater clearness of
what was barely suggested in the Scripture. Evidently, therefore, to
know what was contained in the Torah, _i.e._ what God had revealed, it
was needful to know the unwritten as well as the written Torah, the
former even more perhaps than the latter. And this could only be done
by learning and remembering what had already been taught and accepted as
a valid interpretation by previous teachers. A Tradition of the Elders
was a necessary result of a religion of Torah. If a Pharisee were
offered some religious teaching or were invited to do some action as a
religious duty, he would ask (supposing it was new to him), "Is this
Torah?" And he would not be satisfied until he had been shown that it
was. The proof would be, either that it had already been taught by such
and such a recognised teacher, or that the instructor, _being himself a
recognised teacher_, assured him that it was so. This was the constant,
and even necessary, form in which instruction was given in the meaning
of Torah. And it should be carefully observed (a point which is not
usually understood) that this method of Tradition by no means excluded
individual initiative or progressive development of thought on the part
of those who handed on the Tradition. There was no finality in the
Torah; the diligent and devout student of it was always discovering
something new, and if he could show (as he usually could show) that his
new truth was in the Torah, that was an addition to its known meaning,
while yet the Torah remained unaltered in the infinite richness and
fulness of its contents, the perfect and divine revelation. I have shown
that progressive development was most marked along the line of the
Halachah. But there was even more of free speculation, individual
initiative of research into spiritual things, though there was less of
methodical advance, along the line of the Haggadah, as will be explained
more at length in the fifth chapter. But there also the method, or
rather the form, of Tradition was the one mainly used, presumably as
being that which gave greatest security for the validity of the results
obtained. The Pharisees in the time of Jesus, no less than the Rabbis of
the Talmud, were well able to think for themselves, and in fact did so,
upon religious as upon other questions. And the reason why they
uniformly employed the method of Tradition was not that they were
hidebound slaves of custom, but that their religion was the religion of
Torah. As the Torah was not a burden, so the Tradition of the Elders was
not a constraint. Christians may, and usually do, think that the burden
and the restraint must have been felt. But that is only because the
religion of Christians is not a religion of Torah; and one who is
accustomed to the conditions and conceptions of the former, is not
likely to appreciate, and seldom tries to understand, the conditions and
conceptions of the latter. Equally, of course, one who has grown up in
the habit of thought congenial to the religion of Torah does not easily
appreciate and may seriously misunderstand the manifestations of
religion, in thought and speech, where the Torah is not the controlling
element.
When, therefore, the Pharisees became aware that Jesus was one who
"taught as having authority, and not as their Scribes," they were
confronted with a fact which they were not in a position to understand,
to the meaning of which they had no clue, and which could only appear to
them as a contradiction of their own principles. It would be extremely
perplexing to them to know what to make of Jesus, and how to deal with
him. What he said seemed to be good; but was it Torah? It might be; but
how could they know that? Some of it, of course, they were familiar
with--the common terms of the spiritual Judaism to which reference has
already been made. But some things were new. Their own accepted
teachers, the Scribes, had not taught these things, i.e. had not
declared them to be Torah. Jesus was not a Scribe. He did not say, "This
is Torah because I have learned it from so-and-so." And, not being a
Scribe, he was not competent to declare it as from himself. How could
they receive his teaching, without being unfaithful to what they already
believed? And if they were unfaithful to that? It should be constantly
remembered that the religion of Torah meant to the Pharisee the whole
of religion, all that was possible of communion with God, and not merely
of obedience to precept. Within its characteristic form there was room
for all of that spiritual Theism which, as has been shown, the Pharisees
had in common with Jesus. If he did not hold that spiritual Theism under
the form of Torah, they did; and it was in its essence much the same for
both. They did not know that the form of Torah, with its corollary of
Tradition, was not necessary to the retention of the religion which
brought them close to God in love and obedience, in joy and trust. And
it seemed to them that they risked the loss of all that, if they
tampered with the conception of Torah, or listened to one, however
