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.
In this concluding chapter I shall make an attempt to indicate what Pharisaism was on its spiritual side, as the expression of the Pharisee's personal feeling towards God; or, if I may put it in colloquial terms, what the Pharisee "felt like" as a religious and moral being. I shall try to show the meaning of the peculiar type of character formed under the influence of the religion of Torah, both as regards its excellencies and its deficiencies. I say its deficiencies, for my aim throughout this book has been not to extol the Pharisees as if they had no faults, but to present, as clearly and strongly as I could, what they meant by their religion and what it meant to them. To say that they held to it with sincere loyalty, and that they found in it entire satisfaction, is not to say that it had no limitations, so that there could not be a more excellent way. But it is to say that Pharisaism was a genuine religion, so far as it went, able to satisfy the real wants of living souls. And how far it went, and where it stopped short, is a question upon which the adherent of another form of faith may have a decided opinion, and yet may be entirely mistaken. The Christian may be able, and I hope that the reader will have been able, to recognise that Pharisaism was a genuine religion. But the peculiar form in which that religion was expressed makes it exceedingly difficult for the Christian to recognise in Pharisaism what is familiar to him in his own religion; and, in consequence, he is extremely likely to misjudge and depreciate what to the Pharisee was right and good. My task in this chapter is very far from easy; and I am by no means confident that in performing it I could satisfy a Pharisee that I have done full justice to his case.
The subject is somewhat intangible, being indeed the inner consciousness of the Pharisee in regard to religion. I shall deal with it under three heads: first, the devotional literature available; second, the influence of the conception of Torah as a factor in the formation of religious character; and, third, the result of that influence.
The devotional literature properly so called of the Pharisees, at all events within the period covered by the Talmud, is not extensive. I mean by devotional literature, writings in the form of hymns and prayers. Of hymns there are, in this period, so far as I know, none; of prayers there are a few; some of them included in the liturgy of the Synagogue, and others being individual private prayers. This very meagre list may, however, be extended; certainly in one direction, and I believe also in another. Some of the Psalms ought to be included as being lyrical expressions of the religion of Torah, whether the writers were technically Pharisees or not. And, in the other direction, the liturgy of the Synagogue is the precipitate of Jewish piety through many centuries, and shows better than anything else how much of deep spiritual fervour was engendered by the religion of Torah. I shall make use of the Psalms, or some of them. But of the Synagogue liturgy I shall use only such parts as fall within the period covered by the Talmud. Because my concern is with the Pharisees of the early centuries, not with those of the Middle Ages. And, though I believe it to be the case, I could not prove that a Pharisee of the first century of our era would feel that his thoughts about religion found due expression in the hymns of Jehudah ha-Levi and Ibn Gebirol. Personally, I believe he would; but the fact remains that the Pharisees in the Talmudic period composed no hymns, and that fact must be allowed for whatever it is worth. The reappearance of devotional poetry must correspond, one would think, to some change in the spiritual atmosphere. But, in regard to the use of the Psalms, there need be no such hesitation. Some of the Psalms are unmistakably due to the influence of the conception of Torah in determining the form of religion; and the whole Book of Psalms was used by the Pharisees in the Synagogue service, and for their own study. This latter fact does not prove very much, because the whole of the Old Testament was also used and studied; and no one would contend that the Old Testament is throughout an utterance of Pharisaism. Still, it should be remembered that the Canon of the Old Testament was fixed by Scribes and Pharisees; and that the book of Psalms was finally completed, and in part composed, for use in the Synagogue and the Temple, as the lyrical expression of the religion of Torah.
I shall therefore make such use of the Psalms as will help my purpose, and will supplement the study of them by an examination of the few Pharisaic prayers to be found in the Talmud and the early liturgy. Something was said about the Psalms in the second chapter, and I shall not repeat it. Here I would go into more detail upon particular points.
On looking through the Book of Psalms, it is seen at once that there are some which proclaim themselves unmistakably as Torah Psalms. Notably, Ps. cxix. and the second part of Ps. xix. It is quite inconceivable that these should have been written before Ezra had instituted the religion of Torah. Ps. i., also, the general introduction to the whole collection when finally completed, evidently moves within the circle of ideas associated with Torah. Occasional phrases in other Psalms may also reveal the same fact, even though the particular Psalm, as a whole, may not be specially devoted to the thought of Torah. Thus, in Ps. xxv. 10, the reference to "covenants" and testimonies, and in Ps. xviii. 22, "statutes and judgments." Indications like these, however, cannot be safely relied on; because, as stated in the second chapter, there was Torah before Ezra, and such phrases as those just quoted occur in Deuteronomy. The Psalms in which phrases are found, such as "Torah," "covenant," "testimony," "statute," "judgment," "precept," and the like, may be interpreted in various ways, and not necessarily in terms of the specific religion of Torah due to Ezra. But there is no need to draw any hard and fast line between those which are and those which are not Torah Psalms; for the religious frame of mind peculiar to the Torah Psalmist can be studied in detail in Ps. cxix. That is a Pharisee Psalm, beyond any question. I do not mean that the writer can be shown to have been a Pharisee in the technical sense, a member of a pledged company of separatists.[20] Very likely he was; but whether he were so or not, he looked upon the Torah exactly as the Pharisees did, as the supreme and perfect revelation of God.
