Jewish forerunners of Christianity

Introduction

THE singular position of the Jewish people in the modern world is a fact of supreme interest to the student of history. It constitutes a large and powerful nationality (whatever may be said to the contrary), without political organization or a native land, spread amongst the other nations, yet preserving its own institutions, its own religion, its own language, while mingling in the business, intellectual, and political life of those others.

It is hated in some places, it is flattered in others, but it never is ignored, and it everywhere gives evidence of active national life after an existence of nearly four thousand years. But this is only a part, and not the largest part, of the claims of the Jewishpeople on the attention of thinkers of every land. It and its literature have been the subject of discussion for centuries by competent and incompetent, by friend and foe, alike. From it have sprung the moulders of religious thought of all the great Western nations. Christianity recognizes the Hebrew Law and the Hebrew patriarchs of three thousand years ago as an integral part of its history. Jesus, recognized by the Christian world as the Mediator between God and man, belongs by parentage to the royal House of David. Mary and Joseph and Peter viii INTRODUCTION

and Paul and John, all of purest race, are the highest in honor of all in the roll of the Christian Church.

Beyond the wide extent of Christendom, the creed of Mohammed occupies an almost equal portion of the earth from Senegambia to Java, from Siberia to the Sahara and Hindustan. That creed, too, is distinctly traceable to a Jewish source. The Arabian Prophet was of Jewish race by the mother's side; his thought was moulded by Jewish scripture and the teachings of a Jewish master. He recognized the Jewish revelation as a forerunner of that which he claimed was made to himself, and the ceremonial of his law is largely Jewish in form. The strong analogy between his career and that of a Jewish leader five centuries earlier is touched on in the pages following in this work.

The object proposed is to sketch from contemporary Hebrew literature the workings of the Jewish mind during the period when the race was passing from tribal to cosmopolitan existence, and its religion widening from the practice of one land to a world-wide system. Great as has been the part played by the Jewish people in the history of mankind, it has been entirely different from that of other nations generally recognized as leaders. Its distinction is in the moral and mental field, not in that of war or political organization. It is not, then, by records of conquest or legislation, although law has had considerable influence in moulding the religious character of the Jew, that the development of the race can properly be studied. It is rather in the lives of the teachers and thinkers, who, in the democratic the-

INTRODUCTION IX

ocracy of Jewish society, formed the national policy and shaped the minds of the people. We have chosen a series of the most prominent of these masters in Israel to illustrate the course of events in the Jewish nation during the last two centuries of its separate existence. Their story is mainly drawn from the literature of their own time, as embodied in the great collection of the Talmuds, known as the Babylonian and Jerusalemic. Different as the style of that work is from modern methods and modes of thought, it contains ample foundation of fact to base intelligent historical work on, especially when one seeks to know the nature of mental action of the period, rather than the chronology of external facts. The Jews in Palestine, under the Asmonean kings, formed a small, independent power between Syria and Arabia. By the outside world they were regarded in the same light as others of the numerous kingdoms of Western Asia. The Roman historian, Tacitus, contemptuously says they were the "most despised of the conquered under Medes, Persians, and Greeks," but they had won some distinction by their successful revolt against the Grecian kings of Syria. In their own minds, however, the Jews regarded themselves as superior to all the other branches of mankind. They were the chosen people of the Most High God, entrusted with the knowledge of his Law, and placed by his special command in the land which they had then possessed for fourteen centuries. During that time they had seen both good and bad fortune. David had extended their rule over Syria, and the wealth and glory of

X INTRODUCTION

Solomon was the theme of admiration all through Western Asia still. They had suffered deeply too. The larger part of the sons of Jacob had been dispersed in unknown lands, and the remnant had been carried to Babylon as captives for two generations, but still they had returned. They had increased after the captivity, under Persian and Greek, into a nation of probably two millions in Palestine.

