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DIVINITY SCHOOL
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' Life in Palestine when Jesus lived *
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Life in Palestine
WHEN JESUS LIVED

A SHORT HANDBOOK
TO THE
FIRST THREE GOSPELS

BY
J. ESTLIN CARPENTER
M.A., D.LITT., D.D., D.TKEOL.
Gbtrt Edition

LONDON 
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL ASSOCIATION"
ESSEX HALL, ESSEX STREET, STRAND, W.C.
1915

First Edition 1884, Reprinted 1884, 1889 ; Second Edition 1893,
Reprinted 1899, 1905, 1908, 1911, 1912. Third Edition, 1915.

PRINTED BY ELSOM AND 00.
MARKET PLACE, HULL

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
This little book is intended to illustrate the first three Gospels.
Its object is to present in as short a compass as possible such an
account of the people from whom Jesus sprang, as shall enable
readers of the Gospels, who have not access to larger works, to
frame some notion of the society in which he laboured, and the
ideas and institutions with which he had to deal. It is, thus,
in one sense, an introduction to the study of his life and teach
ings ; but it does not enter on the wide field of Gospel criticism,
and aims only at supplying the needful knowledge of the social
and religious conditions of the work of Jesus.
The materials amassed by scholars are so ample that my task
has been only to weigh and select what seemed most suitable.
Reference to the best sources of information available for English
readers will enable those who wish to make further inquiry into
a field of investigation which can never lose for us its supreme
interest as long as Jesus remains to us the leader of our religious
thought and life. J. E. C.
London, March, 1884.
NOTE TO THIRD EDITION
This edition has been carefully revised, in view of the results
of recent investigation in many different directions. A list of
works most useful for reference will be found on p. 10. J. E. C.
Oxford, September, 1915.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Page 9

CHAPTER I
The Country
i. Its name ....
2. Position, Boundaries, and Size
3. Physical Features
4. Galilee
5. Samaria
6. East Jordan Lands
7. Judaea
8. Jerusalem .

11
12
13
1519
2224
20

CHAPTER II
The People
§ 9. The Jewish Stock
§ 10. Foreign Elements and Influences
§ 11. Occupations
§ 12. Rich and Poor
§ 13. Almsgiving
§ 14. Slavery
§ 15. Education .
§ 16. Popular Beliefs : Angels
§ 17. Popular Beliefs : Demons

3035
4i
45 5i52 54 5861

6

Contents

CHAPTER III
The Government
Page
18.
Native Tribunals : Local ..... 66
19-
Native Tribunals : the Sanhedrin
67
20.
The Romans ....
70
21.
Herod ....
72
22.
Judsa under the Romans .
75
23-
Pontius Pilate .
77
24.
The Roman Empire : Taxation
80
25-
The Tax-Gatherers
83
CHAPTER IV
Religion : I. — Its Public Institutions
26.
The Scriptures ....... 86
27.
The Law .
88
28.
Ritual
91
29.
The Temple
93
30.
Priests and Levites
97
3i-
The Temple Service
ICO
32.
The Synagogue .
105
33-
The Feasts
109
34-
The Sabbath
114
35-
Personal Observances
119
36.
Proselytes .
122
CHAPTER V
Religion : II. — Orders, Parties, and Seots
37-
The Scribes
38.
The Pharisees and Sadducees
39-
The Essenes
40.
The Zealots
125
134
146 149
Contents

CHAPTER VI
Religion : III. — The Messianic Idea

§ 41. The Name Messiah ....
§ 42. The Ideal Future of the Prophets
§ 43. Israel and the Persecuting Heathen .
§ 44. The Messianic Hope in the Days of Jesus-
1. The Two Ages .
Signs of the Approaching End
The Coming Kingdom .
The Messiah
The Resurrection

2. 3-
4- 5-

§ 45. Influence on the Gospel Tradition

Index I.
Index II.

Biblical Passages
Subjects

Page 152154159 163164 165
166167170 175 178180

INTRODUCTION
What do we know about the land of Jesus, the people
among whom he taught, their way of hfe, their thoughts
and feelings ? We learn a great deal, of course, from
the Gospels which record for us the sayings and doings
of Jesus, and show us the impression which he made on
different classes of his countrymen. We know also, from
the books of the Old Testament what was the past history
of the nation, and how most of their great ideas grew up.
But these would not alone help us to understand what
we read of Jesus and his times.
There are, however, other books, some written before
his day, some after it, which tell us much about things
of which the Bible says little or nothing. Some of these
books are books of national and religious hope (see Chap.
vi., p. 162) ; some are books of history. Such are the
works of a famous Jew, named Josephus, who was born
at Jerusalem, a few years after Jesus died, in a.d. 37 or 38
Josephus studied the learning of his time, and after
wards took part in the great war in which his people
were at length finally conquered by the Romans. In
the histories which he wrote we find a precious store of
information about his country, and the events shortly
before and during the lifetime of Jesus.
Other knowledge, especially about the religious beliefs
and practices of the Jews, comes to us from a great collec-

10 Introduction
tion of the maxims of their learned men, especially in
explanation of their sacred Law. This collection of say
ings, handed down from one wise man to another in their
religious Schools, was at last gathered together under
the name of the Talmud, that is ' the Teaching ' ; and it
is of very great use to us in trying to find out what the
Jews thought and how they acted about many things
in which the Teaching of Jesus differed from the Teaching
common in his time.
Books useful for reference : —
Hausrath, The Time of Jesus, 2 vols., 1878.
Schiirer, Jewish People in the Time of Christ, 5 vols., 1890.
Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible, 5 vols., 1898-1904.
Encyclopaedia Biblica, 4 vols., 1899-1903.
Jewish Encyclopcedia, 12 vols., 1901-1906.
Fairweather, The Background of the Gospels, 1908.
Hollmann, The Jewish Religion in the Time of Jesus, 1909.
Montefiore, Some Elements of the Religious Teaching of
Jesus, 1910.
Charles, Religious Development between the Old and New
Testaments, 1914.
The ancient Hebrew divine name, best represented by
the English letters Y H W H, ceased to be pronounced
by the Jews as being too sacred to be uttered. The
vowels of another word meaning ' My Lord,' to be read
in its place, were attached to it, and produced the hybrid
form which finally passed into the English Bible as
' Jehovah ' (Exodus vi. 3), the translators following the
usage of the Greek and Latin versions, and rendering
the name in its ordinary occurrence by ' the Lord.'
The true pronunciation is perhaps best indicated by the
English spelling ' Yahweh,' with the accent on the
second syllable.

Chapter I
THE COUNTRY
[See such older works as Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, Tristram's
Land of Israel, Thomson's Land and the Book ; more recent,
G. A. Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 1894 ;
W. Sanday, Sacred Sites of the Gospels, 1903 ; Herbert Rix,
Tent and Testament, 1907.]
§ 1. Its Name.
The land of the Jews bore several names in their ancient
sacred books. It was called Canaan, a name first given
to a strip of lowland territory along its coast, which after
wards spread over the whole country, just as the name
England spread from the first settlements of the Angles
on our Eastern shores. It was called the Land of Israel,
after the people who dwelt in it. The prophets called
it by the name of their God, ' Yahweh's land ' ; as it
belonged to him, they spoke of it as the ' holy land ' ;
or they termed it simply ' the land,' as though every
one would know which land they meant, and this was a
favourite name in later times. As the country of the
Jews, it was sometimes called Judaea, in the time of
Jesus j though this name more fitly belongs to its
southern part (§ 7). The name by which we know it,
Palestine, seems to have come into use rather later
than the Christian era : the first writer in whose works

12 The Country [§2
we now find it is the famous geographer Ptolemy, who
wrote at Alexandria in the middle of the second century
a.d. This name, like that of Canaan, denoted first of
all a much more limited district : it is the Greek form
of the Hebrew Pelesheth, or Philistia, and meant origin
ally the small territory in the south-west conquered and
occupied by the Philistines. The New Testament
speaks of the different divisions of the country, Galilee
in the north, Samaria in the centre, Judaea in the south,
and the land beyond the Jordan ; Luke occasionally
uses the name Judaea for the whole of Western Palestine.
§ 2. Position, Boundaries, and Size.
Palestine, though so small a country, had already had
a great place in history. It lay on the extreme verge
of the continent of Asia, and made a sort of link between
east and west. It was the highway from Egypt to the
great valley of the Euphrates and Tigris. Much of the
trade from Arabia to the cities of the Mediterranean
passed across it. The Jews had spread from it in all
directions : some were in Babylonia, some in Syria,
some in Asia Minor, some in Egypt, some in Greece, some
in Italy. Communication was fairly easy by land or sea
with all these regions, owing to the central position
which Palestine occupied. But it was itself quite a
diminutive country, about the size of Wales. From the
Lebanon range which bounded it on the north, to the
deserts into which its highlands melted on the south,
was a length of about 140 miles : the width from the
Mediterranean to the Jordan valley ranged from 25
miles at the upper end to nearly 80 at the lower, to which
may be added the trans-Jordanic uplands with an aver
age of 20 more. This made it quite easy for the people

§3] Physical Features 13
to pass from one part to another. From Hebron through
Bethlehem to Jerusalem is but a day's ride : Pompey's
troops could march in a morning from Jericho to the
capital : in two long days the traveller who sleeps at
Nablous (formerly Shechem) can journey from Jeru
salem to Nazareth. From the mountain north of Jeru
salem which now bears the name of the prophet Samuel
(Neby Samwil), from Gerizim, from above Nazareth,
may be seen on the one hand the sea, on the other the
long wall of the hills of Moab or Gilead rising above the
Jordan valley : and from the southern end of the Dead
Sea the snowy cone of Hermon above the sources of the
Jordan can be discerned in the clear air.
§ 3. Physical Features.
This little country is extremely irregular. Along the
coast run narrow strips of lowland, behind which rises
a mighty mass of hills like an unbroken wall. These
bins are not grouped into one long range like the Lebanon;
nor do they generally stand out separate from each
other, like the dome of Tabor rising from the plain of
Jezreel (Greek Esdraelon). It is as though the whole
country, cities, villages, cornfields, and moors, had been
gradually heaved up in the middle to a great height.
Central Galilee is not so high as the southern country,
but even Nazareth, in its quiet valley, stands 8oo feet
above the sea. The great plain of Jezreel interrupts the
line for a little while ; but it rises again in Samaria, and
this rise continues steadily towards the south. Shechem,
between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, is 1,900 feet
above the sea; Jerusalem at 2,610 feet confronts the
Mount of Olives at 2,724 ; and Hebron lies in a secluded
nook among the surrounding hills at a height of 3,029

14 The Country [§3
feet, just above the top of our Helvellyn. On the west,
this great central mass descends by gentle valleys to the
lowlands of the coast. But on the east they drop much
more rapidly into the great depression which is the chief
physical feature of Palestine, the valley of the Jordan,
and the basin of the Dead Sea.
The Jordan is the only real river in the whole land.
It is formed by the union of several small streams, some
of which burst forth from the foot of a great cliff on the
lower slopes of Mount Hermon, and close to the site of
the ancient city of Caesarea Philippi, while others come
from still further north. It falls rapidly into the httle
lake called in old days the ' waters of Merom,' and
by Josephus lake Semechonitis (modern Huleh). From
there it passes with still greater swiftness into the beau
tiful Sea of Galilee, otherwise known as the Sea of Tiberias
or Lake of Gennesaret. This lake lies in a hollow among
the hills, and is itself 682 feet below the level of the sea.
From its southern end the Jordan issues on its rapid
way. It has cut its course below its ancient banks and
winds so much, that in the next 60 miles as the crow
flies its actual course is no less than 200. And it con
tinues falling, falling, all the time, till it reaches the Dead
Sea, lying in a deep trough 1,300 feet below the Medi
terranean. So its name, Yarden, ' the descender,' suits
it very well. The stream runs so fast that it is not fit
for boats : a httle below the outlet from the Sea of
Galilee it was crossed by a bridge, on the high road from
Egypt to Damascus : and further south were two or
three fords. On either hand of the greater part of its
course is a broad plain, in the upper portion tliree or
four miles wide, in the lower, near the ancient Jericho,
as much as twelve. This plain is now dry and bare ;

§4] Galilee 15
but in ancient times it was carefully watered and richly
cultivated. The mountain wall on either hand sheltered
it from cold winds, and secured it a climate of extra
ordinary warmth, so that its produce was abundant and
valuable. On the central heights the temperature was
not so continuously hot. Snow even feU sometimes in
the winter. But it was so warm that the harvest began
before the end of March and was all over by June.
§ 4. Galilee.
[Edersheim, Jewish Social Life, p. 30 ; Merrill, Galilee in the time
of Christ.']
This was the most northern part of Palestine, reaching
up towards the great mountain groups of the Lebanon
and Hermon. The Jews divided it into three parts,
Upper Galilee, Lower Galilee, and the Valley.
Upper Galilee extended nearly as far as the northern
end of the Lake of Tiberias. It was really a continua
tion of the Lebanon chain, with lofty hills and deep and
narrow glens. On the heights here and there stood
castles and fortresses to keep the restless inhabitants
in order. In the cliffs are caves, once the shelter of
bandits, now the haunt of the bear, or the home of count
less bats.
Lower Galilee spreads southwards, across the rich
plain of Jezreel to the foot of the slopes of the hills of
Samaria on the farther side. Its hills are less rugged,
its valleys wider. Between its wooded ridges he gentle
vales, which still yield the wheat for which Galilee was
famous, and forests of oak and olive yet remain to show
with what luxuriant verdure it was once clothed. Its
chief town was Sepphoris, a few miles north of Nazareth,
which was rebuilt during the childhood of Jesus, with

16 The Country [§4
beautiful buildings in the Greek style. Through Sep-
phoris ran one of the great high roads from the coast to
Damascus, along the shore of the Sea of Galilee and across
the Jordan. The village of Nazareth lies in a httle up
land dale, on the side of a green hill rising above it two
or three hundred feet ¦ here and there the limestone
rock breaks through the slope in uneven slabs and rugged
bluffs. Below he gardens and cornfields surrounded with
hedges of prickly pear, bright in spring time with the
flower of the almond ; from the summit is a magnificent
view, sweeping from the mountains of Samaria in the
south round by the sea to the peaks of Hermon in the
north, and the ' high hills ' of Bashan in the east. The
neighbouring dales all had their own villages, and the
whole district was crowded with busy hfe. Moreover,
labour and trade brought wealth.
The Valley included the beautiful region through
which the Jordan flowed, from its sources under Mount
Hermon as far south as the city of Beth Shean, otherwise
called by the Greek name of Scythopolis (modern Beisan).
The upper part of it was occupied at the time of Jesus
with a numerous population. It still yields rich harvests
of wheat and barley ; rice, beans, Indian corn, and the
grain called sesame, are grown in abundance. In the
jungle round Lake Merom, and the forests on the hills,
were vast quantities of game, panthers and leopards,
bears and wolves, jackals, hyaenas, foxes, the wild boar,
the gazelle, which Herod was wont to hunt with the
members of his court. As it nears the Lake of Galilee
the Jordan rolls through low oozy banks of rich alluvial
mud, where herds of buffaloes graze in the meadows on
either hand.
The Lake of Galilee hes in an oval basin about twelve

§4] Galilee 17
miles long, and at its greatest width is about six miles
broad. Along its eastern side the hills run with scarcely
any interruption in an even course from north to south,
at an elevation of nearly two thousand feet. But on
the west they recede inland with a noble sweep, leaving
at their base a strip of land, nearly four miles long, of
unsurpassed richness. This was Gennesaret, the ' garden '
of Galilee. At the northern corner of the plain stood
(so many have thought) the village of Capernaum. The
high road ran through the meadows stretching down to
the lake shore, under clumps of palm, amid orchards of
walnut and olive ; figs and grapes could be gathered for
ten months of the year ; and the variety of its products
seemed to justify the glowing words of Josephus, who
described Gennesaret as ' the ambition of nature.' North
of Gennesaret, though not upon the lake, lay Chorazin,
embowered among the groves which gave it its name,
' the woody place ' : and farther on, beyond the entry
of the Jordan, stood Bethsaida, ' house of fishing,' with
its new and beautiful buildings, bearing the name of
Julias, in honour of the daughter of the Emperor of
Rome. At the south end of Gennesaret stood the tower
of Magdala. It was famous for its dye-works, and in
the meadows round the village the indigo plant was
cultivated for the purpose. In later days it was remem
bered as the home of several noted Rabbis : to us the
only trace of its existence is preserved in the name of
Mary Magdalene. But the most important place was
the city of Tiberias, on the south-western shore of the
lake, so called by its founder, Herod Antipas, after the
Emperor Tiberius. There, only a few years before Jesus
began to teach, Herod built a splendid palace, with
costly furniture and gilded roof, adorned with numerous

18 The Country [§4
sculptures — a great offence to the Jews ; and there he
laid out a race-course for games after the foreign fashion
of the Greeks. About a mile south of the city were the
warm baths of Emmaus, a great resort of wealthy in
valids. Around the outlet of the Jordan was the active
fishing village of Taricheae, where the fish caught in the
lake were cured and packed for exportation. Further
round stood the Greek city of Hippos, and half-way up
the eastern side was the little town of Gergesa.
The general impression about Galilee produced by the
Gospel narratives is that of a thriving and active district.
Jesus moves through the ' villages, the cities, and the
fields.' From his occasional solitudes he passes on to
' the next towns.' Vast crowds of people follow him
from the cities round the margin of the lake, and await
him when he comes to shore. Large, indeed, must have
been the population of the two hundred cities and villages
of Galilee. Josephus even tells us that the people num
bered three millions. This estimate must be taken with
great reserve ; but it is certain that, taken all in all, Gali
lee was the richest and most populous part of Palestine.
Elsewhere there may have been cities more wealthy
and splendid, such as Jerusalem, Jericho, Caesarea-upon-
the-Sea ; nowhere else, except at the capital itself, could
Jesus have so easily been brought face to face with the
representatives of many lands. There were settlers from
the neighbouring cities of Phoenicia, Greek colonists,
Roman officers and soldiers ; there were wanderers, too,
from the wild deserts of the East, or travellers from
Syria and Arabia, passing to and fro. Everywhere there
was hfe, there was stir, there was energy ; and Jesus,
moving among these mingled elements, found a readier
hearing for his word.

§5 3 Samaria 19
§ 5. Samaria.
South of the great plain of Jezreel, the central mass
begins to rise again. Small sheltered hollows he among
the hills : the valleys trend gently westwards towards
the sea ; on the east, ravines descend more abruptly
into the Jordan valley. This region, extending from
Ginea (En-Gannim, ' gardens-spring ') in the north to
Akrabbim (near the ancient Shiloh) in the south, a tract
some twenty-five miles in length and breadth, was called
Samaria. Its pastures, shut in by the surrounding
heights were exceedingly fertile, and its cattle were
famous for the quantity and goodness of their milk.
Its chief city, from which the district took its name, had
long since perished, but on its site a new and more
splendid capital had arisen, adorned by Herod with
palaces and colonnades. It stood on a sohtary hill,
encompassed by others yet more lofty, in whose woods
lurked the hyaena and the bear, which the king delighted
to hunt. He called it Sebaste, the Greek equivalent of
the imperial name Augusta : and there, in the time of
Jesus, the Roman officers used to go for cooler airs, when
their quarters by the sea were too hot under the summer
sun. Right in the heart of the country, in the very
middle of Palestine, lay the town of Shechem, nestling
between two mountains, Ebal on the north and Gerizim
on the south. It had played an important part in the
Jews' history since early days. Though it lay in a valley,
it was no less than i,8oo feet above the sea ; yet it was
— and still is — surrounded with the most beautiful woods.
Among the gardens round the town rises here and there
a palm, from the midst of httle forests of walnut and
mulberry, apricot and almond, orange and peach, fig
and pomegranate trees. From bough to bough stretch

20 The Country [§5
the twining branches of the vine, and clusters of grapes
hang down in wreaths and festoons. On every hand is
heard the sound of falling water through the trees,
mingling with the call of the jackdaw in the poplars, or
the song of the nightingale, so that the inhabitants boast
that their valley is the most musical in the whole land.
Numbers of villages were scattered among the hills, and
the country was very populous.
But the people were not of pure Jewish blood. They
were of mixed descent : and the Jews were by no means
friendly with them. The beginning of differences went
back a very long way. In the old days, the city of
Samaria had been the capital of the northern kingdom
of Israel, which had broken away from the house of
David in Jerusalem. For a long time it was rich and
powerful ; but when the great Assyrian invasions began,
it could not permanently hold out against them. At
last, in the year 721 B.C., the city fell ; and the remnant
of the people were carried away into a distant land east
of the river Tigris. The king of Assyria settled some
other tribes in their places, who brought with them their
own language and their own religion. The old Israelite
worship of Yahweh, however, did not altogether dis
appear ; indeed, it proved stronger than the worship of
the new-comers. In due course it was the turn of the
people of Jerusalem to go into exile. When they re
gained their freedom, and many of them returned and
began to rebuild their ruined temple at Jerusalem, the
Samaritans wished to join in with them. But the Jews
refused ; they would not have anything to do with those
who were not of their own race ; they were afraid that
their religion might be corrupted by the old idolatries.
This was the beginning of unfriendliness. Some time

§ 5 3 Samaria 21
after, as the Jews would not let the Samaritans share in
the Jerusalem temple, the Samaritans built one for them
selves on Mount Gerizim. They got a copy of the sacred
Law of the Jews, and tried to establish the same sort of
worship. They even altered a passage in the book of
Deuteronomy, so as to seem to get support for their own
temple from what was thought to be the command of
Moses. All this made the Jews very angry. At first
they were not strong enough to prevent it : and they
had to endure it for more than two hundred years. Then,
in a time of unusual prosperity, they made war on the
Samaritans, took Shechem, and destroyed the temple on
Gerizim. Next, they laid siege to Samaria, which at last
surrendered under stress of famine ; they razed it to the
ground, and kept a special festival in honour of its fall.
Ever after that the feeling between the Jews and the
Samaritans was very bitter : and from time to time
something was done which made it still more so. Thus,
in the year a.d. io, when Jesus was a boy, a party of
Samaritans contrived to enter the temple at Jerusalem
at midnight, during the feast of the Passover. Under
the cover of the darkness they strewed the sacred courts
with human bones, thus making them all unclean. The
Jews retorted by excluding the Samaritans for ever even
from the outer courts, which had hitherto been open to
them. They were publicly cursed in the synagogues ;
their evidence was not received in courts of justice. The
Samaritans retaliated in their turn. They refused
lodging to those who were going up from Galilee through
their country to the feasts at the capital. Year by year
the Jews of Jerusalem used to communicate to their
countrymen in Babylon the exact day and hour of the
rising of the Paschal moon by a series of beacon fires

22 The Country [§6
which flashed from hill to hill, till the tidings were carried
from the Mount of Olives to the banks of the Euphrates.
With this the Samaritans would sometimes interfere,
confusing the watchers by kindling flames at wrong
seasons on their own mountains. All this kept up the
hatred between the two nations. The Jews insulted the
Samaritans by calling them Cutheans, from the city of
Cuthah from which their ancestors had come — a name
intended to remind them of their foreign origin. They
classed them with the heathen ; they declared that to
eat their food was no better than eating unclean swine's
flesh ; they would not allow them to join their religion :
they refused them any part in the coming glories of the
Messiah's reign (§ 44). Some, however, with a more
generous feeling, triumphing over differences of race and
ancient wrongs, said ' a Cuthean is an Israelite in all
things.' § 6. East Jordan Lands.
[Merrill, East of the Jordan.']
Across the Jordan lay several districts varying in
character and people, some of which are named in our
Gospels. On the south-eastern slopes of Mount Hermon
lay the small territory of Iturea ; its rocky ravines were
the home of wild and lawless tribes, famous for their
skill and courage as archers and horsemen, who hved by
plundering raids on the peaceful dwellers in the plains
beneath. Further to the south-east, bordering the plain
of Damascus and the desert, was Trachonitis (the ' rugged
land '), a mass of basaltic rock inhabited by people even
wilder than the Itureans. They had often no other
homes than the caves in which the district abounded,
where they and their cattle hved together. The capital

§6] East Jordan Lands 23
of this region, however, Canatha, belonged to the group
of towns known by the Greek name of Decapolis (' ten
cities '). Two of these, Scythopolis or Beth Shean, and
Hippos, have been already named (pp. 16, 18) in con
nexion with Galilee and its lake. Another city reckoned
in the same circle was Gadara, a httle south-east of
Hippos, above the ravine of the Jarmuk. Like Scyth
opolis and Hippos, it was chiefly inhabited by Greeks ;
and its remains show with what splendid buildings it
was adorned. In the amphitheatre thousands of people
might assemble to witness the combats of wild beasts ;
while in a smaller theatre, with its tiers of seats carved
out of the rocky hill-side, they might enjoy the plays of
comic poets of their own city. The warm baths of
Amatha in the ravine below were esteemed by the Romans
second only to those of Baiae, on the shores of the Italy
they loved. Further south, along the forest-clad high
lands which in ancient days bore the name of Gilead,
stretched the district of Perea (' the land on the other
side,' i.e., of the Jordan) far down to the Dead Sea. This,
likewise, was very populous, and had its busy cities,
such as Gerasa, with splendid public buildings, amphi
theatre, colonnades, bridges, aqueducts. Towards its
southern border, on the steep slopes of Attains, over
looking the Dead Sea, stood the castle of Machaerus, a
mighty fortress, counted next to Jerusalem in strength,
designed to overawe the neighbouring Arabians. Its
massive walls guarded palace and dungeon with equal
security. It was the scene of the imprisonment and
death of John the Baptist.

24 The Country [§7
§ 7. Judaea.
[Edersheim, Jewish Social Life, p. 59.]
The southern division of Palestine was Judaea. The
Jews divided it into three parts, the Lowlands, the Hill
Country, and the Valley. The Lowlands stretched along
the coast upon the west. The Hill Country was reared
up on the central mountain mass. The Valley was the
deep depression through which the Jordan flowed, ending
in the trough of the Dead Sea. The Lowlands were all
astir with the trade which passed through their towns
to the cities of Phoenicia or the more distant ports of the
Mediterranean. But to the true Jew the Hill Country
was far dearer. It was more rugged, more barren, than
Galilee or Samaria. Its mountains were more lofty, its
valleys less beautifuUy wooded, its pastures more scanty.
But all the most venerable places of ancient days were
crowded into it. The pilgrim coming up from Galilee
to Jerusalem by the shorter road through Samaria passed
by Shiloh, which had been the religious centre of the
tribes after their first conquests : by Bethel, where Jacob
— so the legend ran — had seen the ladder reaching to
heaven : by Ramah, the home of Samuel, from which
came the first beginnings of monarchy and prophecy.
The caravans coming from the south were greeted by
like memories. There was Hebron, where tradition said
that ' Father Abraham ' himself lay buried. There was
Etam, where Solomon was supposed to have constructed
the great reservoirs which still bear his name. There
was Bethlehem, the village home of the first great race of
kings, whose name was for ever associated in the heart
of the Jew with all that was splendid in power and
tender in piety.

§ 7 3 Judsea 25
Those who approached Jerusalem from the Valley,
likewise came in the footsteps of the past. They crossed
the Jordan by a ford which the Israehtes of old had
trodden. They passed through Jericho, the scene of the
first conquest of the invading tribes. It lay several
miles from the river, on a higher level than the rest of
the plain, where streams from the mountains of Judah
secured a fertile tract in the hot and barren valley.
Around the city were palm-groves and rose-gardens ;
the roads were bordered with trees ; and behind the
royal castle was a precious plantation of the shrubs
which yielded the fragrant balsam. The trade in this
drug was very active and valuable, and the city had
become wealthy and important. It had its theatre, its
circus, its race-course ; and a new palace with extensive
gardens was added during the lifetime of Jesus. There
was a strange contrast between the luxuriant beauty of
Jericho and the wild country behind it. Deep ravines
came plunging down towards the valley of the Dead Sea
from the central highlands. The caves and fastnesses
among the rocks were the haunt of robbers ; here and
there some earnest spirit withdrawn from his fellow men
sought shelter in their solitudes. This whole region was
called the Wilderness. It was in these recesses that the
Essenes (§ 39) made their home. It was from here that
John came forth to preach the coming kingdom. Hither
Jesus may have retired after his baptism to think out
the great thoughts quickened within him. The way
from Jericho to Jerusalem lay through one of these
narrow valleys. A long ascent up a winding glen —
opening out in one place where a small spring supported
a clump of trees and a httle grass — led at length to the
eastern slopes of the Mount of Olives. Here stood and

26 The Country [§8
stiU stands the village of Bethany, which seems to the
traveUer who approaches it from below to occupy a
commanding position among its ohve and almond trees
on the hill-side. A httle further the brow of the moun
tain is reached. Beneath runs the vale of Kidron : and
on the other side, crowning the hills upon the west, in
tier after tier above the massive walls, temple and fortress,
palace and theatre, market and house, rises the city of
Jerusalem. § 8. Jerusalem.
[Edersheim, The Temple, its Ministry, etc., p. i ; Besant and
Palmer's Jerusalem, The City of Herod and Saladin ; G. A.
Smith, Jerusalem, 2 vols., 1907.]
The first and most striking feature of the city, especi
ally to a traveller coming from the east, is the group of
hills on which it lies. Of these three were occupied at
the time of Jesus. The lowest and most easterly, hang
ing over the vale of Kidron, opposite the Mount of
Olives, was Moriah, whose summit was 2,425 feet above
the sea. On this stood the Temple, surrounded by its
splendid courts and colonnades (§ 29). The southern
end of the Temple buildings was built up with massive
masonry across the slope named Ophel, and stretched
to the valley on the west, which ran up into the heart of
the city, separating Moriah from the Western hills. This
was known in the time of Jesus as the Cheesemakers'
Valley. The sides were crowded with houses rising
steeply one above another ; a bridge led over it from
the Temple-mountain to the busy city ; and it was also
crossed by an aqueduct constructed by Pilate, conveying
waters from the pool of Etam, south of Bethlehem, to

§ 8 ] Jerusalem 27
the city and Temple. At the end of a long ridge which
sloped gently from north to south and out-topped the
Temple-mountain by 112 feet, lay the Upper City :
northwards, on Akra, beyond the head of the Cheese-
makers' Valley was the Lower City. Altogether, Jeru
salem was not much more than about three miles round.
The whole of this great irregular mass was carefully
guarded with walls and towers, so that to foreigners it
looked at first sight like an immense mountain fortress.
But soon the several groups of buildings began to
stand out more clearly. There was, first of all, the
Temple, with its holy house rising above the wide area
of its sacred precincts. The pure white marble of which
it was built glowed in the sunshine, which was flashed
again and again from the golden spikes studding the roof.
One of its gates was of dazzling Corinthian brass ; others
were overlaid with gold and silver. At its north-west
corner stood the great pile known as the castle of Antonia;
it had been enlarged by Herod, and was afterwards
occupied by the Romans. Here were the governor's
palace, and barracks for the garrison. In the Cheese-
makers' Valley, west of the Temple, near the bridge,
was a great gymnasium, or place of exercise ; there, too,
it would seem, a market-place, a race-course, a theatre.
The city business was transacted in the Council House,
and the records were laid up in the depository of the
Archives. The slopes on the west were partly covered
with the gardens, courts, and halls of a new palace of
Herod, protected with towers of unusual strength, and
shut off from the busy city by a high wall. Over the
hills beyond stretched gardens and orchards : and the
sides of the upper end of the ravine of Hinnom, which
swept past the west and south sides of the city hills on

28 The Country [§8
its way to the valley of the Kidron, were green with
olive trees.
The streets of the city — East Street, Baker Street,
Fish Street, ran their names — were close and narrow :
and within its limited area a considerable population
must have been crowded together. There are no means
of determining the actual number of permanent residents •
guesses run from 50,000 to five times that number. The
city had, indeed, no special trade ; but it was the centre
of Israel's religion, the centre of its learning, and the
centre of its government. Troops of Priests and Levites
were gathered round the Temple ; and there, too, were
the great schools, in which the famous Professors taught ;
for the Temple was Cathedral and University in one.
Crowds of students flocked hither from all parts of the
world. Multitudes of artisans and mechanics, masons,
carpenters, workers in gold and silver, musical instru
ment makers — as many, indeed, it is said, as 18,000 —
were employed by the Herods in the works connected
with the Temple, from 20 B.C. onwards. All these must
have hved in or near the city. Then there were the
lodging-house keepers, who provided accommodation
for the bands of pilgrims and visitors thronging Jeru
salem at all seasons, and especially at the feasts. All
sorts of trades were carried on to meet their wants, as
the names of the Bazaars show : there was the Timber
Bazaar, the Tailors' Bazaar, the Wool Bazaar, the
Braziers' Bazaar. There were the purveyors of the
different kinds of animals needed in the Temple offer
ings, of oil, and wine, and wood ; provision dealers, with
fish from the Lake of Galilee or Tyre, grapes from Hebron,
lentils from Egypt, whose booths were ranged along both
sides of the street ; tailors, sandal-makers, jewellers (who

§ 8 3 Jerusalem 29
even sold false teeth mounted in gold), armourers, all
working in the open air ; donkey drivers, with a stand
at the corner of two thoroughfares, where the patient
animals stood ready to be mounted, or to be loaded with
burdens. What a variety of peoples met in the streets —
Jews from every part of the known world, Phoenicians,
Arabs, Greeks, Romans ! How many languages were
spoken, what differences of colour, look, habit, manner,
dress, must have been seen ! We can form some httle
notion of the multitude, and the far-off lands from which
they came, from this one circumstance, that Jerusalem
was said to contain no less than 480 synagogues. This
number is no doubt exaggerated ; it may possibly have
had some symbolic meaning now lost to us ; but it shows
us the variety of the people whose chief concern was with
religion. The people loved their capital for its ancient
fame ; but still more because it was, as they phrased it,
the place which their God had chosen to set his name
there. Of all the cities of Israel, this was pre-eminently
the ' Holy City.' It was the seat of their faith on earth,
the counterpart of one more glorious beyond the sky,
reserved above till the hour should come for it to descend,
and fling wide its gates for those whose names were in
scribed in the book of hfe to enter in.