Ps. cxix., as everyone knows, is made up of groups containing eight verses, each beginning with one of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. There are thus one hundred and seventy-six verses in all. From an artistic point of view, the structure of the Psalm is stiff and mechanical; the divine name is introduced twenty-two times, corresponding to the twenty-two groups of verses. The changes are rung upon a series of ten words—Torah, statute, righteousness, precept, judgment, way, ordinance, word, saying, and faithfulness—the number corresponding, perhaps, to the ten commandments given on Sinai. With one exception, v. 122, every verse contains one or other of the ten words in the list just given. The result is a certain monotony, and the Psalm is not amongst those most generally admired and loved by the ordinary reader. Whether there is any progression of thought is open to question; it would not, apparently, make very much difference if the verses were rearranged according to another pattern. But once we get past the barrier of artificial method there is thought and feeling in abundance. The one object of thought is the Torah; and the feeling is devout wonder in regard to it, and adoration of God who gave it. The ten words are only so many aspects of Torah, and serve mainly to give variety to the thought of the divine revelation.
The Psalmist meditates upon the Torah, thus variously indicated, from two points of view: first, that of its divine excellence and the goodness of God in revealing it; and, second, that of his own endeavour to fulfil the precepts contained in it. In reference to the first head, it is clear that the Psalmist was filled with delight, gratitude, and praise. The Torah and all connected with it inspired him with joy. There is not the faintest trace of any feeling of oppression, as if he were burdened by the precepts; and, for what is not precept but simply instruction, he received it with devout rapture, as being a precious gift which God had been pleased to bestow. That God had given that revelation was to the Psalmist the greatest of all his blessings. There is in the Psalm but little reference to the past history of Israel, as showing the divine providence. The Psalmist was deeply conscious of God in the immediate present, and of his own close relation to Him. Of course, the Torah, so far as it was a written record, included the history of all the divine dealings with Israel, down to the time of Moses; but it was not this aspect of religion which chiefly appealed to the Psalmist. The providential mercy of God served to give fuller and richer meaning to the thought of Him as the object of worship. The following phrases will serve to indicate the Psalmist's attitude towards God:—v. 7, "I will give thanks unto Thee with uprightness of heart." v. 12, "Blessed be Thou, O Lord; teach me Thy statutes." v. 18, "Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy Torah." v. 41, "Let Thy loving kindness come unto me, O Lord; Thy salvation, according to Thy promise." v. 49, "Remember Thy word unto Thy servant; for Thou hast caused me to hope." v. 57, "Thou art my portion, O Lord." v. 64, "The earth is full of Thy mercy, O Lord." v. 68, "Thou art good and doest good." v. 75, "I know, O Lord, that Thy judgments are righteousness, and that in faithfulness Thou hast afflicted me. Let Thy loving kindness be for my comfort, according to Thy promise unto Thy servant. Let Thy tender mercies come unto me, that I may live." v. 90, "Thou hast established the earth and it abideth. They stand this day, obedient to Thine ordinances; for all beings are Thy servants." v. 132, "Turn Thou unto me, and have mercy on me; as Thou usest to do unto those that love Thy name." And v. 176, "I am like a lost sheep; seek Thy servant." These are only a few of the characteristic phrases of the Psalmist. He evidently feels towards God reverence, trust, and hope; and, no less evidently, does not feel that God is far off and unapproachable, an abstraction rather than a living presence. God was, for the Psalmist, the creator of the world; but He was also the guide and protector of those that know Him and keep His commandments. And it was the privilege of such that they should have been allowed to know Him, and hold communion with Him. The Torah was the means by which that privilege was made available to Israel; and the "precepts," "ordinances," etc., were the particular occasions on and through which that privilege might be realised and enjoyed, and the devout worshipper might come into communion with God. The Psalmist never lost sight of the purpose of the precepts, in the mere doing of what they enjoined. For him the doctrine of the opus operatum would have been a frivolous and mischievous perversion of the truth; in modern phrase, a "soul-destroying heresy." There is nothing of the taskmaster in the Psalmist's conception of God; he does not indeed call Him the Father in Heaven, but that term would more truly express his thought than any phrase of bondage and compulsion. And we can see how naturally the term Father in Heaven would take its place in the language of devotion, when once it had occurred to someone so to use it.
The Psalmist's conception of God, though it is mostly defined in relation to Torah, does not contradict in any way that which is set forth or implied in the rest of the Psalms, or in the highest teaching of the prophets. Compare Ps. ciii., by common consent one of the noblest utterances of pure spiritual theism that the Old Testament contains:—"But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him, and His righteousness unto children's children; unto such as keep His covenant, and to those that remember His precepts to do them." In Ps. ciii., the changeless mercy and love of God are especially dwelt on—His forbearance towards human frailty; while in Ps. cxix. the main thought is of God as having given Torah, divine teaching. But neither Psalmist excludes what the other chiefly dwells upon. The Psalmist in Ps. cxix. cannot be said to have narrowed the conception of God. He was in accord with all that the prophets and the other Psalmists had believed of the greatness and goodness of God. What this Psalmist did was to utter his praise of God, so conceived, from the point of view of the means of grace which He had given, the conditions which He had appointed for personal knowledge and service of Himself. Unless this be understood, Ps. cxix. is wholly misjudged; and the fact that it appeals less than almost any other Psalm to the reader, at all events the Christian reader, is due to unfamiliarity with the Psalmist's point of view. Once that is found, the whole Psalm shines from end to end with pure devotion and fervent, genuine piety.