All through their checkered history, the Hebrew people held faith in a future great development of their nation of a permanent and beneficial kind. What its exact nature would be they did not determine. They held that such a development was intended by divine counsel, and the House of Israel was to be a central figure in it. Moreover this beneficent development was to be accomplished by a supernatural person, to appear on earth at some future time, but meanwhile watching over the fate of the Jewish people.1

These two ideas were deeply fixed in the minds of the Jewish population, and intensified the patriotic feelings which they possessed in common with other nations. The love of the Jews for their native land and its Law, both given specially by the Lord to them, was far stronger than that of the Spartan or Roman for their respective countries. It was not alone the interests of the present or pride in the

had in view the Messianic time in their prophecies." — Talmud Babli, Sanhedrin 99 ; and Midrash Rabba, Genesis 24, 67 : D*Kt3in S*nt!«BO D»»m \Tfhy ppaa Nin — " When Israel transgresses He [the Messiah] asks mercy for them."

INTRODUCTION xi

past that kept up the national spirit, but abiding faith in a future more glorious than any yet seen on earth for the Jewish nation. The land of Palestine was almost as closely connected with that nationality, in the minds of the people, as their own existence, or the Law of which they were the guardians. Jerusalem was to share with the Jew in the future prominence assured by prophecy. In Palestine, alone, the religious rites prescribed by God could be fully accomplished. The descendants of Abraham, away from Palestine, were only exiles. They might keep up their connection with Jewish nationality by observance of the Law and by following implicitly the teachings of the masters of the Law in the Holy Land, but they were distinctively regarded as in an unfortunate position. In fact, the law governing Jewish residents in another land differed essentially in many respects from that applied to those living in Palestine. The man whom circumstances forced to live away from the Holy Land — 'Hutz la-Aretz {ex pair id) — was an object of pity. There was no thought of voluntarily spreading to other lands among the Palestine Jews, when the Asmonean kings held independent sway in Jerusalem and the Temple of the Lord crowned Mount Moriah.

The divine Law itself was moulded under these ideas during many generations of Rabbis. The conditions of life in Palestine were looked on as the normal conditions of humanity in its highest state, and the practical requirements of worship and morals were framed on that theory. The Sanhedrin, the Parliament of the nation, was made up of men trained xii INTRODUCTION

in the Law in the rabbinical schools of Palestine, and their decisions had the force of law for the people as a part of revelation itself. A narrow and bigoted cast of mind was thus engendered, which made the Jews the object of special dislike to the nations with whom they came in contact. It was the very reverse of the character fitted for a colonizing race or for one destined to intellectual leadership among men.

Hillel, a Jew of Babylonian birth, who came to Jerusalem as a needy student under the reign of Herod, and by sheer force of talent won his way to the Presidency of the Sanhedrin, was the first to see the unfitness of this frame of thought to the conditions and development of the Jewish race. He combated it long and earnestly, and he trained disciples on his own ideas. His personality was strong enough to secure the continuance of his descendants for many generations in the office of President of the Sanhedrin, which, after the suppression of the monarchy, became the highest power in the national organization. A rival school, the House of Shammai, maintained, during two centuries, a vigorous opposition to the policy of the House of Hillel. At times, it was stronger with the nation in virtue of its hot national patriotism, or the superior talent of its professors. The House of Hillel and the House of Shammai were, in fact, in modern language, the Liberal and the Conservative parties in the Jewish nation. The great powers of Akibah, with the help of the Rabbis of the House of Shammai, precipitated the revolt against the Romans under Hadrian. Akibah audaciously proclaimed a

INTRODUCTION Xlll

leader of his own choice as the divinely sent Messiah, in the person of Bar Kochba, and essayed to found a Jewish Empire of the East by armed force. His failure quenched among the larger part of the people the idea of a Jewish conqueror yet to come. A little later, Rabbi Judah, the Prince, walking in the footsteps of his ancestor Hillel, devoted himself to the work of binding the nation together by the bonds of literature and Law which might preserve its nationality even if scattered through other lands.

Nationalism is common to the people of every land. It was specially developed among the Jews by the exclusive possession of the divine Law revealed to Moses. The maintenance of nationality for the Jew was a religious duty in the fullest sense of the word as well as a human sentiment. Were Israel to pass away, as other nations once greater in power had done, the religious Jews felt that the Lord's work, not man's alone, would be destroyed. But growth and decay are the common lot of nations as of men. Race sympathy, language, country, and common laws are the bonds which maintain the duration of human societies, and each is subject to change with the course of time until the society itself is dissolved and others take its place with new forms.