Chapter II
THE PEOPLE
§ 9. The Jewish Stock.
The inhabitants of Palestine were really of very mixed
origin. The Jews themselves belonged, like the Canaan-
ites whom their forefathers found in the country when
the tribes of Israel entered it, to the great Semitic race.
This name is derived from Shem, the eldest son of the
hero of the great Flood. The table of Noah's descendants
in Genesis x. is in reality a survey of the nations of the
world as they were known to the authors of the docu
ments out of which the book of Genesis was compiled.
They are distributed under the three names of Shem,
Ham, and Japheth. The classification is by no means
scientific. It depends rather on geographical and polit
ical relations ; some nations are included under Shem
which belonged to quite different stocks ; and others
are omitted which are unquestionably akin. Modern
students reckon language as one of the chief tests of
racial connexion, though it must be taken with some
qualifications, as conquering nations sometimes impose
their speech upon the peoples which they subdue, and
elements of various origins may thus become intermixed.
The group of languages to which the Hebrew of the Old
Testament belongs was spread in the North from the

§93 The Jewish Stock 31
valley of the Euphrates and the Tigris across to Syria
and Palestine ; the Arabian tribes represented another
branch of the same stock ; and this ancient speech is
actually found on the other side of the Red Sea, under
the name of Ethiopic in the highlands of Abyssinia.
How long the Canaanites had occupied the country
before the Israehtes began their conquests we do not
know. There are no great historic monuments in Pales
tine like those of Egypt or Babylonia. But the spade
which has been used with such effect beside the Nile and
the Euphrates, at the sites of Troy or Mycenae, has been
recently employed by skilled investigators (English, Ameri
can, and Continental) on some of the mounds of Pales
tine with remarkable results. For instance, at Gezer, 19
miles W.S.W. of Jerusalem, important discoveries have
been made. It had been a Canaanite city under the
suzerainty of the Egyptian kings. It was still a strong
fortress in the days of the Maccabees, a century and a
half before the time of Christ. It stood near the end of
a ridge of hills, looking over the lowlands, as far as Joppa
and the sea. It had suffered siege after siege ; it had
seen the armies of Egypt, of Assyria, of Greece, and
Rome, pass along the plain below. When the contents
of the great mound were laid bare, it was found (as in
other cases in Palestine itself, in Babylonia, in Asia
Minor) that layers of dwellings could be traced one below
another, showing that there had been a succession of
cities on the same spot. No less than seven could be
thus distinguished ; and the two lowest belonged to an
earlier occupation than the Canaanite. The people were
smaller in stature ; they hved in cave-dwellings ; they
used the weapons of the later Stone-age. They made
rude pottery ; they had learned how to domesticate

32 The People [§9
animals ; they could even draw cows and buffaloes.
Whence they came and how long they had been there,
it is impossible to tell.
But probably by the middle of the third mUlennium,
about 2,500 B.C., the Canaanites were in possession.
They used bronze and copper, but had not yet learned
to work in iron. Their arts were connected with Phoe
nicia further north, and with Egypt in the south. Their
culture and language spread through the country ; they
built cities, they established their sanctuaries, they
developed trade ; and the wealth and fertility of the
land attracted the attention of the great powers of
Babylonia and Egypt. Historic detail is wanting,
though an inscription of Thothmes III describing his
conquests (1480 B.C.) had long been known — he mentions
119 places within or near the borders of Canaan — but
one significant fact came to hght nearly thirty years ago.
At Tell-el-Amarna on the Nile, 190 miles by river south
of Cairo, some 300 clay tablets were discovered, inscribed
not in Egyptian but in the cuneiform (or wedge-shaped)
writing used in the valley of the Euphrates. They con
tained the correspondence of Egyptian governors in
cities of Canaan, and foreign kings between Cyprus and
Assyria, who communicated (about 1,400-1,350 B.C.)
with the Egyptian sovereigns Amenhotep III and Amen-
hotep IV in the Babylonian language and character.
The Canaanite peoples must have been long under
Babylonian sway for this usage to become estabhshed.
The Canaanites who spread through the country, them
selves spoke a language closely allied with the Hebrew
of the tribes of Israel.1
1 Cp. Dr. Driver, Modern Research as illustrating the Bible, 1909.

§93 The Jewish Stock 33
Entering the country in the thirteenth century, B.C.,
the Israehtes gradually won their way by conquest,
and by peaceful extension ; and in the course of time
they spread over the whole land. But as when the Nor
mans conquered England, the Normans were really much
fewer than the Enghsh already in the country, so the
invading Hebrews were at first far outnumbered by the
Canaanites ; and it was not till after several hundred
years that they were thoroughly blended into one nation.
Then came the great disasters which befell the Hebrew
State. First, the Northern kingdom of the Ten Tribes
was overwhelmed by the Assyrian power ; and the great
bulk of the wealthier people were carried away never to
return. By and by a similar fate overtook the Southern
kingdom of Judah. Its nobles, its priests, all the richer
classes and persons of importance, were transported to
Babylonia. But the country was never left altogether
desolate. The poor tillers of the soil, the descendants
of the old Canaanites, remained. They continued as
they were before ; they kept up the same names for the
old hills and plains, the old towns and villages ; and they
practised many of the religious customs which they had
never abandoned from the earliest times. After a time
many of the Jews of the old Southern families returned
from their captivity, they gradually reoccupied their
ancient homes, and the same process of amalgamation
with the rest of the people of the land went on as before.
In the North, however, the situation was somewhat
different. When the Assyrians made their first descents
upon Galilee, the usual practice of deporting the popu
lation was carried out by Tiglath-Pileser in 738 B.C.
Their places were supphed by colonists brought from the
east, some of whom were not of Semitic race at all (cp.p.20) .

34 The People [§9
Very few Jews were to be found in the country when the
Maccabean leaders overthrew the Syrian tyranny, and
these were transferred to Jerusalem in 164 B.C. It was
not till sixty years later that Aristobulus (105-104), the
first among the Maccabean princes to take the title king,
succeeded in once more settling Jews in Galilee. Many
elements thus mingled in the population.
In particular these affected the common speech of the
people. The old language, Hebrew, in which the ancient
Law, the discourses of the prophets, the Temple-psalms,
and the traditions of the nation, were written, ceased to
be commonly spoken except in the sacred Schools. It
was still the language of religion ; hymns were written
in it ; national chronicles were composed in it ; but it
was not understood by everybody ; and even in the
synagogue service it was necessary, when the Scriptures
were read, for them to be translated verse by verse into
the popular dialect. This was called Syrian or Aramean
(from Ardm, the Old Testament name for Syria) . Several
words still remain in our Gospels which show us, even
through their Greek spelling, that this was the language
actuaUy spoken by Jesus and his foUowers. Thus Raca
(Matt. v. 22) ' empty fellow,' mammon (Matt. vi. 24)
' wealth,' Talitha cumi (Mk. v. 41) ' maiden, arise,' Abba
(Mk. xiv. 36) ' Father,' are all regular Aramean words.
So are the words spoken by Jesus on the cross, Eli, Eli,
lama sabachthdni? (Matt, xxvii. 46), ' My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me ? ' Many names present
the same Aramean forms, such as those beginning with
Bar, ' son,' Bar-Jonah (Matt. xvi. 17), ' Son of Jonah,'
Barabbas, Bartholomew.
. But though the language had thus to some extent
changed, the Jewish people clung with great firmness to

§io ] Foreign Elements and Influences 35
the thought that they were still the same nation : they,
like their forefathers, were the descendants of Abraham,
whom they loved to call ' Father ' ; they were the
children of the men who had come out of Egypt, had
wandered in the wilderness, had conquered Canaan, and
once, at least, under David and Solomon, had risen as
a State to power and eminence. They earnestly cher
ished the idea which they found in their ancient books,
that they had been chosen by God out of the other
nations of the world, to be a pecuhar people to him.
They could not forget the incidents of their past ; they
felt they had a special claim to the land in which they
hved, and they looked down upon all other peoples who
could not show the same evidences of divine favour. We
shall see hereafter how this sense of being a nation
blended with their rehgion and affected their whole life
(see Chapter IV). They might be carried away as
slaves to Rome, they might be merchants or teachers
in Alexandria, they might be poor handicraftsmen away
in Babylonia ; but they were still one people, with one
law, one faith, because they were all of one parentage.
Every Jew was proud to belong to the ' seed of Abraham.'
§ 10. Foreign Elements and Influences.
[Edersheim, Jewish Social Life, p. 14.]
The Jews at the time of Jesus, it has been said, felt
themselves one nation ; they had one rehgion, one God.
But it had not always been so. In the earher days of
their history they had been constantly in contact with
other nations, from whom they had adopted other beliefs
and other kinds of worship. Some of these they learned
from the old Canaanites, some from the Phoenicians,

36 The People [§io
some from the peoples of Mesopotamia. Against these
their prophets were constantly contending. After the
captivity they made a great effort to put away every
thing that could tempt them to their former idolatries ;
they wished to protect themselves as carefully as they
could against whatever might draw them away from
being faithful to their rehgion. The truths of this
rehgion they had only won by long struggle and bitter
suffering, and they could not bear to see them again
endangered. Hence they sought as far as possible to
hedge themselves round with sheltering safeguards.
They avoided intermarriage with people not of their
race ; they would not accept the proffered aid of the
Samaritans in rebuilding their Temple (§5).
But they could not long keep entirely to themselves.
The position of their country was such (§ 2) as to expose
them, in spite of themselves, to constant influences from
without. Even if they could escape any more influence
from the peoples of the great Mesopotamian valley in
the East, they could not shut out the culture of the
Western lands of the Mediterranean. It was by the
conquests of Alexander the Great, the famous king of
Macedon, that the way was opened from the West to
the East. His victories over Tyre and Gaza in 332 in
volved the downfall of the Persian supremacy in Pales
tine, and Jerusalem passed under Greek rule. Greek
cities began to spring up within the limits of the Holy
Land. Greeks occupied the old Philistine towns along
the South- West coasts ; Greeks colonized the upper
valley of the Jordan and the heights upon the East.
Greek gods, Zeus, Apollo, Athene, Artemis, Pan, were
worshipped in the temples ; their names and images
appeared upon the city coins. On the borders of Galilee,

§10 J Foreign Elements and Influences 37
touching the lake at Hippos, lay the district of the Ten
Cities, whose Greek name, Decapolis, betrays their
origin (§ 6). The restless activity of Herod must have
considerably increased the importance of the Greek
element in Palestine. They formed the majority of
the inhabitants of his beautiful city of Caesarea-upon-
the-Sea ; their language gave its name to Sebaste, the
Greek form of the Latin Augusta ; and their religion
found a new home in its temples. It was the same with
the new cities of Galilee, Caesarea Philippi, Juhas,
Tiberias ; everywhere Greeks were settled, carrying with
them their language, their manners, and their deities.
Beside the temples stood the baths, the theatre, and the
race-course ; and games were established after the model
of the famous contests of their fatherland.
The Jews could not remain whoUy unaffected by all
this, for good or for bad. On the one hand, the Greek
culture had about it a freedom and variety unlike any
thing which the Jews had ever possessed. On the other
it might prove very dangerous to the purity and sim
plicity of their virtue, and the strictness of their faith.
Some, therefore, were much attracted towards it ; others
were vehemently opposed to it. It became fashionable
among the rich, who were often indifferent to rehgion ;
it drew to it for a long time some of the noblest famihes
even in the priesthood. Men gave up the ancient names
of their forefathers to call themselves by Greek names.
Thus the high priest Joshua changed his name to Jason ;
in 174 B.C. he erected a gymnasium at Jerusalem, where
Greek teachers instructed Jewish youths in the arts of
wrestling, running, leaping, and similar exercises prac
tised in Greece. The Jews could never forget what
followed. Their Syrian overlord, Antiochus Epiphanes,

38 The People [§io
was resolved to force the people to abandon their rehgion ;
in 168 he seized Jerusalem, and did his best to convert
it into a heathen city. The worship of Yahweh was
stopped in the temple. Over the great altar of burnt
sacrifice was constructed a smaller one, dedicated to
Olympian Zeus ; and King Antiochus boasted that he
had made an end of the deity of the Jews. This was
more than the Jews could bear. A terrible struggle
began ; the persecution was severe ; the resistance
stubborn. It was the martyr age of Judaism, and left
deep traces on the national thought and feeling. The
heroic courage of the Maccabees at length restored
liberty of worship to the people, and from that time
onward no similar attempt was made again.
The more rigid Jews endeavoured to avoid all contact
with everything heathen. They aimed at complete
separation. All heathen houses were unclean, and en
trance into them involved poUution. So they would
have as little to do as they could help with the products
of heathen industry. They would use no milk or oil or
wine in private from a Gentile farm or vineyard ; still
less would they employ it in sacrifice ; though they did
not object to buy it for trading purposes to sell again.
In spite of these efforts, however, there was a large in
fusion of Greek ways in Jewish society during the age
before Jesus. Greek personal names, such as Andrew
and Philip among the disciples of Jesus, were freely used.
That the porch and colonnade of the Temple should be
designated by Greek terms, Stoa and Exedra, is not
altogether surprising, as foreign architects or workmen
may have introduced them. But even the supreme
council of the Jews bore a Greek name ; the term San-
hedrin being the equivalent of the Greek synedrion, an

§10] Foreign Elements and Influences 39
assembly. The names of some of the musical instru
ments supposed in the book of Daniel to be employed
at the court of Nebuchadrezzar in Babylon are Greek ;
this is a clear sign of the presence of one mode of Greek
art. But the book of Daniel was really written in
Palestine, and belongs to the time of Antiochus and the
Maccabees. Many words for industrial processes such
as spinning, weaving, fish-curing, and writing were
Greek ; so were the terms of travel, inn, harbour, and
navigation. Foreign objects of commerce, luxury, and
manners — the games, the bath — bore Greek names.
With Greek words came also something of Greek
philosophy. One book in the Old Testament, Eccle-
siastes, written perhaps a hundred years or thereabout
before Jesus, shows many marks of acquaintance with
some of the chief Schools of Western thought. The Jews
who settled abroad necessarily felt this more than those
who remained in Palestine ; they had to hve among the
Greeks in their own cities ; and in Alexandria, in par
ticular, Judaism took quite a special form of its own.
This was due very much to the desire to harmonize the
teachings of the old rehgion with the new thoughts of
Greek wisdom. But many who remained in Palestine
distrusted this tendency. When the sacred books were
translated into Greek for the benefit of the Greek-
speaking Jews at Alexandria, who had lost the know
ledge of Hebrew, there was great grief in Jerusalem.
The strict national party would have nothing to do with
Greek literature. They wished to keep out all ways of
flunking that might weaken their own rehgion. No
thing was to be studied but that — no science, no poetry,
save what was in their own books. ' When may Greek
learning be taught ? ' it was asked. ' When it is neither

40 The People [§io
day nor night,' was the reply, ' for it is written concern
ing the Law, "Thou shalt study it day and night." '
They declared those who followed it unfit to share the
glories of the coming age to which they looked forward ;
just as half a century ago good orthodox people in this
country did all they could to discourage the study of
German. ' Cursed is the man who rears pigs,' they
cried ; ' Cursed is the man who teaches his son the
Greek learning.'
Perhaps in Galilee Jesus would know httle of these
philosophical tendencies, and the opposition which they
provoked. It is doubtful whether he could speak Greek ;
it is not at ah likely that he read any Greek books. But
it was different in Jerusalem. Among the number of
synagogues there (§ 8), were some for the Greek-speaking
Jews from Egypt and elsewhere ; and some of the more
liberal teachers in the great schools of the capital had
penetrated deeply into the foreign learning. Had it
not been for one of these Greek-speaking Jews, trained
at the feet of a Rabbi, specially renowned for his liberal
sympathies and his knowledge of Greek wisdom — had
it not been for Paul, the disciple of Gamaliel — the
whole story of early Christianity might have run a dif
ferent course. The ' new teaching ' (Mark i. 27) might
never have been set free from the restrictions of the
Mosaic law ; the barriers between Jew and Greek might
have remained unbroken ; and ' the spirit of hfe which
was in Jesus Christ ' might have failed to escape from
the limits of nationality, and have faded away instead
of setting out to win the world.

§ ii ] Occupations 41
§ 11. Occupations.
[F. Delitzsch, Jewish Artisan Life ; Edersheim, Jewish Social
Life, p. 182.]
From early days the land of Canaan had been the
scene of a busy active hfe. Even before Moses its hills
were crowded with httle towns : sheep browsed on its
highland pastures ; fields of grain covered the plains ;
the vine, the ohve, and the palm were carefully culti
vated. The Egyptian monuments as early as 1700 B.C.
show us how important was the trade with Canaan.
Corn, wine, oil, honey, and dates were all exported to
the south. Wool from the downs beyond the Jordan
was woven into rich stuffs in the looms of Phoenicia ;
the linen manufacture could compete with that of the
valley of the Nile ; and balsam for embalming the dead,
and the fragrant storax for incense in the temples, were
likewise favourite articles of traffic. Thus, when the
Hebrews entered Canaan, they found a people already
there in possession of the arts of life ; and they learned
from them how to till the soil and grow the vine, the
ohve, and the fig. Large flocks and herds roamed over
the uplands, for they never gave up their pastoral occu
pation ; but they became by their settlement an agricul
tural people, and the hymns in which they sing of the
richness and fertility of their land and thank God for
his good gifts, show us how dearly they loved this mode
of hfe. But they acquired by degrees a knowledge of all
kinds of trades as weU ; they opened mines for iron and
copper ; with the help of the Phoenicians they learned
the arts of building ; they were carpenters, smiths,
masons ; they made beautiful furniture, costly vessels,
embroidered robes, fine jewels, musical instruments. So

42 The People [§u
they recognized the place which labour must fill in
society, and they counted it honourable. ' There is no
trade,' said their wise men, ' which the world can spare.'
' When a man teaches his son no trade, it is as if he
taught him highway robbery.' ' Without these ' — so
run the words of one of their sages — ' cannot a city be
inhabited . . . they maintain the state of the world '
(see the whole passage, Ecclus. xxxviii. 24-34).
The different trades in the time of Jesus had formed
themselves into guilds, such as carpenters or fullers.
In some of them, the men were pledged to mutual help :
thus, the waterman and the ass-drivers bound them
selves to replace at the cost of the corporation the boat
or the ass of any member which had not been lost by
mere carelessness. Different parts of the country had
their own forms of industry. Galilee was famous for its
corn, and on the lake the fishing trade was of great
importance. Taricheae, at its southern end (p. 18), was
its chief centre. There the fish were dried, cured, and
packed for exportation. There, too, was a great ren
dezvous for boats, and Josephus teUs us that on one
occasion during the great war with the Romans he
assembled there as many as 240. The manufacture of
nets, tackle, etc., was thus pretty active. Flax was
grown of different qualities, some coarse, some fine, and
dried in the sun on the flat roofs of the houses ; then it
was made into ropes, Arbel (near the lake, a httle west
of Magdala) being specially noted for its rope-walks.
The warm chmate of the lake of Galilee enabled the
indigo plant to be grown on its shores ; and Magdala,
on the western coast, was well known for its dye-works.
The rich pastures of Samaria, as of the uplands east of
the Jordan, were renowned for their breed of cattle.

§ ii 3 Occupations 43
At Jericho the groves of palms were very valuable ;
and still more the gardens devoted to the balsam shrub,
precious both as a perfume and for medicinal properties,
which were a source of revenue greatly coveted, tul at
last they fell into the hands of the all-devouring Romans.
Judaea was not so weU fitted for the growth of corn ;
but the fine turf of the downs near Hebron was thought
to nurture specially fat lambs for sacrifice. Vine culture
was general in the south ; the steep slopes of the hill
sides were cut into terraces carefully banked up with
stones to prevent the soil from being washed away. A
hedge, perhaps of prickly pear, was planted round, or a
wall was built, to keep out the wild boar, the jackal,
and the fox, or the human thief. In one corner rose a
tower for the vine-dressers to hve in : out of the solid
rock were hewn two vats, one below the other ; in the
upper one the grapes were crushed under the naked
feet of the treaders, and the juice thus pressed out ran
off into the lower one. Many of the hills about Jeru
salem were well covered with valuable trees. Bethany,
perhaps ' the house of dates,' was embowered in palms
Bethphage, ' the house of figs,' stood by a grove of fig-
trees. Olives and fig-trees clothed the slopes of the
Mount of Olives, otherwise known as the Mount of Oil
and the name Gethsemane, ' place of oil-presses,' shows
that the fruit was crushed upon the spot. Jerusalem
was not a manufacturing town ; but a great variety of
industries clustered round the Temple (§ 8) and as the
centre of the whole national hfe, not for the Jews of
Palestine only, but for those of the whole world, all kinds
of commodities were brought to its markets. The
parables of Jesus reflect something of these different
occupations. To Galilee belong the parables of the

44 The People [§n
field and the lake, of the farmer sowing his seed, the
fisherman casting his net, the shepherd losing one of
his sheep ; through Galilee passed the great trading
caravans, and here, likewise, we hear the story of the
traveUing merchant in search of a precious pearl. In
the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, on the other hand,
the scenery of the parables is taken from the vineyard ;
a favourite image is that of the fig-tree.
The hfe of labour was not thought mean or sordid ;
' the tradesman at his work need not rise,' they said,
' before the greatest Doctor ; though some kinds of
work, such as tanning and mining, ranked low, because
they were pecuharly dirty. It was the custom even for
famous teachers to work at some handicraft, for no
fixed fees were paid : teachers depended on the gratitude
of pupils or parents, or sometimes they shared in the
distribution of tithes for the poor, or received support
from the funds of the Temple. Sometimes they deliber
ately pledged themselves to the unworldly hfe. ' Hast
thou all thy life long seen a beast or a bird that hath a
trade,' asked a certain Rabbi Simeon : ' still are they
nourished, and that without anxious care. They are
created only to serve me, and shall not I expect to be
nourished without anxious care, who am created to
serve my Maker ? ' But the Talmud shows us the
Rabbis engaged in all kinds of trades. One is a cooper
in the httle town of Usha in Galilee ; he himself carries
to the school-house the cask which serves as his seat.
Another is a tailor, a shoemaker, a baker, a physician, a
carpenter, a needlemaker, an architect, a cook, a fisher
man, a smith, a potter, a dyer, even a grave-digger. It
was not so very surprising, then, for a carpenter's son or
a weaver of tent-cloth to become a teacher : and we need

§12] Rich and Poor 45
not imagine that people would think ill of Jesus or Paul
because they practised a trade. How healthy was the
spirit of the scholars in one of the famous Jewish schools
at Jabneh (Jamnia) on the maritime plain, who were
taught to say thus : ' I am God's creature, and the equal
of my fellow man ; I have my calling in the town, and
he his in the field ; I go early to my work, and he to his.
Even as he does not vaunt his work, so neither should I
mine ; and if thou say est to thyself, " I produce great
things, and he small," yet have we learnt that though
one produce great things and another small, yet shall
the like reward be to each, so far as his heart is, whilst
working, hfted up to God.'
§12. Rich and Poor.
[Edersheim, Jewish Social Life, p. 86.]
Palestine, in the time of Jesus, was "certainly a popu
lous country. It was covered with towns and villages,
and the people were constantly at work. We know that
there must have been a great deal of wealth, but there
must have been also a great deal of poverty and distress.
For a long time before the days of Jesus, until Herod
established himself in power (§ 21), the government was
very unsettled. There was frequent war ; the Romans
from the west, the Parthians from the east, swept through
the land. When the wars were over, there were left
only desolated fields and ruined villages. Then bands
of robbers appeared, especially in Galilee, where they
issued from the fastnesses of the glens, and extracted
from the unhappy people what httle of their substance
remained to them. But the fertility of the country was
so great, that the wealth thus destroyed was speedily

46 The People [§12
re-created. The strong hand of King Herod restored
order ; and prosperity soon set in. The immense works
which he executed must have required vast resources ;
and these were all drawn by taxation from his subjects.
He coUected large sums to pay the Romans : he raised
old cities from their ruins, and built new ones. Fort
resses and castles, temples and theatres, race-courses,
aqueducts, all bore witness to his love of display, and
still more to the wealth of the people. And as if this
was not enough, he made costly presents to foreign
cities, building walls round one, baths in another, por
ticoes, temples, theatres, in a third. He was only able
to do this by laying most oppressive taxes on the people,
even on the most necessary market-wares. In order to
strengthen himself in power, he enriched his own friends
with moneys and estates wrested from the Jews who were
unfortunate enough to displease him, and he very often
took away their lives as well as their property. After
his death the Jews sent an embassy to Rome, complain
ing bitterly of his recklessness and cruelty ; he had
enriched the cities in the neighbourhood, they said, but
these were inhabited by foreigners ; the Jews themselves
he had reduced to the greatest poverty.
Things were not much better during the youth of
Jesus, when the Romans finally took possession of the
country (§ 22). There was a desperate struggle ; soldiers
ravaged, robbers and slaves swarmed and plundered,
and the most frightful disorder prevailed. Hence it
came about that while some were very rich, most of the
people were but poorly off. The rich were often foreigners
or they might be Jews who had gained their wealth
in evil ways, as tax-gatherers (§ 25), by extortion and
violence. A few had large properties, but not many

§12] Rich and Poor 47
such hereditary estates were left ; there was no great
land-owning class ; there were no great manufacturers
or large industrial enterprises. Thus it might well
seem that the rich was generally the oppressor ; and
when the Jews passed directly under the Roman yoke
this feeling became still stronger. Again and again
complaints were lodged at Rome against the conduct of
the imperial officers. Their grasping avarice was never
satisfied. ' A poor man,' says one of the Roman his
torians, speaking of Quintihus Varus, governor of Syria
during the infancy of Jesus, ' a poor man he entered the
rich country, a rich man he left the country poor.' But
there were, of course, other causes of poverty besides
social oppression. The Wisdom books (Proverbs, Eccle-
siasticus) refer repeatedly to sloth, gluttony, drunken
ness, love of pleasure, gossip, want of thoroughness,
refusal of correction, bad company.
The Gospels show many traces of these grave in
equalities of rich and poor. The rich are always getting
richer, and the poor poorer. The wealthy do not know
howto employ their accumulating gains (Luke xii. 16 sqq.) ;
the needy do not know where to-morrow's bread is to
come from. The creditor arrests his debtor in the
street (Matt. v. 25), and throws him into prison, and there
is no release for him till the last farthing is paid. Only
in a story is anyone generous enough to remit the debts
due to him, whether they be fifty or five hundred pence
(Luke vii. 41, 42). The administrator of a province owes
the prodigious sum of ten thousand talents (Matt, xviii.
23, 24), and he and his family are doomed to slavery.
Money doubles itself with the utmost rapidity, or even
multiphes tenfold (Matt. xxv. 16, 17, Luke xix. 16). The
bankers have a busy time. While beggars are sitting in

48 The People [§12
the streets or lying at the doors of the houses of the rich
(Luke xvi. 20), the merchant turns aU his fortune into a
single pearl which he can carry about with him (Matt. xiii.
45, 46). Unfinished towers stand in the vineyards as
monuments of empty purses (Luke xiv. 28, 29). The
labourer digs up a treasure in the field he tills, hidden
there to be out of reach of thieves or tax-gatherers, and
now without an owner (Matt. xiii. 44). The destitute too
often appeal for help in vain (Matt. xxv. 42, 43) ; from
the petitions of the poor who have no security, the
wealthy turn contemptuously away (Luke vi. 30, 34,
Matt. v. 42).
So the condition of great numbers of the people was
one of poverty, if not always of actual want. If there
was a famine or a plague, whole districts were reduced
to beggary. In one of these periods of distress the
danger was so imminent, that Herod was actually
obhged to sell the costly furniture and plate of his palaces
to provide food and clothes for the temporary support
of fifty thousand men, and to furnish seed for distribu
tion among the ruined farmers.
Those who had trades and hved in the towns were
perhaps a little better off. But the way of hfe of the
poor in the east in the present day shows us something
not unlike what existed in the time of Jesus. Their
food was often scanty ; they ate httle meat ; their chief
subsistence was on different kinds of grain, vegetables,
such as lentils, beans, peas, onions, cucumbers, or dried
fruits ; the traveUer was provided with a day's meal if
he had a few dates, or a bunch or two of dried grapes,
to be washed down with water from some well. If he
had no lodging, he slept under an archway, or by such
shelter as a bare wall might afford. The wages of a

§12] Rich and Poor 49
day-labourer might, perhaps, as in one of the stories
of Jesus, be a denarius a day (commonly reckoned at
about ninepence). But it might be less. When Hillel,
afterwards the famous head of one of the great schools
at Jerusalem during the youth of Jesus (p. 132), first
came to Jerusalem, he worked as a journeyman, but
only received half a denarius a day, out of which he had
to support his family, and bribe the steward of the
academy which he desired to attend, to let him in. The
smallest coin, the mite which the poor widow put into
the Treasury (Mark xii. 42), was a quarter of a farthing.
Money was precious ; and the poor had httle to spend
for comforts or luxuries.
The common village house, occupied by an ordinary
artisan's family, could not, therefore, be very large.
The rent of a small house varied from about 7s. to 28s.
a year ; the rent of a larger house is computed at £9.
Sometimes it stood in a httle court, from which a stair
case ran up outside to the roof. There the farmer laid
out his figs and raisins to dry, or sunned his wheat or
his flax, unhurt by wild animals or thieves. From these,
too, perhaps, as in the present day, the pubhc crier
announced the orders of the local authorities (cp. Matt.
x. 27, Luke xii. 3). The roof, if necessary, could easily
be removed ; the marl, or earth, forming its top layer,
could be scraped back ; the short sticks underneath,
laid across the beams, could be taken up ;- or the tiles
and boards, or even the stone slabs, if there were any,
could be lifted; and a bundle of grain or straw, or a
mattress with a sick man upon it, could be let down
between the main beams (cp. Mark ii. 4, Luke v. 19) . The
roof was not high ; the rooms were low, and the houses
had often but one story. Here is a picture of an interior

50 The People [§12
which has perhaps but one room, drawn by Dr. Farrar :
' The mats or carpets are laid loose along the walls ;
shoes and sandals are taken off at the threshold ; from
the centre hangs a lamp, which forms the only ornament
of the room, in some recess in the wall is placed the
wooden chest, painted with bright colours, which con
tains the books, or other possessions of the family ; on
a ledge that runs round the wall, within easy reach, are
neatly rolled up the gay coloured quilts, which serve as
beds, and on the same ledge are ranged the earthen
vessels for daily use j near the door stand the large
common water-jars of red clay with a few twigs and green
leaves — often of aromatic shrubs — thrust into their
orifices to keep the water cool. At meal-time a painted
wooden stool is placed in the centre of the apartment,
a large tray is put upon it, and in the middle of the tray
stands the dish of rice and meat or stewed fruits, from
which all help themselves in common. Both before and
after the meal, the servant, or the youngest member of
the family, pours water over the hands from a brazen
ewer into a brazen bowl.'
The rich, on the other hand, often lived in great luxury.
They built splendid houses, where, behind the dull walls
which alone were seen from the street, there were
spacious courts and lofty rooms, decorated with costly
marbles. Here they collected expensive furniture, car
pets and curtains beautiful in colour and design, vessels
curiously wrought in glass or bronze, and jeweUed cups
for ornament or for the feast. Silk robes were highly
prized, but were very dear • so, too, was the purple wool
dyed with the gorgeous Tyrian hue. A lady's cloak in
a Jerusalem bazaar might cost as much as £36 of our
money ; a man's dress could be procured for £3 to £6

§ 13 1 Almsgiving 51
a slave's outfit was cheaper, about i8s. Those who were
comfortably off, hved weU, and often practised a gener
ous hospitality. The western style of serving the meals
had been adopted. The guests rechned on sofas or
couches placed round three sides of a table, so that the
feet lay outstretched behind. Goats, lambs, and calves
supphed the favourite food ;- more rarely beef or fowls ;
fish was a regular Sabbath dish ; the poorer people ate
locusts fried in honey, eggs, and soup. In the provision
markets at Jerusalem the prices of food sound to us
surprisingly low. ' A calf might be had for less than
fifteen shillings, a goat for five or six. Sheep were
dearer, and fetched from four to fifteen or sixteen
shillings, while a lamb might be had as low as twopence.'
An ass, an ox, a cow, cost from £3 to £6, a horse a little
more. But though these sums appear exceedingly small,
and it might seem as if all necessaries must be within
reach of every one, yet through all the evidences of wealth
and busy industry the cry of the poor is never far away ;
and in spite of efforts for its alleviation this deep-rooted
misery remained one of the constant dangers of Palestinian
society. §13. Almsgiving.
The presence of constant poverty necessarily stimu
lated goodwill, kind feeling, to make some efforts for its
rehef. There was, of course, no organization, no Poor
Law. The simplest way seemed to be to give money.
From the old days the Hebrew Prophets had again and
again distinguished themselves by upholding the cause
of the poor. ' Right the orphan, plead for the widow,'
cried Isaiah. The authors of the Deuteronomic Law in
stituted a tithe, to be levied every three years from the

52 The People [§14
produce of the land, for the poor. How far this was then
carried out we do not know. But though it seems to
have been enforced in later days, and every Israehte
was free to pluck and eat grapes, or ears of corn, this
was only an occasional help, and after the persecutions
and sufferings of the faithful in the second century B.C.,
there must have been times of great distress. No other
method of dealing with it was then known except alms
giving. This came to be so completely adopted as the
recognized mode of showing brotherly feeling, that it
was technically called by the common word for righteous
ness or ' goodness.' ' Alms,' it was said in the book of
Tobit, iv. 10, ' dehvereth from death ' ; later teachers
declared that ' through Alms a man partakes of eternal
life,' and it was even supposed that the giver could thus
rescue others from the pains of hell. Collections for
the poor were made every week in the synagogue, and
pious Jews were accustomed to give away large sums in
this sort of benevolent charity. It is, as we all know,
one of the forms of pubhc display of excellence which
Jesus most severely rebukes (Matt. vi. 1 sqq.) : but, on
the other hand, it is not surprising that when he desired
to detach people suddenly from the world, and draw
them into the circle of his followers, he should bid them
sell their property and distribute it among the poor.