Second, as to the Psalmist's feeling in regard to his own efforts to fulfil the precepts, and to live in accordance with the Torah. As these were to him the means of realising his personal relation to God, and of entering into communion with Him, he was not in despair when he failed in obedience. He prayed for forgiveness, believing that, if he repented, God would forgive him. When he broke a precept, he sinned and knew that he sinned; but he was not conscious of having thereby set up an insurmountable barrier between himself and God. A barrier certainly; but one which penitence on his part and forgiveness on that of God both could and did remove. All the ideas about bondage under the Law, to which Christians have been accustomed, rest upon a conception of the meaning and purpose of the Torah which Jews have never held, at least those who remained Jews. The writer of Ps. cxix. never held it.
This Psalm is marked by careful, sometimes almost painful, introspection. The Psalmist is continually dwelling upon the precepts as they affect himself, his love for them, his desire to keep them, his delight in them, his longing to learn them, and to be more perfectly in accord with them, his fear lest he should wander from the way of them. Indeed, the whole Psalm is made up of such meditation, in forms varied but continually repeated. Which goes to show that a Psalm written under the immediate influence of the idea of Torah could scarcely fail to be introspective. And this Psalm is an illustration, on a fairly large scale, of the fact that the change effected by the work of Ezra, in turning the religion of Israel into the channel of Torah, tended to make that religion far more personal and individual than it had been before.
The value of Ps. cxix., as evidence for the spiritual meaning of Pharisaism, is this, that it shows what was possible under the religion of Torah, by way of piety and devotion. The Pharisees held precisely such ideas about the Torah as are expressed in this Psalm; and I know of no ground for saying that they were without the piety and devotion with which the Psalmist quickened those ideas.
As has already been said, the Talmudic literature does not contain any hymns by Pharisees; at least, I have never met with any. Perhaps the Pharisees felt that the Psalms gave them all that they needed; perhaps they lacked the gift of sacred poetry. But though there are no hymns in the Talmud and the Midrash, there are prayers, both public and private; and these will throw some light upon the spiritual side of Pharisaism. The earliest prayers of all are those which form the opening and the close of the so-called Eighteen Benedictions, the "Shemoneh Esreh." These are ascribed, in the Rabbinical tradition, to the Men of the Great Synagogue; and though so great an age cannot be proved for them, it is certain that they are very old. They are the earliest existing portions of the liturgy used in the Synagogue; and though they are somewhat bare in their unadorned simplicity, they serve to show something of the religious spirit of the men who were making "a hedge about the Torah," and they indicate that there was something else in that operation besides waning faith and waxing formalism. I quote one or two of them:—"Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God and the God of our fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. God most high, creator of Heaven and earth, our shield and the shield of our fathers."... "We give thanks to Thee, O Lord, our God, for all the benefits, the favours, which Thou hast shown to us. Blessed art Thou, to whom it is good to give thanks. Bestow Thy peace upon Israel, Thy people, and bless us all as one. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who makest peace." These prayers, as they are found in the liturgy now, are very much longer; I have given what are believed to be the oldest parts of the three which I have quoted out of the eighteen. If there is not much warmth in these prayers, as there certainly is not, neither is there any of the vainglory and self-righteousness which are supposed to be characteristic of the Pharisees. And it should be borne in mind that there can be no great difference in date between these prayers and Ps. cxix.
However, I will come down to a time when the Pharisees, if they ever became such as the New Testament represents them, must have long acquired that character. Here is a prayer which dates from the second century of our era, and is part of the liturgy still in daily use:—"Lord of the worlds! not trusting in our righteousness, do we cast our entreaties down before Thee, but trusting in Thine abundant mercies. Who are we? What is our life? What is our virtue? What is our righteousness? What is our deliverance? What is our strength? What is our might? What shall we say before Thee, O Lord God and the God of our fathers? Are not all the mighty as nothing before Thee? and the men of name as though they had never been? And the wise are without knowledge, and the understanding as those who are without discernment. For the multitude of their deeds is nothing, and the days of their life are a breath before Thee" (b. Joma. 87b, mentioned by R. Joḥanan). Christians usually get their notion of what a Pharisee's prayer was like from Luke xviii. 11, 12; and I do not deny that Pharisees may sometimes have prayed after that manner. Nevertheless, what I have just recited is more true to the real spirit of Pharisaism than the prayer in the Parable. And even to that there is another side. A well-known prayer, still used in the liturgy, runs thus:—"Blessed art Thou, O Lord, our God, King of the world, that Thou hast not made me a Gentile ... a slave ... a woman." Much scorn has been poured out upon those who have offered that prayer, as if it were nothing but the utterance of arrogant vainglory. But, however it may sound to Gentiles, what the Jews meant, and mean, by it is this, that God is thanked for having given in the Torah the opportunity of serving Him, in the "Mitzvōth," which were not enjoined upon Gentiles, slaves, or women. It is not self-righteousness which is expressed in that prayer, but the acknowledgment of special obligation, a higher calling, in no way inconsistent with humility and reverence. The prayer in the Parable was doubtless intended by its author to represent Pharisaic piety in an unfavourable light; but the example I have just given is enough to show that a Pharisee would put a different interpretation upon it.