Under the dominion of the Roman Empire it was evident that the Jewish people could not continue to maintain itself long in its hereditary land. It could not endure the oppression of the Roman tax-gatherer and the Roman soldier. The Roman Government, after the repeated rebellions of the Hebrews, was desirous to scatter them through its

XIV INTRODUCTION

dominions, and events helped this political purpose. The keen intelligence of the race made them traders rather than cultivators, and trade naturally led to travel and settlement abroad. Strong as was the race patriotism of the people it had failed to keep up a distinct nationality in the large section of the Jews that had been carried to distant lands by the Assyrian conqueror. The ten tribes were lost forever to national existence when torn from the promised land. That a similar fate did not fall upon Judah seems due largely to the work of Hillel and his descendant, Judah, the Prince.

The work of the latter was to make rabbinic literature a handmaid and protector to the Hebrew Law. The divine Law had been a written one, but the interpretations and deductions which had sprung from it during the course of centuries were only preserved by tradition. Custom had so ruled rigidly. Masters of the Law and Judges in Israel were carefully trained from generation to generation, but it was by the spoken not the written word. The "sayings" of the wise as well as the decisions of the Judges were handed down in the schools of Palestine, and whoever wished to become learned in the law, had to go to Palestine and spend long years there for that end. This is exemplified in the cases of Ben Hyrkanos, Akibah, and Hillel. Those who could not give the time for this exclusive application were forced to remain among the "ignorant," who might, indeed, attain salvation by obedience, but who were regarded as morally and intellectually the inferiors of the Rabbis and stu-

INTRODUCTION XV

dents. When the Prince reduced to writing the whole mass of traditional lore, it became possible for the Jewish dweller of any land to acquire the wisdom of his fathers and train his mind in its study. A Jew needed no longer to journey to Palestine to become a scholar or a master in Israel. Thus, in fact, the religious thought first developed in the Holy Land has been kept unchanged through eighteen centuries in every quarter of the globe where Jews dwell.

Three men were specially prominent in the modifications of the Jewish people and customs while they yet dwelt in Palestine: Hillel gave them a cosmopolitan character as opposed to the old tribal one ; Akibah, by the failure of his great rebellion, caused the abandonment among his people of the dream of a military supremacy which had almost become part of their creed; Rabbi Judah, the Prince, by the formation of rabbinic literature, gave the race a centre of union which had been strong enough to perpetuate their nationality through centuries of subjection and dispersion. I have tried to show the modern reader what manner of men these Masters in Israel and their fellows were in these sketches.

I cannot refrain from expressing my deep sense of obligation to Miss Henrietta Szold, of Baltimore, whose lucid criticism of another work of mine suggested the writing of this book, and to my friend, Mr. Beyant J. Clinch, of San Francisco, California, who greatly aided me with valuable suggestions and a revision of the manuscript.

Adolphe Danziger.

Chapter I

A BRIEF description of the life and politics of the Jewish people during the last period of its existence as a distinct nation in Palestine is needed for the proper comprehension of the lives of its prominent men.

That period extended from the time when the Persian king, Cyrus, five centuries before Christ, sent back the captives of Babylon to Palestine, down to the middle of the third century after Christ.

The people that returned to the Holy Land after the seventy years' captivity, numbered only a few, probably one or two hundred thousand. They grew in numbers and wealth rapidly, and when the Roman conquerors made them part of their Empire, the Jewish population numbered two or three millions.

When the captives returned the old kingdom of David was not restored. As in the old days before Saul, the people had no ruler but the Law of Moses and its authorized religious interpreters. The Rabbis or teachers of the Law were also the Judges of civil affairs, and practically the rulers of the community.

The priesthood attached to the service of the Temple at Jerusalem had high dignity but no political power. The whole polity of the Jewish people had been formed by Moses on a strictly religious basis, but the priesthood employed in sacrifices and ceremonial was not the guardian of religious doctrines nor the judge in them. These functions were filled by the Rabbis, who were also a clergy, in modern language.

Each generation of Rabbis taught, by word of mouth, the Law to the people and also trained up disciples to fill their own ranks. The intellectual activity of the race was concentrated on the study of the Law, as that of Mediaeval Europe was on the study of theology and scholastic philosophy. "Rabbi" and "scholar" were synonymous, as "clerk" (cleric) and ' ' learned man" were in Europe six centuries ago.

