SOME POINTS OF PHARISAIC THEOLOGY
In the second chapter it was pointed out that the development of the
religion of Torah, in the centuries from Ezra to the Pharisees and on to
the Talmud, took place along two main lines. These are indicated by the
two words Halachah and Haggadah. Upon the meaning of the former I dwelt
at some length; but, for the sake of clear and adequate treatment, it
seemed better to defer the consideration of the latter. The thread then
dropped I shall pick up now; for the answer to the question "What was
the theology of the Pharisees?" is given in the Haggadah. This is true
in more senses than one; for to understand what is meant by Haggadah is
to understand the Pharisaic mode of approaching questions of doctrinal
theology, while a comprehensive knowledge of all that they taught upon
such questions could only be obtained by a survey of the whole mass of
Haggadah contained in the Rabbinical literature. To accomplish anything
like that would need a very large volume. Weber devoted a whole book to
it; and he might well have written a second, to include all that he had
left out of the first. It will meet the purpose of the present work to
explain the way in which the Pharisees dealt with doctrinal theology,
and to illustrate this by reference to some main heads of belief,
choosing such as may serve to throw light on references in the New
Testament to Pharisaic doctrines. I shall then be in a position to use
the results obtained for an explanation, in the final chapter, of the
remarkable difference in character and tone between the Pharisaic
religious discourse and that of the New Testament teachers--a difference
felt by all who are able to compare the two literatures.
For the purpose of the present inquiry I must again remind the reader
that the religion of Torah, since the time of Ezra, was based upon the
belief that God had made to Israel a full and final revelation, had
given a body of teaching, for their guidance and enlightenment upon all
matters in which the divine and the human came into contact. The vehicle
of this revelation, the written record of it, was the Pentateuch, called
therefore the Torah, _par excellence_. But all the other Scriptures were
considered to be of divine authority, and only subsidiary to the
Pentateuch, because they helped to make clear its meaning. Further, what
was implicit in the divine revelation, written in the Pentateuch and
amplified in the other Scriptures, was rendered explicit in the oral
interpretation. And whereas the _litera scripta manebat_, unaltered in
form and quantity, the oral interpretation continually increased in
amount and in multiplicity of detail, as being an ever more full and
exact exposition of the contents of the original revelation. To use a
mathematical simile, the whole Torah might be compared to the sum of an
infinite series, written in definite symbols, and made to express a more
detailed concrete result by the progressive evaluation of its terms.
It is evident that for the religion of Torah the prime necessity was to
know the meaning of the Scriptures in general and of the Pentateuch in
particular. The oral Tradition started with the interpretation of
Scripture; and never in its furthest flights of allegorical extravagance
or daring imagination did it wholly forget or entirely disown its
connection with the written word. The connection is not always easy to
trace; but it is there, none the less. The Tradition of the Elders,
wherever it be examined, and whatever be the subject of its
pronouncements, is, from first to last, and from its highest to its
lowest, the declaration that, when God gave the Torah to Israel, "this"
and "this" and "this" is what he meant by it.
When Ezra and his successors made it their chief task to study and
interpret the written Torah, what they looked for before everything else
was direction for _doing_ the divine will. The reasons why they took
this line have already been explained, and need not be repeated (see
above, Chapter II.). The effect was that in the body of tradition
gradually formed, the element of precept was the most conspicuous and
the most systematically developed. It was essential that the Jew,
desiring to serve God, should know exactly what he was commanded to do,
and what he was forbidden to do, and what was the right course to take
in cases where no divine command or prohibition had been explicitly
given. The Halachah was the answer to these questions; being of the
nature of a comprehensive rule of right conduct, and intended to cover
every possible occasion on which a decision was called for. The results,
obtained by proper methods of interpretation, and recognised as valid by
competent authority, were clear and definite, and could only be
disputed by showing that in fact the real intention of Scripture was
otherwise. Hence it was possible to elaborate a consistent system of
Halachah, and eventually to codify it all.[15]
[15] The process of building up the system is seen in the Talmud.
The Code, or the chief Code, is the Shulḥan Aruch, compiled in the
sixteenth century by Joseph Caro.
But the interpreters of Scripture found more in its pages than precept;
the Torah taught other things besides directions for doing the divine
will. It contained instruction about God Himself, about Israel's
relation to Him, about the creation and divine providence as shown in
past history, about human virtues and vices, and the divine approval or
disapproval of them, and so on. It was the task of the interpreters to
set forth this teaching, as well as the positive or negative precepts.
It is probable that the early Sopherim described their work of
interpretation as a whole by the word Haggadah; or, rather, that they
used the cognate verb "higgid" to indicate that the Scripture
"declared" so and so. But when they began to develop the special line of
Halachah, the meaning of what had been the more general term was
restricted so as to denote all the remainder that was not Halachah. This
is, in practice, what Haggadah does mean, namely, interpretation of
Scripture in all other directions except that of precept.[16] As a
technical term, indeed, the actual word Haggadah may be no earlier than
the first, or even the second, century of our era; but that method or
process of interpretation which it was used to describe was in practice
long before.
[16] This is Bacher's explanation, as given in an article in the
_J. Q. R._, 1892, p. 406 fol. His argument seems to me
unanswerable.
Haggadah, then, covers the whole field of scriptural interpretation
except so far as it relates to precept; and this is why the contents of
the Haggadah are so much more diversified than those of the Halachah.
One might truly say that the Haggadah is the Pharisaic comment upon
life as a whole in the light of Scripture, the element of duty being
reserved for special treatment.
If the Scripture could give even a hint upon any aspect of human nature,
upon any phase of human experience, upon any attribute of God, upon any
mystery of His providence, then the unfolding of the true meaning of
that hint is Haggadah.