persuasive and however eloquent, who taught "not as their Scribes." If
this was the point of view from which the Pharisees regarded Jesus, when
they began to make closer acquaintance with him, then it is easy to
understand how their feeling towards him would be something much deeper
than mere petty jealousy or the prejudice of stupid bigotry. No doubt
there was some of that. Inability to understand can express itself in
ways which are mean and contemptible, as is seen in religious polemic in
every age. The Pharisees had no monopoly of ignorant spite. But what I
contend is that the attitude of the Pharisees towards Jesus will bear a
much higher interpretation than mere arrogant jealousy against an
unauthorised intruder. It was a repugnance towards teaching which they
could by no means bring within the frame of their religion, and they
could not imagine any other frame for it; it was a shrinking fear of a
teacher who, with holy and good words and deeds, seemed yet to be
leading them away from the only ideal they could recognise. And leading
not only them but also the people, who were less able to guard against
the danger, and who, as they observed, "heard him gladly," and even
"hung on his words listening." A religion so deeply wrought into the
souls of the best part of the nation as the religion of Torah had been
since the days of Ezra, so strongly held, so passionately loved, so
marked in the individuality of its features, could not enable those who
clung to it to unlearn the ways of their fathers, and to adapt its
contents to a new and unfamiliar form. The religion of Torah, for all
that it had much in common with the religion of Jesus, could never pass
over into the form which he gave to his religion. And although
Christians may say it was "blindness" on the part of the Pharisees, they
are not justified in saying that it was also "hardness of heart," which
made them shrink from Jesus.
The occasions upon which they came into conflict with him were probably
numerous; but the following may fairly be taken as representative of the
rest:--Healing on the Sabbath; the question of divorce; the argument
about Corban. Along with the first may be included the defence of his
disciples for plucking the ears of corn on the Sabbath. And as a
supplement to all may be taken the long invective against the Pharisees
in Matt. xxiii. Whether this list follows the chronological order I do
not know, and for the purpose in hand it does not matter. The difference
in principle is not affected by questions of date.
It will be noticed that I have not included the question of the
Messiahship of Jesus. Of course the Pharisees, like everybody else in
Israel at that time, speculated whether Jesus was "he that should come,"
or whether they were to "look for another." But they did not directly
challenge him on that point, as they challenged him on the points I have
already named. Their challenge about the Messiahship was indirect. Their
position would be that a man who set himself against the Torah could not
be the Messiah. Conceivably the Messiah might in some respects supersede
the Torah, but he could never oppose it. And when Jesus was driven to
declare that in certain points the Torah did not represent divine truth,
it was from that moment impossible that the Pharisees should recognise
him as the Messiah, and inevitable that they should regard him as a
dangerous heretic. This may explain why the Pharisees did not ask him,
in so many words, whether he was the Messiah or not, and also did not
offer objections to any supposed claim to that position made by him or
on his behalf. The question was only put to him directly by the High
Priest at the trial, and therefore not by the Pharisees at all. And it
is scarcely likely to have been put then as a challenge to argument; it
was much more an attempt to get evidence on which to convict him out of
his own mouth. Jesus was condemned and executed on a more or less
political charge, for which the question of Messiahship provided a
useful basis; but he was really rejected, so far at all events as the
Pharisees were concerned, because he undermined the authority of the
Torah, and endangered the religion founded upon it.
That Jesus really did so is beyond dispute. His final position was one
which could not be reconciled with recognition of Torah as the Pharisees
regarded it. But it may well have been, and I think it was, the case
that he was only gradually driven to this position, and that when he
began his ministry he was not conscious of any discrepancy between what
he was teaching and what the Torah implied. That is presumably what he
meant when he said: "Think not that I came to destroy the Torah and the
prophets; I came not to destroy but to fulfil" (Matt. v. 17). His
quarrel, at that time, was not with the Torah itself, but with the
Scribes and Pharisees, as being unsatisfactory exponents of it. "For I
say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the
righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter
the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matt. v. 17, 20).