§ 14. Slavery.
Besides free hired labourers, the Jews, like all other
nations of the time, also employed slaves ; but the form
of slavery which prevailed among them was not nearly so
harsh or cruel as that in the Roman empire. The old

§i43 Slavery 53
law allowed a Hebrew reduced to poverty to seU himself
as a slave to another Hebrew. But this did not last
for hfe, only for a term of six years ; in the seventh year
he was entitled to his hberty if he hked, and his master
was enjoined to give him a handsome present for his ser
vice. If he desired, however, to remain a slave (and this
shows that slaves might become strongly attached to
their masters, Exod. xxi. 5), he could be formally devoted
to servitude for the rest of his hfe. Afterwards another
arrangement was introduced by the transfer of the time
of hberation to the jubilee, every fifty years ; and no
option was given to the bondman under the later law to
remain a slave : no member of Yahweh's people could
permanently part with his liberty. So the slave-markets
of the great cities of the Mediterranean were unknown in
Palestine. The custom of reducing Hebrews to slavery among
themselves seems to have fallen gradually into disuse
after the exile : the slaves employed in Palestine in the
time of Jesus were probably mostly drawn from the
descendants of the old Canaanites, or from the surround
ing districts : though the case of the unmerciful servant
in one of the Parables of Jesus (Matt, xviii. 25) appears
to imply that even in his time a creditor might seize
the person of a debtor. (Some think, however, that
this is an instance of Roman rather than Jewish usage.)
The slaves seem to have been generally treated with
kindness. They worked in the fields, they shared the
household occupation, grinding the corn, baking, wash
ing, cooking ; they nursed the children ; in wealthy
families educated male-slaves acted as tutors to the
boys. They had no legal power, according to the Rabbis,
of holding property for themselves = though they might

54 The People [§15
be charged with the management of estates, and placed
in offices of high trust. The old law, it is true, regarded
the slave as httle more than a piece of goods of more or
less value ; some provision was made, it is true, to pro
tect him against brutal treatment from his master, but
it was not very satisfactory (see Exod. xxi. 20, 21, 26, 27,
etc.). But nothing hke the horrible barbarities frequent
among the Romans, who mutilated, tortured, and killed
their slaves as they liked, was ever tolerated among the
Jews. Nor were the Jews rich enough to rival the
Roman nobles, who kept slaves in their palaces by the
hundred and even by the thousand. Something was
done to encourage masters in setting their slaves free : a
master who had not granted freedom in his lifetime,
might give directions for it in his will, or he might make
a slave his heir, which implied that he would become a
freeman. The Pharisees (§ 38) are said to have been
specially opposed to the slave system, and the Essenes
(§ 39) rejected it altogether ; and the Rabbis did then-
best at least to secure some generosity and consideration
towards the bondman. Thus it is said in the Talmud :
' Beware of eating fine bread thyself and giving thy
servant black ; or of sleeping thyself on cushions, whilst
he lies on straw, especially when he is thy countryman
and feUow behever ; for he who takes a Hebrew slave
sets at the same time a master over himself.'
§ 15. Education.
[Edersheim, Jewish Social Life, pp. 103, 122 ; Oesterley and Box,
The Religion and Worship of the Synagogue, (1907) p. 272.]
The chief concern of the Jews was about their rehgion.
This was what they were most anxious to preserve ; and

§ 15 ] Education 55
they saw that for this end it was necessary to be very
earnest in training the young. Even in the early days
of religious reform in ancient times, when the great
struggle with idolatry was going on, the prophets had
striven to impress this on the people. ' Hear, O Israel,'
they cried : ' Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one ; and
thou shalt love Yahweh thy God with all thine heart,
and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And
these words which I command thee this day shall be in
thine heart : and thou shalt teach them diligently to
thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest
in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and
when thou liest down, and when thou risest up ' (Deut.
vi. 4-7). So pious parents knew that it was one of their
first duties to teach their children rehgion. But that
did not mean what is now commonly caUed education.
Not many in the old days could read and write : but
the traditions of the nation were handed down from
father to son by repetition from memory. Songs were
sung by the shepherds at the wells ; and the wisdom in
which men summed up their experience of hfe in short
pithy sentences, which we call proverbs, was carefully
treasured from the hps of father and mother, to be in
turn imparted to the children to come.
When the Jews returned from their captivity in Baby
lon, the circumstances of the next age were different.
They paid more attention to the collection and study of
their sacred books. These books were read in public
worship at their meeting-houses all over the land. Many
of their people went into foreign countries and settled
there : and many came from foreign countries to settle
in Palestine. Trades arose, and arts developed, and all
this made the need of the common elements of learning

56 The People [§15
strongly felt. The first schools grew up in Jerusalem,
and were chiefly occupied with the study of the sacred
Law. But they were mostly available only for the
people who hved near, or for the rich who could send
their sons from a distance. A great effort was made
accordingly, shortly before the year 70 B.C., to enforce
attendance at elementary schools in the larger towns.
' That the children shah go to the House of the Book '
ran the ordinance of the famous scribe, Simon, brother
of Queen Alexandra (78-69 B.C.). This, however, was still
a very insufficient provision : and in Galilee education
was particularly backward. By degrees, it would seem,
every synagogue had a school attached to it, taught by
the hazzdn or reader of the synagogue : but it is doubtful
how far this system extended in the time of Jesus. In
later days, after the fall of Jerusalem, the schools of
Galilee, especiaUy at Sepphoris and Tiberias, were very
famous. The Talmud has a great many names for a school,
some Jewish and some Greek : thus it was called the
' array,' or the ' vineyard,' where the scholars ' sat in
rows as stands the blooming vine.' Some of the Tal-
mudic proverbs show what importance was attached to
the school-training : ' Jerusalem was destroyed because
the instruction of the young was neglected ' ; ' the world
is only saved by the breath of the school-children ' ;
' even for the rebuilding of the temple the schools must
not be interrupted ' ; ' study is more meritorious than
sacrifice.' The instruction and study here named meant
the teaching of the sacred Law in which the truths and
duties of rehgion were contained. To this was added
the story of Israel's past history. ' Our chief care,'
said Josephus, giving an account of his people and their

§ 15 1 Education 57
usages, ' is to educate our children weU : and we think
it to be the most necessary business of our whole life
to observe the laws that have been given us, and to
keep those rules of piety that have been handed down
to us.' Or again, ' our law commands us to bring our
children up in learning, and to exercise them in the
laws, and make them acquainted with the deeds of their
forefathers, that they may imitate them ' : ' ask any
one of our people about our laws, and he will tell them
all more readily even than his own name, and this in
consequence of our having learned them immediately
as soon as ever we became sensible of anything, and of
our having them as it were engraven upon our souls.'
Instruction in the Scriptures was commonly begun
in the home, where the child learned to repeat short
sentences of Scripture. Few families probably possessed
an entire copy of the Law ; but small portions of it were
no doubt frequent, possibly, too, a roll of a prophet,
and selections from the Psalms used in pubhc worship.
Jesus, it is clear, was well trained according to the
method of those days in the laws, the traditions, the
prophetic oracles and the poetry of his country. He
stands up in the synagogue at Nazareth to read, and
the Hebrew scroll with its difficult characters, destitute
of vowels, yields its meaning to him at once, though
the language is no more that of his daily speech. He
is practised in the usual mode of interpreting the sacred
text, and can meet the learned scribes from the great
schools at Jerusalem on their own ground. He knows
something, perhaps, of other books in which the pas
sionate hopes of his people were taking shape (§ 43).
The larger culture won by the travelled Jews who
studied in the great library at Alexandria, or visited

58 The People [§16
Rome, does not come within his reach. He sees the
httle principalities around him in their quarrels, con
fusion, and disorder : but the vast empire of Rome,
with its wonderful civilization, appears only in the person
of its hated representatives on the governor's seat, or
at the tax-gatherer's receiving office : only far off and
dimly does he behold the great world-population, north
and south, and east and west. Of Greek science, with
its ideas of the fixed order of nature, he hears nothing.
But he is thoroughly at home on the hill-side and beside
the lake. He has learned to see in nature the expression
of the everlasting will ; in hours of daily energy and of
midnight prayer he has found the world the scene of
the presence of the living God. Nor has the wisdom of
his race failed him. Of that profound experience of
human hfe in which its traditions are so rich, he had
become the master. He understands its lessons ; he
gives them new force and meaning. He may share the
illusions of its antiquated astronomy, its ignorant
physiology : but these do not affect the essentials of
his thought. It was because these differed so widely
from the common style of religious teaching in his day,
not because he was without education, or because it
was impossible to be at once a teacher and an artisan,
that his hearers asked in amazement, ' Is not this the
carpenter ? ' (Mark vi. 3).
§ 16. Popular Beliefs : Angels.
The Jews had a great many curious behefs and practices
besides those which were specially enjoined in then-
books of religion. Some of these we can only infer
from passing allusions either in the Old Testament or

§16] Popular Beliefs: Angels 59
the New : of others we can gain some knowledge by
the study of their other books of history and tradition.
Among these behefs, which did not belong to the higher
part of their religion, was the behef in spirits. This
behef is so widespread among all kinds of people in what
may be called the pre-scientific stage, that it is practically
universal. It may be found now in Africa, Asia, India,
China, Australia, America : even in Europe it has not
altogether died out ; and we know that it existed among
the ancient races of Mesopotamia from whom the old
Canaanites and Hebrews borrowed so much. In all the
objects of nature they saw the abode of spirits ; in all the
changes and events of nature they saw the work of spirits.
All sorts of charms grew up by which it was sought to
control bad spirits and secure the favour of good spirits.
The Canaanites and Hebrews certainly shared this way
of looking at things to some extent, but it was modified
under the higher thoughts of religion, especially among
the Hebrews. The good spirits were ranged under the
government of their God, Yahweh : they became his
servants, his messengers, or as we call them (from the
Greek word with the same meaning) angels. They made
a kind of court or retinue round his throne in heaven ;
and thence they sped through the world to do his bidding.
They served his will in the breeze or the flame ; so it
was said of them poetically, ' He maketh the winds his
messengers, the flaming fire his ministers ' (Ps. civ. 4).
In the Book of Jubilees (probably of Pharisaic origin
shortly before 100 B.C.) God creates spirits of winds and
clouds, of hoar-frost, snow, and hail, of thunder and
lightning, of cold and heat, and the four seasons. So
the Book of Revelation mentions angels of wind, sun,
fire, and water. It was their duty sometimes to protect

60 The People [§16
and help the perishing, to provide food for the forlorn
and helpless, to guide the wanderer, or again they were
charged with more terrible tasks of chastisement and
desolation. There were angels or messengers of peace,
and there were angels or messengers of destruction and
death. There was something very beautiful about this notion.
It was as though the Hebrews felt that man could not
be at the head of all created things through the whole
world, whatever he might be on the earth. Between
him and God there must be higher and nobler beings :
and inasmuch as it was the greatest joy and privilege
for man to be the servant of Yahweh, the instrument
for carrying out his plans and purposes, so these more
glorious creatures, ' Sons of God,' as they were called
pre-eminently, must find their constant happiness, the
reason of their existence, in fulfilling his designs.
After the Babylonian exile, this behef became still
clearer and more definite. During the captivity the
Jews were brought under the Persian rule, and thus
came to know something of the Persian rehgion. The
Persians had a somewhat similar behef, and its forms
are thought to have had a good deal of influence on the
beliefs of the Jews. From this time onwards some of
the higher angels are called by special names, and appear
entrusted with great functions in the government of the
world. Four of them stood, one on each of the four
sides of God's throne, and from thence went forth to
the four quarters of the earth. Seventy angels presided
over the destinies of the seventy nations into which the
human race was supposed to be divided, the Jews being
under the pecuhar care of Michael and Gabriel. Beneath
these were innumerable multitudes of every rank, and

§17] Popular Beliefs: Demons 61
fresh ones were constantly being created. They sang
of the divine goodness and proclaimed the wonders of
his works, and made a community of blessed spirits filled
with love and joy and faithfulness. Some of lower rank
acted as protectors to individuals : each man had his
own guardian angel, or perhaps even two. The saying
of Jesus about the angels of little children (Matt, xviii.
io) seems to rest on this behef. They always ' see the
face ' of the Heavenly Father, i.e., they have immediate
access to him, instead of being obliged (as in the court
ceremonial of oriental sovereigns) to approach him
through intermediaries. So the awful interval between
man and his creator was fihed up with orders and ranks,
one above another, of grander and more splendid beings,
who hved only to serve, and gained thereby an abiding
gladness that needed for its utterance a whole eternity
of praise. § 17. Popular Beliefs: Demons.
But there was another side to the behef in spirits :
there were bad spirits as weU as good ; not less numerous,
and for the time quite as powerful. These spirits were
constantly doing all kinds of mischief. Every sort of
bodily malady was their work. In the old days it was
thought also that they brought bhght on the crops, they
sent hail, lightning, flood, and every destructive terror.
But they might be overcome by the skill of the wise ;
and so there arose all forms of magic, of enchantment,
and witchcraft, by which it was supposed that they might
be subdued and disarmed. The Canaanites and the
ancient Hebrews were greatly addicted to these prac
tices ; and though the prophets were never tired of

62 The People [§17
showing how inconsistent they were with the behef in
one God, Yahweh, and severe laws were passed to ex
terminate them, they were never really rooted out. On
the contrary, just as the doctrine of good spirits took a
higher form after the captivity, so also the doctrine of
bad spirits or demons (as we call them, after a Greek
word) became fuller and clearer. Curious conjectures
were made as to their origin : they had arisen out of
the soul of Adam after his first disobedience ¦ they were
the offspring of the intercourse between the ' Sons of
God ' and the daughters of men in the days before the
Flood (Gen. vi. 1-5) ; they were the spirits of the sinful
people who hved at the time of the deluge, or of the
impious men who built the Tower of Babel ; or they
were generated from the shades or the misdeeds of the
wicked. The whole world was full of them. They
roamed about, some in the morning, some at noon, to
seize the sleeper in his midday rest ¦ some at night,
when they sent lying dreams ; it was well therefore,
to avoid saluting anyone in the dark, for fear it might
be a demon ; and it was perilous to sleep in an empty
house, exposed to their attack. A thousand stood on
a man's left hand, ten thousand on his right : if his eyes
were opened to behold them, he would wonder how he
could exist at all. They lurked in certain shrubs : they
dwelt under gutters, in ruins, and above all, in the lonely
wilderness ; so that the desert Arab of the present day,
when he throws away a stone or a potsherd, begs the
pardon of any spirit whom it may happen to hit. They
were divided into orders ; some were ' injurers,' ' des
troyers,' and the like : they inflicted every kind of
disease, from the most trifling headache up to leprosy
and death.

§ 17 3 Popular Beliefs : Demons 63
But in particular every kind of nervous malady was
attributed to them. It was supposed among the Jews, as
among so many other races, both then and now, that
what we call epilepsy, paralysis, madness, was caused
by a demon who had entered the body of the patient,
and taken possession of it. Perhaps it prevented him
from speaking, and he was dumb ;• from seeing, and he
was blind ; from hearing, and he was deaf ; or it made
him tear his clothes to rags in frenzy, and drove him
out among the tombs outside the city, or into the wild
rocky sohtudes of the open country. It may be that
these forms of madness were more common at some
periods than at others, especiahy after times of public
excitement. But, at any rate, they were common in
the days of Jesus ; and there was a regular class of
persons whose business it was to cure these poor patients.
They went about carrying with them rare drugs or
curious amulets and charms ; they employed strange
spells, and made mysterious incantations. Many of
these magic arts were, no doubt, very old, and had been
handed down for many generations. In particular, they
invoked the aid of Solomon, famous for his reputed
wisdom and wonderful knowledge of all the properties
of herb and animal. He was supposed to have great
authority over these spirits. Here is a story which
Josephus tells of what he had himself witnessed. ' I
have seen a certain man of my own country, whose name
was Eleazar, releasing people that were demoniacal in the
presence of Vespasian, and his sons, and his captains,
and the whole multitude of his soldiers. The manner
of the cure was this : — he put a ring that had a root of
one of those sorts mentioned by Solomon to the nostrils
of the demoniac, after which he drew out the demon

64 The People [§17
through his nostrils, and when the man fell down imme
diately, he adjured him to return into him no more,
making still mention of Solomon, and reciting the in
cantations which he composed. And when Eleazar
would persuade and demonstrate to the spectators that
he had such a power, he set a httle way off a cup or
basin full of water, and commanded the demon as he
went out of the man to overturn it, and thereby to let
the spectators know that he had left the man ; and when
this was done, the skill and wisdom of Solomon were
shown very manifestly.'
Just as there were supposed to be ranks and grades
among the good spirits, so likewise were there among
the evil spirits. The chief spirits were known by different
names. There was, for instance, Azazel, for whom, on
the most solemn day of all the Jewish year, the Day of
Atonement, a goat was driven from the Temple into the
wilderness, bearing away with it (in symbol) from the
holy place the sins of the whole people. There was,
again, Asmodeus (Hebrew Ashmedai, Persian Aeshma
daeva), the demon-king (Tobit iii. 8, 17, etc.) ; there was
Beelzebub, whose name was apparently softened from
Baalzebub, the old fly-god of the Philistine city of Ekron
(2 Kings i. 2), better known by the title of ' the Sdtdn,'
which first denoted the ' adversary,' and afterwards
became a proper name. It does not occur in any Hebrew
book which can be positively dated before the Captivity ;
and the clear place assigned to Satan in subsequent
hterature may be partly due to the Persian influence
already mentioned. Satan is the head of all the powers
of evil : and it is an interesting sign of the way in which
Hebrew feehng changed, that the same act which in an
early book was attributed to Yahweh (2 Sam. xxiv. 1),

§17] Popular Beliefs: Demons 65
in a later book is referred to the Satan (i Chron. xxi. i).
The word devil is a modification of the Greek equivalent
of his name, diabolos, the ' slanderer,' who accuses men
before God day and night. He is pre-eminently ' the
Evil One ' j all wicked and unclean spirits stand beneath
his rule. He is the great enemy, constantly at war with
God, seeking in every way to mar his plans, and tempting
even his chosen servants. His sphere is the visible
world in its existing age ; and the Jews expressed their
view of the great strife always going on between good
and evil, by saying that his kingdom of wickedness must
be overthrown, and in its stead must be set up the king
dom of righteousness, the rule of God (Chap. VI).
When the Pharisees charged Jesus with casting out
demons by the demon-prince Beelzebub (Matt. xii. 24),
he replied by showing how absurd it was to suppose that
the Spirit of Evil would thus work its own undoing ;
and added ' If I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom
do your sons cast them out ? ' His power of control
was no exclusive gift ; others could expel demons as well
as he ; let his accusers ask them how they did it !

Chapter III
THE GOVERNMENT
§ 18. Native Tribunals : Local.
The government of the Jews was partly in their own
hands, partly in the hands of their overlords, belonging
to the Herod family (§ 21), and partly in the hands of
the Romans. In the old days they had adapted to then-
settled hfe in towns and villages the kind of local govern
ment which had prevailed in the tribes when they
marched together in the desert. In the family, disputes
were settled by the head of the family. In the com
munity they were settled by the heads of the chief
f amilies, who were chosen for the purpose. These were
often old men, though not always ; as a body, therefore,
they were called the Elders. This kind of local govern
ment still existed in the days of Jesus. The number of
the Elders varied : sometimes they were only seven ; in
larger towns they were twenty-three, the villages and
smaller towns being subordinated to the more important.
They gave judgment in civil cases, such as suits for
recovery of money, and claims for compensation ;- they
also heard criminal cases of theft and bodily injuries.
The larger tribunals seem even to have had (at any rate
at one time) the right of inflicting the punishment of
death for murder. These were not, however, the only

§ 19 ] Native Tribunals : the Sanhedrin 67
local courts. Matters had sometimes to be decided
which could not be brought under the civil law, and were
not of the nature of criminal offences. They might be
grave transgressions of religious truth and duty, in
cluding matters of ceremonial cleanness arising out of
contact with the heathen, cp. p. 129, and gross violations
of what was recognized as morally right. These were
brought before a religious court, composed of the officers
of the synagogue (§ 32). The investigations were some
times held in the meeting-house itself (Luke xii. n ; xxi.
12). The penalty might take the form of turning the
offender out of the synagogue, and refusing him ad
mission for the future, either for a limited time, or for
good ; a kind of excommunication which doubtless in
volved great social disgrace. Or actual chastisement,
such as flogging, might be administered in the synagogue
(Matt. x. 17 ; Mark xiii. 9) ; or, again, in very serious
cases, the persons of the accused might be seized, and
sent in chains to Jerusalem (Acts ix. 2 ; xxii. 5), the
centre of the entire national hfe.
§ 19. Native Tribunals : the Sanhedrin.
[G. A. Smith, Jerusalem, i. pp. 41 iff.]
At Jerusalem there were three courts to which appeal
could be made in succession, if the inferior courts had
been unable to agree on their decision. One of these
was the chief court for all Judaea. The most important,
however, was the supreme rehgious and legal assembly,
known by the name of the Sanhedrin. This institution
was not really very old in the time of Jesus, though the
Rabbis of later days, who loved to try and find a Mosaic
foundation for all their arrangements, used to say that

68 The Government [§19
it was the continuation of a council which they imagined
to have existed during the wanderings in the wilderness.
Its name, however, is of Greek origin (§ 10) ; it is the
same as synedrion, literally ' sitting together.' The term
is first used in history after Pompey's capture of Jeru
salem in 63 B.C. The Romans in arranging for the
government of the people 'continued, or possibly re
constituted, a Senate or Council, with powers of hfe and
death.' This council was called the Sanhedrin.
Its full number of members seems to have been
seventy-one, though it was not necessary for them all to
be present. A third of the whole body, twenty-three,
was required for a judicial vote. These members were
drawn from the Priests and Levites and those Jewish
f amilies of pure descent which had the right of marriage
with the priestly caste. They are described in the New
Testament (e.g. Matt. xxvi. 3, 57, 59 ; xxviii. n, 12 ;
Mark xiv. 53 ; xv. 1 ; Luke xxii. 66) as ' high priests,
elders, and scribes,' the term ' high priests ' deno
ting not only the high priest actually in office with his
predecessors who had filled the same post, but the re
presentatives of the high-priestly families. The presi
dent was the high priest for the time being. He sat in
the middle, and the other members were placed on his
right and left so as to form a semicircle. At each end
was a clerk or secretary ; one recorded the votes for
acquittal, the other those for condemnation. Ranged
in three rows on the floor in front were the disciples who
always attended the sittings ; they had their places
according to precedence, and from their number the
council chose the new members needed to fill the vacan
cies. The meetings were held at one time in a chamber
known as the Hall of Hewn-Stone on the south side of

§193 Native Tribunals : the Sanhedrin 69
the great court of the Temple ; but they might be
summoned elsewhere as, for example, at the high priest's
house. The Sanhedrin decided all cases not already deter
mined by the lower courts, and not reserved for the
Roman governor. Their civil jurisdiction was limited
to Judaea proper : but as their court was composed of
the most eminent men of the nation, they enjoyed the
respect of the entire people : and distant communities
in foreign lands submitted voluntarily to its religious
jurisdiction. They heard accusations of transgressions
of the law : they dealt with charges of blasphemy : they
tried the claims of false prophets. How far they had
the right to inflict the punishment of death, at least
under the Romans, is not certain : it is most probable
that they needed the sanction of the Governor, though
there are instances of their usurping this authority in
fits of tumultuous excitement.
The general rules of their procedure were intended to
secure proper deliberation and avoid undue haste. Any
member who had spoken in favour of the accused, in a
capital case, was not allowed afterwards to speak against
him ; though this prohibition does not seem to have
been imposed on those who, having first held him
guilty, came to regard him as innocent. The disciples
present might only speak for the defence, and not for
the prosecution. A verdict of acquittal might be given
the same day : condemnation must be deferred till the
next. For acquittal a bare majority sufficed ; for con
demnation a majority of at least two was required.
These are some of the rules which the later Rabbis
delighted to recaU. But in cases of violent feeling they
could easily be set aside, if they existed at all ; and in

70 The Government [§20
the wild scenes which accompanied the trial of Jesus
they were all swept away in the torrent of wrath and
hatred which bore him to his death.
§ 20. The Bomans.
The people of Israel had never been long left in then-
country undisturbed. In the earher times of their
history their land had been the highway of the con
quering armies of Egypt, of Assyria, of Babylonia. Then
followed the Persian supremacy ; after that came the
Greek. But the Greek power was destined in its turn
to give way to a still mightier force. The Romans had
slowly been building up their empire over the countries
of the Mediterranean ; and when the Jews, smarting
under the recent oppressions of Antiochus Epiphanes,
looked round for an ally, they cast their eyes westward
and found help in Rome. It was about the year 161 B.C.
that Judas Maccabaeus with the consent of the people
sent ambassadors to Rome. They were favourably
received ; a treaty of peace and mutual aid was con
cluded ; and for some time it seemed as if Israel might
once more aspire to its old independence. Its rulers
even revived the title of king, and regained most of the
dominions south of Damascus which had formed the
ancient empire of David in the great age of Israel's glory.
But this period of freedom did not last long. By
successive conquests Rome was absorbing piece by piece
the territories of the East. First Greece passed under
her sway ; then Asia Minor ; then Armenia ; then
Syria ; till the Roman troops lay on the borders of
Palestine. Was it to be expected that they would long
keep out of a land so fair and rich ?

§20] The Romans 71
Their interference was hastened by a dispute between
two of the Jewish princes — brothers — both striving for
the combined powers of the high-priesthood and the
throne. The famous Roman general Pompey was at
Damascus in the year 63 B.C., and it was not long before
he appeared at Jerusalem. One party surrendered the
Western HiU with the palace and arsenal ; the other
party broke down the bridge across the Cheesemakers'
Valley to the Temple-hill, and withdrew within the
fortress round the sanctuary. The Romans of course
immediately began a siege, which lasted three months,
and the Roman troops at length poured into the Temple
precincts. Numbers of Jews flung themselves over the
high walls, into the ravines on the east and south ;
others set fire to their houses hanging on the steep slopes
of the Cheesemakers' Valley and perished in the flames.
Pompey with a large number of his officers entered the
sanctuary, and though he did not remove its treasures,
he inflicted the severest pang on the hapless survivors
by penetrating where only the High Priest might go,
and that but once a year, into the Holy of Holies.
Numbers of captives were carried to Rome and sold as
slaves. The fortifications were destroyed, the walls were
razed ; and when, nine years later, Crassus arrived at
Jerusalem on his way to the far East, he had no difficulty
in laying hands on the treasures accumulated in the
Temple. He carried off two thousand talents in money
(a talent is commonly estimated at a httle more than
£200), and golden ornaments valued at four times that
amount. Such was the first taste which the Jews had of
the tender mercies of the Romans.

