BOOK LEARNING AMONG THE JEWS
If we could have visited the home of some sincerely religious Jew
about the time when the law of Deuteronomy was adopted by King Josiah
and the people we might have seen the beginning of a new kind of
education--the regular study of books, and especially of the Bible.
They had for their Bible at that time the law of Deuteronomy, which
they had accepted as God's will for all Jews. And if this was God's
will for them, it was plain that it must be taught to everybody,
beginning with the children.
TEACHING THE LAW AT HOME
Let us imagine ourselves, then, visiting the house of some good Jewish
friend in Jerusalem under Josiah. As we enter the door we notice
letters roughly carved or painted on the wooden door. "You ask what
are those words," replies our host to our question. "They are from our
law. They are for the children to see, as they go in and out the door.
This is the way the inscription reads:
="'Hear, O Israel: Jehovah thy God is one and thou shalt love
Jehovah thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.'=
"The priest wrote them for us and both I myself and the children have
been learning to read them," says our friend. "And every Sabbath we
study them, and I teach the children to repeat after me as much of the
rest of Jehovah's law as I can remember. Sometimes the children ask me
questions. They say, 'What mean these laws and these statutes which
you say Jehovah our God commanded?' Then I answer, 'We were Pharaoh's
slaves in the land of Egypt. And Jehovah brought us up out of Egypt
... to give us this land. And Jehovah commanded us to do all these
statutes, to fear Jehovah our God for our good.'"
=Religion through education.=--It is easy to understand that with this
training in childhood it became more and more easy from this time on
to persuade the Jewish people not to worship idols and to see why they
gradually changed more and more rapidly into the most devout and
earnest people in the world. The children were taught in their homes.
THE NEW KIND OF TEACHERS, THE SCRIBES
After Josiah's time many additions were made to this law of Jehovah.
At first it consisted of only a part of our book of Deuteronomy. But
the learned priests and prophets, especially after the destruction of
Jerusalem, made a careful study of all the writings of preceding
generations, and they found many collections of laws and histories of
Jehovah's dealings with his people which seemed to them inspired of
Jehovah and worthy to be reverenced and obeyed. They tried the
experiment of combining some of these with the law of Deuteronomy. So
it came to pass that two or three centuries later the Jews had as
their sacred book the whole of what is now the Pentateuch, or the
first five books of the Bible.
=The need of other teachers besides the father in the home.=--If this
larger Bible was to be carefully studied by every Jew from his
childhood up, there must be certain men who should give their lives to
teaching it. So in time there came to be a class of teachers known as
"scribes." These men spent all their working hours reading this law of
God, making copies of it and teaching it to others. Some of these men
were truly great and good. For example, there was the gentle Hillel,
who lived about a century before Christ and who taught the spirit of
the Golden Rule, although in a form not so perfect as that of Jesus.
="Do not to your neighbor what is unpleasant to yourself.
This is the whole law. All else is exposition."=
It was a scribe like this who talked with Jesus about the "greatest
commandment," and to whom Jesus said, "Thou art not far from the
Kingdom of God."
THE SCHOOLS OF THE SCRIBES
These teachers conducted regular daily schools in the synagogues. More
and more children were sent to them until in the time of Jesus all
boys were supposed to go for at least a year or two. Girls were taught
only at home. People had not yet come to realize that the minds of
girls are as well worth educating as those of boys.
=The methods of teaching.=--The boys sat on the floor in a circle
before the teacher. They repeated after him the Jewish alphabet and
learned to recognize each letter. Their only textbooks were papyrus
rolls on which were written parts of the law. They began with
Leviticus and learned by heart as much of it as possible. We can
imagine that the boys were glad when they finished with Leviticus and
went back to Genesis to the stories of Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph.
They also learned to write. Their copybooks were at first rough scraps
of broken pottery on which with sharp nails they learned to scratch
letters. Probably mischievous boys sometimes drew pictures instead of
practicing the words assigned to them. After they could write fairly
well they were given wax tablets, or even a bit of papyrus, a quill
pen, and an ink horn. Papyrus was expensive and had to be used with
care.
GOOD AND BAD RESULTS OF THE TEACHING OF THE SCRIBES
So much study of these books of law and history was bound to wield a
mighty influence. Those thousands of boys studying laws which for
their time were the most just and humane in the world, could not but
learn something about the meaning of justice and mercy. Better still,
the wonderful stories in Genesis and Exodus left their sure impress on
the hearts of those who studied. The boys for the most part reverenced
their teachers, and many of them came to love their Book, the law. It
was a boy, so taught, who when he was older, wrote that Psalm:
="Thy word is a lamp unto my feet
And light unto my path.=
* * * * * * * * *
=Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?
By taking heed thereto, according to thy word."=
=The danger of formality.=--The danger in this kind of education is
that of blindness to the voice of God to be heard in everyday
experience or in our own hearts as well as in the written Scripture.
The result of this blindness is that goodness and religion are thought
of as merely the keeping of the written law. It was such blind scribes
whom Jesus denounced for giving tithes, or a tenth part of the mint
and anise and cummin, that is, of even the most insignificant of their
garden herbs and forgetting mercy and justice and faith; in other
words, keeping the letter of the written law but not living out the
spirit of it. It is not enough, Jesus taught, just to obey what is
written. To do only that is to be an unprofitable servant. This bad
kind of religion grew up in those schools where only books were
studied, not the real everyday experience of living people.
JESUS WAS A WISE MAN RATHER THAN A SCRIBE
When Jesus came he was a teacher more like those more ancient wise men
of the city gates. Like them he taught his listeners out of doors by
the shores of the lake or on the hillside as well as in the
synagogues. He reverenced the Bible, the Law and the Prophets, as
God's word, but he listened for that word also in the sights and
sounds of the streets and country lanes. He heard his Father's voice
as he listened to house wives chatting with their neighbors, or to
vineyard keepers hiring harvest hands.
"When He walked the fields he drew
From the flowers and birds and dew
Parables of God.
For within his heart of love
All the soul of man did move--
God had his abode."
STUDY TOPICS
1. Look up in the Bible dictionary under "Scribes" and "Rabbi."
2. What impressions of the scribes do you get from Matthew 7. 28-29,
Matthew 15. 1-9, and Mark 12. 28-34?
3. Read Luke 1. 5-6; 2. 25-36. Where and how do you think these good
men and women, among whom Jesus was born, got their training?