There is here no opposition between the conception of Torah and that of
life under the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus also regarded the Torah, at this
time at all events, as being the supreme and final revelation that God
had given to Israel. To fulfil it was not merely to obey its precepts
but to make one's whole life, in thought, word, and deed, respond to
that divine influence. And Jesus maintained that the Pharisees did not
go the right way to attain that end. He himself came to fulfil the
Torah, by making that complete response to its influence, and by showing
how it could and ought to be made. Any notion of getting rid of it after
having once and for all satisfied its claims, belongs to a circle of
ideas of which it is safe to say that Jesus never dreamed.
But yet, if the explanation here offered be correct, it is evident that
what he still supposed to be Torah, and the religion of Torah, was not
so in fact. He had grown up with the conception of Torah, like any other
devout Jew; and he did not at once become aware that what he conceived
religion to be was something that could not be expressed in terms of
Torah. The Pharisees perceived the discrepancy sooner than he did; and
while he found another form for his religion, they adhered to the old
form because that was what they knew, and they could not comprehend
anything different. To them, what he was doing was not reconstruction or
amplification or exaltation of the old religion, but destruction of it.
And, so far as the conception of Torah was concerned, they were quite
right. Torah and Jesus could not remain in harmony. The two were
fundamentally incompatible. And the Pharisees, being determined to
"abide in the things they had learned," viz. Torah, were necessarily
turned into opponents of Jesus.
This cleavage showed itself only gradually; and what forced it on the
consciousness, first of the Pharisees and then of Jesus himself, was
shown in the several occasions of dispute, where appeal had to be made
to first principles.
I take first the case of the cure of a sick man on the Sabbath, as it is
recorded in Mark iii. 1-6: "And he entered again into the synagogue; and
there was a man there which had his hand withered. And they watched
him, whether he would heal him on the Sabbath day; that they might
accuse him. And he saith unto the man that had his hand withered, Stand
forth. And he saith unto them, Is it lawful on the Sabbath day to do
good, or to do harm? to save a life, or to kill? But they held their
peace. And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being
grieved at the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch
forth thine hand. And he stretched it forth, and his hand was restored.
And the Pharisees went out, and straightway with the Herodians took
counsel against him, how they might destroy him." It is evident that the
narrator of that story did not love the Pharisees, and it would not be
unreasonable to take a heavy discount off it on the ground of prejudice.
But we may leave all that out of account. Jesus challenged the Pharisees
to say whether, according to the Torah, he might or might not cure the
man on the Sabbath. If he got no answer, it was certainly not because
they had no answer to give. They would say, "Why do on the Sabbath what
could be done on another day, if the doing of it would break the
Sabbath? The Torah says that the Sabbath is to be kept holy; and this is
done by refraining from certain kinds of action, in themselves perfectly
right and proper. We believe that the right way of fulfilling the
Torah--doing the will of God--is to do so-and-so. And we believe that in
order to save life, when it is in danger, it is the will of God that we
should break the Sabbath, in any way that may be necessary. But that we
should not break it for any less urgent cause. Here is this man with a
withered hand. He is in no immediate danger. Certainly it is a good
thing to cure him. But why not have cured him before? And if his cure
should stand over for a day, is that so great a harm to one who has been
some time in that condition that the Sabbath must be made to give way to
it?" That is the sort of answer that the Pharisees would make. Of
course, the rejoinder is ready to hand, that to do good is right on any
day, Sabbath or no Sabbath. But that is not the point. The challenge of
Jesus was, "Is it _lawful_?" _i.e._ "Is it in accordance with Torah?"
And the Pharisees were perfectly justified in holding that it was not in
accordance with Torah. If Jesus interpreted Torah in a different sense,
that was his affair; and they would not be the more disposed to agree
with him if it be true that he "looked round about on them in anger."