72 The Government [§21
§21. Herod.
The Romans, however, did not at once take posses
sion of the country. They were engaged in other and
larger enterprises. Still, it was plain that no one could
rule without their help. This was clearly seen by Anti-
pater, one of the ministers of Hyrcanus, the High Priest,
who had been restored to office by Pompey. Antipater
was not a Jew ; his family came from Edom ; and this
made it easier for him to deal with a great foreign power
like Rome. He contrived to ingratiate himself with
Julius Caesar, now the leader of Roman pohcy ; he
secured permission to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem ;
and gained other concessions which restored the country
very much to its old condition, with the exception of an
annual tribute to be paid at the Roman quarters in
Sidon. But the unhappy country could not long enjoy its
rest. In the year 40 B.C., the great rival power of the
east, the Parthians, swept down upon it. Antipater
had been assassinated three years before, and his younger
son, Herod, driven from Judaea by the Parthian con
quest of Jerusalem, made his way to Rome. He landed
in Italy as an adventurer ; within a week he quitted it
as a king. But on his return to Palestine he had to
vindicate the title which the Roman Senate had con
ferred. Galilee soon joined his standard ; then Samaria
submitted : but Judaea still held out. It was only with
Roman help that he was able to establish himself in
power. Again was Jerusalem besieged (37 B.C.) : the
Roman troops, infuriated with the resistance which they
had encountered, rushed through the streets killing with
out distinction every one whom they met, even the aged
and the httle children, while Herod rode about vainly

§213 Herod 73
endeavouring^to stop the massacre. Through such a
blood-bath did he wade to the throne.
The Roman support with which he had secured his
kingdom enabled him to keep it, and during the next
thirty years he raised the prosperity of the country to
a height which it had perhaps never before attained
(§ 12). His extraordinary energy, his indomitable will,
the largeness of his designs, gained for him the name of
the Great. His personal character, indeed, by no means
deserved that title. He was capable of strong attach
ments, but there ran through his nature a streak of fierce
savagery which led him into appalling crimes. He never
felt secure on his throne ; the least suspicion begot an
almost insane alarm, which in its turn passed into a mad
fury, wreaking itself even on those near and dear to him.
His beautiful wife Mariamne, her mother Alexandra, her
two sons Alexander and Aristobulus, and his eldest son
(by another connexion) Antipater, all feU victims to
his jealousy and fright : and his treatment of his sons
gave rise to the saying that ' it was better to be Herod's
pig than his son.' Outbreaks of ferocity were foUowed
sometimes by paroxysms of remorse ; the violence of
his nature was equally terrible in both.
In spite of all this, in spite of the cruelties, the out
rages, the executions which marked his reign, it was a
period of great importance in the history of Palestine.
He was not a Jew, and he had no sympathy with that
strong race-feeling which made the Jews cling together
so much, and strive to maintain their national usages un
impaired. Herod wished to break down this exclusive-
ness, and force upon the country which he ruled the
cosmopohtan civilization of the West. He had to deal
with the same kind of difficulty which we find in India,

74 The Government [§21
but he employed much more violent means. Or perhaps
his position rather resembled that of a Viceroy of Egypt
trying to introduce foreign ways under the pressure and
perhaps with the direct help of foreign powers. Some
thing has been said of this already (§ 10) ; it must be
restated here as the real aim of his policy. So while he
lavished large sums on the new temple which he had
begun at Jerusalem (§ 29), he placed over its great gate
a golden eagle, the symbol of imperial Rome. Within
the limits of the city he erected a theatre, which he
adorned with inscriptions of Caesar's achievements, and
trophies of his victories in gold and silver. In one of
the upland plains outside the walls he built an amphi
theatre for gladiatorial combats and contests of wild
beasts. Wrestlers and musicians were attracted from
all quarters ; costly dresses were provided for the
actors ; and large sums were lavished on the supply of
lions and other rarities. Every five years splendid
games were celebrated in honour of Caesar ; and their
magnificence astonished even the foreigners to whom
such spectacles were no novelty.
These innovations excited from time to time the most
bitter opposition ; but every symptom of discontent
was repressed with ruthless severity. The heroic defence
of Jerusalem again and again repeated (§ 20) showed that
the people could fight if they were free ; but the tyranny
of Herod ground them down at every point, so that
there was no possibility of resistance. His generosities,
however, could be on a big scale like his crimes. In the
year 20 B.C. he remitted a third of the taxes. Five years
before (25 B.C.) in time of famine he coined his own plate
to import corn from Egypt and provide seed for ruined
farmers. A second remission of one-fourth of the taxes

§223 Judaea under the Romans 75
was made in 14 B.C. on his return from a visit to Marcus
Agrippa, the Emperor's son-in-law. What he did at
Jerusalem he did elsewhere. The principal cities were
adorned with all kinds of foreign buildings, which helped
to spread the manners of Greece and Italy among the
people of Israel. Herod surrounded himself with foreign
troops, his court was thronged with foreigners, and his
sons were sent to complete their education in Rome.
He himself sought to keep up his influence and connex
ions there by occasional visits, by correspondence, and
by costly gifts. In his family troubles he again and
again invoked the authority of the Emperor Augustus.
When he died, in the year 4 B.C., he left large sums of
money and valuable gifts to the Emperor and Empress,
their family and freedmen, and placed the confirmation
of his will and the settlement of his dominions in Caesar's
hands. § 22. Judaea under the Romans.
The Romans had thus fresh opportunity of inter
ference in the affairs of the Jews, and this interference
was rendered inevitable by the events which immediately
foUowed Herod's death. The king had bequeathed
Judaea to his son Archelaus, but before he could take
possession of his dominions symptoms of a rebellion
began to appear. Order was partially restored — by the
massacre of three thousand people, and Archelaus then
repaired to Rome to secure from Augustus his establish
ment upon the throne. Thither likewise went other
members of Herod's family with similar intent. Then
the long suppressed rage of the nation burst forth. The
people rose in revolt. The whole country was aflame ;
in the collapse of the government bands of soldiers,

76 The Government [§22
robbers, slaves, shepherds, roamed about, plundering
and killing, and aiming vainly at supreme power. This
was the opportunity of the Romans. A smaU detach
ment of Roman troops had been placed in great danger
by the outbreak at Jerusalem. Help was summoned
from Syria ; and with slow but irresistible steps the
Roman general Varus advanced from his head-quarters
at Antioch through Ptolemais and Samaria. Terrible
retribution followed at Jerusalem. Two thousand Jews
were crucified.
Meanwhile the members of Herod's family were wait
ing at Rome for the Emperor's decision on the late king's
will. Augustus did not wish to abandon the children of
his former friend, nor was it desirable to undertake the
additional burden of governing a people so pecuhar as
the Jews. He accordingly confirmed Herod's distribu
tion of his dominions. Archelaus received Judaea,
Samaria, and Edom, with the title of Ethnarch, or
National Ruler : the chief cities, Jerusalem, Sebaste,
Caesarea, gave special importance to these territories,
which yielded the large revenue of six hundred talents.
To Herod Antipas was assigned the rich and busy pro
vince of Galilee with Perea, his revenue being estimated
at two hundred talents. The wild highland districts in
the north-east, which produced only one hundred talents,
were allotted to another son, Philip. For a time, the
rival princes occupied their possessions undisturbed.
Archelaus amused himself with rebuilding the palace
which had been burnt down at Jericho, and planting
palm gardens. But all his diversions were not as innocent
as these. His gross affronts against his Jewish subjects,
his odious tyrannies, made his rule unbearable. At
length his brothers and the principal personages in

§23] Pontius Pilate 77
Judaea and Samaria united in sending a joint embassy
to Rome, to petition for his removal. Augustus lost
no time in useless correspondence. He summoned
Archelaus before him, confronted him with his accusers,
and after hearing his defence deprived him of his Eth-
narchy, and banished him to Gaul. The territories
which he had ruled were placed under the government
of a Procurator, in connexion with the larger province
of Syria : and thus in the year a.d. 6 did Judaea and
Samaria pass under the direct supremacy of Rome.
§ 23. Pontius Pilate.
The first act of the Roman authorities was to lay fresh
burdens on their new subjects. The whole province of
Syria was placed under a general taxation and Quirinus
was sent to superintend the arrangements. In this
taxation the Roman dominions in Palestine must bear
their share. But an unexpected resistance was excited.
The stricter school of the Pharisees, representing the
most uncompromising tendencies of the national party,
regarded the payment of tribute to a foreign ruler as
treason to their invisible king. From the lecture-rooms
of the Rabbis the question passed out to the wider circle
of general discussion. It was at once associated with
the cry for hberty which arose from the hearts of an
oppressed people. The initiative was taken by a man
from Gamala named Judas, who was joined by Zaddok, a
Pharisee of the most rigid type (§ 40). Their movement
aroused considerable enthusiasm, and was with difficulty
subdued. The more violent of their followers endeavoured
to frighten their countrymen into refusing to pay the
obnoxious tax. They broke into their houses, and even
set them on fire. But they were no match for the far-

78 The Government [§23
reaching power of Rome. Punishment came at last,
and Judas and his men could only prove their final
devotion to their principles by the courage with which
they submitted to torture and death.
This is one instance only of the way in which the
national feeling was continually breaking out in the face
of some act of the Roman administrators. Governor
after governor came into Palestine, made a fortune by
his exactions, and then departed to give place to another
who came with fresh greed. At last, about the year
26 a.d., it was the turn of Pontius Pilate. Rough and
brutal, he meant to be master, and he ordered the Roman
troops up from Caesarea to Jerusalem. They carried
with them their military standards or ensigns, consisting
of statues of the Emperor. The Jews, however, had the
strongest religious objection to statues or images of any
kind ; and the predecessors of Pilate had left these
ensigns behind them when they made their state entry
into the city. Pilate, however, had them conveyed
within the walls in secret by night. As soon as it was
day they were of course discovered. The whole city was
agitated by the insult. The news spread all through
the country round, and a large concourse of people
streamed into the capital in eager wrath. Pilate him
self was still at Caesarea. A deputation of the citizens
was at once despatched to entreat that the ensigns might
be removed. Pilate harshly refused. But the deputies
would not be repulsed. They threw themselves upon the
ground, and for five days and five nights never stirred
from their attitude of grief and petition. At length, on
the sixth day, Pilate sent for them again. He erected
his seat of judgment in the market-place, concealed a
body of troops in the rear, and summoned the Jews to

§23] Pontius Pilate 79
appear before him. They again urged their request ;
this time they found themselves suddenly surrounded
by soldiers with drawn swords. Pilate threatened them
with instant death unless they would depart quietly and
trouble him no more. But the deputies did not hesitate
a moment. They flung themselves once more upon the
ground, laid bare their necks, and declared that they
would willingly lay down their lives on the spot sooner
than witness the transgression of their Law. Pilate was
beaten ; he yielded sullenly ; the hated ensigns were
conveyed back again to Caesarea. But this first ex
perience of the heroic stubbornness of the people he
had come to govern was not calculated to make him
love them.
By and by another conflict arose. One of the features
of Roman administration all over the world was the con
struction of great public works. Every capable governor
had an eye to wants of this kind ; a road, a harbour, a
bridge, an aqueduct. They might no doubt be beneficial
when they were executed : but the subject-people who
had to pay for them were not consulted before and
about their making. Pilate saw that the water supply
of Jerusalem was very defective, and he took steps to
improve it by either building or repairing an aqueduct
from a reservoir at a considerable distance. It was
probably the aqueduct which brought water across the
Cheesemakers' Valley into the Temple area, where it fed
the great cisterns under the sacred rock. To defray the
cost he seized on some of the temple treasures. This
robbery from the holy funds immediately excited popular
anger. When he came to Jerusalem a vast crowd
gathered around his judgment-seat with loud abuse.
But Pilate was prepared for the outbreak. He disguised

80 The Government [§24
his soldiers as simple citizens. Carrying their weapons
under their garments they mingled with the defenceless
people ; then, at a given signal, they set upon them.
Large numbers were wounded, some were slain, and in
the confusion many more were trodden to death.
Such were the kind of scenes which arose from the
collision of Jewish thought and feeling with Roman
sternness or brutality. The tale of Pilate's misdeeds
went far and wide among the Jews abroad. ' The
receipt of bribes, deeds of violence, robberies, outrages,
affronts, successive executions of persons uncondemned,
endless and intolerable cruelty ' — this is the list of
charges made against him by a contemporary at Alex
andria. Perhaps the list is exaggerated ; but there is
reason enough to think that it is true in the main. The
Jews had not gained much by passing from the rule of
Herod to that of Rome. And they were constantly
reminded that they were the subjects of an alien race
who cared nothing for their rehgion. If the question of
Greek learning had already agitated the schools (§ 10),
the question of Roman taxes affected the whole people,
from highest to lowest. How the taxation was managed
must now be described.
§ 24. The Roman Empire : Taxation.
The Roman Empire, with which Judaea and Samaria
had thus been formally incorporated, was maintained
by a huge military system. The supreme power rested
(as in Russia to-day) in the hands of the Emperor alone.
To him all the officers, whether of the army or of the
civil service, were ultimately responsible. From the
governor of the richest or the biggest province down to

§ 24 ] The Roman Empire : Taxation 81
the humblest soldier in the ranks, every person engaged,
whether in administration or defence, derived his au
thority from the reigning Caesar. Following the style
of the ancient monarchies of the East, the Greek kings
of Egypt and Syria had for some centuries taken the
title theos, the term applied to the divinities of the
national worship. This title was also awarded to the
Roman Emperor Augustus. In an inscription in Asia
Minor referring to the celebration of the Emperor's
birthday (in the year n or 9 B.C.) he was described as
the Saviour of the human race ; he had been sent by
Providence to put an end to war ; the birthday of the
' god ' was the beginning of good news (Greek Evangelia,
' gospels ') through him to the world. Such was the
reverence which he inspired as the impersonation of the
imperial power. The Empire stretched from the Straits
of Gibraltar to the Persian Gulf ; from the Enghsh
Channel to the cataracts of the Nile. Think how many
modern countries this included : Italy with France and
Spain in the West ; Greece, European and Asiatic
Turkey, Egypt, North Africa ! What varieties of
nationality, language, custom, rehgion, it contained !
And within this immense area, among this hundred
million of people, the Roman Government maintained
peace. There was an army, but it was small compared
with the armies of modern Europe ; it did not exceed
four hundred thousand men. There were, of course,
some troops permanently posted in Palestine. Their
head-quarters were at Caesarea ; but a body of guards
was kept at Jerusalem in the barracks on the north side
of the Temple ; and at the great feasts these were in
creased. In Galilee, also, there was a Roman station at
Sepphoris ; and small detachments were fixed at popu-

82 The Government [§24
lous centres of taxation, such as Capernaum, and along
the great roads. For the Roman administration (like
the English in India) was costly, and the tax-gatherer
could not long be kept out of sight. Army and navy
and civil service must be paid for ; fortifications, public
works, schools, popular shows and entertainments, cheap
or gratuitous distribution of corn to the poor in great
cities — of all this the cost must be borne chiefly by the
conquered provinces. Then the local governor made
special claims for himself and his retinue ; and besides
there were tolls on bridges and roads, harbour-dues,
customs levied at the city-gates or on quays and piers ;
and there was a tax for the use of public lands which
fell to the Imperial treasury when the province was
incorporated. To these last taxes the Jews do not seem to have
raised any religious objection. But the principal taxes
were much more offensive. These were a land-tax and
a tax per head, or poU-tax. The owners of land were
assessed from time to time, and a specified sum was
levied on them according to the estimated value of their
property. Of the annual produce in grain, one-tenth
was demanded ¦ of the wine and fruit one-fifth. Those
who had no land paid in proportion to the assessment
of their personal effects. Other taxes were added upon
slaves and houses, which were of course paid by their
owners. The poU-tax on hired labourers was paid for
them by their employers, who took care to deduct it out
of their wages. The land-tax and poll-tax were summed
up under the name of ' capitation.' Founded on an
assessment or census, this tax came to be designated in
Judaea by the name of the process upon which it was
based. Exacted either directly or indirectly from every

§253 The Tax-Gatherers 83
Jew, it was looked upon as the special badge of subjec
tion to the hated dominion of Rome. The lawfulness of
paying it was incessantly disputed in the schools : and
it supphed one of the test questions which the Pharisees
put to Jesus — ' Teacher, is it lawful to pay census to
Caesar or not ? ' (Matt. xxii. 16, 17 ; Mark xii. 14).
§ 25. The Tax-Gatherers.
For more than two hundred years the coUection of
the taxes in the countries under the Roman sway had
been placed in the hands of a body of men who under
took to pay a specific sum into the pubhc treasury (in
publicum), and then kept the revenue which the taxes
produced. Hence they were called publicani. The
sums required from the larger provinces were frequently
too great for any single individual to raise ; and com
panies were formed to provide the necessary capital
with directors residing at Rome, and agents engaged
on their behalf in the countries which they had in charge.
In Palestine, however, it would seem that the taxes were
not collected in this way by contract, but were paid
direct to the Roman Government ; the tax-gatherers,
or ' publicans ' as our Bibles call them, being appointed
by the Roman officials. At the entrance to the httle
town of Capernaum, for instance, sat the tax-gatherer
Matthew (Matt. ix. 9). On all goods that passed either
in or out of the town, it was his duty to place a certain
value ; on this value a proportionate charge was levied,
and he had then to write out the receipt and take the
money. This opened the way to many unjust exactions
(Luke iii. 12, 13), and made the tax-gatherers, as a class,
exceedingly detested. Those of the lowest grade were

84 The Government [§25
continually guilty of extortion : while the superior
officers took advantage of their position to enrich them
selves by the most disgraceful devices. They trumped
up false charges in order to wring bribes from their un
fortunate victims (Luke xix. 8). They detained and
opened letters on mere suspicion. They were regarded
as no better than robbers, the wolves and bears of
society — and their shamelessness became a public
scandal. In Palestine there were additional reasons which made
their occupation hateful and their character degraded.
They were required to take an oath of allegiance to the
Emperor, for whom sacrifice was offered twice daily in
the Temple. The payment of taxes to a foreign con
queror was something more to the Jews than a mere
sign of subjection to a heathen power. In the eyes of
the stricter party it was a religious offence. To own
any other master was treason to the invisible king.
Connivance at the practices of Rome involved, there
fore, faithlessness to the only rightful Lord. The actual
agents of the oppressor were like traitors who had thrown
off their true allegiance. They had thus cut themselves
from all social esteem ; they were out of the pale of
many cherished rites. The Pharisees who so largely
guided pubhc opinion threw the whole weight of their
influence into the scale against them. The more rigid
school denied the lawfulness of paying tribute at all.
Another party among them, distinguished for their
broader views and likewise for their general integrity,
thought all kinds of evasion quite legitimate.
So the tax-gatherers were driven out of respectable
society. A promise made to them was declared no more
binding than one made to a thief or a murderer. Their

§25] The Tax-Gatherers 85
money was polluted ; and charitable offerings known
to come from them to the synagogue or the temple were
not received. They could not act as magistrates, or
even give evidence in court. With such persons inter
course was tacitly forbidden. If a Rabbi visited them,
and accepted their hospitality, he excited astonishment
and scorn. To one another they might be not less kind
and courteous than their neighbours (Matt. v. 46, 47).
Sometimes an honest publican, as is told of the father
of a certain Rabbi Zeira, lessened the burdens of his
countrymen, instead of increasing them. But these
instances were rare. They were commonly ranked with
the ' sinners,' people who did not fulfil the usual social
and rehgious conventions, did not keep the Sabbath or
go to synagogue, perhaps engaged in unclean occupations
like tanning, or consorted with Gentiles ; their place
was thus outside the true fold, among the heathen
(Matt. ix. n ; xi. 19 ; xviii. 17 ; Luke xv. 1). It
needed a sublime courage for a teacher to throw himself
confidently on their secret longing for a higher life ; a
sublime love to melt their hardness ; sublime humanity
to see in them also sons of Abraham — sons of God, like
wise. But that which was invisible to most eyes was not
hid from the sight of the Master who painted the immortal
picture of the Pharisee and the Publican.

Chapter IV
RELIGION
Part I. — Its Public Institutions
§ 26. The Scriptures.
[G. B. Gray, Critical Introduction to the Old Testament, 1913 ;
G. F. Moore, Literature of the Old Testament (Home University
Library).]
The religious institutions of the Jews in the time of
Jesus were not new. They were the results of many
centuries of growth. It was the boast of their learned
men that their wisdom was older and more venerable
than that of any other people. They knew of no nation
which had holy books as old as theirs. And this boast
was to a great extent true, though not quite in the way
in which it was meant. The rehgion of the Jews was
founded chiefly on those sacred books which went under
the general name of the ' Writings,' or the ' Books,' or
as we call them (using the Latin name) the ' Scriptures.'1
These books are the remains of a national hterature,
which must once have been more extensive than it is
now, for much seems to have perished in the disasters
1 The name ' Old Testament,' or ' Books of the Old Covenant,'
came into use only among the Christians, to distinguish the
Jewish Scriptures from those of the New Covenant.

§26] The Scriptures 87
which from time to time befell the nation. They con
tain specimens of many kinds of hterature. There are
legend and history ; there are ancient myths concerning
the origin of the human race ; there are the early
traditions of the Hebrew people from the time of their
march out of Egypt ; there are their hymns, and their
proverbial wisdom ; there is the latest philosophy of
despair in the preacher's cry, ' Vanity of vanities ' ;
there is the love poem of the Song of Songs, there is the
great drama of Job. Above all, there are the wonderful
discourses of the Prophets, and there is the Sacred
Law (§ 27).
How these books were gathered together we do not
precisely know. Some, like Daniel, some of the Psalms
or Ecclesiastes, had not been written very long at the
time of Christ : others, or at least parts of them, were
many centuries old. But the Jews reckoned three classes
among these books. There was, first of all, the Law,
arranged in five books, which our Bible (probably follow
ing Tyndale and Luther) describes as ' Books of Moses,'
though that title is not found in the Hebrew manuscripts.
Next came a group of books called the ' Prophets,' which
included the historical books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel,
and Kings, and the collections of prophetic discourses
under the names of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the
twelve prophets from Hosea to Malachi. This was the
second division. The third set were called especially
the ' Writings,' and comprised books of all kinds, such
as the Psalms, the Chronicles, Esther, Job. Books of
late origin were put into this division, for it was not
thought proper to add them to the collections of the Law
and the Prophets. Thus the book of Daniel, which
appeared in the middle of the second century B.C., and

88 Institutions of Religion [§27
Ecclesiastes — possibly later still — were placed in the
last group. So these books had not originally formed
part of one collection. It seems sometimes a matter of
chance that one was preserved while others were lost.
But in a larger sense they do form a whole. They tell
the story of one people : they show us its thoughts at
great crises of its history : they reveal the growth of its
religion from rude beginnings to the loftiest truths ;
they exhibit the long preparation needed for the fuller
unfolding of divine hfe in Jesus of Nazareth.
§ 27. The Law.
[Montefiore, Hibbert Lectures (1892), ix.]
Among all their sacred books those which the Jews
most prized were the books of the Law. These were five
in all. We call them by names derived from the Greek
translation of the Hebrew Scriptures ; the whole group
we designate by another Greek term, the Pentateuch ;
but the Jews spoke of them together as ' the Law.' The
tradition which was universally received in the time of
Jesus was that this Law had been instituted by Moses
after he led the Israehtes out of Egypt ; and it was
supposed that the books recording it had been drawn up
by him. We know now, however, that these books
could not all have been written by one person, or at one
time. The materials of which they are composed are so
different, the circumstances for which they are designed
vary so largely, that neither the groups of narrative nor
the groups of laws can be attributed to a single author.
On the other hand they grew up by degrees. Long before
anything was written, the traditions of the national hfe
had gradually taken shape, and had been handed down

§27] The Law 89
from father to son, through many generations. So, toe,
had the usages of the tribes, their customs, and the
decisions of their judges, slowly consolidated into certain
accepted rules. These rules constituted the early torah
or ' teaching,' and out of them came the First Code, on
which further legislation was afterwards based.
The First Code, which represents the primitive law
of the Hebrews, after their settlement in Canaan, may
be found in Exod. xxi.-xxiii. The second code is con
tained in the Book of Deuteronomy, and may be dated
about the year 620 B.C. It is, of course, based on much
older materials, but it reconstructs them under the in
fluence of a passionate devotion to the worship of
Yahweh alone. The third and latest code is that known
as the Levitical Law, now extended through the middle
books of the Pentateuch, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers.
This was slowly elaborated during and after the Baby
lonian exile ; and was thrown into the general shape in
which we now have it through the labours of Ezra in the
middle of the fifth century B.C. The bulk of it seems to
have been formally made known and solemnly adopted
about the year 444 B.C. ; but by what agency it was at
last combined with the sacred Law previously existing is
by no means certain.
This much at any rate is clear, that the Law as finally
adopted represents a religious growth of many centuries.
We can follow through its several stages the increasing
efforts made to purify rehgion and guard it from corrup
tion. For it was one of the peculiarities of the Israelites
that their national and their religious hfe was so insepar
ably blended that their existence as a nation was one
side of their religion ; and so the Law which dealt with
them as a nation was concerned largely with their

90 Institutions of Religion [§27
rehgion. During the earher period after the settlement
in Canaan the Israehtes were involved in all kinds of
idolatries. Some they brought with them : others they
found practised in the country, and adopted from the
inhabitants. Against these the prophets hurled the
whole weight of their teaching, as they sought to raise
their people to higher and more spiritual notions of God.
Now the successive codes of the Law — so far as they dealt
with rehgion— were designed to give practical effect
to the teachings of the prophets. The Levitical Law
was the last and most elaborate of all, and it succeeded.
It was impressed so powerfully upon the people, it so
fenced round the whole hfe, that it bound all the members
of the nation into one compact body, pledged to one end,
the realization of Yahweh's demand, ' Ye shall be holy,
for I, Yahweh, your God, am holy.' This was the
common tie that united all Jews everywhere. However
they might be scattered, they possessed one Law. Round
this Law their affections clung with the most extraordinary
tenacity. They might have but a small country ; they
might be the prey of foreign conquerors ; they might
be poor, oppressed, despised ; it was no matter, they
had one proud distinction given to no other people under
heaven, neither to the ancient civilization of Egypt or
Mesopotamia, nor to the wisdom of Greece, nor to the
power of Rome ; they, and they only, possessed Yah
weh's Law. To its study they devoted themselves with
unwearied zeal ; they sang of it in their hymns with a
rapture greater than they could find words to express
(see Psalms xix. 7-14 ; cxix. 1, etc.) ; they poured out
their life-blood like water sooner than violate it ; the
whole of their existence seemed to have but this one
object, the fulfilment of the Law. No new Teacher,

§283 Ritual 91
therefore, could long escape the necessity of answering
the question, ' Moses commanded thus and thus in the
Law, what sayest thou ? '

§28. Ritual.
In so far as the Law was connected with rehgion it
had to regulate that in which rehgion expressed itself,
viz., worship. Now the worship of all early peoples
expresses itself always in one way, viz., by making gifts
to God. The ancient Hebrews did not differ from their
neighbours in this respect j they brought part of the
crop from their fields, the fruit from the orchard, the
young of their flocks and herds, to offer on the altar to
Yahweh ; as the Canaanites did to the Baals. And
this traditional way of worshipping God they had not
given up in the time of Jesus. Each successive code of
their Law had said more about it, about the place and
time where it should be performed, the persons who
should perform it, and the manner in which the rite
should be fulfilled. Every other rehgion laid stress on
it. Palestine itself was full of temples to Greek, Phoe
nician, Syrian deities, where worship was carried on by
means of sacrifices. Costly buildings were reared for the
abode of the divinity : magnificent offerings, precious
gifts, vast accumulations of treasure, were deposited in
them : the ministers of the sacred house, the priests who
might have access to the deity, were kept carefully apart
from other men, and might not engage in common work.
These were the ideas of every rehgion : and they were
to be found vivid and strong among the Jews. In the
old days the whole country had been covered with
sanctuaries : on every hiU-top might be an altar, beneath

92 Institutions of Religion [§28
the venerable oak a sacred place. But at these local
sanctuaries there was a constant danger. They brought
religion near the homes of the people, but what kind of
religion ? A rehgion infected with idolatry, a rehgion
which could not be acceptable to Yahweh. So the pro
phets laboured to wean the people from their attach
ment to these places of village worship, and set free the
service of Yahweh from the idolatries inevitably mingled
with them. This aim found legal expression in the
Deuteronomic code (§ 27), which required that the local
sanctuaries should be abolished, and that all sacrifice
should be offered at Jerusalem alone. This principle
was not permanently adopted till after the Captivity,
but it was assumed in the Levitical code (§ 27), and re
mained ever afterwards in force. This code thus gave a
perpetual sanction to the old custom of worshipping
God by sacrifice. It laid down the most rigid rules
about the persons who might perform the holy rites ;
it specified the kinds of sacrifices which should be
offered on different occasions ; it fixed the order of the
feasts ; it even sought to regulate the minutest details
of the daily existence of a member of the holy community.
This, it must always be remembered, was the result of
a great effort to save the high truths of Israel's rehgion,
attained by the prophets, from being again dispersed by
the corruptions of idolatry. They were hedged round
with the strictest ritual, partly because rehgion could
not be conceived without ritual, partly because a definite
ritual was then necessary to guard the great conception
of the sole deity and spirituahty of Yahweh.
The ritual of a single Temple, however, could not
satisfy all the wants of a people scattered not only through
one country but through many ; and accordingly we

§2g] The Temple 93
find that long before the time of Jesus, a new sort of
worship had sprung up, which sought to do what the
old local sanctuaries had in part done, viz., bring the
organization of rehgion back from the metropolis into
the village, and connect it with the home-hfe of the
people. So we have to consider two quite different hnes
of religious expression, two orders of worship, the Temple
with its ritual of sacrifice, and the Synagogue with its
teaching and prayer. § 29. The Temple.
[Edersheim, The Temple, p. 19 ; Waterhouse, in Sanday's Sacred
Sites, p. 106 ; G. A. Smith, Jerusalem, vol. ii. p. 499.]
It has been said that whereas in the old days there had
been many sanctuaries to Yahweh, just as there were
many sanctuaries to the Canaanite Baals, to the Assy
rian Ishtar or Nebo, to the Greek Apollo or Aphrodite,
the Jews had settled down at last in the pecuhar prin
ciple of having only one holy house, and this of course
was estabhshed at Jerusalem. They were thus able to
concentrate on this one temple both the wealth and the
affection that might otherwise have been divided among
many. One of the devices of Herod for winning popu
larity with the Jews was the restoration of the Temple,
which had suffered severely in the visitations of the
Romans (§§ 20, 21), and this design was carried out with
extraordinary splendour.
The Temple mount, as has been said, was separated
from the western quarter of the city by the narrow ravine
of the Cheesemakers' Valley. Across this valley ran a
bridge, which was broken down in Pompey's siege, and
was now repaired by Herod. It was 354 feet long, and

94 Institutions of Religion [§29
the roadway was 50 feet wide ; in the centre, the depth
of the valley beneath was 225 feet.1 The bridge led to
the south-western entrance of the Temple enclosure,
where the road passed into the nave of the great royal
cloister running the whole length of the southern side.
This magnificent structure was of the size of a colossal
cathedral, far larger than any existing in this country.
Its total length was 922 feet ; it contained no less than
162 massive pillars ; the nave was 45 feet broad, and 100
feet high ; the aisles on either hand were each 30 feet
in width, and 50 feet in height.2 It was an additional
wonder that this gigantic building was reared up from
the slope of the Kidron Valley on massive masonry,
itself almost equal in height to the tallest of our church-
spires : at the eastern corner the depth from its roof into
the vale below was no less than 450 feet.
The Temple area, bounded on the south by this royal
cloister, was an irregular square, the shortest side (on
the south) being 922 feet, the longest (on the north)
1,150 feet in length. Eight gates, four on the west side,
two on the south, one each on the east and north, pro
vided entrance. Along the east, north, and west sides
ran more cloisters, though not on so grand a scale as the
royal cloister on the south : the court within, paved with
variegated marble, was the Court of the Gentiles, which
was open to all. Here were houses for Levites, and even
a synagogue ; here, too, the stalls for animals for sacri
fice, oxen, sheep, and doves, which must have resembled
1 The suspension bridge at Clifton, Bristol, is 245 feet above
the river Avon.
2 Compare the following dimensions : — Westminster Abbey,
total length, 513 ft. ; breadth of nave and aisles together, 75 ft. ;
height of nave, 102 ft.

§293 The Temple 95
an immense cattle-market ; here, likewise, the booths
of the money-changers for the endless visitors alike from
the country and from foreign lands, bringing gifts or
vows to the sanctuary. Not far, however, could the
Gentile penetrate through the throng ; a low barrier,
four feet high, called the Soreg, pierced by gates, marked
the line beyond which he might not pass ; suspended
against pillars were inscriptions in Greek and Latin
(one of which has been recently found), warning him that
further intrusion involved no less a penalty than death.
In the interior of this vast court arose a huge platform,
approached on different sides by nine flights of steps.
Around it ran a narrow terrace or fortification which
enabled the Sanctuary within to be defended. On this
platform stood the holy house itself, with the courts
for priests and people. A high wall rose from the terrace,
bounding the Court of Israel, with a cloister and cham
bers on the inside. The chief access was through the
great Eastern portal, past gates overlaid with gold.
Then the worshipper entered the Court of the Women,
which was open to both sexes, but formed the limit
beyond which women might not advance. Here stood the
trumpet-shaped receptacles for offerings for the Temple
service ; here was the place of the believer's ordinary wor
ship. More steps led up to the Men's Court : and at a
shght elevation above this was the court of the priests,
which the people might not enter. Right and left were
groups of chambers for all kinds of purposes connected
with the Temple service. In one the priests assembled
before the duties of the day began ; another was their din
ing chamber ; in a third the shewbread was prepared ; in
others, wood or salt was laid up for the altar, the skins of
the sacrificial animals were salted, the priests' vestments

96 Institutions of Religion [§29
were deposited, the machinery for supplying the great
laver with water was stored up. There were chambers
for the High Priest, for the Sanhedrin, sleeping chambers,
bathrooms for the indispensable ablutions ; in one was
a fire always burning for the priests, who must ever walk
barefooted over the marble pavements, even in the
winter's cold.
In the Priests' Court in front of the Holy House was
the Altar. Built in ancient fashion of unhewn stones,
its base was about 55 feet square.1 A terrace ran round
it near the top, on which the priests walked ; it was
reached by an inclined plane, always kept well salted,
that the barefooted priests, ascending and descending,
might not slip, for the blood of the victims which trickled
down from above made this precaution necessary. Three
fires burned upon the altar, and hard by was a great salt
heap from which the sacrifice was salted. Close at hand
were all the requisites for dealing with the sacrificial ani
mals, marble tables for laying out the flesh and fat ; low
columns to which the dismembered parts were hung ;
rows of hooks and rings for fastening the pieces. In
such a system an ample water supply was essential ;
the mighty laver between the altar and the porch, sup
ported on twelve lions, was emptied every evening, and
refilled every morning by special machinery ; vast
cisterns were constructed in the rock beneath, and a
comphcated system of drainage, which could be flushed
at once, carried off the large quantities of blood daily
shed down into the vale of Kidron.
1 A good deal of difficulty besets these measurements, which
are given in the original authorities (who do not always agree)
in cubits. I have followed the figures of Dr. G. A. Smith, who
estimates a sacred cubit at 20.67 inches.

