committed it to the men of the Great Synagogue to be finally preserved and promulgated by the schools of theology and their leaders. On this account the leaders in question sometimes enjoyed more respect from the masses than did the high priest himself. Indeed, since the written law was in a certain sense within the reach of every one, and the oral tradition could only be brought to the knowledge of the people by the teaching of the Scribes, these champions of religion were naturally disposed to attach the highest value to the sacred treasure of which they we.e the special guardians, and ventured to assert, with an appeal to Moses himself,' that "the words of the Scribes were weightier than the words of the Law." As to the special point of washing hands before and particularly after a meal, it was said that the precept had passed into forgetfulness, but that Hillel and Shammai revived it and taught that it was absolutely binding. We read of a certain Rabbi Eleazar who was banished by the Sanhedrim for neglecting this sacred institution, the sentence remaining in force even after his death. Of course the object of these regulations was not to secure cleanliness, but to guard against ceremonial impurities. Indeed, precautions of this kind made up the substance of Jewish religion, whether interpreted by the Sadducees who held that the priests were more especially bound to preserve their sacred persons from impurity, or by the Pharisees who taught all the people of the Lord to take the same precautions. The dread of becoming unclean without intending it, especially by unwittingly using natural produce from which no tithes had been paid, had contributed powerfully to the formation of the Pharisaic party. On returning from the market it was necessary to take a bath before eating any thing, for who could tell with how many unclean persons he might have come into contact? Cups, cans, brazen-ware, and even bedsteads required frequent washing for fear they might accidentally become unclean. Nor was all this, together with careful washing of the hands before every meal, left to the discretion of each individual; for the commandment was absolute. We may see how miserably trivial the tradition on this point became by consulting the Mishna, the oldest and most important part of the Talmud. The Mishna is divided into six books, and the whole of one of them treats with incredible minuteness of "purifications." There are a hundred and twenty-six chapters in it, four of which are specially devoted to the washing of hands before 1 Deutonomy iv. 14, xvii. 10. meat. The discussion ran on such questions as whether the hands were to be held up or down, and whether the fingers only, the whole hand, or the arm up to the elbow must be made wet. A later Jewish treatise contains twenty-six directions for this ceremony. It appears, therefore, that the point upon which Jesus was attacked was far from unimportant. Religion itself was at stake! How did he defend himself? By a counter attack of crushing violence! There is a tone of long-suppressed indignation, one would say, in the answer which he instantly made : "If you speak of transgression, why do you transgress God's law for the sake of your tradition? For God said, 'Honor your father and mother!' and, He who curses his father or mother, let him perish and find no mercy!' But you say: If a man says to his father or mother, Whatever I should naturally have devoted to your support is corban (that is, dedicated to the temple), he is bound by his vow. You will not allow him to support his parents any longer, if he has vowed his money to the temple. Thus have you disarmed the law of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! How truly does that saying of the prophet Isaiah fit you: This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me! In vain do they seek to honor me by stamping precepts on the people's heart, which are but commandments of men.' This answer put an end to the discussion. A haughty silence was the only possible reply to such an onslaught. The faithful guardians of the tradition had not come all the way from Jerusalem to be put on their own defence! And if they had any other complaints, difficulties, or questions in store, they might well be content without stating them, for the Nazarene's declaration had been as frank and decisive as could possibly be desired. They knew all they wanted to know already, and perhaps more. The narrative seems to indicate that Jesus himself was now convinced that he had nothing more to hope from the Scribes or from the Pharisees in general; that a reconciliation was impossible, and that the only appeal lay to the general public. At least, we read that he now summoned the multitude and cried emphatically, “Listen to me all of you, and understand my words! It is not that which goes into the mouth that defiles a man, but that which comes out of the mouth!" His words were few, but there was matter enough for thought in them. When he was alone with his disciples again, Peter said to him, "Explain this saying to us!" "What!" he cried, "are even you so dull of comprehension still? Do you not understand that whatever goes in at the mouth drops into the belly, and is there separated and cast away? But what comes out of the mouth is from the heart, and that defiles a man. For from the heart come such evil thoughts as murder, adultery, unchastity, heft, false witness, evil speaking against holy things. That s what defiles a man." So Jesus said; but the second Evangelist makes him add he very gratuitous explanation that the reason why nothing which comes from outside can defile a man is that it does not go into his heart but into his stomach. The first Evangelist, too, misses the far-reaching consequences of the saying, and limits its application by the closing words: "But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.' "2 There was little ambiguity, however, in the words that Jesus used to the multitude and to his friends, or in the manly utterances that preceded them. They were an open declaration of war, not only upon such individuals as covered the lack of true piety in their hearts by strict compliance with the external ordinances of