His action was in effect an attack on Torah, whatever his intention
might be.[6]
[6] The action of Jesus in casting out devils was not in itself a
ground of controversy with the Pharisees, since they did the same;
and moreover neither side questioned the genuineness of the
exorcisms of the other. But it appears from Mark iii. 22-30 that
the Pharisees alleged that Jesus performed his cures by the help of
Beelzebub the prince of the devils; and Jesus denounced them as
guilty of the sin against the Holy Spirit, for their malicious
slander in ascribing to diabolic agency what was due to power from
God. Then follows the famous declaration: "Whosoever shall
blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is
guilty of an eternal sin" (Mark iii. 29). This is the foundation
for the doctrine of the unpardonable sin, in Christian theology. It
rests entirely on a misunderstanding of the phrase, "hath never
forgiveness," a misunderstanding already apparent in Matt. xii. 32,
where it is said that such a one "shall not be forgiven either in
this world or in that which is to come." The phrase in Mark, "hath
never forgiveness," is the key to the real meaning of the saying of
Jesus. The Christian reader, finding the phrase only in this one
passage, naturally supposes that it is very exceptional and carries
some tremendous meaning. But, in fact, it is a Jewish idiom
applicable in ordinary circumstances. In the Talmud, j. B. Kama
6^c, is a passage dealing with injuries and affronts from one man
to another. A Rabbi suggests a method of reconciliation; upon which
another Rabbi comments: "This will do where it is not a case of
slander; but if he has put forth a bad name against his fellow-man,
_he hath not forgiveness for ever_." There is here no question of a
sin which God will not pardon, but of an affront which man will
not, or does not, pardon. It is only a way of saying that slander
is one of the hardest of all offences to forgive. The Rabbi who
said this never dreamed of an unpardonable sin as Christians have
imagined it. The unvarying doctrine in Pharisaic theology on the
subject of forgiveness is that God always forgives those who repent
when they repent (see on forgiveness in Chapter IV.). The term
rendered "for ever" is used in the Talmud in connections which
preclude all idea of theological meaning. Thus, j. M. Kat. 83^d, of
the rent garments of the mourner, "They do not sew the pieces
together _for ever_." The declaration of Jesus accordingly is not
the intimation that there is a sin which God will never forgive,
but the denunciation of malicious slander by a justly indignant
man. The phrase, "is guilty of an eternal sin," is only an
expansion of "hath never forgiveness." It is worth noting in this
connection that the references to Jesus in the Talmud do not
include a charge that he was possessed by a devil or made use of
the help of the prince of the devils. See my _Christianity in
Talmud and Midrash_, where all the Rabbinical passages relating to
Jesus are collected and commented on.
The question of Sabbath-breaking was raised in another form in the
incident described in Mark ii. 23-28, and elsewhere. This is chiefly of
importance because it is made the occasion for the declaration that "the
Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." The action of the
disciples in plucking the ears of corn on the Sabbath was challenged by
the Pharisees. Jesus defended it by an appeal to Scripture, the
relevancy of which is not obvious, and by the declaration just quoted,
which is only a valid defence if it means that the Sabbath can be put
aside by man for his own convenience, however slight the occasion. The
Pharisees would certainly agree to the declaration about the Sabbath (it
is found, b. Joma 85^b), but they would not admit the interpretation
which Jesus put upon it. They would say that the Sabbath was a divine
institution, intended for the benefit of man; and that, while for grave
reason it might be sometimes right to break the Sabbath, yet that was
not left to the caprice of anyone who chose to break it. If that was
allowed, the blessing of the Sabbath would be gone and the divine
intention frustrated. From the point of view of Torah, no other answer
was possible. And Jesus, in his treatment of the Sabbath, by dispensing
with the obligation of the hitherto customary observance of it, was
disclosing the fact that he did not now look at the matter from the
point of view of Torah.