§30] Priests and Levites 97
Twelve broad steps led up to the Holy House, which
consisted of three parts. In front rose a splendid porch,
facing the east, 172 feet in length from north to south,
and as high as it was long. Within lay the Holy Place,
70 feet by 35 feet, where stood the golden lampstand,
the shewbread table, and the incense altar. Most sacred
of all, a chamber only 35 feet square, hidden by a veil
from all hght of day, and entered but once a year by the
High Priest, and by him alone, in the most solemn rite of
Jewish worship, was the Holy of Holies. There in the
darkness — the centre of all these majestic structures —
the innermost recess of the divine abode was — nothing.
It was a noble vindication of the truth for which the
Jews had striven so long. ' I dweU in the high and holy
place,' said the ancient prophet, in the name of Yahweh,
' with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit.'
The Jews had learned the first lesson of all rehgion, ' God
is a spirit' ; they had yet to learn the second, 'they that
worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.'
§ 30. Priests and Levites.
[On the following §§ much useful information will be found in
Edersheim, The Temple, and Jewish Social Life, and in the
Dictionaries of the Bible.]
A temple of such immense size, standing at the centre
of the pubhc religious hfe of a whole nation, naturally
needed a large body of men to conduct its services. This
body was divided into two great classes, the Priests and
the Levites. The origin of this division was supposed
to go back to Moses, but we now know that the arrange
ment was really of very much later date, and was not
clearly fixed until after the middle of the fifth century

98 Institutions of Religion [§30
B.C. From that time onwards the higher clergy, the
Priests, claimed the exclusive privilege of performing
all the actual rites of sacrifice and ministration in the
Holy Place : to the Levites were allotted only the lower
duties. The two grades were supposed all to belong to
the same sacred tribe, but large numbers of Levites were
not really so by descent, but had been incorporated into
the guild in consideration of the services which they had
been accustomed to render. Each order, however, be
came very jealous of its rights ; and any candidate for
admission to the priesthood was obliged to prove his
hereditary claim with great minuteness.
Both bodies were numerous. The Priests were divided
into twenty-four 'courses,' which took it by turns to serve
in the sanctuary for a week at a time. A similar division
existed among the Levites. The different departments
of the Temple service were under the superintendence
of particular officers. One was captain of the guard ;
another looked after the closing and opening of the gates
at the proper times ; a third had the care of the birds
for the offerings ; to a fourth was committed the charge
of the water supply, the cisterns, and the drains ; others
dealt with the shewbread, the incense, the vestments ;
and one served as physician, for the barefooted Priests,
in their thin linen robes, were especially exposed to cold
and chills. The immense and elaborate ceremonial made
special training necessary ; and as the duties of each day
were distributed by lot, each Priest had to be prepared
for any function. This kind of traditional learning was
naturally kept up among the Priests themselves, but
instruction was sometimes sought from teachers outside
the order.
The duties of the Levites fell into three great classes ;

§30] Priests and Levites 99
they were the Priests' assistants, they performed the
Temple music, they guarded the sacred precincts. In
their attendance on the Priests they were required to
cleanse the sanctuary, its fore-courts, and many of its
vessels ; to look after the storehouses and their contents
— vestments, spices, wood, and the like ; and to prepare
the shewbread and the sacrificial food. They furnished
the choirs for chanting the Psalms in daily worship, and
the bands which accompanied them, as many as thirty-six
different instruments being enumerated by the Rabbis.
And their ranks supphed the Temple-guard posted day
and night at the gates of the great enclosure and the
inner courts. Woe to the Levite who was found asleep
at his post, when the Captain of the Temple made his
rounds. Perhaps he was only beaten — perhaps his
clothes were set on fire, and he was wakened by the
flames. The orders of Priests and Levites, though so large and
important, did not, however, possess a corresponding
influence in the nation, That was the privilege of the
learned, who looked down upon ignorant Priests, and
scornfully classed them with the rude uncultivated
' people of the land,' the common country-folk. Many
of them were very poor, and though the maintenance of
the Priests on duty at the Temple was provided from
the Temple revenues, those who were dispersed through
the country were often very badly off. Their position as
a separate caste made them cling together against out
siders, though there might be rivalries among them
selves : but if they were sometimes selfish and exclusive,
they were also not without the finer qualities which
result from union in a great corporation and devotion
to great duties. In times of danger they could behave

100 Institutions of Religion [§31
with heroic courage. During the siege by Pompey (§ 20)
they distinguished themselves by their faithfulness
through months of peril, and their willing surrender of
their hves in the hour of defeat. The Roman general
brought up huge engines from Tyre, from which stones
were hurled into the Temple precincts. Still twice a day,
says Josephus, were the morning and evening sacrifices
offered ; they were never interrupted, not even for any
' melancholy accident,' when one of the officiating priests
feU wounded or killed upon the ground : nay, when the
soldiery at last rushed in sword in hand, they calmly
continued at the altar, and only stopped to die.
§ 31. The Temple Service.
The original idea of the Sanctuary among the Israehtes
was that of a place where their God was in some way
physically present, and made himself known by some
manifestation to their senses. In the tradition of their
wanderings, they loved to tell how Moses took a tent and
pitched it outside the camp, as the Sacred tent, and
Yahweh came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the
entrance, and talked with him (Exodus xxxiii. 7-11).
This tent they called the Tent of Meeting. When the
Temple was built by Solomon at Jerusalem it was said
that this was the place which Yahweh had chosen to set
his name there. The city of Jerusalem became, in a
special sense the city of Yahweh ; the Temple was his
dwelling ; and in the story of its dedication they said
that the glory of Yahweh filled the house with a shining
cloud, so that there was no place for the priests to minister
(1 Kings viii. 10, 11). So the authors of the Levitical
code gave to the sanctuary a special new name, and called

§3i 3 The Temple Service 101
it ' The Dwelling.' Thus there gathered about Jerusalem
the most exalted notions of its beauty and holiness, as
the seat or earthly throne of the Divine Lord. It was
the ' City of the great King ' (Matt. v. 35) : men looked
to it from afar with longing ; they trod its streets with
rapture ; it was the one place on earth where all that
they most loved in their rehgion was made real to them.
The great instrument of this was the Temple service.
This was still conducted along the ancient lines. It was
no doubt much more elaborate ; increased wealth gave
it greater splendour ; new feasts, new ceremonies, were
added. But the idea beneath it was the old idea. The
chief acts of devotion were the old acts of sacrifice : the
essential thought was that Israel came to pay homage to
the Heavenly King. The daily worship was intended
as a national act : and whereas the whole people could
not be present at each service, they were represented by
a body of laymen appointed for the purpose. Like the
Priests, these were divided into twenty-four courses,
each of which had its head and sent certain members to
Jerusalem to serve for the week appointed for their
course. They were known as the ' Standing Men,' and
they stood for all their countrymen and fellow-subjects
in the earthly house of their sovereign God. Let us see
how this principle was worked out in the daily service.
Before the dawn the Priests gather in the Hall of
Polished Stones to draw lots for the various duties of
the morning sacrifice. The great Altar had to be cleansed ;
the lamps of the golden lampstand in the Holy Place
had to be trimmed ; the ashes from the altar of incense
had to be removed : the sacrifice had to be burned on
the altar of the fore-court, the incense offered in the
sanctuary. These and their associated duties were

102 Institutions of Religion [§31
assigned by lots, which were drawn amid solemn prayers
and devout recitations. Then the necessary prepara
tions were made ; the gold and silver vessels were
brought forth ; and at last the chief officiating Priest
was left alone within the Holy Place. There he waited
for the signal that the time was come to kindle the
incense. Meanwhile the congregation had gathered with
out. There were the regular ' Standing Men ' and pious
residents in the holy city, with some of the pilgrims who
had come from abroad. When the president gave the
word of command, there was a deep stillness, for all the
people fell on their faces with outspread hands in silent
prayer. Then as the smoke of the incense rose, the
voices of the Priests were heard reciting the collects of
blessing to Yahweh : here are the first two :
' True it is that Thou art the Lord our God, and the
God of our fathers : our King and the King of our
fathers ; our Redeemer and the Redeemer of our fathers ;
our Maker and the rock of our salvation : our Liberator
and our Deliverer. Thy name is from everlasting, and
there is no God beside Thee. A new song did they that
were redeemed sing to Thy name by the sea-shore ; to
gether did all praise and own Thee as King, and say,
" Yahweh shall reign who saveth Israel." '
' Be graciously pleased, Yahweh our God, with thy
people Israel, and with their prayer. Restore the service
to the oracle of Thy House ; and the burnt-offerings of
Israel and their prayers in love graciously accept : and
let the service of Thy people Israel be acceptable unto
Thee continually.'
Then the pieces of the lamb that had been slain in
sacrifice were laid on the great altar ; the priestly
blessing was pronounced ; and the meat and drink offer-

§31] The Temple Service 103
ings were presented. On the right hand and the left
stood the Priests with their silver trumpets, and now
they moved forward, for the Psalm for the day was to
begin.1 The choir of Levites raised the chant, supported
by the band of musicians ; and at each pause the trum
pets were blown three times, and the people prostrated
themselves in worship. This was the last act of the
service : when it was over the congregation dispersed,
to assemble again, some of them, for another service
at the evening sacrifice. On Sabbaths and at the great
feasts (§ 33) the service was much more elaborate. But
the central idea was always the same : the worship was
rendered by the entire nation in the persons of their
accredited representatives in the Priests and the Con
gregation. The same conception that the people and their land
belonged to Yahweh, ran through the touching practice
of offering the first fruits to God in his Holy Place. The
whole country was divided into twenty-four districts.
In each district the farmers went into their fields while
the corn was ripening, and marked off the best portion
of the wheat and the barley for Yahweh. The finest
clusters of grapes were indicated on the vines by a rush
round the stem ; the best bunches of dates on the palm,
the pomegranates, the olives, the figs, were all chosen in
the same way. Then they were all carefully gathered
when the time came, and carried to the local centre,
where deputies were appointed to take them up to Jeru
salem under the leadership of one of the ' Standing Men '
1 The Psalms selected were, ist day of the week (Sunday),
Psalm xxiv. ; 2nd day. Psalm xlviii. ; 3rd day. Psalm lxxxii. ;
4th day, Psalm xciv. ; 5 th day, Psalm lxxxi. ; 6th day, Psalm
xciii. ; 7th day (Sabbath), Psalm xcii.

104 Institutions of Religion [§31
of the district. They met overnight so as to make an
early start : and lest they should be in any way defiled,
they lodged in no house, but camped beneath the open
sky. As soon as the dawn spread over the hills, the
leader called them together with the ancient words,
' Arise ye, and let us go up to Zion and to Yahweh our
God ' (Jeremiah xxxi. 6) ; and they answered, as they
formed into rank, ' I was glad when they said unto me,
Let us go into the house of Yahweh ' (Psalm cxxii. 1).
Slowly the procession advanced to the sound of the flute ;
the offerings were borne in wicker baskets, or in costly
vessels of silver and gold. As they marched, the people
chanted the Psalms known as ' Songs of Ascents,' A.V.
' Songs of degrees ' (Psalms cxx.-cxxxiv.), a httle collec
tion of hymns to be sung by pilgrims on the way up to
Jerusalem, full of joy in the holy city, of longing for it,
of delight in the temple, of trust in Yahweh. When
they neared the sacred hill a messenger was sent forwards,
and a band of Priests and Levites came out from the
Sanctuary to bid them welcome, and greet them with
peace. Up the slope to the Temple mount they sang
' Praise ye Yahweh, praise God in his sanctuary, praise
him in the firmament of his power ' (Psalm cl.) ; and
when they passed within the gates, the Levites burst
into the triumphant strain, ' I will extol thee, 0 Yahweh,
for thou hast hfted me up, and hast not made my foes to
rejoice over me.' — By such ceremonies as these the whole
national and rehgious hfe of Israel was linked with the
Temple and its services. How great, then, must have
been the courage of a Teacher who could calmly pro
claim a time when the Temple should fall, and they
should be no more.

§323 The Synagogue 105
§32. The Synagogue.
The worship of the Temple could only be attended by
a small number of the whole Jewish people. The resi
dents in Jerusalem might be present often ; perhaps
some who were very devout went every day. The
visitors in the Holy City who had come on pilgrimage,
we may be sure, went as often as they could during their
stay. But some other arrangement was needed to help
the people in their ordinary life in their own homes.
It was much to know that every morning and evening
sacrifice was offered and prayers were said upon the
sacred hill, for the whole nation ; but for support and
strength in daily work much more was wanted. Indeed,
the want had long been felt. When the people were
carried away into their Babylonian captivity, there was
no temple at all, no ritual, no altar, no sacrifice. Every
thing that they had cherished as the public service of
rehgion suddenly passed out of their reach. Hence it
was inevitable that new forms of worship should grow
up, if worship was to be continued with any living
power. The people began to gather round those most
eminent among them for wisdom or piety. They met
in each other's houses. They read aloud their sacred
books ; they gathered up the discourses preached by
the prophets ; and they hstened while some voice still
touched with prophetic power addressed to them such
glowing words of hope and trust as we read for example
in the last twenty-seven chapters of the book of Isaiah.
When they returned to their own land they took
immediate steps to rebuild the Temple and restore the
ritual, but they did not give up the meeting for prayer
and praise. By degrees special buildings — ' meeting
houses ' they called them — were reared for the purpose,

106 Institutions of Religion [§32
and by the time of the Greek supremacy these were
generally established throughout the land, and we know
them by their Greek name, synagogues. The synagogue,
and the institutions connected with it, played a great
part in the village hfe. It had to do both with rehgion
and with secular affairs : it was a place of worship, and
a place for the administration of justice. The authori
ties responsible for the latter consisted of the Elders or
Rulers, with a President at their head, who were elected
by the Congregation, after having given sufficient proof
that they possessed the necessary knowledge. In the
larger towns this local Sanhedrin or council consisted of
twenty-three members ; in smaller places seven sufficed.
These formed the local court, and they made all the
arrangements for the worship. There was besides a
hazzdn or ' minister,' (' attendant,' Luke iv. 20, R.V.)
who was the schoolmaster as well ; he did not, however,
preach like a modern minister, but he had charge of the
sacred books ; his office was one highly respected, and
he might be sometimes called upon to conduct the ser
vice. There were short services every day ; on Mondays
and Thursdays, the usual market-days, when the country
people flocked into the towns, they were a httle longer ;
the principal services, however, feU on the Sabbath.
These were all under the regulation of the Ruler of the
synagogue (not necessarily identical with the President
of the Elders), who chose the persons who should take
part in them. There was no select body of men whose
function it was to pray or teach ; all might do so who
were fitted for it by natural gifts or by training ; and
several of the Congregation generally assisted in each
Sabbath service. There were also officials for the collec
tion and distribution of alms.

§ 32 ] The Synagogue 107
The building was usually of stone, square or oblong in
shape, perhaps divided by pillars into aisles, three or
even five in number. At one end — in Galilee generally
at the south, looking towards Jerusalem — was the ark,
a chest or cupboard in which the sacred books were kept,
veiled by a curtain before it. In front of the ark were
ranged the Elders, facing the Congregation. In the middle
was a platform for those who were to pray, read, or preach.
The person who was selected to conduct the chief devo
tions of the day, was called the Messenger, the Deputy,
or Delegate of the Congregation. He mounted the plat
form, stood by the reading-desk, and recited two prayers,
of which the following are beheved to be the oldest forms,
probably in use in the time of Jesus.
' Blessed be Thou, 0 Lord, King of the world, who
formest the hght- and createst the darkness, who makest
peace and createst everything ; who in mercy givest
hght to the earth, and to those who dweU upon it, and
in thy goodness day by day and every day renewest the
works of creation. Blessed be the Lord our God for the
glory of his handiwork, and for the light-giving lights
which he has made for his praise. Blessed be the Lord
our God, who has formed the lights.'
' With great love hast Thou loved us, 0 Lord our God,
and with much overflowing pity hast Thou pitied us,
our Father and our King. For the sake of our fathers
who trusted in Thee, and to whom Thou taughtest the
statutes of hfe, have mercy upon us and teach us —
[Enlighten our eyes in thy law ; cause our hearts to
cleave to thy commandments ; unite our hearts to love
and fear thy name, that we may never be put to shame,
world without end. For Thou art God who workest
salvation, and us hast Thou chosen from among all

108 Institutions of Religion [§32
nations and tongues, and hast in truth brought us near
to thy great name] — that we may give thanks to Thee,
and declare thy unity in love. Blessed be the Lord,
who in love chose his people Israel.'
Then foUowed the recitation of the famous passages
from the Law, Deut. vi. 4-9 ; xi. 13-21 ; Numbers xv.
37-41, known by the first Hebrew word Shemd, ' Hear,
O Israel.' This was the great profession of Jewish
faith. From the platform the ' Messenger of the Con
gregation ' then passed to the front of the ark, and there
a long series of collects, technically called ' Benedictions,'
were repeated. Some were always the same ; some
varied with the day ; there were commemorations of
the mercies of God, prayers for peace, for insight and
knowledge, for forgiveness of sins, for dehverance from
every kind of need, for general redemption from bondage.
To these the Rabbis sometimes added prayers of their
own, either in special forms, or free. Next came the
reading of a passage from the Law, which might be dis
tributed among as many as seven readers, beginning
with a descendant of Aaron, if any claimant to priestly
rank was present, and passing in turn to a Levite. The
roU was carefully taken from the ark by the Minister ;
the linen coverings enveloping it were removed ; it was
placed on the reading-desk on the platform, open at the
appointed lesson, and the reader stood up and com
menced. He was not, however, alone ; and he did not
go very far. By his side stood an interpreter to translate
what he read in Hebrew into the common speech of the
people (§ 9). The Law was held in such great reverence
that the reader might not read more than one verse at
a time, so that there should be no danger of failure to
render the sense correctly. When the lesson from the

§33] The Feasts 109
Law was over, a lesson from the Prophetical books was
next read. Whether these were in a fixed order, like
those from the Law, is not known. This likewise was
translated, three verses at a time, into the popular
Aramean ; the interpreter contenting himself with giving
the general meaning, without heed to the exact words.
As soon as this concluded, the reader sat down, and
began his sermon. Sometimes his discourse was addressed
only to a ' speaker ' by his side, who repeated aloud the
thoughts thus privately whispered to his ear. A very
great Rabbi would not even communicate withthespeaker,
but confided his ideas first of all to some favourite
pupil. How all these conventional artifices for main
taining the teacher's dignity before the unlettered people
of the land were brushed aside by the simplicity of Jesus !
At the close of the sermon a doxology was pronounced,
the service ended, and the congregation dispersed.
We have all heard something like this nearer home.
It is not difficult to see, in spite of the vast differences
of time, place, language, manners, how the Synagogue
worship, with its prayers, Scripture readings, and sermon,
supphed the type on which Christian worship was first
based, and which it still employs for the expression and
maintenance of spiritual rehgion.
§ 33. The Feasts.
The daily and weekly services in the Temple and
Synagogues did not fill up the whole round of Jewish
worship. There were also various special services in
the sanctuary at Jerusalem. From very ancient times
the appearance of the new moon, marking the beginning
of the month, had been celebrated by special sacrifice

110 Institutions of Religion [§33
and ceremony, and this practice was still kept up in the
time of Jesus. Various incidents in the history of the
Temple and the city were commemorated by different
festivals and fasts. In the autumn fell the most solemn
day of the whole Jewish year, known as the Day of
Atonement, when the chief officer of the nation, the
High Priest, entered the Holy of Holies to make con
fession for the sins of the people, and with the offering
of incense and the sprinkling of blood entreated the
divine forgiveness. But beside these were three great
feasts, which had been kept from very early days, and
had now gathered around them a vast mass of traditional
interest. These feasts had probably once been connected
with primitive usages of old Canaanite rehgion, and were
first concerned with the seasons of the agricultural year.
There was the feast of Unleavened Bread, which fell in
the spring, in the first month of the Jewish year, when
the first sheaf of early barley was brought from the field.
Seven weeks later came the feast of Weeks, when the
harvest was over ; and in the autumn, after the vintage,
the agricultural year was closed by the celebration of
the feast of Ingathering, afterwards called the Feast of
Booths (Tabernacles). The old Hebrews seem to have
adopted these feasts into their own rehgion, and they
tried by degrees to plant them firmly in its midst by
associating them with incidents in their own history.
Thus to the feast of Unleavened Bread they prefixed the
Pesach or Passover, in commemoration of their deliver
ance from Egypt (Deut. xvi. i) ; and at a later time they
explained the meaning of the feast of Booths (Tabernacles)
by reference to the booths in which they supposed their
ancestors to have been sheltered on the same occasion
(Leviticus xxiii. 42, 43). The same tendency led them

§33] The Feasts 111
still later to commemorate at the feast of Weeks the
giving of the Law on Sinai, and to attach other events in
their national traditions to particular sacred days.
The observance of these three feasts was thus a matter
of very ancient rule. In the days when the land was
covered with local sanctuaries it had been the custom
for every full-grown male Israelite to come ' to see
Yahweh's face ' (as they phrased it) with a proper offer
ing, according to his means. When the Deuteronomic
Law was promulgated, and all sacrifice was restricted to
the temple at Jerusalem, it was expected that all the
worshippers of Yahweh in the little kingdom of Judah
would assemble there. The same principle was enforced
when the temple was rebuilt after the Captivity ; but
it was plain that as the people spread over their ancient
land, and afterwards settled in other countries, they
could not keep up this custom regularly. So it seems
only to have been considered obligatory on the men who
hved within fifteen miles of the holy city to attend every
time. But the strong national feeling of the Jews made
them cling very firmly to these usages ; and to the Pass
over, in particular, which celebrated the birthday of
their hfe as a united people, by their liberation from their
Egyptian bondage, they were very deeply attached.
Year by year vast multitudes crowded to Jerusalem,
not from Palestine only, but from all cities of the world
where Jews had made a home away from their own land.
From distant countries came the pilgrim bands speaking
many different languages ; the city was full, and the
slopes outside the walls were crowded with the tents in
which the caravan-parties were encamped. Then they
were proud to feel that they were a nation ; they were
proud of their worship, proud of their temple, proud of

112 Institutions of Religion [§33
their God who had chosen them for his own, apart from
other men. They counted the paschal lambs that were
slain for the Passover supper ; it is said that on one
occasion there were upwards of a quarter of a milhon ;
and they knew then that there could not be much fewer
than two and a half million of people assembled.1 It
was to keep this feast that Jesus went up with the
Twelve to Jerusalem.
There were special services in the Temple ; but the
chief feature of the festival was the supper, at which
the Passover lamb was eaten. For this purpose families
and friends used to unite in httle parties, varying from
ten to twenty persons. Strangers in the city were freely
allowed the use of a room with the necessary furniture,
tables, and cushions, in return for which it was customary
to leave behind the skin of the lamb and the earthen
vessels employed at the supper. Lambs were purchased
in the streets or in the temple court, and on the afternoon
of the day on which the Passover began (14th Nisan) the
people repaired to the temple, where the animals were
inspected by the priests and slain. When the festive
service was over they broke up into groups, and gathered
at the appointed guest-chamber ready for the meal,
which might begin as soon as the sun had set, and the
trumpets on the temple hill had announced that the
15th of Nisan had commenced. They came in their
best clothes ; and they had eaten nothing since the after
noon service, that they might have good appetites, for
it was an occasion of joy. The guests lay down on mats
and cushions spread upon the floor, so that all could
1 Probably there was some great exaggeration in the number
of the lambs. The statement is that of Josephus, but it is diffi
cult to believe that so many could be killed in one afternoon.

§33] The Feasts 113
reach the dishes on a low table in the middle. The head
of the family, or the president of the httle company, first
took a cup of wine mingled with water, and gave thanks
over it. Here are a few words of a very old prayer
which tradition associates with this act. ' Blessed art
thou, O Lord our God, who hast created the fruit of
the vine. Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of
the universe, who hast chosen us from among all peoples,
and exalted us from among all languages, and sanctified
us with thy commandments. And thou hast given us,
O Lord, in love, the solemn days for joy, and appointed
seasons for gladness : and this the day of the feast of
unleavened bread, the season of our freedom, a holy con
vocation, the memorial of our departure from Egypt.'
When the cup had been passed round, and hands had
been washed, the paschal table was brought forward ;
it bore the lamb, roasted whole with unbroken bones,
but now cut in pieces, bitter herbs, lettuce, endive, etc.,
with a kind of thick batter called haroseth, made of dates,
raisins, figs, almonds, vinegar, and spice, and lastly, thin
round cakes of unleavened bread. The president dipped
some of the herbs in the haroseth and distributed them,
and it was then customary to sing Psalms cxiii. and cxiv.,
ending with short thanksgivings. The cup was passed
round again, and the president next broke the bread
with thanksgiving, which was in its turn dipped in the
haroseth. Then the real meal began, and the lamb was
eaten. When this was finished the wine-cup was filled
a third time ; and a special benediction was pronounced
over it, so that it bore the name of the ' cup of blessing.'
Finally the cup went round a fourth time ; more hymns
were sung (Psalms cxv.-cxviii.) ; and with two more
collects of praise the supper and the service ended. h

114 Institutions of Religion [§34
§34. The Sabbath.
Prominent among the religious observances of the
Jews in the time of Jesus was the keeping of the Sabbath.
We have spoken already of the Synagogue services which
took place upon that day \ but why were they fixed on
that day ? It was because from very ancient times that
day had been regarded as especially sacred. It is possible
that it was of Babylonian origin, possible also, that it
was once connected with the changes of the moon. The
evidence is obscure, and all that we can definitely affirm
is that it appears in the early books of Israel's history
and prophecy in association with the new moon, as a day
when common labour was suspended. This may have
been a Canaanite custom which the immigrant Israehtes
adopted into their rehgion. Their lawgivers tried to
account for it in their own way, first of all by connecting
it with the great event at the beginning of their national
history, the dehverance from Egypt. ' Remember that
thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and that
Yahweh thy God brought thee out thence with a mighty
hand and with a stretched out arm, therefore Yahweh
thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day '
(Deut. v. 15). This was how the authors of the Deutero-
nomic code (620 B.C.) explained the custom in their
edition of the famous Ten Words. But there was no real
connexion between the dehverance from Egypt and keep
ing the seventh day ; so a later editor of the Ten Words
did not hesitate to alter this explanation, and substitute
what he thought a better one : ' In six days Yahweh
made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is,
and rested the seventh day : wherefore Yahweh blessed
the Sabbath day, and hallowed it * (Exodus xx. 11).

§34l The Sabbath 115
This is, of course, a reference to the grand story of the
Creation with which the book of Genesis opens ; and it
does give a much better reason for observing the Sabbath,
if it were a true one. But we now know that this story is
of much later origin than the practice which it is invoked
to sanction. The process of creation has been arranged
in six days, followed by a rest day, because the Sabbath
was already an ancient and sacred institution. So it
gradually came to be one of the usages most clearly
separating them from other nations ; aU their devotion
to their God and their Law gathered with peculiar
strength round this one observance.
The great principle which regulated it was that no
work might be done. So all business was stopped ; no
one worked in the fields, or the vineyards ; the shops
were closed ; no craft might be carried on in the house ;
and all household labour was, as far as possible, sus
pended. No fires were hghted, and no food was cooked.
If a man got his clothes wet, and it was necessary to
kindle a fire to dry them, he must take great care that
his neighbours did not see. The most minute rules were
laid down in the later books of Rabbinical Law to secure
abstinence from everything that might seem like work ;
and many of these must have been discussed again and
again in the time of Jesus. Thus it was gravely asked
whether a father might carry his child in his arms. A
tailor might not go out with a needle on Friday after
noon, lest the Sabbath should come on, and he should be
guilty of carrying the needle. No loose ribbon might be
worn — that was carrying something, but it might be
sewn on to the dress. False hair might be worn in the
house, but not in the street. An old man, however,
must go without his false teeth on the Sabbath, for they

116 Institutions of Religion [§34
might fall out, and he might pick them up, and carry
them. A wooden-legged man might put on his wooden
leg on the Sabbath, and a cripple might walk on crutches,
but it was not lawful to cross a river on stilts. One
important dispute gathered round the question whether
it was lawful to eat an egg laid on the Sabbath. It was
decided to be unlawful if the hen was kept for the purpose
of laying ; because then the egg would be the result of a
week-day occupation continued on the Sabbath. But
if the hen was kept for fattening, it was another matter ;
then the egg might be regarded as part of the hen that
had just dropped off, and so it might be eaten.
There were, however, many duties which could not
be altogether avoided ; for instance, the cattle must be
watered. Hence a whole series of regulations was
devised to secure them from carrying anything when
they were taken to the well : the water might be drawn
and poured into the trough, but it must not be carried
and set before them, the animals must come to it and
drink of their own accord. Another set of works referred
to the treatment of the sick. It was said in the pro
phecies of Ezekiel (xx. ii) that Yahweh had given
statutes and judgments through the fulfilment of which
men should live. It was argued, therefore, that no law
could be binding which involved danger to hfe. Here
was a fruitful theme for debate and minute distinctions.
What classes of cases could be brought under the head of
danger to hfe ? Some were in favour of strict interpre
tation, some of lax. Some laid down broadly that all
medical apphcations to the outside of the body ought
to be forbidden ; if a man had lumbago he must bear it
till the Sabbath was over, and not have a hot fomentation.
On the other hand, certain internal remedies were

§34l The Sabbath 117
allowed — provided they were taken for food as pleasure,
and not as medicine. Some said that broken bones must
not be set ; others said that if a man had swallowed a
piece of glass a doctor might be fetched, a splinter might
be taken out of the eye, or a thorn from the flesh. If an
animal feU into a pit Rabbinic Law ordered food and
drink to be lowered, or some means furnished by which
it might be kept up in the pit ; nay, the Talmud even
discusses cases when it was lawful to lift an animal out !
The liberal teachers said, in a language that closely re
sembles the words of Jesus, ' The Sabbath is given to
you, not you to the Sabbath.'
These strict rules had one very great drawback. They
were so strict that only a few zealous and determined
persons could possibly keep them. Consequently all
sorts of evasions were allowed. For example, a farmer
wanted to move a sheaf in his field. That was carrying
— labour : but if he laid on it a spoon in common use,
then, as he might move the spoon, he might move the
sheaf in order to transport the spoon ! A regular set
of arrangements (of relatively late date) was devised
under the name of Eriibh, ' mixture ' or ' connexion.'
The house was the centre where many things might be
done which were unlawful elsewhere. But the limits of
the house might be extended through several courts or
alleys by stretching a rope or a wire along them, or by
putting up a beam at the entrance. Then everything
which could be done in the house could be done in all
parts of the area thus connected. Friends who hved
more than a Sabbath day's journey from each other
(2,000 cubits, about three quarters of a mile), and wished
to meet at each other's houses, used to go on Friday to
some spots at the proper distances, and bury some little

118 Institutions of Religion [§34
bits of food, representing two meals. ' Where a man's
food is,' they said, ' there is his home,' and so they were
free to start on another two thousand paces ; and places
beyond the prescribed distance were thus connected
within legal limits. But this was only allowed for
serious objects, such as paying a visit of condolence,
attending a wedding banquet, or meeting a master or
friend. AU these rules, one might suppose, would make the
keeping of the Sabbath almost unbearably irksome.
But it was supposed to be a day of delight. The best
dress must be worn, the choicest food made ready. The
rich gathered their friends round them at dinner ; even
the poor must have three meals. So strong was this
feeling that one school (followers of Shammai, p. 132)
declared it improper to disturb the gladness of the day
by visiting those who were in any sorrow, or trying to
comfort the sick, for this involved a painful excitement
of the sympathies ! The disciples of another famous
teacher, Hillel, however, pronounced these acti.' quite
lawful. Thus the discussion of what might be done and what
might not be done on the Sabbath was a very important
feature in Jewish rehgious hfe. It was the same in
every country where the Jews were settled. They were
ridiculed and abused by their heathen neighbours, but
they did not mind that : they must be faithful to then-
Law as they understood it. Again and again in war
they were taken at terrible disadvantage. In the first
Maccabean rising they chose to be massacred without
attempting to defend themselves, rather than fight on
the Sabbath. When Pompey besieged Jerusalem (§ 20),
they would do nothing on the Sabbath to prevent the

§35] Personal Observances 119
erection of earthworks, or the advance of battering
engines ; they would rather perish than violate God's
command. We find it hard to understand how the ob
servance of the Sabbath could gather round it this
devotion. It must be remembered that every part of
the Law seemed to be connected with every other part.
It was all blended into one whole ; and that whole was
inextricably joined with the rehgion and nationahty of
the entire people. Every Sabbath the Jews knew that
they were in fellowship with all their countrymen, how
ever scattered they might be, through this observance.
All their pride of race and rehgion was wrapped up in it.
No good Jew, therefore, could think lightly of anything
which seemed to involve its desecration or to bring it
into disrepute. § 35. Personal Observances.
Besides the duties of pubhc worship, whether in the
Temple or the Synagogue, the celebration of the feasts,
and the keeping of the Sabbath, there were many other
religious duties either directly or indirectly founded
upon the Law. Some of these were designed to keep
the great truths of the Law constantly in the mind of
the Israelite. Thus there were certain memorial signs
by which the house or the person of a pious Jew could
be known at once. The first was the tsitstth or tassel, of
blue or white wool, worn at each of the four corners of
the outer robe (Deut. xxii. 12 ; Numbers xv. 37, sqq.),
' that ye may look upon them, and remember all the
commandments of Yahweh to do them,' said the Law.
Then, secondly, there was the mezuzah, a httle case fixed
to the right door-post of house or room, containing a

120 Institutions of Religion [§35
parchment-roll, on which were inscribed in twenty-two
lines the two great passages, Deut. vi. 4-9 ; xi. 13-21.
Thirdly, there were the Tephillin, literally, the ' Prayers,'
or as they are called in the Gospels, Phylacteries, a Greek
name meaning ' guards,' which implies that they were
looked on as charms or amulets, endowed with a magical
protecting power. They were small leather cases, to
which leathern thongs were attached. One shape, in
tended to be bound on the left arm, held a single scroll
containing four extracts from the Law, Exodus xiii. 1-10 ;
xiii. 11-16 ; Deut. vi. 4-9 ; xi. 13-21. Another sort had
four divisions, in each of which was a copy of one of the
sacred passages ; this was to be fastened on the forehead,
just beneath the hair.
These phylacteries were to be put on at prayer-time.
As in other cases, so also the personal devotions of the
Jews had been carefully reduced to rule. We do not
find in the age just before Jesus any of those wonderful
Psalms being composed which realize for us so fully the
spirit of true religion. Everything is becoming systema
tized. It is true that some of the Rabbis recommended
what we will call free prayer ; but many of their dis
cussions about prayer show that they had come to look
on it as a formal duty, and that it did not always spring
fresh from the heart. Twice every day, once in the
morning, and once in the evening, was the Shemd to be
repeated (p. 108), with the prescribed thanksgivings at
the beginning and the end ; though this duty was only
imposed on adult males, and was not obligatory on
women, children, or slaves. Thrice a day, morning,
afternoon, and evening, must every one, men and women,
old and young, free and slave, repeat ' the Eighteen,' or
' the Prayer.' These were eighteen collects of thanks-

§35 3 Personal Observances 121
giving and supphcation : here are two of them : —
' Praised be Thou, Lord, our God, and the God of our
Fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the
God of Jacob, the great, the mighty, the terrible God,
the Most High, thou who bestowest abundant grace and
createst all things, and rememberest the promises to the
fathers, and bringest a redeemer to their children's chil
dren, for thy name's sake, out of love. O God, who
bringest help and salvation, and art a shield, praised be
Thou, 0 shield of Abraham.'
' Forgive us, O our Father, for we have sinned ; pardon
us, O our King, for we have transgressed. Thou de-
hghtest to forgive and to pardon. Praised be Thou,
Lord, most merciful, Thou who abundantly pardonest.'
Besides these prayers there were thanksgivings at
meal-times for food and drink j there were special
prayers on the Sabbath, on New Year's Day, and for
other pecuhar occasions ; and free prayers might be
offered also. Other religious observances sprang out of
the distinction between clean and unclean enforced in
the Law (see § 37) ; and others again were connected
with the practice of fasting, which was not, indeed,
ordained in the Law, but was of ancient date, ever since
the disasters of the faU of Jerusalem and the Captivity.
There were pubhc and general fasts commemorating
past calamities ; or a fast might be proclaimed in a
dry autumn when the lands suffered for want of rain.
The second and fifth days of the week (Monday and
Thursday) were appropriated for this purpose. Pious
persons used to fast oftener ; some (like the Pharisee,
Luke xviii. 12) fasted on these two days all the year
round. The fasts were kept with different degrees of
strictness : in the lowest, the usual washing and anoint-

122 Institutions of Religion [§36
ing was not forbidden ; in the more severe, all external
expressions of cheerfulness, such as greetings to friends
and neighbours, were rigidly suppressed. These are only
some general outlines of recognized rehgious duty ; with
what minuteness the stricter Jews defined the obliga
tions of the Law we shall see more clearly by and by.
§36. Proselytes.
Stress has been laid in this chapter on the connexion
between the religion of the Jews and their race. Each
helped to keep up the feeling of the other. But might
nobody else worship God as the Jews worshipped him ?
Could not men of other nations adopt the rehgion of the
Jews, attend their synagogues, and take offerings to their
Temple ? If the Jews thought that they, and they
alone, had the true rehgion, must they not have desired
that others would share its blessings with them ? The
great prophets of old time had taught that a day would
come when even the greatest enemies of Israel, those
who had fought, as it were, over its prostrate body,
would be joined with it in the service of Yahweh. When
the Jews were in exile in Babylonia it was hoped that as
soon as they were set free the pious and earnest among
them would carry forth rehgion to the ends of the earth,
and bring all nations to the truth. But after the return
to Palestine and the rebuilding of Jerusalem they had
so many troubles close at hand that they had no time
or energy to think of spreading their rehgion in distant
lands. During the two centuries before Christ, however, the
Jews had become more and more widely dispersed among
the Mediterranean countries ; and more and more

§36] Proselytes 123
strangers had come and settled in Palestine. As the
Jews mingled with others, their habits and behefs by
degrees became better known, and many persons were
inclined to adopt them. It was a time when great dis
content was felt with the old idolatries, and people often
eagerly welcomed some fresh kind of religion in the hope
that it might be more satisfactory than what they had
long practised without much faith in it. Especially was
this the case with a rehgion that had been very long
established, and could trace back its origin to great
antiquity. Then it was thought to deserve pecuhar
respect. So the Jews seem to have been quite active
in making converts, and though many of the Roman
writers made fun of their earnestness, there were not a
few persons in almost all ranks who showed a different
mind. The Romans were generally ready to be friendly
to the rehgion of the country in which they hved ; thus
we hear in the Gospels of an officer in the Roman army
who built a synagogue at Capernaum (Luke vii. 5). The
regular converts are called in the New Testament by a
Greek name, proselytes, those who come into, or joined,
the religious fellowship of the Jews. These were ad
mitted to the full privileges of Judaism by the signs of
circumcision, baptism, and sacrifice. There were many
others who were attracted by the high spiritual mono
theism of the Synagogue, and joined in the Sabbath wor
ship where the Scriptures were read in the Greek. They
observed some of the great moral rules, and abstained
from such offences as blasphemy, idolatry, murder, un-
chastity, theft. They were known as the ' God-fearers,'
and supphed the Apostle Paul — and no doubt other early
missionaries as weU — with many a follower. But they
did not take on themselves the full obligations of the Law.