It will be clear, from what has been said, that all the subjects usually
included under the term doctrinal theology would find their place under
the head of Haggadah. Such are the doctrine of God, His existence and
attributes; the doctrine of sin and restoration; the doctrine of
revelation; the doctrine of "the last things," etc. And it is quite true
that whatever the Pharisees taught upon those subjects is found in the
Haggadah and not in the Halachah. But there will not be found a
consistent system of doctrine upon these or any other subjects; there
will not be found a detailed scheme of heads of belief. There will be
found the utterances of individual teachers, sometimes diverging widely
from the opinions of other teachers upon the same subject. There will be
found, not indeed a complete and unrestricted license to any man to say
and teach and believe what he liked, but a liberty to differ where each
had what seemed to him good warrant for his belief. _Uniformity of
religious belief was never required by the Pharisees_; and the most that
was done in that direction was to recognise that there were certain
limits beyond which a Jew could not go and still remain within the
Jewish communion. Thus, even if he claimed to prove from Scripture that
there were other gods than the One, he would cease to be acknowledged as
a Jew. Or, if he said that the Torah was not from Heaven, _i.e._ was not
a divine revelation, he would in like manner be regarded as no longer a
Jew. But (to put it generally), if he loyally accepted the axioms and
postulates of Judaism, then he was free to draw his own conclusions from
them in regard to what he believed. The Rabbis never drew up a
doctrinal creed; and when Maimonides did so, in the twelfth century of
our era, he did what was felt by many to be uncongenial to the spirit of
Judaism.
This absence of a system of doctrinal theology is a feature of
Pharisaism which is most important for the right understanding of it;
and Christian scholars have gone far astray through not being aware of
this essential fact. Weber proclaims his error in the very title of his
book, _A "System" of Ancient Palestinian Synagogue Theology_. There is
much to be learned from Weber's book, and much that is extremely
valuable to those who know how to use it; but, none the less, the whole
conception of Pharisaic theology expounded in that book is fundamentally
wrong, because Weber calls that a system which never was a system, and
never set out to be. Christian doctrinal theology is capable of being
presented as a system; and has, in fact, been so represented by almost
every denomination of Christians. Weber presumably had such a system on
Lutheran lines. He took for granted that there must have been a system
on Pharisaic lines; in other words, that the doctrines of Pharisaic
belief were developed from fundamental principles with such logic as was
admissible, and were consistent with each other. He therefore took the
general scheme of his own Christian theology, and set down under its
several heads what he could find of Rabbinical doctrine upon each point.
He must have been perplexed by the want of agreement amongst his
authorities, but he got over that by regarding the more prominent
doctrine as the rule, and the other as the exception; the former was a
part of the system, the latter was an aberration. Christian scholars are
pathetically grateful to Weber for having given them an orderly and
methodical arrangement of the medley of Pharisaic doctrine; certainly he
has done so; but with as much success and as much truth as if he had
described a tropical jungle, believing it to be a nursery-garden. Many
people have seen a nursery-garden. Few have seen a jungle. It is easy
and natural and highly convenient to identify the unfamiliar with the
familiar; but the jungle remains a jungle, when all is said and done.
The meaning of which is this, that the Rabbis adjusted their beliefs to
the Torah; they believed whatever they found there, or could deduce from
its plain statements and obscure hints, or could shelter under its
sanction. It never troubled them that what they found in the Torah was
not always mutually consistent. One teacher drew forth _this_ lesson,
and another drew forth _that_, and a third something different. But what
then? Only that the Torah contained these various lessons; and why
should not they all be learned? For had not God given them all? What he
said had many meanings, and was not exhausted by one interpretation.[17]
Even if contradictory conclusions were drawn, they were not on that
account any the less divine truth. It was said (j. Ber. 3^b), in regard
to the controversy between the school of Hillel and the school of
Shammai, "The words of each are the words of the living God." And that
applies to the whole field of the Haggadah. If the results of
interpretation were arrived at by legitimate methods, and declared by
competent teachers, then they were received as valid. Not indeed that
anyone was required to believe what was stated in them. That was not the
intention of the teacher. Haggadah was above all things meant for
edification; it presented religion under a great variety of aspects, and
by means of an extraordinary wealth of illustrations drawn from the
whole field of knowledge and experience. To learn this was good, by
reason of the variety; the religious thought of the learner was
enriched, his moral nature benefited, and his spirit continually
refreshed by the contemplation of the everchanging aspects of divine
truth. Uniformity would have made that impossible; to have required it
would have been fatal; and to suppose that it was required is to miss
the point of Haggadah, which is what Christian scholars usually do.
[17] A Midrash says: "One text issues in many meanings.... The
school of R. Ishmael teach (in reference to Jer. xxiii. 29), 'Like
a hammer that breaketh the rock'; as this is divided into many
sparks, so even one text issues in many meanings. For the way of
the Holy One, blessed be He, is not like the way of flesh and
blood. For flesh and blood cannot say two things at once. But He
who spake and the world was, uttered ten words in one act of
speaking, as it is said (Ps. lxii. 11), 'God hath spoken once.'
'And God spake all these words, saying, etc.'" (Exod. xx. 1).
Yalkut Shim'oni on Ps. lxii. 11, § 783.
If a Jew were told by some teacher a piece of Haggadah, he would be
impressed by the wisdom or the beauty of the thought contained in it, or
perhaps would admire the skill which drew it forth from some obscure
hint of Scripture; but he would never say to himself, "I must
straightway believe this; if I do not, I shall be in error, and in peril
of my soul." He would more likely say, "Blessed art thou, Abraham our
father, from whom has sprung such a teacher for Israel." And observe
that Haggadah is still Torah. It is an exposition and application of
what is implicit in the divine revelation, drawn forth and made
articulate. Yet, even so, there is no demand made for the acceptance, as
an article of belief, of each Haggadic exposition. The Jew, and notably
the Pharisee, knew what faith was, as well as the Christian did; but he
did not make it the regulator of his attitude towards that which was
taught him as the contents of revelation.