How far he was conscious of this divergence, or rather, when he became
aware of it, can hardly be determined. But in the controversy with
regard to divorce the divergence became unmistakable. The controversy
was strictly not about divorce in itself, but about the attitude of the
Torah towards divorce. Jesus condemned divorce (Mark x. 2 fol.). Whether
he allowed the one exception or not, his general condemnation of the
practice is not open to question. But the Pharisees also condemned
divorce. They could not abolish it, but they sought to restrict what had
been the immemorial freedom of the husband to put away his wife at his
pleasure. It is often urged against Hillel and Akiba that they allowed
divorce for frivolous reasons, and Shammai is praised because he would
not allow divorce except for unfaithfulness. Neither the blame nor the
praise is justified or even called for. The only difference between
Hillel and Shammai on the subject was whether the Torah allowed divorce
for trivial reasons, or restricted it to the one grave reason. It was a
question of interpretation of the authority recognised alike by Hillel
and Shammai. It was not a question of the private opinion of either of
them upon the ethical character of divorce. If Hillel and Akiba had seen
their way to interpret the Torah in accordance with their own ethical
judgment, they would certainly have done so. And, in fact, the Talmudic
treatment of the subject is in the direction of making divorce
difficult, and of giving protection, where possible, to the wife against
the caprice of the husband. But in face of the fact that the Torah, the
written Torah, expressly allowed divorce (Deut. xxiv. 1), not even
Hillel and Akiba could establish the contrary view.
So far as the condemnation of divorce on its own account was concerned,
the Pharisees would be in agreement with Jesus, though probably not to
the extent of admitting no exception, supposing that Jesus himself went
so far. The point of controversy was in regard to the Torah as bearing
on the subject. This is clear, because Jesus himself appealed to the
Torah. He asked the Pharisees, "What did Moses command you?" And it
appears that what he was thinking of was the passage, Gen. i. 27, "Male
and female created he them." But the Pharisees quoted against him the
express command, Deut. xxiv. 1, "Let him write a bill of divorce, etc."
So that here there was Torah against Torah. The Pharisees would say, "We
agree with you that divorce ought, so far as possible, to be restricted
and avoided; but, nevertheless, we cannot condemn it outright, because
the Torah, which is God's own teaching, expressly allows and even
enjoins it. But you, who do condemn it outright, how do you reconcile
that with Torah?" Jesus answered that the permission to divorce was a
concession made to human imperfection, and that the real intention of
God was expressed in the passage in Gen. i. 27. But that answer implied
necessarily that the written Torah was, in this one case at all events,
not divine and perfect, since it contradicted itself. And such an answer
was fatal to a recognition of the supremacy of Torah, as the Pharisees
understood it. To them, the fact that Jesus had, in this one instance,
definitely repudiated the divine authority of Torah, would outweigh the
fact that upon the subject of divorce itself they were to a large extent
in agreement with him. The result of the controversy would be a deepened
impression, alike on the Pharisees and on Jesus, that his standpoint was
not that of Torah, and that his ground principle was irreconcilable with
theirs.
Another phase of the opposition between Jesus and the Pharisees is shown
by the incident described in Mark vii. 1-23, of which the catchword is
"Corban." The Pharisees and Scribes ask Jesus "why his disciples did not
follow the Tradition of the Elders, but ate their bread with unwashed
hands." Jesus turned upon them and charged them with making void the
word of God by their Tradition. "For Moses said, Honour thy father and
thy mother; and, He that speaketh evil of either father or mother, let
him die the death. But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or
mother, That, wherewith thou mightest have been profited by me, is
Corban, that is to say, Given to God, ye no longer suffer him to do
aught for his father or his mother; making void the word of God by your
Tradition; and many such like things ye do." Now, even if the charge
brought against the Pharisees were true, that they would not allow a man
to be released from a vow in order to honour his parents, they would not
thereby be "making void the word of God by their Tradition." On the
contrary, they would be upholding it. For, while Exod. XX. 12 says,
"Honour thy father and thy mother," Num. xxx. 2 says, "When a man voweth
a vow unto the Lord, or sweareth with an oath to bind his soul with a
bond, he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that
proceedeth out of his mouth." No provision is made for annulling vows,
except those of a wife by her husband or her father under certain
conditions. The practice of annulling vows generally was introduced by
the Rabbis, and they admitted that it had no direct sanction in
Scripture. If, therefore, in the case of a man who had made a vow to the
detriment of his father and mother, they refused to release him, they
would be upholding Scripture against their Tradition. True, Scripture
would be opposed to Scripture; but the responsibility for that rested on
Moses, not on them; and the practice of annulling vows would have the
effect of removing that contradiction, and was perhaps so intended.