Here is another prayer from the second century (b. Ber. 16b), and still in use:—"May it be pleasing in Thy sight, O Lord my God and the God of my fathers, that Thou wilt deliver me this day and every day from the shameless and from shamelessness, from the evil man, from the evil companion, from the evil neighbour, from evil chance, and from Satan the destroyer; from stern judgment and from the implacable adversary, whether he be a son of the covenant or no." This is merely a fragment of prayer, as indeed the others are which I have quoted. It is only a variation on the theme "Deliver us from evil," the evil being specified in concrete forms. And, since it has been incorporated in the liturgy, it was presumably intended for public use, and was not the private utterance of its author, who was R. Jehudah, the compiler of the Mishnah. This distinction is important, because it is often charged against the Pharisees that they reduced prayer, like so much else, to a mere mechanical routine; that they regulated, down to the minutest detail, the words and even the posture and the gestures of the worshipper; and that they left nothing to the spontaneous volition of the soul that would seek God. Certainly there are many such regulations in the Talmud, both as regards what should be said and how it should be said. But these all refer to the public worship of the congregation, and not to the private prayer of the individual. Moreover, they are indications of the process by which the liturgy was compiled, its contents determined, and the manner of its use appointed. The worshipper, using the liturgy, was concerned only with the finally completed order, and not with the stages of its preparation. When the Book of Common Prayer was compiled, there were discussions as to what should be included in it and what left out; whether this phrase or that was to be preferred; whether at such a point the congregation should stand or kneel; whether the minister should face the congregation or not; and so on.
Presumably, votes were taken, and resolutions passed upon hundreds of such points. Are these regulations a restriction upon worship? Does the worshipper know, or take any interest in knowing, the details of the process by which the liturgy was produced? He accepts the final result; and finds in it a help to his worship, unconscious of the fact that perhaps every line has been canvassed by a committee and settled after debate. Much the same might be said of the preparation of any liturgy; and what is found in the Talmud, which offends the piety of the Christian, is only the same kind of preparatory work as that necessary in the case of any liturgy. If the Pharisees were extremely careful, as they certainly were, in deciding what should go into their liturgy, and how it should be used, why are they more to be blamed than those who directed, "Here the minister shall say" so and so? The Pharisees produced a liturgy which, gradually enlarged, has lasted down to the present day; and though a case may be made out for its revision, still it has served, for many more centuries than the Book of Common Prayer can claim, as the expression of the united worship of Israel.
But, while public prayer was thus carefully regulated, there was never any restriction, imposed or thought of, upon private prayer. It is expressly said (M. Aboth. ii. 13), "When thou prayest, make not thy prayer a fixed form, but a prayer for mercy and an entreaty before God." I do not think that this refers to public prayer; but, even if it does, it would still show that the Pharisees were careful to keep the spiritual intention of prayer, while using the prescribed form. But I believe the reference is to private prayer; and it is certain that this was left to the spontaneous freedom of the worshipper himself. Prayer was always an essential element in the religious life of the Pharisee; not because it was required of him, but because it was the natural instinct of his soul. "Would that a man could pray all day," said R. Joḥanan (j. Ber. 2ª). Pharisees knew what it was to withdraw to their inner chamber, and "pray to their Father which seeth in secret." And it was not a Pharisee who added:—"Thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall recompense thee."
Of such entirely private prayers there is no written record. But several prayers are mentioned in the Talmud as having been composed for their own use by famous Rabbis. Here are some of them as they are found together (j. Ber. 7d):—"May it be Thy will, O Lord my God and the God of my fathers, that Thou wilt not put hatred of us into the heart of any man, nor hatred of any man in our hearts; and that Thou wilt not put jealousy against us into the heart of any man, nor jealousy of any man into our hearts. And may Thy Torah be our employment all the days of our life; and may our words be entreaty before Thee." To which was added by another Rabbi: "And unite our heart to fear Thy name; and keep us far from all that Thou hatest, and bring us near to all that Thou lovest, and do with us righteousness for Thy name's sake."
The disciples of R. Jannai used to say this (on rising from sleep):—"Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who quickenest the dead. Lord, I have sinned against Thee; may it be Thy will, O Lord my God, that Thou wouldst give me a good heart, a good portion, a good disposition, a good understanding, a good name, a good eye, a good hope, a good soul, a humble soul, and a contrite spirit. May Thy name not be profaned among us; and make us not a byword in the mouth of the people; may our latter end be not to be cut off, nor our hope the giving up of the ghost. Make us not to depend on human gifts, and give us not our sustenance by the hand of men; for their comfort is small and the shame they inflict is great. And grant our lot to be in Thy Torah, with those who do Thy will. Build Thy house, Thy temple. Thy city, and Thy sanctuary, speedily, in our days."
