AS a rule, Jewish readers approach the works of Christian writers upon
Jewish subjects with distrust. They are accustomed to find in them
either the misrepresentations of Anti-Semitic hatred or the
misrepresentations of conversionist love. The present book, based upon
lectures delivered at Oxford upon the Hibbert foundation, is a
representative of the rare group of studies belonging to neither
class. It embodies an earnest and surprisingly successful attempt to
depict justly the religious life of the Jews in the time of the
Talmud. The writer is well prepared for his task by thirty years'
devoted study of Rabbinical literature; he is known as the author of a
careful and scholarly work on "Christianity in Talmud and Midrash."
The book includes a preliminary historical sketch, a study of what the
Rabbis meant by Torah, indicating the true nature of Pharisaic
legalism, chapters on the attitude of Jesus and of Paul toward the
Pharisees, and two final chapters on the Pharisaic theology. The book
is valuable as a Christian reply to Weber, the German author of a
learned, widely-used, and thoroughly unfair presentation of Jewish
theology. Mr. Herford frankly confesses that he is an apologist of the
Pharisees, but his book is in no sense an iconoclastic attack upon the
ideas received among Christians as to the character of the Pharisees.
He freely admits, as any fair-minded Jew would, the dangers of the
Pharisaic system, but he is likewise careful to point out that these
dangers were by no means destructive of true spiritual life. It is
most refreshing to find a book of this sort included in the Crown
Theological Library, along with the erudite but anti-Jewish works of
Bousset and Harnack.
_The Truth About the Pharisees_
MR. HERFORD aims to set forth the truth about the Pharisees rather
than to present new ideas or conclusions. Nevertheless, his book
contains here and there new suggestions. His theory that the men of
the Great Synagogue were identical with the Soferim, though it has a
certain plausibility, is hardly supported by any great weight of
historical evidence. It is interesting to learn that the Synagogue
represents the oldest form of congregational worship, and is the
oldest human institution that has survived without interruption. The
parallel between the Hassidim and the Saints of Cromwell's time (p.
38) is curious. Mr. Herford has the somewhat strange notion (pp. 44-5)
that there is a sign of "mutual distrust" in the weeping of the High
Priest and the representatives of the Beth Din after the former had
taken the oath to observe the regulations concerning the Day of
Atonement. To the ordinary reader of the Mishnah the tears seem a
perfectly natural expression of the emotional strain under which all
the people labored on the great day.
It is hard to part from Mr. Herford's admirable book without quoting a
very fine tribute which he pays to the Jewish people. In speaking of
the influence of Ezra's ideals, he says (p. 55): "The Talmud is the
witness to show how some of his countrymen, some of the bravest, some
of the ablest, some of the most pious and saintly, and a host of
unnamed faithful, were true to those ideals and clung to those hopes;
and how, through good report and ill report, through shocks of
disaster and the ruin of their state, ground down by persecution, or
torn by faction, steadily facing enemies within, they held on to the
religion of the Torah."
[Illustration: Signature: D.S. Blonsheim]
_University of Illinois_