However that may be, the charge against the Pharisees of making void the
word of God by their Tradition would not be borne out in this instance,
even if it were true that they refused to release a man from a vow of
the kind described.
But the assertion that they did so refuse is contrary to the express
statement of the Mishnah, which is the codified Tradition; and is
moreover entirely at variance with the spirit of Rabbinical ethics in
regard to respect to parents. The crucial passage is M. Nedar. ix. 1,
and it runs thus: "R. Eliezer says, 'They open a way for a man on the
ground of honour to his father and mother.' The Wise forbid. R. Zadok
said, 'Before they open a way for him on the ground of honour to his
father and mother, they should open it for him on the ground of honour
to God. If this were so, there would be no vows.' The Wise agree with R.
Eliezer, that in a matter which is between a man and his father and
mother they open a way for him on the ground of honour to his father and
mother." Two cases are here distinguished; in the first, if a man makes
a vow of any kind, he is not to be released from it on the ground that
it would bring reproach on his parents to have such a rash and foolish
son. He must be made to keep his vow. But in the second case, if a man
make a vow upon a matter between himself and his parents, i.e. one
which, if he keep it, will occasion injury or loss to them, then he is
to be released from it on the ground of honour to his parents. The
commentators on the Mishnah all agree in this interpretation, and there
is no doubt as to the intention of the Mishnah. Moreover, there is no
indication that there ever had been a different opinion, as if the
statement now made in the Mishnah had taken the place of an earlier
statement. There is no evidence that the Pharisees ever held or taught
the doctrine attributed to them by Jesus, while it is contradicted in
the most definite manner by the declarations of their own legal
authorities.
The charge is all the more pointless because the Pharisees, whatever
else they may have failed in, always showed the most devoted respect to
parents. A more unfortunate ground of attack could hardly have been
chosen than that which is taken in the Corban incident; and the
Pharisees would not have had the slightest difficulty in repelling the
charge brought against them. Whether the error involved in the account
of the incident be due to the Evangelist or to Jesus himself, an error
it remains. And it is not fair, on the strength of the New Testament
text, however it came to be written, to hold the Pharisees guilty of
denying that which they themselves expressly enjoin. That is the fact.
How the misstatement[7] came to be made, I do not know and will not
speculate. Of course this does not in any way affect the truth of the
principle enunciated by Jesus: "There is nothing from without the man
which going into him can defile him, etc." That marks, in practical
effect, though possibly not in theory, a complete breach with
Pharisaism, since the Torah did, in the most explicit manner,
distinguish between clean and unclean, and did teach that outward things
caused defilement. The Pharisees held by the Torah; Jesus, at this
point, threw it over. Yet the Pharisees could and did say that the
defilement was not caused by the outward thing itself, but expressed the
will of God that certain actions and contacts should be avoided. Why He
had so willed, they did not know nor inquire; enough that He had so
willed, and included it in the Torah which He had given. If it be said,
"So much the worse for a religion and an ethic which are based on
Torah," the question is taken down to first principles, and will be
answered variously according to the view held of those first principles.
I only observe that the religion of Torah was hampered by the fact that
it applied a sublime theory to material some of which was originally
quite independent of that theory and unworthy of it; and the Pharisees
were unable to recognise that fact, while doing their best, and a very
splendid best, to overcome a difficulty of whose nature they were not,
and could not be, aware.
[7] "Corban" does not mean "Given to God," at least it does not
mean that the thing in respect of which the vow was made was
dedicated to sacred use. "Corban" is merely a formula prefacing a
vow. A man would say, "Corban! if you shall enter my house!"
meaning, "I vow that you shall not enter it."