I have said that Haggadah is interpretation of Scripture in all
directions except that of precept. And that is true; but the term
"interpretation" must be taken in a very wide sense. A connection of
some kind there always is between Scripture and Haggadah; but it is
sometimes extremely slight. For the Haggadic interpreter performed his
task in two ways: either he developed what he believed to be the real
teaching of Scripture upon this or that point; or he sought to find in
Scripture a sanction for truths which he already believed. And not
merely for definite truths, but for anything which might tend to
edification,--ethical principles, mystical speculations, meditations on
providence and the wonders of creation, the imaginings of pious fantasy,
and even the play of daring wit. There was nothing that could not find a
place in the Haggadah, if it could be linked on to some text or word or
letter of Scripture. The methods employed were, from the point of view
of strict exegesis, often wildly extravagant. No freak of allegory, of
word-play, of fantastic juggling with letters and syllables, is without
illustration in the Haggadah. And the men who employed such methods knew
well that what they were setting forth was not the plain literal meaning
of Scripture. What they saw, with their inward vision, was the divine
truth, holiness, justice, beauty, goodness, love; they read it in their
own experience, and traced it in nature and history and man. They looked
to see it all mirrored in Scripture; for there was the divine
revelation, and there all that they believed to be divine must be. Some
of it could be plainly seen; for, in essentials, the Haggadic teaching
upon ethics and piety kept to the main lines of the Scriptures. What
could not be plainly seen was inferred to be there; and no hint was too
slight to indicate its presence. We say that this means reading into the
text what is not there. And doubtless that is the case. But the
Haggadist did not so understand what he did. If he was conscious of
ideas, thoughts, beliefs, which he felt to be variously good, then,
since Scripture was for him the only vehicle of divine revelation,
somewhere in Scripture must be indicated all that various good. And any
method was justified by which it could be brought forth and made clear.
That I take to be the theory of the Haggadah, the explanation which a
Haggadist would give of the reason for his peculiar treatment of
Scripture. Haggadah, like Halachah, is a natural, perhaps even a
necessary, development of a religion of Torah. Both are integral parts
of Torah; and a thorough understanding of the nature and function of
each is necessary for the understanding of the whole. Halachah and
Haggadah, together with the personal spiritual life of the individual,
cover the whole field of the religious consciousness of the Pharisee.
For it is entirely wrong to say that the Pharisee was wholly taken up
with the Halachah, the discipline of direct precept. No Pharisee that
ever lived confined his thoughts and aspirations, his beliefs and hopes,
within the range of Halachah, nor could have done if he had tried. He
guided his conduct by the Halachah certainly, because he believed that
by following it he was doing the will of God exactly as it ought to be
done. But the Halachah did not teach him, and did not profess to teach
him, how he should think about God, nor did it seek to regulate his own
private communion with his Father in heaven. For this last he sought no
other teacher except the promptings of his own soul and the answer of
God to his prayers. And for the knowledge of God's nature and His works
in providence and human history, he gladly learned from any wise and
gifted teacher who could tell him anything, or in any way help him to
think wisely, to worship devoutly, to live worthily. I shall have more
to say about this in the concluding chapter. I only mention it here,
because it was necessary to show the place which the Haggadah occupied
in the religious thought of the Pharisee, and how it did for him what in
other religions is done by a scheme of doctrinal theology. For the
present I keep to the subject of the Haggadah itself, and proceed to
inquire what can be learned from it as to the main heads of Pharisaic
belief, especially in the period covered by the New Testament. It is
mainly for the sake of this inquiry that I have given the foregoing
explanation of the nature and intention of Haggadah.
The inquiry is by no means an easy one. For, while it is only necessary
to open a volume of the Talmud, or of one of the great Midrashim, to
find on almost every page some Haggadic utterance, often indeed a great
mass of Haggadah, it is wholly unwarranted to say "this" and "this" is
what the Pharisees believed. It may be; and, of course, if it were not
in some way acceptable to Pharisaic minds, according to their canons of
judgment, it would not be found in their books. But the Haggadah does
not carry its meaning on the surface, nor yield it to the hearer or
reader who has only a passing glance for it or a careless ear. And thus,
what really represents the truth believed, or the good discerned, the
element to which the mind assented, and which it gratefully received, is
not expressed in the verbal form of the Haggadah, nor in its
statements,--extravagant and even impossible as they sometimes are.
There was no idea of taking those statements as they stand, as if they
were to be accepted as true, and believed as divine revelations. When it
is said by a Haggadist that since the creation God has been occupied in
making marriages (Ber. R., p. 133^c § 68. 4), that does not represent as
it stands what any Pharisee, or the Haggadist himself, really believed
about God. As George Eliot truly says of that particular Haggadah, "The
levity of the saying lies in the mind of him who hears it"; and, as she
might have added, puts a frivolous meaning on it. The Haggadah is full
of such things; but the Haggadah is not on that account frivolous or
absurd. And when the unwary Christian produces specimens of Haggadah,
and says, "See what those Rabbis believed and taught," the foolishness
which he illustrates is not that of the Rabbis. To get at the real
meaning and serious purpose of Haggadic teaching is one of the
difficulties in the inquiry into what the Pharisees believed. In itself
it is not a great difficulty, but it needs to be recognised.
A further difficulty is presented by the question, how far can the
utterance of some individual teacher be taken to represent a generally
accepted belief, seeing that there was no requirement of uniformity of
belief? To that question a decisive answer is scarcely ever possible,
except within wide limits of probability. If a doctrine can be
formulated upon some topic of theology, it will represent a _de facto_
consensus of belief, rather than the conscious acceptance of the
teaching of any authority; and those who held the belief might still
prefer a different statement of it. Everywhere caution is necessary in
drawing forth from the Haggadah its real meaning, and in forming
conclusions as to the generality of its acceptance.