124 Institutions of Religion [§36
Curiously enough the Jews never quite reconciled them
selves to those who did. Sometimes they used very
contemptuous language about them, and even said they
were as great a plague as leprosy. After all they cared
most to keep their rehgion to themselves. Only when
we have fully understood this can we realize the true
grandeur of the teaching of Jesus.

Chapter V
RELIGION
Part II. — Orders, Parties, and Sects
[Besides authorities named in the introduction, see R. T. Herford ,
Pharisaism (19 12).] § 37. The Scribes.
All the religious hfe of the Jews centered in the observ
ance of their sacred Law (§ 27). But the Law was not
concerned with rehgion only. It regulated all the prin
cipal duties of ordinary society as well ; it set before men
the pattern of conduct demanded from those who
belonged to the people of Yahweh in a great many
things which do not seem to us to have anything — or at
least not much — to do with rehgion at all. One reason
for this was that they did not realize that the Law con
tained elements of various dates and origins, separated
from each other by hundreds of years, the products of
very different social and religious conditions. These
were all grouped under one name, Moses ; above Moses
stood God as their ultimate author. All, therefore, were
equally divine ; moral or ceremonial they required the
same obedience. Another reason was the danger to which
the Jews were constantly exposed, of falling away from
their rehgion into some one of the numerous forms of

126 Orders, Parties, and Sects [§37
idolatry by which they were surrounded. The Levitical
Law introduced by Ezra (p. 89), and finally combined
with the older codes by his successors, succeeded at last
in firmly establishing itself in the community. In order,
however, that it might be known, reverenced, obeyed, it
was necessary that it should be accessible to all. Not
every one could go to consult the roUs at Jerusalem ; it
must be copied for general use in pubhc worship or in
private study. The rise of the synagogues, in whose
services the reading of the Law formed a leading part,
caused a demand for copies, and produced an order of
persons whose business it was to transcribe the sacred
books, and guarantee their correctness. Of course it
was not a new thing for special persons to write or copy
books ; but the books of the Law came to have a pecuhar
importance, and so the men who were entrusted with the
duty of preparing them were called pre-eminently the
' Writers ' or the ' Scribes.'
This title had been, indeed, already borne by no less a
person than Ezra himself ; and it passed on to his succes
sors who were engaged in similar tasks of reproducing,
studying, explaining, teaching the Law. Here was the
rule of hfe ; but it was not always very clear. It did not
go into sufficient details ; it might lay down a general
ordinance to be obeyed in average cases, but then a great
many difficulties might arise, owing to circumstances
which had never been contemplated when the Law was
made. So it happened that the teachers engaged in ex
pounding the Law were often called upon to decide what
might be done, and what might not. They were desig
nated by the same name, the ' Scribes,' for they were
probably at first the same persons who edited and re-
edited, copied and re-copied the holy books ; in the

§37] The Scribes 127
Gospels they are often called the ' Lawyers,' or the
' Teachers of the Law.'
They first come clearly into view soon after the
beginning of the Greek period (§ io), when it was felt
that great care must be taken to preserve the true
rehgion. The way in which it was proposed to do this
was indicated in the proverbial sayings, attributed to
the men who followed Ezra, ' Be circumspect in judg
ment,' ' train up many scholars,' and ' make a hedge
around the Law.'1 But it was not till after the great
struggle led by the Maccabees (about 164 B.C.) that it
was fully realized that the hfe or death of rehgion was
involved in keeping up the Law. From that time on
ward — the middle of the second century B.C. — the
position of the Scribes, teachers and scholars together,
became more and more important. Shortly before the
days of Jesus the word Rabbi (literally ' my great one ')
came into use in addressing them ; and then, as with the
French monsieur (shortened from mon Seigneur, ' my
lord ') the meaning of the pronoun dropped, and the term
was employed simply as a title. They formed a kind of
guild or brotherhood. There was a secular side to the
profession ; the Rabbi circumcised the babe, instructed
the boy, drew up marriage settlements, and prepared the
deeds for purchases and sales, for loans and agreements,
and such-like pubhc transactions. These involved tech
nical questions of what we should call civil law, and so
the Rabbi was a member of the local court of justice
connected with the synagogue, or if he was very eminent,
he might be elected into the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem
1 Compare the language of Psalms i. i, 2, xix. 7-14, and cxix.
The function of the Scribe and his experience of life are described
in Ecclesiasticus, xxxix. 1-11.

128 Orders, Parties, and Sects [§37
(§§ 18, 19). In this way it might often happen that a
Rabbi was asked to arbitrate in some dispute, when the
parties sought a private decision without taking their
case before a court (cp. Luke xii. 13).
But we have said, and it must be constantly repeated
that the Jews recognized no real distinction between
what we call civil law and rehgious law, between things
secular and things rehgious. Hence it came to pass that
the Rabbis were also continually occupied with dis
cussing and applying those rules which had been laid
down for maintaining the separateness of the Jews from
other people, and the observance of their pecuhar usages,
as a rehgious duty. They started from the written Law :
but around this there grew up a great body of decisions
made by famous teachers in particular cases. These
resembled the decisions of our judges in the interpretation
of the statutes enacted by Parliament. The decisions of
our judges are reported, and from time to time collected :
one decision makes a precedent, as it is called, and others
follow on the same lines. Something like this happened
among the Jews ; only the maxims of their great Rabbis
were not written down : they were transmitted orally,
by the master to his scholars. ' The Teachers say,' he
would begin. A great deal of pains was taken in the
cultivation of memory ; a Rabbi whose head was stored
with the sayings of the wise was described as ' a well-
plastered cistern, filled with the water of knowledge, out
of which nothing could escape.' When any critical point
was debated, he was considered the cleverest disputant
who could most readily produce the words of some
famous predecessor in support of his view. Thus they
did not really deal with the principles of the case ; they
only asked ' what has been said about it already ? '

§37] The Scribes 129
The quotation of a verse from the Scriptures, whether
really apposite or not, or the sudden appeal to a tradi
tional authority, was considered conclusive. In this
way they gradually filled up all kinds of gaps in their
written Law. When any case turned up for which no
provision was made, they looked about for that which
seemed most like it, and settled the difficulty accordingly.
So, all matters of conduct were placed under two heads,
what was unlawful and what was lawful, what was for
bidden and what was allowed. This sort of arrangement
was called ' binding and loosing' (cp. Matthew xvi. 19).
We have already seen the kind of questions which had
sprung up concerning what might or might not be done
on the Sabbath (§ 34). All the rules defining the limits
of lawful occupation on the Sabbath were Scribe-made
Law ; they were the results of centuries of discussion of
all sorts of real or imaginary questions. WeU did the
Rabbis say that the Sabbath-legislation was like a
mountain hung by a hair ! Another very important set
of rules gathered round the ordinances concerned with
ceremonial cleanness. This was one of the ways in
which the strict Jews strove to keep themselves separate
from the Gentiles among them. For instance, they must
only eat food which was technically clean. So they must
not eat beef bred by a Gentile, nor taste wine from a
Gentile vineyard. 'Thou shalt not boil a kid in its
mother's milk,' said the Law. ' Then you must not eat
flesh and milk together,' said the Rabbis, ' for they might
mix and be cooked in your stomach.' But (as Mr. Mon-
tefiore has observed) we are apt to exaggerate the
trouble which the food-laws caused. It was no more
irksome to abstain from eating hares, rabbits, pigs, and
lobsters, than to avoid cats, dogs, and horses. When

130 Orders, Parties, and Sects [§37
many people ate httle or no meat, and those who did all
killed the animals in the same way, the rules for slaughter
were not tyrannical, and to refrain from taking milk,
butter, or cheese, with meat or poultry was no particular
hardship. Still, when a strict Jew went out to dinner,
he might be made quite uneasy by the idea that some
of the food on the table might somehow be unclean, or
might not have been properly tithed (p. 136). Jesus cuts
all this away by one stroke, ' Eat such things as are set
before you ' (Luke x. 8). Great attention was also paid
to the right mode of washing the hands. Should the
whole hand be dipped in the water, they asked, or only
part of it ? Should the water come up to the wrists, or
no further than the fingers ? And should the hand be
held upwards or downwards in washing ? It was the
same with the cleansing of all kinds of dishes, pots, and
pans. There were metal dishes and earthenware dishes,
there were vessels of glass, or, it might be, of leather ;
for each one of these a fresh set of rules had to be made.
Moreover, there were different kinds of water : there was
well-water, and river-water, and cistern-water, and so
forth ; and each of these must be used in the proper way.
In fact, there was a proper way of doing everything, and
it was the life-business of the Rabbis to find it out.
It might be supposed that ah this would have been
excessively tiresome to the people. Much of these dis
cussions, however, referred only to ceremonial usage ;
the rules of ritual purity did not affect the working
peasant or artisan. They were intended for priests in
the discharge of their duties, or for laymen visiting the
temple ; they were not even obhgatory on the ordinary
Rabbi. Still there might have been some resistance to
their imposition even to this modified extent. Yet it is

§373 The Scribes 131
plain that the Rabbis as a body were held in great respect
among the people. They sprang from them, they were
not a sacred caste with hereditary rights ; whatever
position they gained was acquired by their own talents.
And they represented the fundamental tendency of the
Law. They were the hving types of that way of life
which had been dehberately impressed on the community
as the only guarantee for the preservation of the great
truths of rehgion which the prophets had worked out in
old times. Wherever they went, therefore, and they
went everywhere, they were sure of a welcome. They
were greeted in the streets ; they had the front seats in
the synagogue. No httle home festivity was complete
without their presence ; at a dinner-party it was part of
the entertainment to talk about the Law ; and the best
places at table were always given to them. To marry a
Rabbi's daughter, even to carry a Rabbi's burdens, fetch
his water, or load his ass, was a privilege. A man should
help a Rabbi in need feed him, clothe him, redeem him
from slavery, sooner than even his own father. But
what if his father was a Rabbi too ? Why, then, in that
case, the duty of a son might be discharged first, because
it coincided with the duty of a scholar to his Teacher.
Israel was the people of wisdom ; and the Rabbis were
the wise men of Israel ; they were honoured, it was said,
by God himself, and their praises were proclaimed by the
angels ; in heaven each would hold the same rank and
distinction as on earth.
This deep reverence could hardly have been paid to
the Rabbis had there not been a great deal of real earnest
ness and genuine rehgion among them. They had a
large experience of hfe, which they summed up in short
pithy sentences, some of which were often very striking.

132 Orders, Parties, and Sects [§37
' On three things,' said Simon the Just (probably early
in the third century B.C.), ' does the permanence of the
world depend ; on the Law, on worship, and on works
of righteousness.' For a Jew these were the funda
mentals ; obedience to the divine will, joyous devotion,
right conduct, unstained by any participation in heathen
ism. Works of righteousness, however, might be per
formed not for their own sake, but for some expected
gain, either on earth or in heaven. And in days of
national misfortune the gain might not be manifest, and
loyalty might waver, as if God were unfaithful. So the
wise Antigonus of Socho impressed this lesson on his
disciples : ' Be not like servants who serve their master
for the sake of a reward, but be like servants who serve
their master without thinking of reward, and let the fear
of Heaven be upon you.'
At the time of Jesus the Rabbis were very much
divided into two parties, one following the lead of Hillel,
the other of Shammai. Hillel and Shammai were the
acknowledged heads of the whole Jewish schools during
the latter part of Herod's reign, and indeed for some
time longer. Hillel came from Babylonia to study at
Jerusalem. He was very poor, and could not always
pay the fee which it had recently been determined to
charge for admission. One day, so runs the story, the
college porter refused to let him in. So he climbed up
outside to the window to catch what he could of the
teaching going on within. It was winter, and it began
to snow. But Hillel never left his post. It happened to
be the eve of the Sabbath ; and the discussion went on all
night under two famous Rabbis, Shemaiah and Abtahon.
When the light dawned, they could not make out why
the lecture-hall was still so dark. Then they noticed

§37] The Scribes 133
that the window was blocked up. It was the Sabbath,
but they went to see what was the matter, and Hillel was
found buried in the snow and numbed with the cold.
They did not hesitate what to do ; they brought him
in, rubbed him with oil, and laid him before the fire,
saying to one another, ' This man is worth breaking the
Sabbath for.'
By and by Hillel became the president of the Sanhe
drin, and by his side stood Shammai. They were very
different men ; Hillel was famed for his courtesy and
gentleness ; Shammai was harsh and rough. Many
stories were told to show the different temper of the two
men. A Gentile once went to Shammai, and said he
wanted to be made a proselyte ; ' but you must teach
me the whole Law,' he added, 'while I can stand on one
leg.' Shammai flew into a rage, hfted a measuring-rod
which he had in his hand, and drove the man away.
Then he went to Hillel, with the same mocking demand.
' Agreed,' cried Hillel ; ' never do to your neighbour
what is unpleasant to yourself ; this is the whole Law,
all the rest is only commentary.' The Gentile was so
much struck by these words that he really became a
diligent student of the Law, which was just what Hillel
wanted. Thus it happened that Hillel generally took a
larger and more liberal view of the prescriptions of the
Law than Shammai, who was for enforcing the strictest
interpretation of every detail of rehgious observance.
We have seen an instance of this already, in connexion
with the Sabbath (p. 118) ; here is another, affecting a
very little matter, but quite typical of the excessive
formahty which Rabbinism produced. Suppose a man
suddenly remembered that he had omitted to say grace
after his last meal, what should he do ? ' Say it then

134 Orders, Parties, and Sects [§38
and there,' answered Hihel's followers. ' No,' said the
school of Shammai ; ' he must go back to the place where
he ate, and say it on the same spot.'
So the good and the evil in the system of the Rabbis
were always struggling together side by side. No doubt
all the Rabbis thought they were working for rehgion.
They did not care to be rich or powerful ; they were
content with poverty, they could bear suffering. They
mostly kept aloof from civil and pohtical questions : they
did not share the popular illusions about the speedy
coming of the Messiah : Israel was not ready, and so they
redoubled their zeal for the strict fulfilment of the Law.
Their notions were rooted deep, for they had been sown
amid blood and tears in the desperate fight which had
been waged again and again with heathenism. It was
not wonderful, therefore, that they should believe that
their way of religion was the only right way, and that they
should regard anyone who contested their traditional
maxims by a direct appeal to first principles, with angry
horror. It is the danger of all systems that we get to
love them better than truth ; it is the inevitable result
that anyone who attacks the system seems to be attack
ing the truth. It is easy for us in our day to see the
superiority of Jesus to the Rabbis : does it never happen
now, however, that we take the side of the Rabbis against
the Prophets ?
§ 38. The Pharisees and Sadducees.
Side by side with the Scribes in the Gospels we hear
again and again of the Pharisees. In contrast with the
Pharisees, when they retire defeated after some en
counter with Jesus, the Sadducees appear upon the scene.

§38] The Pharisees and Sadducees 135
Who were these persons ? We shall perhaps gain the
clearest ideas of them by briefly describing each group
separately, and then comparing them together. Let us
deal first with the Pharisees, for they were closely alhed
with the Rabbis of whom we have already said so much.
The prominence given to the Law by its expounders
in the schools and synagogues helped greatly to keep
the people faithful to it. But some were more faithful
to it than others, observed it more strictly, and embraced
its leading principles with more ardour. Such men were
naturally noticed by their neighbours ; the care they
took in avoiding pollution, and keeping away from
everything heathen, could not be altogether hidden.
First it was said of one, and then of another, ' How pious
he is.' By degrees this epithet came to be attached to
all who took special pains to make their hfe conform to
the demands of the Law, and there was a recognized
class who went by the name of ' the Pious. ' They did not
differ from other people in their behef ; they held the
same doctrines ; they obeyed the same ordinances ; but
they cared much more for their rehgion, and the only
way they had of showing this was by a more rigid fulfil
ment of the Law.
The great struggle for freedom of rehgion in the middle
of the second century B.C. led by the Maccabees, was
largely maintained by these determined men, who readily
sacrificed themselves and their families sooner than be
false to their faith. The triumph of the Jews against
their Syrian oppressors seemed for a time to secure an
uninterrupted field for the principles represented by the
Pious. But after a time the effect began to wear off ;
earnestness declined, and many who had at first been
zealous grew indifferent and neglectful. Greek influ-

136 Orders, Parties, and Sects [§38
ences gained in power, and dangerous tendencies to
worldliness threatened the purity of rehgious observance.
The people were often not in a condition to pay proper
attention to the distinctions of clean and unclean.
During the disturbances many legal duties had been
neglected, even by Priests and Levites, and the masses
had certainly failed to comply with the full requirements
of the Law. This was especially the case in the matter
of some of the proper rehgious taxes on the products of the
land. Enquiry was made whether the tithes ordained in
the Law for the Priests, the Levites, and the poor, had been
duly paid. This was not a mere financial arrangement
for raising so much money. It was a rehgious duty ;
part of the tax was supposed to be paid to the real owner
of the whole land, God ; as such it was holy, and could
not be lawfully enjoyed by a layman not belonging to
the sacred caste. Anyone who partook of food on which
the proper tithe had not been paid was really guilty,
therefore, of eating something which ought to have been
given to God.
How was this difficulty to be avoided ? Some did not
mind, they were willing to run the risk. Others resolved
that they would only buy food from dealers who could
be trusted to have paid the proper tithe. This led to
the formation of brotherhoods or companionships of
persons who pledged themselves to the strict discharge
of this particular rehgious duty. The members of these
groups bought and sold among themselves, and so kept
aloof from the rest of their neighbours. They would not
take a meal at anyone else's house, because they might
unknowingly eat of some untithed food. Thus they
came to be known as the people who had separated them
selves from the community ; and this grew into a name,

§38] The Pharisees and Sadducees 137
they were called the PherusMm (Aramaic Pharishaia) or
Pharisees, i.e., the Separatists. This name first appears
in historical record during the administration of the
Maccabean Priest-Prince, John Hyrcanus, 135-105 b.c.
The strictness displayed in one direction naturally
spread to others. The principal of separation became
of great importance in the general question of the clean
and unclean. First one was more precise than the rest
of his comrades in the fraternity : then another followed
him : by and by a third was discontented because these
even were not precise enough, and so he aimed at a still
greater austerity. Thus there grew up various grades
among the fraternities, representing successive stages in
the endeavour to carry out to the utmost the supposed
requirements of the Law. Entrance into the brotherhood
was open to all : the candidate for admission declared
himself ready to fulfil all rehgious demands, and took a
vow before tliree members of the guild to keep the rules
of the community faithfully. A period of probation
preceded his reception into the several grades, lasting
from thirty days to a year : and special instruction was
imparted to him, in explanation of his new duties.
The fraternities of the Pharisees thus formed plainly
stood in close relation with the Rabbis. They were
simply the further development of the principles of the
Schools : they attempted to give actual form in real hfe
to the ideal demands of the Teachers who spent all their
energy on the study of the Law and the determination of
right conduct in all kinds of possible or impossible cases.
But these brotherhoods, though they were formed out
of the people, were not in opposition to the people. On
the other hand, they were open to all ; they claimed no
privileges, they only imposed obligations ; they took

138 Orders, Parties, and Sects [§38
nothing from the people, they simply set before them a
pattern of performance of duties which, in theory at
least, every one recognized as binding on himself. The
people had no objection to seeing others more pious, more
devoted, more self-sacrificing than themselves. On the
contrary, they admired them for it : especially as the
devotion of the Pharisees to the Law which was the bond
of Israel's nationality made them the most zealous
patriots. The Pharisees, in short, embodied as far as
they could the fundamental notions of Israel's holiness,
and so became peculiarly the national party.
It can be readily understood that the impulse repre
sented by the Pharisees could not always work un
checked : and the check came from a source from which
we might not have expected it at first, viz., the priestly
families. The piety of the Pharisees was largely indepen
dent of the Temple and its services. It did not in any
way spring from the ritual : it dealt with a number of
questions which had httle or no concern with the pubhc
institutions and organization of rehgion. Hence it
tended to throw the priesthood rather into the shade : at
least it did not in any way promote their interests. Some
times, indeed, some priest joined a fraternity of the
Pharisees ; but, in general, the leaders of the priesthood,
who jealously maintained hereditary privileges which
counted for httle beside the personal ascendancy acquired
by the extraordinarily devout, stood in distinct rivalry
with them. These priestly families made up the party
of the Sadducees, whose exact origin is not known. They
were wealthy, and they had power in Jerusalem. That
power they were not ashamed to maintain, sometimes,
by unworthy concessions to their foreign rulers. They
come into view in the later Maccabean period, as a con-

§38] The Pharisees and Sadducees 139
servative opposition over against the Pharisees. They
stood for the Temple, the Priesthood, and official piety ;
while the Pharisees stood for the Synagogue, the School,
the Teacher, and personal piety. Neither party could
properly be called a sect : both had the same standard
of faith ; yet their rehgious ideas differed widely. Let
us very briefly examine some of these differences.
The first great difference related to the value of the
traditional maxims which had gradually come to be
regarded as of such immense importance in the schools.
For this difference it is not very easy to account. Ezra
was priest as weU as scribe, and the early work of the
copyists was probably done at Jerusalem under the
control of the priests. The priestly party must have
had their own scribes, and they must have worked out
a number of rules for the performance of the great cere
monies which also formed part of current practice. But
they were not interested in the great moral and theo
logical questions with which the Pharisees concerned
themselves. The Teachers gained such weight, the
authority of their continuous succession was so powerful,
that the body of Scribe-made law was ranked beside the
ancient written Law. It was supposed that it must
have been communicated to Moses himself and handed
on by him to the Elders, and so on through generation
after generation. The Pharisees were on the side of the
Rabbis and the Schools. But the Sadducees would have
nothing but the letter of the Scripture. Hence they
rejected the great mass of supplementary precepts which
the Teachers had accumulated, and with this they also
rejected many important modifications calculated to
bring the written Law into more complete harmony with
the spirit of a later time. Thus the written Law, founded

140 Orders, Parties, and Sects [§38
on the primitive usages of the rude tribes of the desert,
laid down the principle of retaliation for personal in
juries, ' an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.'
The Pharisees were for interpreting this symbolically,
and substituting a money compensation. The Sadducees
insisted on its hteral execution. When the Pharisees
were taking aU sorts of trouble about minute compli
ance with the requirements for ceremonial cleanness
elaborated in the Schools, the Sadducees only laughed ;
there was nothing about that in the Law. The Phari
sees wanted to have the golden lampstand in the sanc
tuary cleansed after a great feast, in case it should have
received any accidental defilement. The Sadducees
refused, with the sarcastic remark, ' Why, they will be
wanting to cleanse the sun next.'
The same unwillingness to receive anything in addition
to the actual words of Scripture determined the attitude
of the Sadducees to the behef in a future hfe, which was
warmly embraced by the Pharisees. The doctrine of
another state of rewards and punishments after death
played a great part in the teachings of the Pharisees.
But it was not mentioned in the written Law, and so the
Sadducees would have none of it. It did not really gain
a place among the ideas of the Jews until after the Cap
tivity, and was in part due, perhaps, to the influence of
Persian behefs. But it had now been established a long
time in Jewish thought, and formed a regular part of the
traditions of the Teachers. So it was supposed, hke the
rest of the. oral Law, to have really come from Moses, and
to have been in existence aU along. We can teU, how
ever, from the language of some of the Prophets about
the state of the dead in the underworld, that they knew
nothing of it. This is the way in which Josephus (who

§38] The Pharisees and Sadducees 141
was himself of noble priestly family, and as a young man
had made trial of both Pharisees and Sadducees) des
cribes it : — ' The Pharisees also beheve that souls have
an immortal vigour in them, and that under the earth
there will be rewards or punishments, according as they
have practised virtue or evil-doing in this hfe ; and that
the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison,
but that the former shall have power to revive and live
again. On account of these doctrines they have immense
influence with the masses of the people, and whatsoever
is done about divine worship, prayers, and sacrifices, they
do according to the directions of the Pharisees ; inso
much that the cities gave great attestations to them on
account of their entire virtuous conduct, both in the
actions of their hves and their discourses also. But the
doctrine of the Sadducees makes the soul die with the
body.' This passage of Josephus shows us that the
general teaching of the Pharisees was much more accept
able to the people than that of the Sadducees. And it
was particularly so in connexion with this doctrine of
the hfe to come, and the associated behef in the ' kingdom
of heaven,' derived from the oracles of the Prophets
(see chap. vi.).
The Sadducees maintained that the fulfilment of the
hopes uttered by the Prophets was not really to be ex
pected as a positive certainty. If men are free to choose,
they argued, and can do one thing, or abstain from doing
another thing, according as they like, how could anyone
foretell what was going to happen ? Man had been made
at the beginning by God, and then set to do as best he
could. God had provided him certain rehgious help in
the Law : let him obey this, and he would be happy and
prosperous here ; but let him not think there was any-

142 Orders, Parties, and Sects [§38
thing more to come. No, said the Pharisee ; God has
not left man to himself ; he is always working with man ;
he guides his actions to certain ends ; and he will punish
the wicked and recompense the righteous. The Saddu
cees, rich and comfortable in Jerusalem, on good terms
with Herod or the Romans, did not care so much for the
coming of that ' kingdom ' for which so many were long
ing and toiling and praying. They did not feel the bitter
ness of oppression ; they were not anxious for a change
which would make short work of their particular
privileges ; and they had not that passionate burning
faith which could never be content while the people of
God were mixed with idolaters, and subject to heathen
rule. So they did not share the great national aspira
tions : though Josephus significantly tells us that when
they came into office ' they had to conform to the notions
of the Pharisees, because otherwise the multitude would
not endure them.'
Thus on the whole, the Pharisees, with all their
extravagances, stood much nearer to the real hfe of the
people. While the Sadducees remained at Jerusalem,
the former were scattered through the country, mingling
in popular movements, and knowing what was going on
everywhere. They were not a very large body in num
ber : Josephus only reckons them at about six thousand
in the days of Herod. But with the Rabbis, they ex
ercised the most powerful rehgious influence among the
Jews. They led in the Sanhedrin ; and their milder
judicial practice helped to make them popular. ' Judge
not thy neighbour,' said Hillel, ' till thou art in his place.'
Of course, there were among them men of various char
acters. The Sadducees accused them of doing their
works of righteousness to secure recompense hereafter,

§38] The Pharisees and Sadducees 143
and professed great admiration of the maxim of Anti-
gonus (p. 132), ' Be not like servants who serve their
master for the sake of a reward.' Even the Talmud
talks of ' the plague of Pharisaism,' and holds up to scorn
' the dyed ones,' ' those who preach beautifully, but do
not act beautifuhy.' Like the grades among their
fraternities, so they were satirically arranged in such
classes as these : ' (1) The shoulder-Pharisee (explained in
different ways, who pubhcly carried a hst of his good
deeds upon his shoulder, or who walked with shoulders
bent beneath the heavy weight of his virtues). (2) The
borrower-Pharisee, who begs the loan of a httle time that
he may first perform another good work. (3) The
calculating-Pharisee who says, " May my few bad deeds
be deducted from my many virtues." (4) The thrifty-
Pharisee who says, " From my modest means I save some
thing to perform a good work." (5) The Pharisee who
says " Would that I knew of a sin that I had committed,
that I might perform an act of virtue in atonement." (6)
The Pharisee from fear (of God), i.e., Job. (7) The
Pharisee from love, i.e., Abraham.'
We may be sure from the language of Jesus in the
Gospels that he had really much more sympathy with
their way of thinking on many subjects than he had with
the Sadducees, and that he was all the more grieved there
fore, to see among them so much self-righteousness and
pubhc display of piety. The Teachers and the Pharisees
were, in fact, at once the Puritans and the forward party
in Jewish rehgion. They were the real promoters of
rehgious progress. Their ideal was that ah the people
should know and practise the Law; and they en
deavoured so to interpret it as to enable it to take up
into itself new ideas, which the hteral meaning did not

144 Orders, Parties, and Sects [§38
always seem to justify. Their doctrine of a Mosaic
tradition, independent of the Scripture, provided them
with the means of accommodating fresh behefs into their
rehgious scheme without breaking continuity with the
past. So in one sense they were the liberals of Judaism,
and unquestionably prepared the way for some of the
teachings of Jesus.
For example, they attached great importance to the
idea of repentance, and the divine mercy to the contrite
sinner. This is again and again a prominent theme
in the Rabbinic teaching. They told a story of King
Manasseh who was said to have been carried prisoner to
Babylon for his evil-doings (2 Chron. xxxiii. n). He
called for help to the strange gods whom he had wor
shipped, but in vain ; they vouchsafed no dehverance.
Then he remembered the words ' Return unto the Lord
thy God, he is merciful and will not forsake thee,' and
prayed earnestly to the Lord. The angels sought to
shut up the gate of heaven against him. But the Holy
One, blessed be he, said, ' If I do not receive him, I shut
the gate in the face of repentance.' The doctrine of the
divine forgiveness led to the emphatic demand that men
also should forgive. To this one of the books that issued
from the Pharisaic teaching gives striking expression.
The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs comprise twelve
discourses supposed to be addressed by the sons of Jacob
to their descendants. The work appears to have been
composed shortly before 106 B.C. (50, Dr. R. H. Charles),
by a Pharisee of liberal views, who taught that the Law
was given to hghten every man, that the Gentiles should
be saved, and that man's duty consisted in love to God
and his neighbour. Revenge was accordingly forbidden.
' If anyone seeketh to do evil unto you, do well unto him,

§38] The Pharisees and Sadducees 145
and pray for him, and ye shall be redeemed of the Lord
from all evil.' ' Therefore love one another, and with
long-suffering hide ye one another's faults, for God
dehghteth in the unity of the brethren, and in the purpose
of a heart that takes pleasure in love ' (Joseph xviii. 2 ;
xvii. 2). The immediate sequel of this was the injunc
tion of forgiveness. ' Love ye one another from the
heart ; and if a man sin against thee, speak peaceably
to him, and in thy soul hold not guile ; and if he repent
and confess, forgive him. . . . But if he be shameless
and persisteth in his wrongdoing, even so forgive him
from the heart, and leave to God the avenging ' (Gad
vi- 3, 7)-
This is very near to the spirit of Jesus. On the other
hand, it was from the Pharisees that he met the most
determined opposition ; and it was by their help that
he was brought to death. There is at least this to be
said for them, and it is more than can be said for all
persecutors — the fate which they inflicted on him they
were ready to endure themselves. We have seen an
instance already of the steadfastness of the Jews in the
face of death under Pilate (pp. 78L) j here is another.
When the Roman Governor, Petronius, was sent to Pales
tine to erect a statue of the Emperor Caius (known by his
nickname Caligula) in the temple at Jerusalem, he was met
by a vast multitude of Jews first at Ptolemais, and then
at Tiberias, who were prepared to resist to the uttermost.
' Will you war, then, against the Emperor,' inquired
Petronius, ' without considering his great preparations
for war, and your own weakness ? ' ' We will not by
any means war with him,' was the reply, ' but we will
die before we see our laws transgressed.' The tenacity
with which the Jews have maintained their rehgion

146 Orders, Parties, and Sects [§39
through terrible sufferings even in our own day is largely
due to the heroic courage with which, again and again,
Rabbi and Pharisee laid down their hves in martyrdom.