The opposition between Jesus and the Pharisees finds its most emphatic
expression in the long speech contained in Matt. xxiii., the keynote of
which is: "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" It is
sometimes argued that Jesus himself did not say all the hard things in
that speech, but that they represent the hostility of the early Church
towards the men who had destroyed her founder. That is possible; and
certainly the Evangelists do not incline to a favourable view of the
Pharisees on any occasion. But I do not feel free to evade the duty of
dealing with that speech by availing myself of that argument. Moreover,
I do not see anything to make it impossible, or even unlikely, that
Jesus did say all those things. Having in effect broken with the
religion of Torah, and being in the position of a man driven to bay,
fighting, as the saying is, with his back against the wall, it is only
human nature that he should so speak as to hit hard. And, if it were the
case of any other man, who would take the words spoken under such
conditions as expressing the calm and deliberate judgment of the
speaker upon the persons addressed, or as weighty evidence of the truth
of the statements made? I am not going to go through the various charges
in order to estimate the truth or the exaggeration of them. I shall make
no suggestions that perhaps the Pharisees in that time were very bad,
though they were more respectable before, and, in a curious way,
recovered their character afterwards. Nor will I admit that it was
perhaps true of the rank and file, but that men like Hillel and Gamaliel
and Joḥanan b. Zaccai were honourable exceptions. If it was true at all,
it was most of all true of Hillel and Gamaliel and their compeers,
because these represented Pharisaism in its perfection, and their
religion was the religion of Torah in all its height and depth and
length and breadth. Whatever could be truly said of Pharisaism, either
good or evil, was true of the religion by which they lived.
I take all that sweeping denunciation as the final expression of
irreconcilable opposition between Jesus and the religion of Torah. And
I shall content myself with making a few observations upon the fact and
the meaning of it. As for the term "hypocrites," the justice of the
implied charge is not established by the fact that the charge is made.
That hypocrisy is possible under the religion of Torah is undeniable;
but there is certainly no necessary connection between the two. The
Pharisees themselves were quite aware that there were hypocrites in
their ranks.[8] The retort would be justified that hypocrites have been
found amongst professing Christians also. But recrimination is not
argument. The hypocrisy question is not really difficult to understand,
if the explanation already given of the religion of Torah be borne in
mind. The theory of that religion, when put into practice, necessarily
involved the doing of many acts in a particular way. Even actions in
themselves of little or no importance became important when the Torah
directed a specific way of doing them. They were done as a fulfilment of
the will of God upon that particular point; and His will was not
fulfilled unless there was, on the part of the agent, the conscious
intention of serving Him. The mere _opus operatum_ was worthless. To the
Pharisee, starting from Torah as his ground principle, the doing of a
multitude of apparently trifling acts was the obvious way of putting
religion into practice, and he rejoiced in doing them. But one who did
not start from Torah as a ground principle would have no clue to the
understanding of what the Pharisees did, or why they did it. If such a
one took as his ground principle the immediate authority of conscience
and his own direct intuition of God, and if he then judged the Pharisees
by his standard and not by their own, then he would easily draw the
conclusion that they were hypocrites, because he would see them treating
as of great importance things which conscience would pay no attention
to; and he would judge that men who could be satisfied to discharge the
obligations of religion in such a way, must either be ignorant of what
religion really is, or pretenders to a piety they did not possess. The
religion of Torah lays itself open to the misconstruction which charges
its adherents with hypocrisy. But, apart from particular instances where
the charge could be established, the charge only shows how far those who
make it are unable to comprehend the Pharisaic conception of religion.
To urge that their conception of religion was defective is legitimate;
to condemn them as hypocrites on the strength of a different conception
of religion is not legitimate, no matter by whom it is done.
[8] See the often-quoted passage describing the seven classes of
Pharisees, b. Sotah 22^b.