A still further difficulty, and one which is of especial importance for
the purpose of this book, is that of using, for comparison with the
teaching of the New Testament, Haggadah often of much later date. Of the
enormous mass of Haggadah contained in the Rabbinical literature, only a
small proportion is contemporary with the Gospels, and very little
indeed contemporary with Jesus. One of the most famous Haggadists was
R. Joshua b. Levi, in the middle of the third century of our era. If we
find that he teaches some doctrine, are we entitled to use his words as
evidence that such doctrine was believed by Pharisees in the time of
Jesus and the Apostles? If not, then, of course, the appeal to the
Talmud and Midrash, in illustration of Pharisaism in the New Testament
period, is futile. Here, again, caution is necessary; but, with caution,
the answer is that the later literature may rightly be used as evidence
of earlier beliefs and ideas. We have already met the same question in
reference to the Halachah (see above, Chapter II.). And the answer there
was that the _principle_ of Halachah was accepted, and the development
of that principle was begun long before the time of Christ. What changed
continuously through the centuries was the body and form of ascertained
Halachah, determined by the gradual expansion into greater detail of its
precepts, and their application to a greater variety of cases. The
Halachah, as codified in the Mishnah, is much more extensive than the
Halachah as it was known to the Pharisees in the time of Jesus. But the
intention of it is the same for the earlier period as for the later.
Wherefore it is legitimate to use the Talmud to illustrate the principle
of Halachah as accepted in the New Testament period, as also for the
periods before and after; but it would not be safe to infer that some
particular definition, propounded by Akiba or Judah the Holy, was
already regarded as Halachah, and taken for a rule of conduct by the
contemporaries of Hillel and Shammai. Now, with regard to the Haggadah,
the case is somewhat different, because, as has been already explained,
no uniformity of belief was required, while uniformity of practice was
required. But, allowing for that difference, what was said about the use
of the later literature in regard to the Halachah applies also to its
use in regard to the Haggadah. For here, also, there is an element which
does not change, or not to any great extent, over a period which
includes that of the New Testament and a considerable time before and
after. That element is the general Pharisaic belief about God, Israel,
and the world, about man's relation to God and to his fellow-men, about
virtues, vices, the nature of sin, the function of prayer, and so on.
What the Haggadah did was to teach this, illustrate it in all manner of
ways, and present it in every possible aspect, but not in any great
degree to modify it. Indeed, I think hardly to modify it at all. There
is, in Pharisaism, no such progressive development of doctrine as there
is in Christianity. Of course there could not be, in the nature of
things, a Pharisaic Christology. But there was no progressive doctrine
of a Messiah, nor of the Torah, nor of the resurrection of the dead,
nor, I think, of any of the main subjects of belief. There were general
ideas commonly held upon these subjects, beliefs upon which there was
substantial agreement, and no thought of challenge. And the Haggadah was
the means by which this general body of belief was continually
illustrated and illumined, so that it might have ever renewed power to
refresh the soul. Just as the Halachah was the detailed application of
Torah to conduct, on its practical side, as the doing of the divine
will, so the Haggadah was the detailed application of Torah to the
spiritual life generally, so that the light which God had given might be
shed over the "things which are eternal."
I proceed to sketch out what I take to be the general beliefs of the
Pharisees which form the background, or the substratum, of the Haggadah,
so far as I have been able to make it out. Afterwards I will give some
Haggadic illustrations upon particular points. I purposely do not
attempt a systematic arrangement, because the Pharisees themselves did
not.
The object of worship is God--one, and undivided. He is the Creator of
the world and of everything in it; and no other being shared with Him in
that work. He does what He will; but His will is always just. His
providence supplies the wants of His creatures. He is good, kind, and
merciful.
It is the duty of man to obey Him. He has made known His will; He
rewards those who fulfil His command, and punishes those who disobey. He
has made all the human race; but Israel stands in a special relation to
Him, because only Israel is bound to Him by a covenant. The Torah was
offered to the other nations, but they would not have it. They are
therefore outside the range of God's favour. They can only come within
it by learning from Israel the Torah. There are, nevertheless, good men
amongst the other nations.
It is the privilege of Israel to have been found worthy to receive the
Torah, and his highest aim is to fulfil it, not only by doing what it
sets before him as the divine will, but by taking to heart all that it
teaches him concerning sacred things.
The Pharisee believed himself to be under the immediate care of God.
Nothing happens to him except by the divine permission. God sees, and
knows all that he does and all that he is going to do. Nevertheless, his
will is free. He is not compelled either to obey or to disobey. If he
obeys, God is pleased with him. If he disobeys, God is angry with him.
Reward will follow in the former case, punishment in the latter. If he
has sinned, repentance will make his peace with God. Forgiveness is
never refused to the penitent. He can always pray to God, and God will
always hear him.
It is his duty to be kind towards his fellow-men, "especially towards
them which are of the household of the faith"--namely, Israel. He must
not wrong anyone, whether Jew or Gentile. He must especially do acts of
charity towards the poor and the suffering. He must not live an idle
life; and in all that he does he must serve God.
Although at present he has much to endure, yet there will be in the
future a better time, when the Messiah shall come and set up the
kingdom of God upon earth. Then Israel will be freed from the oppression
of the Gentiles, and will enjoy peace and prosperity and the fulness of
the blessing of God. When that shall be, no one knows. God will send the
Messiah when it pleases Him to do so. But the sins of Israel hinder his
coming.
When life on earth is over, there is a life beyond the grave. For the
righteous there is Heaven, where they will be rewarded; and for the
wicked there is Hell, where they will be punished. The righteous in
Heaven will live for ever. The wicked in Hell will be destroyed and made
an end of. There will be no chance to repent after death.