Each distinguished Rabbi gathered disciples in proportion to his reputation for learning, and when he deemed any of them thoroughly skilled in the Law, he ordained him Rabbi and gave him the right to teach and preach in the synagogues.

The ruling body of the nation, the Sanhedrin, was a council of the leading Rabbis, who judged the people according to the Law of Moses, both as written in the Scripture and as handed down by tradition of the schools. The Sanhedrin chose its own members and elected its President and Chief Judge, who was of nearly equal authority.

In all important cases the majority vote of the Sanhedrin was the supreme power among the Jewish people, both for making, or rather declaring, laws and pronouncing on their application. The Sanhedrin was practically legislature and Supreme Court. For the enforcement of its decisions it depended on the action of the people. This state of affairs continued, with some slight changes, down to the dominion of the Greek successors of Alexander in Syria. The Antiochid kings tried to Hellenize their Jewish subjects in both religion and language. They intruded High Priests into the Temple for bribes and forbade the practice of the Jewish religion. The revolt of the Makkabees followed, and finally John Hyrkan, the High Priest of the Asmonean family, took the title of King of the Jews, and made Palestine a sovereign state.

Intercourse with the Greek heathens of Syria had lessened the hold of the Jewish faith among the Hebrews. A school, or sect, arose, under the name of Sadducees, which rejected the traditional law accepted by the Jewish people from immemorial time and claimed that the text of the Pentateuch alone, as interpreted by themselves, embodied the whole Law. This teaching was acceptable to Hyrkan, who desired to lessen the influence of the Sanhedrin, then practically the Parliament of the nation, and he became a Sadducee. He persecuted the traditionalist members of the Sanhedrin, in whose stead he put Sadducees, and as he was also High Priest, his office became supreme in every part of religion. The successors of John Hyrkan pursued the same policy toward the Pharisee Rabbis, and when the Asmonean dynasty was succeeded by the Idumaean Herod, the Sanhedrin had lost its power as a political factor altogether, though even Herod leaned more toward the Sadducees than the Pharisees, whom he persecuted bitterly. The priestly office was separated from the kingly, but the High Priests continued to hold Sadducean doctrines. Thus, by a singular combination, the men who to strangers were the heads of religion were heretics to the orthodox Jews themselves.

The Rabbis continued to hold their influence, and were accepted by the bulk of the people as their religious teachers in spite of kingly persecution. A number of the Rabbis, however, especially the writers or Sophcrim (the scribes of the New Testament) consented to serve the Sadducean kings and priests in the administration of the Law. They were regarded as intermediate between the Sadducees and Pharisees. By their influence among this class, the High Priests succeeded in controlling the Sanhedrin for a considerable period. Their policy was to concentrate the minds of the people on the Temple at Jerusalem as the very centre of religion. By this they increased their own revenues and importance. This special importance of the Temple tended to another result. It intensified the local nationalism and tended to make the people forget the wider brotherhood of man in the local ceremonialism of the Jewish Temple service. Thus Sadducean principles tended to make the Jewish people a mere tribe, which could have no national existence outside of Palestine, the Holy Land.

The orthodox or Pharisee teachers, many of them drawn from Jews born in other lands, taught the broad principles of the Mosaic Law, and lessened the importance of both the Temple and the Holy Land as elements in the religious life of the people. The High Priests of the Temple represented the narrow localism of Palestine and had a contempt for abstract dogma. The Presidents of the Sanhedrin, or Patriarchs, were the heads of the masters teaching Jews of every land. The High Priests perished with the destruction of the Temple by Titus. The Patriarchs of the Sanhedrin continued to exist as recognized religious heads of the Jewish people down to the last Emperor of the Roman world, Theodosius. The man who first made this office hereditary and defined its powers clearly against priestly usurpation was Hillel.

Hillel was born in Babylon among the Jewish colony which had remained there when the " remnant of Israel" was restored to its native land by Cyrus. The Babylonian Jews counted many of the noblest in blood of the race, and Hillel' s parents, though poor, traced descent from David.1 He was advanced in life, forty years old, when he left Babylon to study deeply the Law in the famous schools of Jerusalem, which drew students from many lands to learn. Herod then ruled in Palestine as a subject-king of Rome. The persecution to which the Pharisee Rabbis had been subjected had ceased for a while, and the more famous Rabbis taught in peace, even if the Sadducean High Priests controlled by force or bribery the decisions of the national Assembly. Two famous masters, Shemaiah and Abtalion, were recognized by the faithful in Israel as the wisest amongst the traditional teachers, and to their school Hillel came to learn the precepts of the Law.