R. Ḥija b. Abba used to pray:—"May it be Thy will, O Lord our God and the God of our fathers, that Thou wouldst put it into our hearts to offer sincere repentance before Thee, that we may not be ashamed before our fathers in the world to come."
R. Tanḥum b. Iscolastiki used to pray:—"May it be Thy will, O Lord my God and the God of my fathers, that Thou wilt break and take away the yoke of the evil inclination from our hearts. For Thou didst create us to do Thy will, and we are bound to do Thy will. Thou desirest, and we desire it. And what hinders us? The leaven in the dough. It is revealed and known before Thee, that there is no strength in us to withstand it. But may it please Thee, O Lord my God and the God of my fathers, that Thou wilt cause it to pass away from us, and that Thou wilt subdue it; and we will make Thy will our will, with a perfect heart." R. Joḥanan used to pray:—"May it be pleasing unto Thee, O Lord my God and the God of my fathers, that Thou wilt cause love, goodwill, peace, and friendship to dwell in our habitations; that Thou wilt grant us a happy end and the fulfilling of our hope; that Thou wilt fill our borders with disciples, and that we may rejoice in our portion in Paradise. Make us to acquire a good heart and a good friend; and may we awake to find what our hearts have longed for, and may there come in Thy presence rest unto our soul."
I have translated these prayers as nearly literally as our language would allow, so that the reader may have them as far as possible in their original form. There is nothing very sublime about them, none of the eloquence of fervent rapture. But neither is there any of the vainglorious boasting supposed to be characteristic of the Pharisees. They are sincere, simple, and earnest, so far as they go, petitions for the granting of things necessary for the soul as well as for the body. They may fairly be taken as representative of Pharisaic piety, in the absence of what is not within our reach, namely, the devotional language of the Pharisee's prayer to God in the solitude of his own chamber.
The illustrations which have been given from the scanty remains of the literature of piety left by the Pharisees will have been sufficient to show a very considerable difference of tone, character, spirit, between what was produced under the religion of Torah and what is found in the New Testament. And the impression so created is confirmed by the other citations I have made, in the course of this book, from the Pharisaic literature. To one who is accustomed to the New Testament, there is a certain flatness about the Rabbinical literature, a want of the sublime, and still more of the beauty of holiness, the fervour of faith, the personal consecration which marks the New Testament. There is nothing in all the Rabbinical literature at all like the rapt utterance in 1 Cor. xiii. That belongs unmistakably to the new dispensation, and not to the old. The same may be said of much else in the New Testament. If I may so express it, there is a different "feel" about it, quite unlike what there is about any Rabbinical writing. As to the fact of this, I imagine there can be no dispute; but it is well worth the trouble to try and get at the meaning of it. For it cannot be dismissed at once as being due to the spiritual deadness of the Pharisees, the result of engrained hypocrisy and self-righteousness. I trust that enough has been said in previous chapters to show that the Pharisees were sincere and in earnest about their religion, however strange to Christians be the forms in which they expressed their ideas. The very strangeness of those forms may well prevent Christians from recognising the meaning and worth of the ideas expressed in them, since Christians could not use those forms for their own religious ideas.
The question is not whether the Christian or the Pharisaic conception is the better; because, both for Christian and for Pharisee alike, that is a foregone conclusion. The question is rather, why did the conception of Torah, which from the time of Ezra was the controlling factor in the development of Pharisaism, produce that particular type of piety and religious character generally, of which so many illustrations have been given? In what way did the influence of that conception make itself felt upon those who devotedly accepted it and shaped their lives in accordance with it? Here I get to the second main head of the present chapter.
The Torah, which, it will be remembered, includes both the written word and the unwritten interpretation embodied in the Tradition, was regarded as containing the full and final revelation which God had made. It was a body of divine truth, partly explicit, partly implicit, according as its contents had or had not been drawn forth and clothed in words. But it was truth, to be apprehended and learned, to be received in the mind by the understanding before it could be made the guide of conduct or could minister in any way to spiritual wants. The reader will remember that all the terms used in connection with the appropriation of the contents of Torah are variations on the theme of teaching and learning. "Talmud," "Mishnah," "Midrash," all express these ideas, and Torah itself is divine teaching. The significance of this is that the religion of Torah had its deepest root in the intellectual, rather than in the moral or spiritual, region of the mind. The moral and the spiritual were by no means neglected or unprovided for; very far from that. But, if I may so put it, they came in under the intellectual. The moral sense of the Pharisee was strong, and his piety genuine, but the exercise of both was conditioned by the contents of the Torah, duly interpreted. He must be put in possession of certain knowledge, in order to act either morally or devoutly. For him, the "seat of authority in religion," and also in morals, was the Torah; and, while it is quite true that to a large extent he made the Torah the exponent of his own moral and religious conceptions, reading into it or finding there a great deal which does not appear on the surface, it is also true that he regarded it as an external authority to which he must submit. He had no difficulty in doing this, since he believed the Torah to be the full and final revelation of God. It was all good and holy and divine; and there could be no surer guide for him in all that he had to do and all that he could think and believe in respect of his relation to God. The function of conscience was, for the Pharisee, not to pass moral judgments independent of, still less contrary to, the Torah, but to co-operate with it, and to confirm its authority. Conscience would be, in him, clear upon the distinction between right and wrong; but what was right and what was wrong would be decided by the authority of Torah, not by the immediate intuition of conscience and reason. And I think that a Pharisee would be quite unable to understand how any action could be right which was not in accordance with Torah.[21] Certainly it could not be right for him.