§ 39. The Essenes.
The principle on which the brotherhoods of the
Pharisees were founded was that of separation as far as
possible from every kind of common uncleanness or
defilement, without at the same time giving up their
place in society. But it was very difficult to carry this
out fully in town and village, where all sorts of persons
lived together, and Jew and heathen might be brought
into close quarters. Those, therefore, who cared most
for realizing in their own persons the fullest demands
of legal purity, and were less anxious to work upon the
people at large, saw no other way than to withdraw from
ah risk of polluting contact with their fellow men, and
live by themselves. Thus there were formed certain
communities whose sole aim was to give the utmost
possible effect to the fundamental notions of cleanness,
even though this might involve the surrender of other
ordinances of the Law. These persons were called
Essenes. They are not mentioned in the New Testa
ment, but some of the principles of their brotherhood are
so like those adopted by the first disciples of Jesus that
it seems well to say a few words about them here.
Some of the communities were established in towns ;
but the more important and striking were planted in the
deep ravines plunging from the highland mass of Judaea
down towards the Dead Sea (§ 3). Here, in these wild
spots, around some spring which secured them an abun-

§39l The Essenes 147
dant supply of pure water, settlement after settlement
grew up. Some consisted only of men : other branches
of the order allowed women to belong to it as well, and
permitted marriage. The settlement contained dwellings,
an eating-hall, where the common meals were served,
baths with plenty of cold flowing water, and a synagogue.
The members of the order had no separate property :
the rich gave up their wealth into the common fund, and
all shared alike. They were not allowed to be idle ; the
rule of hfe was service : each one did what he was best
fitted for, in the cultivation of the land, or in other
manual arts. Twice a day, after carefully bathing, they
met for meals in the refectory ¦ they ate no meat, they
drank no wine ; their food consisted only of bread,
vegetables, and water, for the Law said, ' Thou shalt not
kill,' and they would not take the life even of a beast,
and they imitated the abstinence of the priests on duty
in the Temple. This meal was a kind of festival -, they
came to it clad in white garments ; they began and ended
it with thanksgiving and praise. They were permitted
to use the property of the order for the rehef of the poor
without apphcation for leave from their superiors : but
only with this sanction might they make any gifts to
their kindred. They had no servants ; slavery was
altogether unknown among them ; they recognized no
distinctions except between the clean and the unclean.
The pubhc services of the Temple involved too great risk
of defilement for them to be present, but they sent gifts
to it. On the other hand, their Sabbath observance was
exceedingly strict. Their food was all prepared the day
before, and they would not move any vessel out of its
place. But the ceremonial aspects of the Law were not by

148 Orders, Parties, and Sects [§39
any means enforced to the exclusion of the moral. At
the end of the long probation of three years through
which the candidate for admission into the order had to
pass, he was solemnly bound by oath to a hfe of rehgion
and virtue. Josephus, who had hved among the Essenes
as well as among the Pharisees and the Sadducees, gives
us the following account of what an Essene undertook
to do : — ' He swore first of all to show piety towards God ;
next to observe righteousness towards men ; to injure
no one either of his own accord or by command of others ;
always to hate the wicked and to help the good ; to keep
faith with all men, especially towards those in authority,
for no one has any power except from God ; and if he
himself should be in power not to use it insolently, nor to
try to outshine those subjected to him by any superior
dress ; always to love the truth, and to aim at convicting
liars ; to keep his hands from stealing, and his soul pure
from unhallowed gains ; not to conceal anything from
those of his own sect, nor to disclose any of their doctrines
to others, not even under compulsion unto death.'
It is plain from this that the Essenes paid great
attention to right conduct. But their isolated hfe pre
vented them from having much influence on the world
at large. They are said by Josephus to have numbered
as many as 4,000 ; but as they did not spread through
the country like the Pharisees, mixing with the common
life of the people, they did not exercise anything like a
proportionate power. Is it not curious that we do not
hear anything of them in the Gospels ? Jesus never
speaks of them, either to commend them or to blame.
We cannot help wondering why. They were the monks
of Judaism ; perhaps one reason why he is silent —
though we must remember what scanty reports we have

§40] The Zealots 149
of his sayings, and he may have spoken about them in
words which were never taken into the tradition of his
life and teachings — is because he saw that the world can
never be mended by those who abandon it. Not one
single evil can be cured by ' leaving human wrongs to
right themselves.' The method of Jesus was just that
which the Essenes, with ah their earnestness, could
never practise, for it was ' to seek and to save the lost.'
§ 40. The Zealots.
The Essenes, it has been shown, carried out to the
furthest extent the rehgious principles of the Pharisees.
But it must never be forgotten that with the Jews
rehgion always had a pohtical side. On the one hand
the idea of the clean led to separation from the com
munity and retirement from the world. But on the
other hand the doctrine of the rule of God over his chosen
people begot the most determined hatred of the Roman
oppressor. He was a tyrant, and he was a heathen.
The struggle with the Greek princes of Syria had inten
sified the devotion of the people to the national element
in their faith, and the subjection to Rome kindled it
anew. This principle, also, was dear to the Pharisees :
could it receive at their hands its full expression ? Its
extreme development must plainly mean the endeavour
to throw off the Roman supremacy, and estabhsh Israel's
independence as of old. Would the Pharisees dare to
attempt this ?
The first impulse in this direction, it would seem, came
from a man named Judas, of Gamala in Gaulanitis. He
was the son of a certain robber chief, Hezekiah, whose
plundering bands had carried terror through Galilee, till

150 Orders, Parties, and Sects [§40
Herod, then a young man of five-and-twenty, succeeded
in suppressing them, and secured and executed their
leader. Hezekiah's son, therefore, was brought up in
hatred of Herod, and when on his death the whole
country was in disorder (§ 22), Judas raised the standard
of revolt in Galilee. It was not long before volunteers
gathered round him, and he boldly marched on Sep-
phoris. There the arsenal and the treasury fell into his
hands ; arms and money were distributed to his men ;
and he drew to him all who were ready to dispute the
rising claims of Rome. But his triumph did not last
long. One centre of rebellion after another was reduced
by the Roman general Varus, with terrible cruelty.
Sepphoris was burned, and its inhabitants were sold into
slavery. Judas, however, escaped, and waited silently
for another opportunity.
He did not wait alone. Many shared the same feelings
of passionate hatred against Rome ; and this was es
pecially strong among some of the Pharisees of the
school of Shammai, who were more deeply committed
to opposition to everything heathen than the followers
of Hillel. Among Shammai's disciples was a certain
Zaddok, who alhed himself with Judas ; and from then-
joint efforts arose a party whose zeal for the Law and
against heathenism gained for them the name of Kan-
naim or Zealots. Obedience to Rome, they taught, was
hurtful to God's Law ; the yoke must be broken ; and for
the restoration of independence, fortune, family, hfe,
must be freely flung away. Let them have but one
ruler, God ; but one constitution, the Law. The regis
tration arranged by Quirinus for a general taxation (§ 24)
was the signal for fresh outbreak, in the year a.d. 6 or 7.
Once more Judas called his followers to revolt, but with

§40] The Zealots 151
only slight result. No striking success lifted him into
power ; the people were persuaded by the high priest
to pay the taxes j and Judas disappears from history.
But the party to which he had communicated a definite
impulse did not disappear ; though it did not become
prominent again until many years had passed, when
it was destined to give its intensest fury to the final
struggle with Rome. Among the Apostles is reckoned
one ' Simon a Zealot ' (Luke vi. 15) : with what surprise
must he have heard Jesus say ' the kingdom of heaven
is within you.' But here we approach one of the most
difficult of all questions connected with the relation of
the teachings of Jesus to the Jews and their rehgion.
What were their notions of ' the kingdom,' and what
were his ?

Chapter VI
RELIGION
Part III. — The Messianic Idea.
[Martineau, Essays, Reviews, and Addresses, iii. ; ' Early History
of Messianic Ideas ' ; Drummond, The Jewish Messiah ;
R. H. Charles, Eschatology, Hebrew, Jewish, and Christian.]
§ 41. The Name Messiah.
When John the Baptist, it is said, had heard in prison
what Jesus was doing, he sent to him by his disciples a
message of inquiry, ' Art thou he that should come, or
are we to look for another ? ' (Matt. xi. 2, 3.) When
Jesus after long labour in Galilee, asked his disciples
what they thought of him, Peter at once answered ' Thou
art the Christ ' (Mark viii. 29). What is the meaning of
this inquiry, of this answer ? They are plainly of great
importance for the right understanding of the hfe of
Jesus, the impression he produced upon the people
around him, and his true relation to both his own time
and to humanity. But we cannot properly interpret
them without knowing something of the history of that
great Jewish faith and hope commonly summed up by
the short name of the Messianic Idea. This expression

§41] The Name Messiah 153
denotes the complex mass of behefs and expectations
about the ideal future, whether with or without a Messiah.
We do not find the name Messiah in the first three Gospels
it is true j but we find everywhere its equivalent, Christ.
Christ, as we all know, is a Greek word, the translation
of the Hebrew word, Mashiach, or, as we write it,
Messiah. This Hebrew word means ' Anointed ' ; and
so Peter's declaration to Jesus is equivalent to saying
' Thou art the Anointed.' But the anointed what ?
anointed with what ? anointed by whom ?
These questions take us back a long way to the roots
of Jewish usage and thought. In ancient days it was
customary to dedicate the king to his high office by
anointing him with oil : and inasmuch as the king of
Israel reigned in the name of Yahweh, God of Israel, he
was called ' Yahweh's Anointed.' Nay, since all the
great powers of the world, in the highest prophetic view,
were dependent on Yahweh, even though they might
not know it, a heathen king, entrusted with a divine
purpose by Yahweh, might be designated in the same
way ; and so we actually find one of the prophets of the
Captivity speaking of Cyrus, the Persian king, whom he
believed to be Yahweh's chosen instrument for the
dehverance of Israel from their Babylonian exile, as his
' Anointed ' (Isaiah xiv. i). When Peter, therefore,
affirms that Jesus is ' God's Anointed ' (Luke ix. 20),
he declares his behef that Jesus is the appointed agent
of the divine designs for Israel. What were those designs,
as the Jews interpreted them ? They were concerned
with the destiny of the Jewish people : and popular
expectation about them had often changed. Before we
can understand what men were looking for in the time of
Jesus, we must first find out what was the origin of the

154 The Messianic Idea [§42
hope which was to pass through so many forms, and to
exercise such great influence over the hearts of the race.

§ 42. The Ideal Future of the Prophets: the
Purification of Israel.
The beginning of what we describe as the Messianic
expectation is to be sought in the oracles of the ancient
prophets. These are full of pictures of Israel's ideal
future. They do not, indeed, speak of a Messiah, except
in the single case already named ; but they portray
Israel's destiny under Yahweh's controlling providence,
and they are the founders of this mighty hope. On what
grounds did this hope rest, and in what forms did it
take shape ?
The Hebrew Prophets rested their expectation of
Israel's future on one great thought. Israel was the
people of Yahweh. To Yahweh they owed their land,
and their existence as a nation. From all the peoples
of the earth he had chosen them for his own ; from their
childhood he had loved them, he had cared for them as
a father for his son. They were bound, therefore, to
render him true service. He was their king, and had a
right to their obedience ; no other gods might be wor
shipped beside him ; and idols and images must be swept
away. Nay, more ; inasmuch as he was righteous, he
demanded righteousness in his people ; justice and good
will must prevail among all orders of men, from the king
and the priest, the noble and the rich, to the poorest
widow and the humblest orphan in the realm. But when
this thought was confronted with actual fact, what did
the prophets find ? Had Israel rendered that service ?
Had it been obedient, loving, pure ? Alas, no : it had

§42] Purification of Israel 155
been continually false to Yahweh, paying its devotions
with equal or greater zeal to Canaanite and foreign
deities : it had stained the homage which it did offer to
its own Lord with gross idolatry and profane unchastity :
it had too often been guilty of the most grievous crimes
against righteousness and mercy ; its nobles had been
violent, grasping, oppressive : its priests had been
drunken and corrupt : its judges had taken bribes : its
very tradesmen had robbed the poor with false weights
and measures. And yet Israel was still the people of
Yahweh, and Yahweh was still a God of righteousness.
Could he endure that this should go on unchecked ?
No, said the Prophets, he cannot endure it. A day
must come when he will lay the proud low and dehver
the oppressed : when he will punish the ungodly, and,
if necessary, sweep the offending people from the land.
This day was called ' Yahweh's Day.' Woe upon sin,
chastisement for all iniquity, this was the first burden
of Hebrew prophecy.
By what means the chastisement was to be inflicted
was not always so clear as the moral necessity of its in
fliction. When any great power seemed to threaten
Israel, the Prophets naturally pointed to it as the chosen
instrument of Yahweh's design. So Amos beheld
Assyria in the distance, and Isaiah viewed it close at
hand, and both affirmed that its invasion had but one
meaning — it was Yahweh's doom on Israel. So, later
still, Jeremiah and Ezekiel saw the Babylonian troops
close round Jerusalem, and in the fall of the city dis
cerned Yahweh's judgment on its crimes. But was
chastisement all ? Was there nothing more ? Did
Yahweh only care to avenge himself on Israel ? Could
he be heedless of that long tie which he had himself

156 The Messianic Idea [§42
created since the ancient days when first the people
learned that he had chosen them ? Impossible * that
tie implied a loving tenderness which could not be alien
ated even by repeated sin, and would not abandon the
infatuated or wilful nation even in what might seem re
peated and hopeless guilt. Yahweh had made Israel,
and called them to himself ; however the people might
stray, they would be brought back at last ; the filthy
would be cleansed, the corrupt purified ; and when all
that was evil had been removed, a remnant would remain,
from which a new Israel might arise, and the nation
realize Yahweh's high intents. So the prophets looked
for a time when the chastisement would have done its
terrible work, and Yahweh would quicken the survivors
with a fresh and nobler life. If the punishment had
taken the shape of exile in a foreign land, then the cap
tives should return and possess their ancient homes once
more. From all countries should they assemble, and
the old rivalries should cease and all should dweU to
gether in one accord. The days of national glory in
the past were the days of David's splendid reign. What
better thing could be desired than that a king like David
— nay, of his very house — should reign again ?
But the prospect of pohtical restoration, and the
establishment of a government like the best of ancient
time, could not fill up the measure of the prophet's ideal.
It was not even complete when it was added that the
new Israel should receive the spirit from on high, and
thus be enabled to work out with constant faithfulness
its true relation to Yahweh. Was not Yahweh the
maker of all the peoples of the world ? Did he not care
that they should share the saving truths whose know
ledge he had of old conferred on Israel ? Could he be

§42] Purification of Israel 157
content that wickedness should remain anywhere, and
that any should be shut out ? No ; the mountain of
Yahweh's house in Jerusalem should rise pre-eminent
above the summits of the earth, so that all nations might
see it, and flow thither to learn his ways and walk in his
paths (Isaiah ii. 2-4). Under the rule of righteousness,
nature by a kind of sympathy with man, would share the
general quickening ; the moon would be as bright as
the sun ; the sun would shine with sevenfold hght ; the
very soil would produce with marvellous fertility ; the
fiercest animals would be fierce no more ; all war would
cease, and justice and peace would abide for ever. The
book of Isaiah contains the classical description of this
happy time (xi. 1-9) by a poet of unknown date who
looks for the rise of a sovereign from the house of Jesse,
David's father. The royal line is hke a tree which has
been felled to the ground (the monarchy ended in 586
B.C.), but its stump survives, and it may yet send forth a
new shoot, and under a reign of justice all violence shall
pass away.1
Meantime other elements gained new force. The
notion of judgment was intensified, and grew into larger
scope : all nations were to be gathered to undergo it in
the valley east of the Temple mount: and Yahweh's
Day was to be ushered in with wonders in the heavens
and earth, with blood and fire and pillars of smoke, the
sun turned into darkness and the moon into blood (Joel
ii. 30, 31 ; hi. 2). By and by prophecy died away. But
1 Compare such passages as Amos ix. 11-15 ; Hosea xiv.;
Isaiah ii. 1-4 ; ix. 2-7 ; xxx. 18 ff. ; xxxii ; xix.. 18-25 .' Micah
iv. 1-5 ; v. 1 ff. ; Zechariah ix. 9, 10 ; Jeremiah xxxi., xxxiii.
14-26 ; Ezekiel xxxvii. — xxxix. ; Isaiah xl. — lxvi., especially
xlix., Ii., liv., Ix., lxi., lxiii. 1-6 ; lxv. 17-25.

158 The Messianic Idea [§42
its eye was still fixed on that which had fascinated it from
the beginning. The first of the Prophets had proclaimed
that Yahweh's Day was coming. It had not come ;
but with unconquerable faith men still looked forward
to it. For there were still the wicked who must be
chastised ; there were still the suffering poor who must
be righted ; and there were the faithful for whom
prosperity must be at length in store. And so the last
of the Prophets (in the order of our books) has yet the
same message ; but the great catastrophe will not come
without warning ; Elijah, the hero-prophet who had
fought with spiritual wickedness of old, should reappear,
and fathers and children should have one more chance.
' Behold I will send you Ehjah the prophet before the
coming of Yahweh's great and dreadful day : and he
shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and
the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and
smite the land with utter destruction ' (Malachi iv. 5, 6).
Thus did prophetic imagination play round the great
central ideas of Israel's relationship to Yahweh, of
Yahweh's righteousness and sole deity, of the need of
purification, of the spread of the true rehgion. Some
times one element is more prominent ; sometimes an
other ; sometimes attention is concentrated on Israel,
sometimes it is widened to take in the heathen ; some
times there is to be a king, and sometimes not ; some
times the nations around will be conquered, sometimes
they will make a tremendous attack on the restored
Israel and be finally overthrown, sometimes they will
spontaneously submit, or joyously receive the true
rehgion. Nothing is fixed, except that Yahweh rules in
righteousness ; his truth must triumph, his will must
be done.

§ 43 ] Israel and the Persecuting Heathen 159
§ 43. Israel and the Persecuting Heathen.
The chief motive of ancient prophecy had been the
conversion of Israel from false worship, and its purifica
tion from sin. But in the restored Jerusalem, after the
great rehgious revival under Ezra and Nehemiah, this
conversion seemed to have been effected. The Jews
had at last learned the terrible lesson which the trials
of so many centuries had been teaching them. They
turned to Yahweh — and found their happiness in obe
dience to his Law. Under the Persian supremacy and
the dominion of the earher Greek princes the develop
ment of the Levitical cultus went on among them with
surprising rapidity. They were devoted to their reli
gion, and they had the blessings of peace ; and though
they were still subject to a foreign power, they were un
molested in the practice of what they held essential in
faith and duty.
But near the middle of the second century B.C. a great
change took place. In the days of their Syrian overlord,
Antiochus Epiphanes, they were involved in a desperate
struggle. Antiochus thought he could exterminate the
rehgion of the Jews, and force the people to adopt the
worship of his Greek gods. The conflict was not long,
but it was of fearful severity while it lasted ; and it
brought out a new phase of Jewish thought. Hitherto
whatever danger the rehgion of Yahweh had had to en
counter, had arisen through the habits of the people
themselves. Their own wilfulness had made them false
to it : they could not rise above the customs which they
had long practised, or shake themselves free from old
Canaanite usage. Their Babylonian conquerors, their
Persian masters, had never attempted to interfere with

160 The Messianic Idea [§43
their rehgion. But now it was directly attacked, and
thousands of hves were demanded for its defence. They
were given freely, but not without a cry of anguish.
The heart of the people was sorely troubled. They had
suffered before, and justly, for they had been unfaithful.
Now, on the other hand, they suffered for their very
faithfulness. Had they been disobedient and neglectful
it would not have been so hard to understand. What
made it so mysterious was that the trouble came when
they had been striving with all their might to fulfil
Yahweh's demands. ' If we had forgotten the name of
our God,' they said, ' or stretched out our hands to a
strange god, would not God search this out ? for he
knoweth the secrets of the heart.' But they felt that
they were innocent : ' nay, but it is for thy sake we are
being kuled all the day long, we are counted as sheep for
the slaughter.' This was quite a new thing. Was it
surprising, then, that the bitter expostulation rose,
' Awake, why sleepest thou, 0 Lord ? arise, cast us not
off for ever ! ' (Psalm xliv. 20-23).
So Israel was plunged into a deadly conflict ; and
though under the heroic leadership of the Maccabees
the national faith triumphed, yet the contrast between
the true rehgion and heathenism was intensified, and
their opposition became a powerful new element in the
hfe of the people. This feeling deepened as the Roman
power gathered round the helpless nation. It was not
absent even under the splendid reign of Herod ;- it broke
out again with fresh force after his death when the Holy
City itself passed into Roman hands ; it became more
bitter than ever when the city had fallen, the Temple
had perished, and the last traces of national power had
disappeared.

§ 43 ] Israel and the Persecuting Heathen 161
At such crises what must be the attitude of the
believer ? When the exiles returned from Babylon, and
all the world seemed fair, they had joyously cried,
' Yahweh is king.' This great trust had taken deep root
in the heart of the people, and now sustained them in
the time of their trial. ' Yahweh is king ' — but where
was his kingdom ? It was to be seen in the world above
and around, as the Psalmist sang —
Yahweh hath established his throne in the heavens,
And his kingdom ruleth over all.
appealing to the angels who guided the stars and the
winds, the ministering spirits and the works of God, aU
Nature being the scene of his sovereignty. It was to
be seen also wherever there was a faithful soul obedient
to his will, and every one who repeated the great con
fession of Jewish faith, ' Hear, O Israel, Yahweh our
God is one Yahweh,' the so-called Shemd (p. 108), was
said to take upon himself the yoke of the kingdom. But
this could not be all. There must come a time when the
heathen likewise would be taught with irresistible demon
stration that God was king, and the sufferings of the true
believers would be ended. The kingdom which they
confessed in ignominy and suffering must be visibly
manifested in the splendour of its might ; the long en
durance of Israel would be turned into triumph ; the
divine rule would hft the righteous into power ; and
sovereignty and dominion should be given to ' the people
of the saints of the Most High ; his kingdom is an ever
lasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey
him ' (Daniel vii. 27).
Such was the thought of the writer of the Book of
Daniel, at the time of the great persecution under Anti-
L

162 The Messianic Idea [§43
ochus Epiphanes (§ 44, 4). The book in which he poured
forth his great hope, and sought to console and en
courage his countrymen does not, however, stand alone.
All along the line, for more than two hundred years, the
same thought keeps bursting out. The ' kingdom of
God ' — when will it come ? how will it be recognized ?
what will happen first ? who will be the agent of its
estabhshment ? what will be its nature when it is founded
at last ? — these were the questions of which men thought
and talked. It was not in Palestine only that this hope
flourished. We hear of it in Alexandria as well. Quite
a number of books are devoted more or less to the de
lineation of the future age seen in its hght.
Some of these books have only recently become known
to us. In the following hst the dates are those of the
chief Enghsh scholar in this branch of study, Rev. Dr.
R. H. Charles (see his Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha,
2 vols., 1913). Palestinian.
Daniel, between Dec. 15, 168 B.C. and Dec. 25, 165.
Enoch (now preserved in an iEthiopic version), com
posed of different elements, earher and later, some prob
ably belonging to the second century B.C. and some to
the first (like the Parables, xxxvii.-lxxi.), perhaps 94-
79 b.c. (Pharisaic).
The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, originally
written under the Priest-Prince John Hyrcanus, between
109 and 106 b.c. (Pharisaic).
The Book of Jubilees, under the same reign, 135-105
b.c. (Pharisaic).
Psalms of Solomon, by various authors, 70-40 B.C.
(Pharisaic).

§44] In the Days of Jesus 163
The Assumption of Moses, composite, probably a.d.
7-29 (Pharisaic).
Baruch, composite, between a.d. 50 and 90 (School
of Hillel).
Fourth Book of Ezra (or 2 Esdras in the Apocrypha),
composite, a.d. 100-120 (School of Shammai).
Hellenistic (Egyptian).
The Sibylline Oracles, at various dates from 160 B.C.
onwards = the oldest verses are found in book III.
The Secrets of Enoch, about the beginning of Chris
tianity, a.d. 1-50
Besides these the sayings of the Rabbis contain many
speculations about ' the kingdom,' though we cannot
so easily tell what was the age of these, because they were
not written down until very much later. Let us try
now and find out what were the kind of behefs and hopes
entertained at the time of Jesus about the coming of the
kingdom, and about the Messiah.
§ 44. The Messianic Hope in the Days of Jesus.
[Carpenter, First Three Gospels, chap. ii. ; H. Latimer Jackson,
The Eschatology of Jesus, 191 3.]
Although so many books had been written about this
hope, and it had been so much thought of and talked
about, we must not suppose that everybody had the
same ideas about it, or even cared for it with equal
earnestness. Indeed, as matter of fact, we know that
they did not. The pictures of the future vary greatly in
detail, and even in some of the more important features ;
and while the doctrine about it was acceptable to the
Pharisees, the Sadducees rejected it altogether (p. 140).
We must not expect, then, to find everything clear and
consistent, or universally received. We can only inch-

164 The Messianic Idea [§44
cate the general outhnes, and show how the same funda
mental principles might receive different poetic ex
pression from different minds.
The great thought of the old hope had been the
purification of Israel, and the triumph of the true
religion over idolatry and sin within it. The great
thought of the new hope is the elevation of Israel, and
the triumph of the true religion over heathen opposition
in the world. This would take place when the true
kingship of Yahweh should be victoriously displayed,
and the ' kingdom of God,' already present in each
believing heart, should be pubhcly erected into universal
sovereignty. But the new hope attached itself to the
old, which had had its own views of Israel's ultimate
supremacy and of the destinies of the heathen ; it took
up its language, borrowed its images and symbols, and
remodelled the ancient prophetic materials under the
influence of fresh impulses of faith.
i. The two Ages. — The relation of the ideal future to
the present in which the behever hved was of necessity
incapable of strict determination. The old prophets had
said simply ' Days are coming.' So in general, the two
periods were known by the designation of ' this age,'
and ' the coming age.' ' This age,' said Rabbi Jacob,
' is like a vestibule in comparison with the age to come.
Get thyself ready in the vestibule, that thou mayest enter
the dining-room.' These two periods are frequently
mentioned in the first three Gospels (Matthew xii. 32 ;
xiii. 22, 40 ; Mark x. 30 ; Luke xvi. 8 ; xviii. 30 ; xx.
34. 35). and evidently constituted the framework into
which the future events were to be fitted. One would
fohow the other, and both would have this world for their
scene. How soon ' this age ' would end, and ' the

§44] In the Days of Jesus 165
coming age ' begin, it was difficult to decide. The hope
easily attracted round it, as the Book of Daniel shows us,
all kinds of speculations as to the date of the great
change, but they are without interest for us now. It is
sufficient to observe that the time immediately preceding
the transition was spoken of as ' the latter days,' and
' the time of the end.'
2. Signs of the approaching end. — So great a change,
it was thought, could not appear without some outward
warning that it was at hand. It was a favourite belief
of the older prophecy that there was a kind of corres
pondence between nature and man. The struggles of
humanity must be presaged or accompanied by catas
trophes in the outward world, just as the spiritual reno
vation of society had its counterpart in the wonderful
diffusion of hght and hfe and peace in sky and earth.
So now it was expected that the final conflict of the
powers of the true rehgion and of heathenism would be
indicated by marvellous signs. ' I will tell thee,' says
the Sibyl, ' a very clear sign, so that thou mayst perceive
when the end of all things is to come upon the earth.'
Swords shah be seen at night in the starry heaven to
wards the west, and towards the east : the sun shall be
echpsed, rocks shah drop blood, and bands of soldiers,
on foot or on horseback, shall chase each other through
the clouds. There will be famine and pestilence, fire
and earthquake : the bonds of society will be loosened,
and deeds of violence and crime will set men against each
other. These were the pains attending the Messiah's
birth (' travail,' Matthew xxiv. 8). Then would appear
the forerunner, promised aforetime by Malachi, before
the advent of ' Yahweh's great and dreadful day,' the
prophet Elijah, caught away of old ere death took him.

166 The Messianic Idea [§44
He should estabhsh peace, heal rivalries, and settle dis
putes, so that, as they said, money or other property
of doubtful ownership, treasure-trove whose possessor
was unknown, must wait ' till Elijah came.' (Comp.
Matthew xvii. 10 ; xvi. 14 ; Mark ix. n ; vi. 15 ; viii.
28 ; Luke ix. 8, 19).
3. The Coming Kingdom. — The great feature of ' the
coming age ' would be the manifestation of the kingdom
variously called ' the kingdom of God ' or ' the kingdom
of heaven.'1 It was for this that the believer prayed :
that prayer, said the Rabbis, which does not make
mention of the kingdom, is not a prayer. The kingdom
should be a rule of righteousness ; and one after another
strove to depict its inward blessings. ' For ah good
order,' said the Sibyl, ' shall come upon men from the
starry heaven, and righteous dealing, and with it holy
concord, which for mortals excels all things, and love,
faith, hospitality. And from them shall flee lawlessness,
blame, envy, anger, folly. From men shall flee poverty
and need, and murder and pernicious strifes, and mourn
ful quarrels, and thefts by night and every evil in those
days.' ' Then will God,' said the Book of Enoch, ' be
gracious to the righteous, and give him eternal upright
ness, and he will give him power so that he shall be
(endowed) with goodness and righteousness, and he shall
walk in eternal hght. And sin shall perish in darkness
for ever.' Once more, of the faithful in that glorious
day it was written in the Book of Jubilees, ' their souls
shall cleave to me and to all my commandments, and I
will be their father and they shall be my sons, and they
shah all be named sons of the hving God.'
1 In this phrase ' heaven ' is a pious equivalent for God, as in
the words of the prodigal, ' I have sinned against heaven.'