Man is under the protection of angels, and liable to temptation and harm
from evil spirits. There are many such, and there is a prince over them.
The angels are God's messengers. Each man has in himself two opposing
impulses or tendencies; one towards good and the other towards evil. It
is his duty to control the evil impulse and strengthen the good one.
God will help him to obey the good, and will not prevent him from
yielding to the bad. To keep his mind fixed on the Torah, and filled
with its teaching, is his protection against sin and his incitement to
right living. He is glad that the Torah gives him so many precepts to
fulfil, because it thereby constantly reminds him of God, and provides
opportunities for serving Him. The Torah is the centre and circumference
of all his thoughts and beliefs about religion. In it God has revealed
everything that He has revealed at all. It is the greatest gift He could
make, and He has bestowed it all on Israel, and kept nothing back.
Such, in bare outline, and purposely stripped of all details, I believe
to have been the contents of the religious consciousness of the
Pharisees in general, the beliefs and ideas common to them all. In
different periods, according to circumstances, there would be variety in
the emphasis laid upon particular points.
For instance there might be, as there certainly was, more than one
period when the group of beliefs centring on the Messiah rose into
exceptional prominence, and were held with more than usual fervour. And,
again, the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70, and the final overthrow
of the Jewish national polity in A.D. 135, had a profound influence upon
Pharisaic belief, by laying additional stress on faithfulness to the
divine will, and by causing deeper reflection upon the mystery of that
will as shown in the suffering of Israel. The Pharisees deplored, with
sincerest grief, the loss of the Temple and the cessation of its
services. But they were well able to learn the lesson of a worship and a
religious life, for which such external means were needless. And they
did learn it with wonderful rapidity.
So, too, for individuals according to temperament, some elements of the
general belief would have more importance than others; and there would
be, further, a great variation in the strength of conviction with which
the beliefs were held, as also in the character of those who held them.
It is clear that such a general conception of religion could open a way
for the faults of pride and hypocrisy, charged against the Pharisees, as
it also could open the way for the virtues of humble piety and sincere
devotion. It probably did the one. It certainly did the other. There
were good, bad, and indifferent Pharisees, as there are good, bad, and
indifferent Christians. And all that I am concerned with at present is
the general Pharisaic consensus of belief, thought, and feeling upon
divine things.
If I have described it correctly, then it represents the underlying
meaning of the Haggadah; and whatever is contained in the Haggadah is
intended to illustrate, or enforce, or make prominent, some aspect of
those beliefs. It matters nothing that there is endless variety, and
frequent contradiction, in what the Haggadists say, _i.e._ in the form
in which they clothe their thoughts; nor that they make statements
which are extravagant, or impossible, or absurd, or grotesque, or even
occasionally, in appearance at least, irreverent. What really was in
their mind was the underlying religious truth or ethical principle which
they sought to illumine. That was their serious intention; and it is not
a denial of this if it be admitted that, like all interpreters who use
the method of allegory, they occasionally let their fancy run riot, and
indulged in freaks of exposition whose connection with religion is not
obvious.[18] Trivialities of that kind, however, may be left out of
account.
[18] As, _e.g._ when they give the name of Lot's wife, which was
Idith (Tanḥ. i. 45^b), or are able to say that the fare which Jonah
paid to go in the ship was 4000 gold pieces (b. Nedar. 38ª), or
that Noah took with him into the ark suitable food for the
different creatures:--hay for the camel, barley for the ass,
grape-vines for the elephant, and _glass_ for the ostrich (Tanḥ.
15ª).
It will be of more use to take some of the points of the foregoing
sketch of Pharisaic belief, and examine them in greater detail. And the
first shall be the doctrine of God, and more particularly certain
aspects of the doctrine of God.
Between the Pharisees and the New Testament teachers there was no
dispute as to the sole sovereignty of God, or that He was the Creator
and upholder of all things. But it is well to lay stress upon the
Pharisaic belief in the nearness of God and the directness of access to
Him; also to make clear the fact that emphatic resistance was offered by
the Pharisees to any idea of a plurality of divine persons. They would
own no being who could be regarded either as in some sense a second God,
or as a mediator between God and man.
That the Pharisees commonly thought of God as a cold abstraction, a
distant and inaccessible Power, is by Christian scholars frequently but
quite erroneously asserted. Of course, it was never denied that God was
the Almighty, the Lord of all worlds, supreme over everything. Indeed,
that was affirmed over and over again, and is one of the axioms of
Pharisaic belief. But, whatever other Jews may have done, under the
influence of Hellenism, the Pharisees never doubted for a moment that
God Himself, the one supreme God, was actually near to every one of His
people; "near, in every kind of nearness," as it was said (j. Ber. 13ª).
That is the really effective belief of the Pharisees, as can be seen on
well-nigh every page of the Talmud and the Midrash. How it was to be
reconciled, if it needed to be reconciled, with the belief in the
abstract infinity of God, was a question which the Pharisees never
troubled to answer, even if they were aware of it. There was no Jewish
philosophy of religion till long after the closing of the Talmud. And
the Pharisees most certainly did not logically develop their conception
of God from their idea of the Torah. Whether, even if they had done so,
they would have arrived at the barren abstraction, which Weber declares
to have been the Pharisaic idea of God (Weber, _System_, etc., p. 149),
is open to question. But they never allowed any theoretical reasoning
which would prevent them from owning the love and goodness of God, or
which would place an impassable gulf between Him and His creatures. The
following piece of Haggadah illustrates this point: "It is said (Exod.
xx. 1), 'And God spake all these words.' He doeth the whole at once
(_i.e._ in one action). He kills and He makes alive, in one action. He
wounds and He heals, in one action. The woman in travail, those that go
down to the sea, travellers in deserts, captives in prison, east and
west, north and south, He hears them all, in one act (of hearing)"
(Shem. R. p. 50^b). And a few lines further on it is stated that He
spoke all the ten commandments in one act (of speaking). There is here
no attempt to explain _how_ God, being Almighty, can take particular
notice of persons; there is the unquestioning belief _that_ He does so.