So, too, in regard to his relation to God and his worship of Him, the thoughts and feelings of the Pharisee, the sincere and devout utterance of his spiritual being, would flow, naturally and with no sense of compulsion, in the channels provided by the Torah, in such forms of belief and such expressions of aspiration as were in harmony therewith. I lay stress on the phrase "naturally, and with no sense of compulsion"; because it is very difficult for the Christian, whose supreme authority is not the Torah, to realise the position of the Pharisee in this matter, and to understand that he did not feel himself to be under constraint. Of course, wherever there is authority, there is that which on occasion will constrain; and the Christian is, to that extent, no less under constraint than the Pharisee. But it is not an oppressive burden, though it may be a hard duty, to submit to an authority which is owned to be supreme. And the Pharisee, regarding the Torah as the supreme authority, since it was the expression of the will and mind of God, did not feel himself oppressed by the duty of submitting to it. He would entirely agree with what was said, in a very different connection (John viii. 32):—"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." He claimed that he did know the truth; it was given him in the Torah, from God Himself; and in making his life and thought and action conform thereto, he found his true freedom. "None is free," says the Talmud, "save he who is employed in the study of Torah" (M. Aboth. vi. 2). Whether the range of freedom is not wider when its limits are prescribed by direct allegiance to a person instead of to a mental conception like that of Torah is another question altogether, and one upon which the Pharisee and the Christian will have each his own opinion. And while it must not be forgotten that the Pharisee also owed allegiance to a person, felt himself to be in immediate relation to God, looked up to Him and prayed to Him, yet he would expect to find the intimations of the divine will in the Torah, and not in his own intuitions. It is not that the Pharisee was without the essentials of a spiritual experience, real faith in God, real communion with Him, real devotion to His service; for these he certainly had. It was that these were realised by him only when expressed in terms of Torah. Whatever could be so expressed took its place at once as part of his religious or moral consciousness. Whatever could not be so expressed remained outside, or, at best, held no prominent position in his thought.
The principle here laid down will be sufficient, I believe, to explain the chief characteristic differences between the Pharisaic and the Christian type of mind, disregarding, of course, individual variations. It has been pointed out, in a previous chapter (p. 171), that Christianity in all its forms centres upon a person, namely, Christ; and that Judaism in all its forms, and Pharisaism most of all, centres upon an idea, namely Torah, and will recognise no person as the object of its devotion, save only God Himself. This is not a proud resistance to the appeal of a great personality; it is simply a natural and necessary result of making the Torah the central feature of religious thought. There cannot be two centres, two authorities both regarded as supreme. If the Torah be raised to the highest place, as the expression of the divine will and the medium of the divine revelation, then there can be no other to divide the allegiance. And not only so, but the demand, or the appeal, to recognise such a one can only appear as an infringement of the sovereign rights of the Torah. A Pharisee might admit that it was conceivable that God should have chosen some other means than that of Torah as the medium of His revelation. He could not admit that God actually had done so, without surrendering the Torah altogether. And this is the ground on which I said, in the third chapter, that the opposition between Pharisaism and the religion of Jesus was fundamental and irreconcilable. Not, indeed, that the religion of Jesus himself centred on a person, as the religion of Paul and all later Christians did; but that Jesus himself was that person; and his personality could by no means be expressed in terms of Torah.
It is evident that devotion to a Person will produce a type of mind very different from that produced by devotion to an Idea; and the difference will be this, that the seat of moral authority and the source of spiritual inspiration will be transferred from the Torah without to the heart, conscience, and reason within. With the result, of course, of imparting to these a freshness and vigour which they had not, and could not have, before. Certainly, heart, conscience, and reason were by no means inactive when applied to Torah; but responsibility for what they did rested on Torah and not on themselves. They followed, gladly and willingly, the lead which God had given in the Torah; but they followed a lead. But in devotion to a person, heart, conscience, and reason, so to speak, act from themselves, and the responsibility rests upon them. And the note of the character so formed is not obedience, but consecration of self. And this, I believe, is the reason why there is such a marked difference of tone and spirit between the New Testament and the Rabbinical literature. The former is the result of the quickening power of a newly awakened devotion to a person, while the latter is the result of steadfast and most faithful devotion to an idea. Nor is that all. The devotion to a person leads to a different form of expression, as the experience to be clothed in words is different. The New Testament contains abundance of moral and religious teaching, as the Talmud also does; but the New Testament puts it in the form of direct appeal to the Christian to do and be so and so, that he may be a disciple of Christ, and well pleasing unto God. The Talmud puts it in the form of maxims of conduct, or lessons drawn from Scripture, to be accepted and acted on because they are portions of Torah, divine truth and wisdom offered to man, for his good, but not making any direct appeal to him. And whereas, in the New Testament, the spiritual fervour of the teacher could utter itself in the glowing rapture of Paul, in the Talmud the spiritual fervour of the teacher (sometimes not less than that of Paul) was spent upon the study of Torah: in the one case God was sought and found through the person of a revealer; in the other, he was sought and found through the medium of a body of knowledge. The watchword of the New Testament is Love. The watchword of the Talmud is Wisdom. And each can claim, as its ideal, the highest and fullest and noblest meaning of its own watchword.