He was poor when he came. He had a rich brother in Jerusalem, but he declined his aid when proffered,3 and preferred to support himself and pay the small admission fee required at the school by daily, labor. He fully accepted the rabbinical maxim, "it is better to live by flaying abandoned carcases than by beggary." He went out daily to gather firewood in the forest near, which he sold in the market. The fee for entrance to the school was half a copper shekel. Hillel regulated his labor so that when a shekel was earned for each day, he gave the rest of his time to the studies of the school. The other half defrayed his scanty food.9 At times he went two or three days without any in his thirst for knowledge.

His example was not a solitary one among the Jewish students of his time. Many of the most eminent Rabbis earned their bread as artisans while giving their energies to the study or teaching of the Law. The Priests of the Temple were rich and honored. The teachers of the Law often had to struggle for the necessaries of life.4 Honest poverty was no reproach among their class.

It is told of Hillel that one day, when the President of the college was to deliver an important lecture, he lacked the half-shekel to pay the doorkeeper. He mounted the flat roof of the building and listened at a window which looked into the hall below. It was evening and bitterly cold, but the student forgot everything in listening to the words of wisdom which flowed from the great Rabbi's lips. He grew cold and was unable to move when the lecture ended. He fell asleep at last and snow came on, which covered his body with a mantle of white. On the next morning, which was the Sabbath, the students gathered early to hear the morning sermon. They saw the window darkened by the lifeless body, and they carried it into the room. They tried to revive Hillel, but there was no fire, and the Law forbade kindling one on the Sabbath Day. The question whether it was lawful to break it in such a case was keenly debated, but the Masters settled it by declaring the rule, "This man deserves that the Sabbath law be suspended in his behalf." 5 When he recovered and told his story they commanded that thenceforth he should pay no entrance fee.6

Independence and perseverance were shown by this conduct, and to these Hillel added a keen and lofty intellect. He profited above all the other students by the lessons of his Masters and after some years he received the rabbinical degree. He then returned to his native land, where he was received with honors by the old Jewish population, and there he passed some years teaching.

He felt drawn back to Jerusalem by the love of intercourse with the learned and perhaps, also, with a secret ambition of becoming a leader of the people. If so, it was gratified beyond his hopes.7 The Sanhedrin had been filled with incompetent men after the death of Shemaiah and Abtalion. They were recognized by the people as faithful guardians of the oral law, but when they were gone none was found who could command the same confidence or even remember the text of their decisions, which were the undoubted law of Israel to all believers. Two Rabbis, the Sons of Bethyrah, of high family but little learning, held the offices of President and Supreme Judge, but they were unable through ignorance to decide many of the questions put to them. Hillel gained admission to the Sanhedrin and gradually won respect by his profound and accurate knowledge of the points of the oral law. At length a crisis came. A point of religious observance had to be settled which, small as it appears in modern eyes, was of vital importance to religious Jews. The First Day of the Passover in a certain year fell immediately after a Sabbath, and the question was how to reconcile the laws, one of which commanded the slaying of the Paschal lamb before Passover, and the other that forbade any slaying on the Sabbath. The party spirit between Sadducees and Pharisees, the sticklers for the letter of the Pentateuch as the only law, and the teachers who maintained the value and necessity of tradition, gave the question an importance that may seem incomprehensible to modern minds. It was not so to the Jewish people. They regarded any violation of the Law as among the worst evils that can befall man, and here was a point in which either of two necessary courses seemed to involve such a violation. The people murmured against the ignorance of the Council and asked,

"Are there, then, no Judges in Israel to tell us what is the law so that we may not sin ? "