He may be high in Heaven, but no suffering creature of His suffers
unseen or unheard. "A bird perishes not, without Heaven" (_i.e._ except
by the will of God); so said a great Pharisee, in words that have a
striking likeness to a saying of Jesus on the same subject (j. Sheb.
38^d, and cp. Matt. x. 29). A story is told (Debar. R. 102ª) of a
certain Jew who was on board a ship, where all the other passengers were
Gentiles. The ship touched at an island, "and the sailors said to the
Jew, 'Take money and go ashore, and buy something for us.' He said, 'I
am not at home here; how shall I know where to go?' They said, 'A Jew is
at home everywhere. For whithersoever thou goest, thy God goeth with
thee.'" (The reference is to Deut. iv. 7, "What great nation hath a God
who is so nigh to them.")
The nearness of God is especially emphasised in relation to prayer. He
hears all who pray to Him, and it is He himself who hears and to whom
prayer should alone be offered. "Every man," says the Talmud, "has a
'patronus' (a 'friend at court'). If there comes trouble upon him, he
does not go direct to his patron, but goes and stands at his door, and
calls to the servant or to a son of the house, and he tells the patron
'So and so is standing at the door of thy court.' Perhaps the patron has
him admitted. Perhaps he leaves him alone. But the Holy One, blessed be
He, is not so. If trouble comes on a man (God says), 'Let him pray, not
to Michael and not to Gabriel, but to me, and I will answer him at
once.' And this is that which is written (Joel ii. 32), 'Everyone that
calleth on the name of the Lord shall be delivered'" (j. Ber. 13ª). Here
we have not only the declaration of belief in direct access to God
Himself through prayer, but also the repudiation of any mediator.
Michael and Gabriel may be servants of God, but they do not come between
God and man to keep them apart or to serve as the necessary medium of
intercourse. They were never, in Pharisaic theology, allowed any place
which might seem to impair the divine Unity. The idea of a second God
was steadfastly resisted; and no personification of divine attributes,
or exaltation of archangels, was ever carried so far as to imply a
plurality of persons in the Deity. As against the doctrine of the
Logos, and the Christian exaltation of Christ, the Pharisees maintained
the strict unity of God. Neither the Memra of the Targums, nor the
Shechinah of the Talmud and the Midrash, however personified for
Haggadic purposes, was regarded as being in any sense a personality
co-existent with God Himself. The Holy Spirit was either God, or the
influence of God, but not a personality distinguishable from Him.
Metatron comes the nearest to the conception of a second God; but,
whatever the later Cabbalists may have made of Metatron, the Pharisees
of the Talmud expressly rejected the notion that he was a second God. It
is told (b. Ḥag. 15ª) that the famous Elisha b. Abujah, the nearest
approach to a Jewish heretic, went up into Heaven (Paradise), and there
saw "Metatron, to whom was given power to sit and write down the merits
of Israel." (Elisha) said: "It is taught that on high there is no
sitting, no strife, no parting, and no joining. Can there be, Heaven
forbid, two powers? (_i.e._ two Gods). They brought out Metatron, and
gave him sixty lashes of fire." The commentator on this passage explains
that Metatron was treated in that manner in order to show that he was
not superior to the other angels in kind, and that he was subservient to
God, not on any sort of equality with Him. Metatron, as I have elsewhere
maintained,[19] is the Rabbinical reply to the Gnostic and Christian
doctrines which seemed to threaten the divine Unity. It was perhaps with
reference to Christian doctrine that the Rabbis laid stress on the
belief that God has no Son. Commenting on Exod. xx. 2: "R. Abahu said:
'A parable of a king of flesh and blood; he reigns and has a father or a
brother. The Holy One, blessed be He, saith, "I am not so"; (but) (Isa.
xliv. 6) "I am the first," I have no father; "and I am the last," I have
no son; "and beside me there is no God," I have no brother'" (Shem. R.
51^b). Abahu lived in the third century of our era; and most of the
Haggadic expositions of the unity of God, on the lines indicated, are
later than the New Testament period. But, as they were only developed in
opposition to Christian teaching, it is not likely that in the time of
Jesus or the Apostles the Pharisees were divided or uncertain upon a
point which had scarcely as yet been challenged. Jesus himself never
challenged it, so far as the Synoptic Gospels are evidence; and, upon a
belief so fundamental in Pharisaic Judaism, it is not to be supposed
that he was more consistent than the Pharisees themselves. The challenge
came not from Jesus but from Paul, even though Paul may not have
intended, or been conscious of, any infraction of the unity of God in
his teaching about Christ. The Pharisees took the alarm from him; and,
in opposition to his Christology, and the later Johannine doctrine,
taught with especial emphasis the undivided sole supremacy of God. And
they had no more difficulty than Jesus had in believing that the one God
was both sovereign Lord and heavenly Father, as in fact they called
Him.
[19] See my _Christianity in Talmud and Midrash_, pp. 286-8.
So much for the Pharisaic conception of God. We will now consider
another set of beliefs of theirs upon which a comparison with New
Testament teaching is possible and instructive--the Pharisaic ideas
about Retribution, reward and punishment, merit. There is no consistent
Pharisaic doctrine upon the subject, but rather a comment upon the facts
of human experience from different points of view. That man's will is
free is one of the axioms of Pharisaism. It was stated by R. Akiba,
"Everything is foreseen, and freedom is given, and the world is judged,
and all is according to the amount of work" (M. Aboth. iii. 15). Man is
therefore a moral agent, cognisant of the distinction between right and
wrong, capable of acting upon that distinction, and liable to be judged
accordingly. "All is in the hand of Heaven except the fear of Heaven,"
said another teacher (b. Ber. 33^b). If, then, man serves God, he does
so not on compulsion. He is therefore subject to the approval or
disapproval of God for what he does. Experience, interpreting life,
discerns evident tokens of such approval and disapproval; and Scripture
clearly teaches that God distinguishes between the righteous and the
sinner in His treatment of them. Whatever form His approval or
disapproval may take, they are His certain judgment on human actions, to
be looked for as the consequence of doing those actions.