I pass to the consideration of another effect produced by the conception of Torah as the controlling factor in Pharisaic religion. Within the lines of Torah there was room for a highly developed spiritual life, a pure morality, a devout piety. Also, for warm sympathy and generous kindness, and in general for the virtues which make human nature lovable.
All these were present, in varying degree, as truly as they are present in Christians. But how about those who stood without the pale of the Torah? What did the Pharisee consider to be his relation to them? In practice, of course, this would depend largely on the individual Pharisee; and no doubt examples might be found of every degree of exclusiveness, from tolerant regret for those who were deprived of the unspeakable blessing of the divine revelation down to the arrogant contempt which said (John vii. 49), "This people that knoweth not the Torah is accursed." But I shall deal only with the theory, not with the practice, of the application of the Torah to "them that are without." It was said above, that what could not be expressed in terms of Torah either remained outside the religious consciousness of the Pharisee, or, if admitted, held no prominent place there. It goes therefore without saying, that Israel's possession of Torah must influence its attitude towards the rest of mankind. The Pharisees were by no means blind to the fact that among the Gentiles there were "those who feared God and worked righteousness"; but, if the Torah was the final and complete divine revelation, there could not be an equality, still less a real feeling of brotherhood, between those who did and those who did not accept the Torah as the guide of their lives. And this would remain true, even though there were, as there was in the best minds among the Pharisees, a real concern for the Gentile, and a desire that he too might share in the blessing vouchsafed to Israel. The Pharisee by no means rejected the visions of the prophets as, that "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." But how could that be realised unless the Gentiles came in by the way of Torah, and united themselves with Israel? It was concern for the Gentiles, amongst other motives, which prompted the assertion, to be found often in the Midrash, that when God gave the Torah, He offered it to all the nations of the world. They all, except Israel, rejected it; but at least they had their chance. It was no arbitrary decree of God which deprived them of it. His will was to do them good, if they would have it; and presumably they might yet have it, if they would. In such ways the Pharisee looked out across the barrier which separated him from the Gentile, not without the hope and the desire that "all men might be saved," but unable to see how that could be brought about, except by the coming of the Gentile within the lines of the Torah. To obliterate those lines was necessarily, to the Pharisee, unthinkable. It would be to renounce the very blessing for the sake of which they desired that the Gentiles should come in. And, even if there were no Gentiles, the Torah was still the very life and soul of Israel; to part with it would be death; a fact to which Israel has borne witness through the centuries. In the nature of things, the religion of Torah as held by the Pharisees could not free itself from Particularism; and though it could and did cherish a vision of Universalism, the vision was for the far future, and only floated fitfully before the gaze of the Pharisee. It hardly counted amongst those present realities of his religion of which he was most conscious, and to which he gave his chief thought.
I have tried to indicate what I believe to have been the effects of the conception of Torah as the controlling factor in the religion of the Pharisees, having, so far as I am aware, no other purpose than to get at the real truth about them; in other words, to do them justice. That I have not refrained from pointing out the deficiencies as well as the excellences of their form of religion will show that my object has not been to offer a mere panegyric upon them; they deserve better than that. I shall attempt, in conclusion, to describe the kind of mind and character produced by the influence of the ruling conception of Torah, the Pharisaic ideal aimed at, and more or less realised in practice. Individual Pharisees, of course, would present many and marked variations from the type, just as is the case among Christians; and I take no account of them, except to say that whatever may be true in the matter of the common charges of hypocrisy, pride, self-righteousness, and the like, is due to individual defection from the ideal, and is not an inherent quality in it.