religion, or the schools which favored such hypocrisy, but on the Jewish conception of religion generally. Surely no less than this was involved in his declaration that nothing external can make a man unclean in the sight of God; in his passionate denunciation of the doctrine that so-called duties to God (in point of fact, duties to the temple and the priests) transcend all others; that money once set aside for sacred purposes must under no pretence be applied to secular objects; that a son was at liberty, nay, when once he had made the vow, was irrevocably bound - to let his parents suffer want in favor of the temple! "A noble way," Mark makes him cry to the Scribes, A noble way, in truth, of mocking the law of God to maintain your own tradition, — and this is only one example out of many!" There is something in the style in which he speaks of "your" tradition, as though it were totally external to himself; something in his choice of an example that had filled him with the utmost indignation and appeared to him so absolutely conclusive; something in his application to the pious Jews before him of Isaiah's stern rebuke, - that makes us ask whether he had not been goaded and exasperated already by events of which we have no record. At any rate, when his disciples came to him afterwards, and asked him with some trepidation, "Do you know how indignant the Pharisees were when they heard what you said?" he an swered, almost contemptuously, that since the Pharisaic school was not of God, it would soon meet its ruin: "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up. Let them be! They are blind leaders of the blind. If a blind man chooses a blind guide, they will both fall into the gutter! But it may still be asked whether it was not the oral law alone with which Jesus had broken, and which he declared to consist of mere "commandments of men;" whether he did not still acknowledge the divine authority of the Mosaic or written law, especially as he cites the fifth of the Ten Commandments as the word of God? But observe! Jesus proclaimed and applied the principle that the religious life cannot be polluted except by the moral uncleanness which a man brings upon himself. He was evidently quite aware of the far-reaching consequences of this principle, and its flat contradiction of the Jewish religion. He knew perfectly well that the various laws as to clean and unclean food were contained in the books of Moses; he knew that they were dear and sacred to the heart of the Jews (witness their conduct under the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes), — and yet he fixed upon these very laws, together with the innumerable regulations as to cleanness and purifications, as to sacrifices and vows; and if he did not absolutely annul them, he yet roundly declared that they have no binding force and no intrinsic value. All this proves beyond dispute that he attributed divine authority to the commandment, "Honor thy father and thy mother; " not because it was contained and enforced in the twentieth and twenty-first chapters of Exodus, but because the moral sense of man confirms it without appeal. The supremacy, then, not only of the tradition, but of the Law itself, he unhesitatingly rejects. But Jesus did not rashly hurry his followers into every possible deduction that could be made from his principle. With perfect tact he confined himself in his controversy with the Scribes to one striking example, and, in his appeal to the multitude and his own disciples, kept to the subject then in hand. But he did not mean to let the matter rest here. This deliberate and emphatic appeal from the pious leaders to the people themselves had a double motive. In the first place, Jesus was now convinced that nothing could be done with these leaders, and that he must leave them to take their own course, whereas he still hoped better things from the people's sense of truth; but, in the second and principal place, he saw how the masses were bowed down beneath the weight of the regulations forced upon them on pain of incurring the wrath of God, so numerous that it was next to impossible to observe them all! He saw how hard, how very hard, this was upon them; saw that it was a yoke they could not bear. In direct antagonism to the Scribes, therefore, and in the hope of rescuing his fellow-countrymen altogether from the influence of the Pharisees, he gave more prominence to his own person henceforth than he had done hitherto. He had already absolved the multitude from the duty of blind obedience to the laws that related to food and ceremonial purity, and not long afterwards he invited them in more general terms to exchange the principles of the Pharisees for his: "Come unto me all you that are wearied and heavy laden, and I will give you rest! Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am gentle and lowly of heart; and you shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.' Nor did he shrink from chastising that spiritual pride which is fostered by a hard and formal religion. "You are the men," he said to the Pharisees, "who pass yourselves for righteous in human eyes, but God sees intc your hearts; and what is exalted by men is an abomination to God." Finally, he gave his followers the emphatic warning: "Beware of the Pharisaic leaven!" 8 "2 So the relations between Jesus and the Pharisees had long been growing sharper and more strained, and after this open rupture the breach between them could never be closed again. The contest now begun could end only with the absolute defeat of one or other of the two parties. It was a struggle for life and death. After this momentous encounter, we are told that Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre; that is to say, to the boundaries, perhaps even beyond them, of Phoenicia.5 If this statement is trustworthy, we may certainly connect the journey with the controversy that preceded it, and may suppose that after his collision with the Pharisees Jesus deemed it advisable to retire beyond the reach of his adversaries for a time. Since it was not his intention to preach in Phoenicia, 1 Compare Acts xv. 10-19; Colossians ii. 20-22. 4 Matthew xvi. 6 (Mark viii. 15; Luke xii. 1). |