The Pharisees, like other moralists, expressed this by saying that God
rewarded the good and punished the bad. And they used that principle as
a clue to the meaning of providence, as shown in human suffering and
happiness. They pondered on the problem why suffering should be
inflicted on the apparently innocent? and why the obviously sinful
seemed often to prosper? And they suggested various partial solutions of
the problem, but wisely left it an open question. It might be that there
was no suffering without previous sin, or it might be that suffering
was sometimes the chastisement imposed on the righteous through the love
of God, as it is said: "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth." It might be
that material prosperity and adversity were the signs by which the
divine approval and disapproval were shown, the reward or the punishment
for human actions; or it might be that these were manifested only
inwardly, in the soul and not in the outward lot. All these different
views find varied expression in the utterance of Pharisaic teachers, and
there is no attempt to set up one as true to the exclusion of the rest.
And when the Pharisee spoke of reward and punishment, he meant to
indicate his belief that in some way it went well with the man who did
good, and ill with the man who did wrong, and both by the divine
appointment.
In the Gospels, Jesus also speaks of reward, as every reader knows; and
many readers have winced when they read:--"Pray to thy Father, ... and
thy Father shall _reward_ thee." "Great is your _reward_ in Heaven."
"If you do good to them that do good, what _reward_ have ye?" Phrases
like these have an unpleasant sound, wherever they occur, because of the
notions commonly attached to the term reward. No one supposes that
Jesus, in using that term, was appealing to low motives of
self-interest; and I believe that he meant exactly what I have given as
the Pharisaic meaning, namely, that there was a divinely appointed
difference between the condition of the good and that of the bad, as a
consequence of their actions. It is at least not justifiable to say that
Jesus must have meant what he said, according to its best
interpretation, and that the Pharisees must have meant what they said,
according to its worst interpretation. Jesus was one, and the Pharisees
were many; and while he remained ever on the highest plane of spiritual
wisdom, the Pharisees represented different degrees of that wisdom. Some
might, and occasionally did, interpret divine reward and punishment in
terms of material welfare, while others saw more deeply into the
spiritual meaning of those terms. But it is not true that the material
interpretation represents the general belief of the Pharisees, while the
spiritual interpretation is the exception. The truth is that they would
not reject any interpretation which might throw some light upon the
problem; and they cared nothing that different interpretations
contradicted one another.
So far, there is no essential difference, that I can see, between the
Pharisaic teaching and that of the Gospels, or the New Testament
generally, about reward and punishment. The difference that does exist
is due to the fact that Pharisaism was the religion of Torah. For here
the divine approval or disapproval was necessarily associated in an
especial degree with the "Mitzvōth," the precepts which
expressed the will of God for the conduct of man. To say that there is a
reward for doing a "Mitzvah" is no more out of keeping with true piety
than to say there is a reward for praying to the Father which seeth in
secret. In each case it only means that the act of devotion to God,
whatever form it take, is acceptable to Him, and His blessing is given
to the doer of it. Now, the Mitzvōth were clearly-defined,
specific acts; and the Pharisee, as has been already pointed out in a
previous chapter, regarded them not as irksome constraints, but as
welcome opportunities for serving God. The more Mitzvōth
he could meet with the better. If, by doing them, he could thereby
please God, what more could he wish for? Certainly he looked for reward;
but the joy of service and the blessing of God was the reward he looked
for. That is the real mind of the Pharisee in regard to reward. And if
some Pharisees interpreted the blessing of God in a material sense, to
be shown in outward prosperity, while others interpreted it in a
spiritual sense, that is only a difference of temperament as between
particular Pharisees. What the reward should be, in what way God would
show His approval and give His blessing, was as God should please. The
Pharisee served Him with gladness and zeal; and only hoped (as
Christians also have been invited to hope) that God might say to him:
"Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy
Lord."
It was a Pharisee who said, "The reward of one Mitzvah is the
opportunity to fulfil another" (Aboth. iv. 5); and perhaps no words
could better indicate the Pharisaic view of reward in the service of
God. The service is everything; the reward is God's way of showing that
the service is acceptable. Moreover, the reward, if it were expected to
be anything more than the present consciousness of divine approval, was
not looked for in this world, but would be part of the bliss of the
world to come. "Thou wilt find," said a Rabbi, "no single Mitzvah in the
Torah, to which a reward is attached, which does not depend on the
raising of the dead. 'Honour thy father and mother, that thou mayest
prolong thy days,' and 'that it may be well with thee.'... 'That thou
mayest prolong thy days' in a world which is endless, and 'that it may
be well with thee' in a world which is wholly good" (b. Ḥull. 142ª). And
again it is taught, "What is that which is written (Deut. iv. 7) 'which
I command thee to do them this day?'" To do them _this day_, and not
_to-morrow_. To _do them_ this day, and not to _receive the reward_ this
day" (b. Kidd. 39^b); and on the same page is the express statement,
"Reward for a Mitzvah in this world there is none." Of the nature of the
reward this is said: "The world to come is neither eating nor drinking,
nor increasing and multiplying, nor giving and receiving, nor jealousy,
nor hatred, nor strife; but the righteous sit with crowns on their
heads, and enjoy the light of the Shechinah" (b. Ber. 17ª).