For the basis of such a description of the Pharisaic ideal, I take a remarkable passage now included in the Mishnah, in the treatise called the Pirké Aboth, or Sayings of the Fathers (M. Aboth. vi. 6). The whole chapter, which is later than the rest of the book, is called "The Acquisition of Torah." This is the passage:—"Greater is Torah than Priesthood or Kingship. For Kingship is acquired by thirty stages (i.e. there are thirty qualities necessary to the ideal King), and Priesthood is acquired by twenty-four; but Torah is acquired by forty-eight things. And these are they:—Study, the listening ear, ordered speech, the discerning heart, dread, fear, meekness, cheerfulness, purity, attendance on the Wise, discussion with associates, argument with disciples, sedateness; Scripture, Mishnah; having little business, little intercourse [with the world], little luxury, little sleep, little conversation, little merriment, forbearance, a good heart, faith in the Wise, the acceptance of chastisements, [He is one that] acknowledges God, that rejoices in his lot, that makes a fence for his words, that claims not goodness for himself, that is loved, that loves God, that loves mankind, that loves deeds of charity, that loves uprightness, that loves reproofs, that shuns honour [i.e. when offered to himself], that puffs not up his heart with his learning, that is not insolent in his teaching, that bears the yoke along with his companion, that judges him favourably, that establishes him upon truth, that establishes him on peace, that settles his heart in his study, that asks and answers, that hears and adds thereto, that learns in order to teach, and that learns in order to do, that makes his teacher wise, that makes sure what he hears, that repeats a word in the name of him who said it." The remainder of the passage has no bearing on the general subject, being only a note upon the last clause. The author is unknown. The list, which includes fifty-one qualifications instead of the forty-eight announced at the beginning, varies slightly in different editions; but it may be taken as representing substantially the ideal character developed by and under the religion of Torah. It may usefully be compared with the enumeration of Christian virtues in Rom. xii.; and, if that comparison is made, there will be noticed that difference of tone and spirit to which I have already alluded. But it will also appear, from such comparison, that there is no contrast as between black and white, hypocrite and holy. The Pharisaic ideal may seem to be drawn in terms of more level prose than the Christian ideal as set forth by Paul, and, moreover, to be one more capable of being attained, in actual life. There is an element of sober matter-of-fact in Judaism, and especially in Pharisaic Judaism, which may not be sublime, but has great value, nevertheless, in the practical conduct of life, even the religious life. Some of the items included in the Pharisaic list may seem to be of but little importance, such as those having immediate reference to the study of Torah—argument with disciples, attendance on the wise, and the repeating a saying in the name of him who said it. These, and similar items, have to be judged, of course, by the standard of the supreme worth of the Torah. What that meant to the Pharisee, how much more than the mere study of a book, I do not now need to repeat, after all that has been said in previous chapters. But many of the items indicate the great and substantial virtues and graces which belong to the higher human nature alike of the Pharisee and of the Christian. They include love to God, love towards all mankind (let it be noted especially, that love is not restricted to Israel alone), sympathy, kindness, forbearance, purity, meekness, cheerfulness, contentment, patience under trial, and that which a great Rabbi once said excelled all other qualifications for the perfect life—a good heart. A man who should strive after such an ideal of character and conduct would follow no unworthy quest; and, however different be the form in which he expresses his religious ideas from the form familiar to Christians, there is no fundamental difference between them in the desire to seek God and serve Him with the noblest powers that He has given to the human soul. It is not quâ man, but quâ Pharisee that the adherent of the religion of Torah is sundered from the Christian. There was in him the same human nature, capable of high development in its relation both to God and to man. And the conception of Torah was for the Pharisee the agent in that development; while for the Christian the controlling factor is personal relation to Christ. I am not concerned to judge between these two. I am concerned only to maintain that the development of human nature through the agency of Torah did in fact take place, and did produce very great and noble results.
Pharisaism in history has had a hard fate. For there has seldom been for Christians the opportunity to know what Pharisaism really meant, and perhaps still more seldom the desire to use that opportunity. It has served as a foil to Christianity, the way for such use being prepared by the New Testament. Its supposed blemishes have been held up to view, in order that the excellences of the Christian religion might shine the more brightly by comparison. If learned men like Lightfoot, Wagenseil, and especially Eisenmenger, explored the Rabbinical literature well-nigh from end to end, it was mainly for the purpose of reviling what they found there. And, in our own day, though there is no longer to be found amongst Talmudic scholars the scurrilous rancour of an Eisenmenger, there is still the inveterate habit of regarding Rabbinical Judaism as a means of exalting Christianity; there is nearly always the criticism of Judaism from the Christian point of view, and judgment given upon premises which it never recognised. There is scarcely any attempt to learn what it really meant to those who held it as their religion, who lived by it, and who died by it, and have done for two thousand years.
Is, then, the Christian religion so weak that it must be advocated by blackening the character of its oldest rival? And if it should appear, as I trust in some degree it has appeared, that the religion of Torah as held by the Pharisees was a real expression of spiritual experience, the inspiration of holy living and holy dying, is the spiritual power of Christianity in any degree made less? Why should the one begrudge to the other whatever is good in it? Especially when the one has grown great and has become the religion of many nations, while the other has remained as the inheritance of a lonely people? Why should not the Christian be glad to own that the Jew, even the Pharisee, knew more of the deep things of God than he had supposed, and after a way which was not the Christian way, yet loved the Lord his God with heart and soul and strength and mind,—yes, and his neighbour as himself? The time is surely come when Pharisaism should be recognised as a religion entitled to be judged on its own merits and by its own standards; a religion widely different indeed from Christianity in its methods and its forms of expression, but yet a living faith, capable of ministering to the real wants of human souls; a religion sui generis, but none the less to be acknowledged as one among the many expressions of divine revelation on the one hand and of human seeking after God on the other? It is in the hope of helping towards such a sympathetic and unprejudiced recognition of the intrinsic worth of Pharisaism that I have written this book. What I have written is scanty indeed, in view of the greatness of the subject; but it may yet have been enough to give some idea of what Pharisaism meant to the Pharisee, and to show that the Saints and Sages of Israel, those more particularly who are included amongst the Scribes and Pharisees, were not what they have commonly been called and usually thought to have been. Saints and Sages they were, who served God faithfully, and found in the Torah His full and perfect word. And to me, though not walking in their way, nor sharing in all their beliefs, yet drawn to them across the ages, they have been the companions and friends of many a year.