The Sadducee Rabbis of the High Priest's faction were confounded. They had claimed that the Scripture alone was the sole guide for the law, and here the Scripture required two courses to be followed, each of which violated the other. The Pharisees proclaimed tradition as the guide, but none knew the traditional law on this point. Hillel did. He rose and declared the law required that the Passover observance take precedence over the Sabbath Day. At first he was scoffed at as a foreigner,8 but the scoffers ceased when he quoted the exact decision on this case of his former teachers, Shemaiah and Abtalion. Their authority was recognized by all, and the question was settled to the delight both of the Pharisees and the whole people. Even the Sons of Bethyrah, wearied, perhaps, of the difficulties of their position, voluntarily laid down their office, and the Babylonian Hillel was chosen President of the Sanhedrin "to restore peace in Israel," as the Talmud says.9

His election was a triumph for the Pharisees, who had long been overborne by their opponents, backed by the wealth and power of the Sadducean High Priests. It was also a triumph for the element among the nation which opposed the narrow-spirited nationalism of Palestine. Hillel was not even born in Palestine. His teachers, whose authority had saved the reputation of the Assembly among the people, were not even of Jewish race, but of the "Proselytes of Righteousness" from the Gentiles.

IO JEWISH FORERUNNERS OF CHRISTIANITY

The election of Hillel was, then, a victory not only over the Sadducees, but over the whole spirit of narrow tribalism which would confine privileges to the natives of Palestine.

Hillel himself recognized this fact, and his quick intelligence and patient tact enabled him to use the power thus placed in his hand to the fullest degree in exalting the dignity of the Presidential office. The court party in the Assembly had been forced to agree in Hillel's election. They tried to offset the power of this foreigner by giving him a colleague who represented Palestine nationalism of the narrowest kind. They chose for Chief Judge, the second officer of the Sanhedrin, a Rabbi named Shammai, famous alike for his learning and his haughty temper. This man, who was attached by many ties to the Sadducean faction, it was hoped, might reduce the power of Hillel to naught in the Assembly.

The position of the latter was assailed by Shammai with the utmost bitterness, though under the regular rabbinical form. As Chief Judge he delighted in reversing decisions rendered by the President, and holding his sayings up to scorn. These assaults Hillel treated with a calmness which shamed even the partisans of his rival. He treated Shammai with scrupulous politeness and extended the same courtesy to his decisions. The curious saying recorded in the Talmud that both these rivals spoke the "words of the living God " sounds like an utterance of Hillel. His work was for something greater than wordy victories.

He evidently realized that the Jewish people

HILLEL, THE FORERUNNER OF CHRIST II

would not long remain in Palestine under existing conditions. Exile was its fate, and in Babylon Hillel had seen and studied how the law of Israel might be preserved intact even though the chosen people were scattered from the Holy Land. He made it his task to prepare the popular mind for the impending changes. As a means to this end he increased the dignity of the office with which he was clothed, so as to make it greater than even the High Priest's functions. He introduced the idea of Davidic descent as a proper qualification for the head of the Assembly of Israel. Hillel himself belonged to that family, and, besides increasing the popular veneration for the office, this new idea made the Presidency practically hereditary in the House of Hillel. As the High Priest was of the House of Aaron so the President of the Assembly, a descendant of the great king, was recognized as the Nasi, or Prince, in Israel. Hillel had no ill-feeling against Rome ; at least not in the same degree as the natives of Palestine. The Heathens had not affected him personally nor his family. Jerusalem and the Holy Land were to the Jews in Babylon little more than a memory, a religious sentiment, and re-awakened only when they made a pilgrimage to the land of their fathers. The Hebrews in Babylon were happier than those in the Holy Land. From a religious point, Hillel was satisfied ; the Land of the Lord was indestructible, the faith as such was not affected by dynastic changes. He and his people had lived and prayed in Babylon with the same fervor to the same God, as those who lived in Jerusalem. If the Commonwealth was threatened in its religious life, it was wiser to conciliate than to oppose the enemy of the Lord. Love is a greater factor in securing the national and religious stability of a people than hate. God's chiefest law is love, and this the Jew could carry with him to the ends of the world. For this neither Temple nor Palestine was indispensable. What the Jew needed was a clearer understanding of the will of God. Imbued with these ideas, Hillel advocated kindlier feelings towards the Heathens. If the Jews would treat them with consideration they might remain undisturbed in their national existence. Thus thought and acted the foreigner Hillel. It was, therefore, quite natural that the Nationalist party, whose head was Shammai, opposed the conciliatory measures of the President. But in order to maintain this policy, Hillel needed a powerful party behind him, a party of wealth which must be favored to make it stable and responsive.