§44] In the Days of Jesus 167
4. The Messiah. — How would this kingdom be estab
lished ? Who would found it ? How would God make
his power visibly manifest ? How could the kingdoms
of the earth be overthrown save by forces like their own ?
The answer was difficult. Some of those who looked for
the kingdom were content to leave it with God, to bring
it about in his own way. Others recalled the pictures
of the king who should reign in righteousness, which
had been drawn by the old prophets, and had never been
realized. This was the more natural because these
ancient oracles had long possessed the character of
Scripture, as authoritative declarations of the will of
Yahweh. Those who looked upon them in this hght
naturally thought that the promises which they seemed
to make would be actually fulfilled. So the hope grew
that the ' Anointed of Yahweh ' would come forth, as the
agent of the wonderful changes which would finally
result in the everlasting kingdom of God. Whether he
would appear in ' this age,' before ' the end,' or after
wards in ' the coming age,' men could not tell. Some
expected one thing, some another.
One form of the great hope was founded on memories
of the past. The promised king of old was to be of
David's race ; and so the Messiah would be of the same
high descent, and was accordingly described as ' Son of
David.' David had reigned in Jerusalem, and there, so
some thought, the Messiah would be born. But again,
others, following a hint in an obscure passage in the
prophet Micah v. iff., looked for his birth at Bethlehem,
the home of David's youth. How he would rise to power
they could not tell. Occasionally it was surmised that he
would be kept in concealment till the proper time should
come for him to be revealed to the world. Then he

168 The Messianic Idea [§44
would step forth in kingly might, and found a realm of
righteousness wherein nothing unclean or idolatrous
should have any place. God should gird him with
strength, it was said in the Psalms of Solomon, to break
down unjust rulers. He should purify Jerusalem from
the Gentiles who trod it under foot : he should thrust out
sinners from the inheritance, and destroy the wicked
nations by the word of his mouth. The people of the
Gentiles he should make to serve beneath his yoke, and
glorify the Lord over ah the earth ; and there should be
no unrighteousness in his days. But all this should be
wrought by other means than the people had known of
old. For he should not put his trust in horse or bow, or
multiply gold and silver for war. The Lord himself was
his king, and should set ah nations before him in fear.
He would be pure from sin, strong in the deeds of the
Lord, and mighty in the fear of God, feeding the Lord's
flock in faith and righteousness, and leading them in all
holiness. This is the picture drawn by a writer whose
hope has been nourished on the noble thoughts of ancient
poetry and prophecy, and whose language is founded on
the recognized images of might or gentleness.
Another type, however, is delineated in one of the
documents now included in the Book of Enoch (xxxvii.-
lxxi.) known as the ' Parables,' where the Messiah is
depicted as a heavenly being, under the name of ' the
Son of Man.'1 The whole representation rests upon the
vision of the judgment in the Book of Daniel (vii.). The
scene is vast, dim, and confused ; ah clear forms have
1 This is equivalent in Semitic usage to ' the Man,' perhaps (as
we might say) the ideal Man, the type of humanity made ' in the
image of God.' ' The Man ' would be as well known as ' the
Day,' e.g., I Cor. iii. 13.

§44] In the Days of Jesus 169
disappeared ; the seer is conscious only of the great sea,
as if chaos had come again, and the four winds warring
upon it. It is the counterpart of the tumultuous ocean
of life. Up from the deep come four huge beasts, sym
bols of the ancient empires which the writer supposed to
have followed each other in Western Asia, (i) the Baby
lonian lion, eagle-winged, (2) the Median bear, voracious
and brutal, (3) the Persian leopard, whose wings typified
the speed of its marches, and (4) the dreaded Greek,
shattering and devouring with great iron teeth. For
these tyrannic powers a great trial is prepared. A multi
tude of unnamed ministering agents erect thrones for
the divine judge and the heavenly beings associated
with him in this solemn assize. The Ancient of Days,
whose white robe and white hair are the emblems of
purity and hght, takes his seat. Flames issue from the
base of his throne, and a river of fire flows in front,
barring all access to his awful majesty. The angelic
ranks are ranged around in due order of service, and one
after another the empires are judged and dismissed, and
Antiochus Epiphanes himself is slain. The execution of
the judgment occupies an unknown period, . and then,
sailing through the sky, borne on the clouds (like the
Virgin in Raphael's Sistine Madonna), comes a mys
terious figure ' hke unto a son of man,' i.e., a human being
in contrast to the brutes that rose from the waters
below. Nobler in form and celestial in origin, he is
escorted by a retinue of angel servitors who bring him
into the presence of the Ancient of Days, and to him is
then given dominion that shah not pass away. Who is
this august being ? The author explains his own vision
by himself interpreting the figure ; he represents ' the
people of the saints of the Most High, his kingdom is an

170 The Messianic Idea [§44
everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and
obey him.'
Here is the undoubted source of the hopes which cul
minated in the Gospel language which describes ' the
Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power
and great glory ' (Matt. xxiv. 30). But the Gospel
prophecies depict the Son of Man as a real person, who
will ' sit on the throne of his glory ' with the nations
gathered before him for judgment (Matt. xxv. 31). A
change has taken place in the form of the great event,
the Ancient of Days has disappeared, and the Son of Man
is his appointed representative, endowed with authority
over all the world. The ' Parables ' of the Book of
Enoch show us this change already effected. Written
probably a hundred years before the ministry of Jesus
(Dr. Charles dates them 94-79 B.C.), they identify the
Messiah with Daniel's symbohc Man, under the title of
the Son of Man. He is described as God's ' elect ' or
' chosen.' He has been created before the sun and stars,
and stands before the Lord of Spirits, endowed with the
spirit of wisdom, understanding and might, so that he is
able to discern all secret things. Thus equipped for the
judgment he will sit on the throne of glory, as the Vice
gerent of the ' Head of Days ' or ' the Eternal.' Angels
and men alike will be brought before him, and with un
erring justice he will condemn the evil and estabhsh the
good. ' The righteous and elect shah be saved on that
day.' 5. The Resurrection. — There were thus two markedly
contrasted types of the Messiah's nature and function.
One was content to conceive him as the descendant of
David and the restorer of his empire ; the other soared
into the heavenly world, and imagined him as the ideal

§44] In the Days of Jesus 171
Man, older than creation itself, the destined judge not
only of all humanity, but even of angelic powers. Both
looked for a kingdom of righteousness, though they
differed as to its scene and character, and the persons
who should be privileged to share in it. And both have
left striking traces in the hterature of the New Testament.
The revival of the Davidic power would, of course,
take place on earth. It would involve the extension of
Israel's sway over Gentile peoples. Was it to be ex
pected that this would be accomphshed without oppo
sition ? Ezekiel had depicted a mighty gathering of
hostile nations upon the mountains of Israel ; so it might
be anticipated that the enemies of God would assemble
against the Holy City for one final onset. But the
Messiah, or, if he had not yet arrived, God himself,
would appear in its defence, and the invading hosts
should be slain. Then, evil would be no more ; war
and contention, envy and greed, should cease. The
scattered Israehtes should return to their ancient land.
Some even thought that the Gentiles who survived
the great overthrow would join of their own accord
in worshipping the true God, and would sing his
praise. The old Jerusalem, battered with so many
sieges, would not be large or beautiful enough to take
the throng, and a new city was expected to descend
from on high, suited to a new heaven and a new earth.
Ah good things needful, corn and oil and wine and
milk, should issue in boundless store from the all-pro
ducing earth. Disease should pass away, and hfe be
prolonged without weariness for a thousand years. But
the Messiah's reign would not last for ever, and after a
time (represented in the Book of Revelation as a thou
sand years) the kingdom would be surrendered to the

172 The Messianic Idea [§44
Father, that God (as St. Paul said) might be ' all in ah '
(i Cor. xv. 24, 28).
Conceived as a king of the house of David, the Messiah
would exercise the royal prerogative of judgment. It
was the supreme duty of the oriental monarch to preside
impartially over the administration of justice. Accord
ingly it was predicted in the Psalms of Solomon (xvii. 28-
31) that he would ' bring together the holy people, whom
he shall lead in righteousness, and he shall judge the
tribes of the people made holy by the Lord his God. And
he shall not suffer iniquity to abide in their midst, nor
shall any man dwell with them knowing wickedness. . . .
He shall judge peoples and nations by the wisdom of his
righteousness.' This is rather a continuous process than
a single event, operating on the hving under his sovereign
sway. But new ideas and hopes had already entered
into Jewish thought. The older prophecy had always
regarded Israel as a nation, possessing as a people a
united, enduring hfe. Individuals died and their souls
went to the gloomy world below, but their places were
taken by their clhldren, and the race hved on. But later
experience, the vicissitudes of national suffering, perhaps
also the influence of a rehgion hke the Persian, which had
worked out lofty doctrines of judgment, resurrection,
and hfe to come, brought a great change in their ex
pectations. After the persecutions in which so many of
the faithful had laid down their lives, could it be supposed
that they would never see the triumph of the religion for
which they had freely died ? And those who had pur
chased their safety by surrendering their principles and
abandoning the faith of their fathers— must not they be
made to feel their baseness and suffer for their cowardice ?
So the expectation grew that this hfe would be followed

§44] In the Days of Jesus 173
by recompense for the loyal and retribution for the
apostate, and it was boldly predicted that 'Many of
them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake,
some to everlasting hfe and some to shame and ever
lasting contempt ' (Dan. xii. 2).
This hope implied some kind of resurrection. With
or without a body departed Israehtes would emerge from
their graves to hve again in happiness or pain. How
they would receive their allotted destinies, what would
be the localities and the conditions of their future being,
was still obscure. But conscience and imagination
quickly worked on the new thought. The old language
of judgment received fresh meanings, and pictures such
as the author of Daniel had drawn in vague but mag
nificent outlines gradually gained more definiteness and
precision. Expectation, indeed, varied. The books
included under the name of Enoch in the two centuries
B.C. already show great diversities of view. If the king
dom of the future was to be of lasting duration upon
earth, the judgment would naturally take place at its
inauguration, and the new hfe would unite body and
spirit in a resurrection of the flesh. If on the other hand
the earthly kingdom was to come to an end and give way
to a universal rule of God, the final judgment was to be
postponed. The sinners would be destroyed when the
kingdom appeared, and the righteous would enjoy peace
and well-being, and see many good days on earth. The
' great judgment ' would arrive at the close of the Messi
anic age, the new heaven would be created, and the right
eous dead (hitherto guarded by angels) would be raised as
spirits only, the portals of heaven should be opened to
them, and they should shine on high like the stars (civ. 2).
Yet once again in the Parables (xxxvii.-lxxi.) the

174 The Messianic Idea [§44
righteous will pass into the heavenly world when ' the
great judgment ' (without any intervening period) breaks
in on the existing scene. The earthly bodies will be
needed no more, but the saints shall be clothed with
' garments of hfe from the Lord of Spirits,' which shall
never grow old ; and the communion of the blessed is
presented in the form of table-fellowship in a hallowed
meal : — The Lord of Spirits will abide over them,
And with that Son of Man shall they eat
And lie down and rise up for ever and ever. (lxii. 14.)
These expectations are none of them systematically
set forth ; they are not carefuhy arranged to answer all
questions in advance. They are the impassioned utter
ances of men who have reflected on the sin and suffering
in the world, and have thrown their explanation into the
form of schemes of future redress. But what the scope
of the resurrection would be, who would take part in it,
and how the judgment would be effected, they could only
guess. Sometimes it was supposed that only righteous
Israehtes would rise, sometimes that the whole nation,
good and bad alike, hving and dead, would be summoned
to the judgment seat. In the Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs (Benjamin x. 7-9) the Israehtes will be raised
first and judged, and then the Gentiles. Enoch (h. 1)
points in the same direction with the declaration that
both the earth and Sheol shah give back what has been
entrusted to them, though some interpreters still limit
this to dead Israehtes : and IV Ezra (vii. 32, 37) con
templates the resurrection of ah the dead, like the great
picture of the judgment in Matt. xxv. 31-46, when ' ah
the nations ' are gathered before the throne of the Son
of Man. The Jewish hope, as was not unnatural,

§45] Influence on the Gospel Tradition 175
apparently made final acceptance with God conditional
on right behef in him. This might seem to involve the
exclusion of the Gentiles, but opportunity should be
offered to them before the judgment to repent, and the
Lord of Spirits would have compassion on them. The
unrepentant, like guilty Israehtes, would be sent to the
grievous lot of the condemned amid flames of fire or
regions of darkness where there should be ' a sound of
lamentation and weeping and groaning and dreadful
pain.' It remained for Jesus to hft the whole question
of human destiny above the limits of race and creed, into
the universal sphere of conduct and character, and
represent the heavenly Man as identifying himself with
every form of human need, ' Inasmuch as ye have done
it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it
unto me.' § 45. Influence on the Gospel Tradition.
It was no doubt under the influence of ideas more or
less resembling these that John the Baptist sent his
message to Jesus (§ 41). We can quite well understand
its meaning now. In the same way we can understand
how it was, when the apostles had once accepted Jesus
as the Messiah, that the two sons of Zebedee should ask
for the places of honour at his right and left hand, when
he should come in his glory (Matthew xx. 20 ff. ; Mark
x. 35 ff.). And a great deal of the language ascribed
to Jesus himself — for example, the description of the
armies gathering round Jerusalem, of famines and wars,
of the appearance of false Christs, of terrible signs in the
sky, as the prelude to the appearance of the Son of
Man in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory

176 The Messianic Idea [§45
(cp. Matthew xxiv. ; Mark xiii. ; Luke xxi.), receives
its explanation from the symbols and images in which
the national hope was expressed. But the student of
the Gospels, who desires to know what were the real
thoughts and aims of Jesus of Nazareth, finds himself con
stantly beset by problems that he behind these pictures.
He sees that the Gospels are all constructed on the behef
that Jesus was the Messiah for whom so many of his
fellow-countrymen were so eagerly looking. Further,
he sees that the Evangelists continually represent the
Teacher as employing the language and sanctioning the
hope which had gathered in the popular mind around the
advent of the Deliverer. He sees that they unmistakably
attribute to him the claim to be the Christ, and the declar
ation that he would come again ' in his kingdom ' in the
lifetime of some of his hearers (Matthew xvi. 27, 28 ; xix.
28 ; Mark xiii. 26, 30 ; Luke xxi. 32 ; etc.). How, then,
can he help asking himself these questions, ' Are such
words rightly ascribed to Jesus ? ' ' Did he, after ah,
beheve that he would reappear after his death descending
in clouds of glory from the sky ? ' ' If he did share this
great hope, which after events proved to be so unfounded,
what value is to be attached to his teachings on other
subjects ? ' ' And if he did not, how could the disciples
have been so mistaken ? How could they have so failed
to understand his real words, and have raised pretensions
for him which he never made for himself ? '
The answer to these questions cannot be given here.
They take us into the heart of the criticism of the
Gospels ; they involve dehcate and difficult inquiries ;
but they can no longer be ignored. We must recognize
the plain meaning of the words ascribed to Jesus. We
must come to the conclusion either that he did not say

§45] Influence on the Gospel Tradition 177
them, or that if he said them, events have shown that he
was mistaken. If it should turn out, when they are
carefuhy examined, that they are really inconsistent with
other teachings whose originality as sources of thought
and impulse at once mark them as his genuine utterances,
we shah then have good ground for concluding that they
do not represent his own ideas, and were never really
put forward by him. We shall see in them rather the
thoughts and hopes of his followers about him ; and we
shah discern that their roots he not in the language of
Jesus himself, so much as in the behefs and expectations
of the time, which the disciples appropriated for their
Master, and piously supposed him to have authorized,
because they expressed their own notions of what was
fitting for him. In this way we may hope to clear away
from Jesus the official robes with which his person has
been so long invested. What shah we find behind ?
We shah find the true Gospel, the real ' good news,' the
actual word of Jesus to his brother men ; and we shah
learn that his doctrine of ' the kingdom ' is not concerned
with Jerusalem only, or with the Jews alone, but is good
for ah times and lands ; that the hope of it is the most
precious treasure of the human heart ; that when we
pray, as he has taught us, ' thy kingdom come,' we pray
for all men everywhere, ' Thy will be done on earth as
it is in heaven.'
the end

178
INDEX I.— BIBLICAL PASSAGES
Page
Gen. vi. 1-5

Exod. xiii. 1-10
Exod. xiii. 11- 16
Exod. xx. 1 1 .
Exod. xxi. -xxiii.
Exod. xxi. 5 .
Exod. xxi. 20, 2 1 , 26
Exod. xxxiii. 7- 11
Lev. xxiii. 42, 43
Numb. xv. 37 sqq.
Numb. xv. 37-41
De«i. v. 15
£>ewi. vi. 4-7 .
.DeW. vi. 4-9 .
Deirf. xi. 13-21
Deut. xvi. 1 .
Deut. xxii. 12
2 Sa««. xxiv. 1
1 Kings viii. 10, 1 1
2 Kings i. 2 .
1 Chron. xxi. 1
2 Chron. xxxiii. 1 1
Ps.i. 1,2
Ps. xix. 7-14 .
Ps. xxiv.
Ps. xliv. 20-23
Ps. xlviii.
Ps. lxxxi.
Ps. lxxxii.
Ps. xcii.
Ps. xciii.
Ps. xciv.
Pi. civ. 4
Ps. cxiii., cxiv.
Ps. cxv.-cxviii.
Ps. cxix.
Ps. cxix. 1, etc.
Ps. cxx.-cxxxiv.
Ps. cxxii. 1 .
Ps.cl. .
Isaiah ii. 1-4 .
Isaiah ii. 2-4 .
Isaiah ix. 2-7
Isaiah xi. 1-9
Isaiah xix. 18-25

62
120120114 89 53
,27, etc. J4
100
. no
. 119
. 108
. 114
• 55
108, 120
108, 120no119 64
100 64
65
144
127
90, 127103160103103103103i°3103 59
113
113
90, 127 90
104104104
157 157157157 157

OLD TESTAMENT Page

Isaiah xxx. 1 8ff .
Isaiah xxxii.
Isaiah xl.-lxvi.
Isaiah xiv. 1 .
Isaiah xlix. .
Isaiah li.
Isaiah liv.
Isaiah lx.
Isaiah lxi.
Isaiah lxiii. 1-6
Isaiah lxv. 17-25
Jeremiah xxxi.
Jeremiah xxxi. 6
Jeremiah xxxiii. 14-26
£^ft. xx. 1 1 .
Ezek. xxxvii.-xxxix
Daniel vii.
Daniel vii. 27
Daniel xii. 2 .
Hosea xiv.
Joel ii. 30, 31, iii. 2
Amosix. n-15
Mi'caAiv. 1-5
AficoAv. iff. .
Zechariah ix. 9, 10
Mo/acAiiv. 5, 6
Apocrypha
4£«yavii. 32, 37 .
Ecclus. xxxviii. 24-34
Ecclus. xxxix. 1- 1 1 .
Tobit iii. 8, 17, etc. .
Tobitiv. 10 .

157157 157153157157 157157157 157
157 157 104157
116157168 161
173
157157 157
157
157.167 157158

174 42
127 64 52

Psalms of Solomon xvii.
28-3r •
Enoch, the ' Parables '
xxxvii.-lxxi. 162, 168,
Enoch li. 1 .
Enoch Xxii. 14
Enoch civ. 2 .
Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs
Benjamin x. 7-9

172 173
J74 174
173

t74

Index

179

New Testament
Matt. v. 22 .
Matt. v. 25 .
Matt. v. 35 .
Matt. v. 42 .
Matt. v. 46, 47
Matt. vi. 1 sqq.
Matt. vi. 24 .
Matt . ix. 9
M att. ix. 1 1 .
Matt. x. 17 .
Matt. x. 27 .
Matt. xi. 2, 3 .
Matt. xi. 19 .
Matt. xii. 24 .
Matt. xii. 32 .
Matt. xiii. 22, 40
Matt. xiii. 44 .
Matt. xiii. 45, 46
Matt. xvi. 14 .
Matt. xvi. 17 .
Matt. xvi. 19 .
Matt. xvi. 27, 28
Matt. xvii. 10.
Matt, xviii. 10
Matt, xviii. 17
Matt, xviii. 23, 24
Matt, xviii. 25
Matt. xix. 28 .
Matt. xx. 20ff .
Matt. xxii. 16, 17
Matt. xxiv. .
Matt. xxiv. 8 .
Matt. xxiv. 30
Matt. xxv. 16, 17
Matt. xxv. 31
Malt. xxv. 3I-46
Matt. xxv. 42, 43
Matt. xxvi. 3, 57, 59
Matt, xxvii. 46
Matt, xxviii. n, 12
Mark i. 27
Mark ii. 4
Mark v. 41 .

Page

34
47
101 48 85 52 3483 85
67 49
152 8565
164 164 48 48
166 34
129 176166 61 85 47 53
176 175 83
176 165170 47
170 174 48 68 34
68 40 49 34

Mark vi. 3
Mark vi. 1 5 .
Mark viii. 28 .
Mark viii. 29 .
Mark ix. 11 .
Mark x. 30 .
Mark x. 35ft. .
Mark xii. 14 .
Mark xii. 42 .
Mark xiii.
Mark xiii. 9 .
Mark xiii. 26, 30
Mark xiv. 36 .
Mark xiv. 53.
Mark xv. 1 .
Luke iii. 12, 13
Luke iv. 20 .
Luke v. 19
Luke vi. 1 5 •
Luke vi. 30, 34
Luke vii. 5
Luke vii. 41 , 42
Lukeix. 8, 19
Luke ix. 20
Luke x. 8
Luke xii. 3
Luke xii. 1 1
Luke xii. 13
LwAe xii. 16 sqq.
Lttfce xiv. 28,29
Luke xv. 1
Lwfte xvi. 8 .
Luke xvi. 20 .
Luke xviii. 12
Lwfte xviii. 3°
Lttfte xix. 8 .
Luke xix. 16 .
Lwftexx. 34» 35
Luke xxi.
LmAs xxi. 12 .
Luke xxi. 32 .
Luke xxii. 66
Actsix. 2 ; xxii. 5
1 Cor. iii. 13 •
1 Cor. xv. 24, 28

180

INDEX II.— SUBJECTS

Abraham, Father 24, 35
Abraham, sons of 85
Abtalion, Rabbi 132
Akra, at Jerusalem 27
Akrabbim, pass of 19
Alexander the Great 36
Alexandria 57
Almsgiving 5 1
Altar, the Temple 96
Amatha, baths of 23
Amos, the prophet 155
Angels, belief in 59L
Anointed (Messiah), the 153, 167
Antiochus Epiphanes 37, 38, 70,
159, 162, 169
Antipater, father of Herod 72
Antonia, castle of 27
Aramean words 34
Archelaus, son of Herod 75, 76
Aristobulus, King 34
Asmodeus, demon 64
Assumption of Moses, the 163
Assyrians, the 20, 33, 155
Atonement, Day of 64, 97, no
Augustus, Emperor 75,76,77,81
Azazel 64
Babylonians, the 31, 155, 169
Babylonian writing 32
Baruch, the Apocalypse of 163
Bashan 16
Beelzebub 64, 65
Benedictions, the 108
Benevolence 52
Bethany 26, 43
Bethel 24
Bethlehem 13, 24, 167
Bethphage 43
Bethsaida 17
Beth Shean 16, 23

Booths (Tabernacles), feast of
no
Caesarea-upon-the-Sea 18, 37,
76, 78, 81
Caesarea Philippi 14, 37
Caligula, statue of the Em
peror 145
Canaan, the land of 1 1 , 41
Canaan, trade with Egypt 41
Canaanites, the 31, 32, 33, 35,
59, 61, 91, no
Canatha in Trachonitis 23
Capernaum 17, 82, 83, 123
Census (tax) 82
Cheesemakers' Valley, the 71
79. 93
Chorazin 17
Christ, the name 153
Cleanness, ceremonial 129, 146
Courts of justice 67
Courts of the Temple 94-96
Crassus, Roman general 71
Cuthah, Cutheans 22
Daily Worship 101
Damascus 14, 16, 22
Daniel, Book of 39, 87, 161, 162,
165, 168
David, King 167
Day of Atonement 64, 97, 1 10
Dead Sea, the 13, 14, 23, 25, 146
Decapolis, the 23, 37
Demons, belief in 61-65
Deuteronomy, Book of 89, 92
Devil, the 65
Dress, cost of 50
Dwelling, the Levitical 101
Ebal, mount 13, 19

Index

181

Ecclesiastes, Book of 39, 87
Edom 72, 76
Education 54-58
Egypt 14, 31, 32
Eighteen (collects), the 120
Elders, the 66, 68, 139
Elijah, appearance of 158, 165
Emmaus, baths of 18
En-Gannim 19
Enoch, Book of 162, 166, 168
Esdraelon, plain of 13
Essenes, the 25, 54, 146-149
Etam, reservoirs at 24, 26
Evil One, the 65
Ezekiel 155, 171
Ezra 139
Ezra and Nehemiah 159
Ezra, Fourth Book of 163
Fasts 121
Feasts, yearly 110-113
First Code, the 89
Food, prices of 5 1
Food-laws 129
Forgiveness, stress on 144, 145
Future life, belief in 140, 141,
172
Gadara 23
Galilee 12, 13, 15-18, 24
„ conquered by the Assy
rians 33
„ Jews settled in 34
„ occupations 42-44
„ bequeathed to Herod
Antipas 76
„ Roman station in 81
Sea of 14, 16
Gamala in Gaulanitis 77, 149
Gamaliel 40
Gennesaret 17
Gennesaret, lake of 14
Gerasa 23
Gergesa 18
Gerizim, mount 13, 19, 21
Gezer 31

Gilead 13, 23
Ginea 19
' God-fearers,' the 123
Government 66-85
Greeks in Palestine 18, 23, 36,
37. 38
Greek names and words 38, 39
Greek philosophy 39, 40
Greek science 58
Greek supremacy 70
Guilds of trades 42
Hall of Hewn-Stone, the 68
Ham 30
Heathen, as enemies of Israel
159, 171, 175
Hebrew language, the 30, 32
Hebrews, the 41, no
Hebron 13, 24, 43
Hermon, mount 13, 14, 16, 22
Herod (the Great) 16, 19, 27, 37,
45, 46, 48, 72-75, 93. 15°.
160
Herod Antipas 17, 76
High Priests 68, 96, 97
Hillel 132, 133, 150
Hinnom, ravine of 27
Hippos 18, 23, 37
Holy City, Jerusalem 29, 160,
171
Houses, rent and structure 49,
5°
Huleh, lake 14
Idolatry in ancient Israel 92
Isaiah 155
Israelites 30, 32, 33
Iturea 22
Japheth 30
Jehovah, the name 10
Jeremiah 155
Jericho 13, 14, 18, 25, 43, 76
Jerusalem 13, 18, 24, 25, 26-29,
44, 51, 76, 101

182

Index

Jerusalem, besieged by Baby
lonians 155
„ besieged by Pompey 71.
„ Crassus at 71
„ taken by the Parthians 72
,, besieged by Herod 72
„ the New 171
Jesus in Galilee 18, 40
„ in the Wilderness 25
„ his teachings 52, 61, 145,
151
,, in the Synagogue 57
,, attitude to the Pharisees
143
„ silence about the Essenes
148
,, questions the disciples
152
,, regarded as the Messiah
175. 176
Jews, their race 30
Jezreel, plain of 13, 15, 19
John Hyrcanus, Priest-Prince
137
John the Baptist 23,25,152,175
Jordan, the river 16, 17, 18
Jordan valley, the 12, 13, 14
Jordan, lands east of the 22, 23,
36,42
Josephus, the historian 9, 14,
18, 42, 56, 63, 112
,, on the Pharisees 140
„ on the Sadducees 142
„ on the Essenes 148
Jubilees, Book of 59, 162, 166
Judaea, the country n, 12, 24ft.
„ subdued by Herod 72
„ bequeathed to Archelaus
76
„ under the Romans 77
Judah, kingdom of 33
Judas Maccabaeus 70
Judas of Gamala 77, 78, 149-
151
Judgment, the future 155, 157,
169, 170, 172, 173

Julias 17, 37
Julius Caesar 72
Kidron, valley of the 26, 94, 96
Kingdom of God (heaven), the
i4if„ 161, 162, 164, 166, 167
Labour, honour for 42, 44
Law, the 87, 88ff., 118, 119, 123,
i25ff., 136ft., 146, 147
Lawyers, the 127
Lebanon range, the 12, 13, 15
Levites, the 97-104, 136
Levitical Law, the 89, 92, 100
Maccabean rising, the 118
Maccabees, the 34, 38, 127, 135,
138, 160
Machaerus, castle of 23
Magdala 17, 42
Magic and witchcraft 61, 63
Malachi 165
Mary MagdalSnS 17
Matthew, the tax-gatherer 83
Merom, waters of 14, 16
Messiah, the 22, 167, 170ft.
the name 153
, , as descendant of Da vid
167, 172
„ as Son of Man 170
Messianic Idea, the 152, 163
Mezuzah, the 119
Minister in the Synagogue 106,
108
Moab 13
Moriah, mount 26
Mount of Olives 13, 25, 26, 43
Nablous (Shechem) 13
Nazareth 13, 15, 16, 57
New Moon, observance of the
109
Officers of the Synagogue 106
Olives, mount of 13, 25, 26, 43

Index

183

Palestine, its name and size 1 1 ,
12, 15, 18
Palestine, mixed population 30
Palestine, Romans in 70ft.
Parables of Enoch 162, 168, 174
Parables of Jesus 43, 53
Parthians invade Palestine 72
Passover, the 110-113
Paul 40
Pentateuch, the 88
Perea 23, 76
Persian influence 60, 64
Persian supremacy 36, 70, 159
Petronius, Roman Governor 145
Pharisees, the 54, 77, 134-146,
149
Philip, son of Herod the Great
76
Phoenicians 18, 24, 32, 35, 41
Phylacteries 120
Pilate 26, 78-80
Pious, the 135
Pompey 68, 71, 72, 100, 118
Poverty 51
Prayers, daily and special 120,
121
Prayers at the Passover 113
Prayers in the Synagogue 107
Prayers in the Temple service
101
Priests 97-104
Priests and Levites 28, 68, 136
' Prophets,' the (i.e. books) 87
Prophets and Prophecy 51,
154ft., 164, 167
Proselytes 122
Proverbs 55
Psalms for the week 103
Psalms at the Passover 113
Psalms of Solomon 162, 168
Publicans 83
Quirinus 77, 150
Rabbi, the name 127
Rabbinical law 115, 117

Rabbis, the 44, 54, 67, 69, 99,
108, 137, 142
Rabbis, their duties and privi
leges 1 28ft.
Ramah 24
Reader of the Synagogue 56
Religion in the home 55
Religion, its institutions, etc.
86-175
Repentance, doctrine of 144
Resurrection, hope of 170, 174
Revelation, Book of 171
Revenge forbidden 144
Rich and Poor 45
Ritual in the Temple 91
Rome and the Romans 18, 27,
45-47. 54. 66, 68, 123, 160
Rome, first treaty with 70
Rome, Herod recognized as
king by 72
Rome, supremacy over Judaea
77S.
Rome, Revolt of Judas 150
Roman Empire, the 58, 80, 81
Sabbath, the 11 4- 119
its possible origins 1 1 4
„ mode of observance
H5
observance by Essenes
H7
Sacrifices 91
Sadducees, the 134, 138ft.
Samaria 12, 13, 15, 19, 24, 42,
76, 77
Samaria, city of 19, 20
Samaritans, the 20, 21, 22, 36
Samuel 24
Sanhedrin, the 38, 67ft., 96, 142
Sanhedrin, local 106
Satan, the (or ' Adversary ') 64
Schools 56
Scribes, the 57, 68, 126ft.
Scriptures, the 86, 139, 140
,, instruction in the 57
Scythopolis 16, 23

184

Index

SebastS 19, 37, 76
Secrets of Enoch, the 163
Semitic languages 30, 31
Semitic race, the 30
Sepphoris 15, 16, 56, 81, 150
Services in the Temple 100-104
Shammai 132, 150
Shechem 13, 19, 21
Shem 30
Shemd, the 108, 120, 161
Shemaiah, Rabbi 132
Shiloh 19, 24
Sibylline Oracles, the 163, 166
Signs of the end 165
Simon, a Scribe 56
Simon, a Zealot 151
Sinners (conventionally) 85
Slavery 52
Solomon 24, 63, 64
Solomon, Psalms of 162, 168, 172
Son of David 167
' Son of Man ' 168, 170
Spirits, belief in 59
Standing Men, the 101, 102
Synagogues, their origin 105
„ the building 107
„ officers of 67
„ their services 106
Syrian or Aramean 34

Tabernacles (Booths), feast of
no
Tabor, mount 1 3
Talmud, the 10, 44, 54, 56, 117,
143

Taricheas 18, 42
Taxation 80-83
Tax-gatherers 83-85
Tell-el-Amama, tablets of 32
Temple, the 26, 27, 28, 43, 69, 71
Temple, the, of Herod 93ft.
Temple Services, the 100-104
Tent of Meeting, the 100
Ten Tribes, kingdom of the 33
Tephillln, the 120
Testaments of the XII Patri
archs, the 144, 162
Tiberias 17, 37, 56
Tiberias, sea of 14, 15
Tiberius, the Emperor 17
Tiglath-Pileser 33
Tithes 136
Trachonitis 22
Trade between Egypt and
Canaan 41
Trades and occupations 41-45
Tradition, doctrine of 139, 144
Tsitsith, the 1 19
Unleavened Bread, feast of no
Varus, Roman general 76, 150
Vespasian, the Emperor 63
Weeks, feast of 1 10
' Writings,' the 87
Yahweh, the name 10
Yahweh's Day 155-157
Zaddok 77, 150

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