Such ideas were in the minds of the Pharisees when they spoke of the
reward for doing the will of God; ideas not hardened into a formal
doctrine, and perhaps by some only dimly apprehended, but yet indicating
a vision of divine things not very unlike what has floated before the
gaze of Christian souls. But while the Pharisees thus delighted to muse
on the reward, they were emphatic in teaching that the "Mitzvah" was not
to be done for the sake of the reward, as if to obtain thereby some
payment of what was due. The distinction is somewhat fine, especially as
the reward hoped for was spiritual bliss and not material advantage. But
the Pharisees drew the distinction, nevertheless. Thus it is said, in
reference to Ps. i. 2, "His delight is in the law of the Lord." R.
Eliezer says, "Who delighteth greatly in his commandments." "In his
commandments (Mitzvōth), but not in the reward of the Mitzvōth" (b. A.Z.
19ª). The sole reason allowable for doing a Mitzvah is the hope of
pleasing God thereby. And then follows the well-known saying of the
ancient Antigonos of Socho: "Be not like servants who serve their master
for a reward." These are only a few instances out of many to show that
the Pharisee was not actuated by motives of the kind which are usually
ascribed to him in his performance of the things commanded him. If to an
ideal so lofty and so austere, the Pharisee sometimes failed to rise,
and said what was not worthy of it, there is no cause for wonder, since
the same may be observed amongst Christians, and is merely due to
individual human nature. But the Pharisaic conception of religion in
general, and of this phrase of it in particular, is entitled to be
judged by the best to which it looked up, and not to be condemned for
its occasional failure to apprehend that best.
Finally, what about merit? The Pharisees were never afraid to talk about
merit; but what they said must be taken in the light of what has already
been stated. They had no fixed doctrine of merit; and there certainly
never was a general Pharisaic belief in a system of bargaining with God
as between debtor and creditor on business lines. This or that teacher
may have used the terms of such transactions by way of illustration; but
they do not represent the general mind of the Pharisees upon the
subject. The Pharisees certainly believed that to perform many Mitzvōth
was better than to perform one; and they not unnaturally concluded that
there could be no more reasonable criterion for a judgment of character
than the use which a man had made of the opportunities afforded by the
Mitzvōth for serving God. Mitzvōth, being specific commands, could be
counted up; and the degree of goodness shown in doing them, or of
badness in not doing them, could be thought of quantitatively, instead
of qualitatively. This is not, for obvious reasons, the best way of
treating the matter; and the Pharisees have, in consequence, come in for
a great deal of rebuke and contempt for having degraded the relation of
man to God, when all that they did was to use an unfortunate metaphor in
order to express a real distinction. It was perhaps mainly through the
use of this metaphor, this quantitative description of goodness, that
they laid themselves open to the charge of boastful self-righteousness;
and no doubt they were occasionally to blame in that respect. Because a
Pharisee was able to observe, in a quite dispassionate way, the fact
that he had performed so many "Mitzvōth." It would have been better for
him not to have learned that method of self-examination. But,
nevertheless, it is true, though only those who know the Pharisees can
be expected to believe it, that genuine humility could and often did go
along with that candid estimate of good performed.
This accumulation of goodness, through the performance of "Mitzvōth," is
what the Pharisees meant by merit, "Zachuth." And though they were not
in the least ashamed of it, nor saw why they should be, they were
careful to keep the idea of merit within limits. Like the reward hoped
for, the merit acquired was not a motive, but an accessory. They
believed, certainly, that merit counted for much with God. As has been
said, they believed that He judged men according to whether the goodness
of their deeds or the badness was the greater; in other words, by the
amount of merit which they possessed. But they did not presume to set
up a claim against Him; and while they pleaded merit before Him, they
were taught that it was not their own merit they should plead, but that
of others. "He who pleads the merit of others is answered for his own;
and he who pleads the merit of himself is answered for that of others"
(b. Ber. 10^b). Very often it was the merit of the Fathers, Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, to whose influence with God great effect was ascribed.
Yet what is all this but the idea of intercession, of the good on behalf
of the less good? And as between Pharisaic and Christian ideas on the
subject, the difference is more in the form than the substance. Even the
appeal to the merits of the Fathers was discouraged by many Pharisees,
on the ground that it tended to shift responsibility for a man's own
conduct on to someone else. They never for long forgot that, nor wavered
in their trust that God was a just and loving God, into whose hands they
need not fear to commit themselves. With simplicity of heart, rather
than with profound philosophical acumen, they mused on their experience
of life in the light of Scripture and in the thought of service of God;
and if they did not get much further than the conviction that it is well
with the righteous and not well with the sinner, that God knows all and
will deal justly with all, that some of His ways are plain to be seen,
and others past finding out, and that the whole duty of man is to fear
God and keep His commandments; and that the highest joy is to serve Him
with gladness, and in doing justly, and loving mercy to walk humbly with
Him,--who will say that they are very far wrong?
This was the practical purpose of the Pharisees, the aim of their
serious intention, and, in no inconsiderable degree, the measure of
their achievement.
I have dwelt upon these two aspects of Pharisaic theology as being of
most importance for my main purpose in this book. To include all that
could be said would defeat that purpose by wearying the reader. I have
therefore left unnoticed such topics as the belief in the Messiah and
the group of ideas connected with Eschatology; and I have done so in
order to concentrate attention upon what is of fundamental importance,
namely, the point of view from which the Pharisees looked upon religious
belief and the truths apprehended in it, the special character imposed
upon their general conception of things divine, by the form of Torah in
which all their religious thought was cast. What has been learned in
regard to the two theological topics dealt with in this chapter can be
applied to others; and, in any case, the general mind of the Pharisees
has, I hope, been made easier to understand.
If it has, then I trust to be able to carry the reader with me in what I
shall say in the concluding chapter of Pharisaism as a spiritual
religion.