And this leads me to the conclusion of what I have to say about the
opposition between Jesus and the Pharisees. The conflict was one between
two fundamentally different conceptions of religion, viz. that in which
the supreme authority was Torah, and that in which the supreme authority
was the immediate intuition of God in the individual soul and
conscience. The Pharisees stood for the one; Jesus stood for the other.
The particular occasions of dispute, some of which have been noticed,
mainly served to bring out this fundamental opposition; at all events
that is their chief importance.
The conflict was unequal, because it was one in which an Idea was
matched against a Person. The idea of Torah was sublime, and deserved
all the devoted loyalty that was given to its expression and defence.
But it was an idea, mediated in the consciousness of those who held it.
Jesus was a living soul, with the spiritual force of a tremendous
personality; and against him the idea of Torah could not prevail. This
was the real meaning of the fact that he taught "as one having
authority, and not as their Scribes." This was the ground of his claim
to forgive sins, a claim which the Pharisees could only interpret as
blasphemy (Mark ii. 7). And this appears in all his relations with the
Pharisees, as the force which opposed them, and which they could
neither comprehend nor overpower. They could not at the same time retain
the conception of Torah as the basis of their religion and admit the
authority of Jesus. They saw no reason why they should abandon Torah;
they could not therefore do other than reject Jesus. And when the
verdict of the Pharisees is expressed in the saying of the Talmud,
already quoted, "Jesus practised magic and deceived and led astray
Israel," that contemptuous dismissal shows how completely they failed to
realise that what had opposed them had been the strength of a great
personality. And I do not think that on the Jewish side this ever has
been realised from that day to this. If the Pharisees had realised it
they would have met him with arguments quite different from those which
they did use; possibly they would have refrained from controversy
altogether. As it was, they remained within the circle of religious
ideas which they knew, and continued to find in the Torah the
satisfaction of their spiritual wants--a real satisfaction of real
wants, such as men might feel who were not hypocrites and impostors, but
earnest and devout, and chiefly concerned to do the will of their Father
in Heaven, in what they believed to be the way He desired.
If there was on the part of the Pharisees a complete inability to
comprehend the religious position of Jesus, there was also on his part
an inability[9] to comprehend the religious position of the Pharisees.
If he had realised what Torah meant to the Pharisees, he might, and
doubtless would, have desired to show them a "more excellent way," but
he would not have taken the line which he did of denunciation and
invective, since to do so would defeat his purpose.
[9] I have been asked how I can reconcile this alleged inability on
the part of Jesus to understand the Pharisees with the power he
showed elsewhere of reading the character and comprehending the
thoughts of those with whom he came into contact. My answer is that
I do not admit John ii. 25 as true of the historical Jesus; and
that, while I do not deny that he had deep insight into human
character and thought, such insight depends on sympathy. That there
was finally a complete absence of sympathy between Jesus and the
Pharisees is plainly to be seen, and admits of no dispute. And,
that being so, I submit even he did not escape the effects of that
limitation, in making him unable to comprehend the position of the
Pharisees. The inability was on both sides, and for the same
reason.
This I believe to be the real truth about the inability of both the
Pharisees and Jesus to understand each other, or, in other words, the
impossibility of harmony between the religion of Torah and the religion
of the individual soul, if I may so describe it. That incompatibility is
fundamental. Christianity, in all its forms, is a religion founded on
personality, one in which the central feature is a Person. And Judaism,
at all events since the days of the Pharisees, is a religion in which
the central feature is not a person, at all events not a human person,
but the Torah. It is near the truth to say that what Christ is to the
Christian, Torah is to the Jew. And alike to Christian and to Jew it is
almost impossible to comprehend the religion of the other. Even Jesus
could not do it. And if he could not do it, what wonder that his
greatest disciple, Paul, in passing from the one conception of religion
to the other, should have failed to carry with him into his new faith
the remembrance of what the old faith had meant to him while he lived in
it?
To the further consideration of this essential opposition between the
religion of Torah and the Christian religion I shall proceed in the next
chapter, when I shall deal with the criticism of Torah in the Epistles
of Paul.