R. Travers Herford

“ There is first of all the general fact of the existence of the Jewish people in unswerving loyalty to the Torah, and in the faith and practice of the religion founded upon it—an existence and a loyalty maintained through centuries of bitter persecution at the hands of Christians. It is simply impossible that such a result could have been produced, if the religion, by which its adherents lived and for which they died, had been a soulless hypocrisy, a pious sham, or a futile delusion. ”

“ Paul expounded this truth in terms of Christ, because in his own experience it was through Christ that the divine help had come to him; the force of a living personality which had set free his soul was that of Christ. To him it seemed that such was the only way by which the longed-for deliverance could be effected. Now the Law was not a person, a living spirit, but a command, a written word. And even the Torah, in its wider meaning, was still only a body of knowledge, a revelation, a complex idea; it was not a living spirit, that could give of its own life to a human soul. ”

“ What else had the prophets been, in the old days? And had not John the Baptist been much like one of them? That John, and after him Jesus, had called his hearers to repent, was no reason whatever for resenting his boldness, or for denying his right to speak. It was the natural thing for a prophet to do; as, in much later times, it is natural for a revivalist to convict his hearers of sin, and lead them to the mercy seat. They do not resent being called sinners, and are only grateful for the glad tidings of the mercy which saves them. ”

“ We look for help not to the commandment, but to Him who gave the commandment; not to the Law, but to the Lawgiver; not to the Torah, but to the wise, holy, and loving God, of whom the Torah is the revelation. We learn, from the teaching which He has given to us, to go direct to Him, pray to Him, trust Him, love Him, find help and strength from Him. He is our Father in heaven, always ready to hear His children, to forgive them when they repent of their sins against Him, and to deliver them from evil. ”

“ When Ezra came forward with the book of the Torah, he did so not in any sense as an opponent of the prophets, or as making a breach between their ideas and his [65] own. He came forward to enforce their teaching, to apply it, and to get from it a larger result of practical righteousness than it had produced in their time. It was just because the prophets had so splendidly revealed God to Israel, had proclaimed to him the full grandeur of his privilege, that Israel must now be taught to do his part as he had never done it before. The greater the privilege the greater the responsibility. ”

“ R. Joḥanan used to pray:—"May it be pleasing unto Thee, O Lord my God and the God of my fathers, that Thou wilt cause love, goodwill, peace, and friendship to dwell in our habitations; that Thou wilt grant us a happy end and the fulfilling of our hope; that Thou wilt fill our borders with disciples, and that we may rejoice in our portion in Paradise. Make us to acquire a good heart and a good friend; and may we awake to find what our hearts have longed for, and may there come in Thy presence rest unto our soul." ”

“ Israel as the moral ideal, and, in demanding obedience to it, set up a goal that could never be reached.
The more the divineness and holiness of the Law was recognised, the greater must be the sin of disobeying it, the deeper the despair resulting from such disobedience. Righteousness, the harmony of the human will with the divine, was only possible by fulfilling the whole Law; to fail in a single point was to break that harmony, and thus to become unrighteous. The Law, with its multitude of precepts, only served to increase the occasions of sin, and plunge the sinner in a deeper despair. ”

“ Ezra had it clear in his mind that if Israel was to survive at all, it must resolutely cut itself off from all possible contact with what was not Israel. It must become a closed corporation, a community occupying not merely a political but much more a religious and social enclosure of its own, within which it could work out its own salvation. In the catastrophe of the Exile, Ezra read the lesson that indiscriminate association with neighbouring peoples had corrupted its religious life, and brought upon a faithless nation a deserved punishment. ”

“ The watchword of the New Testament is Love. The watchword of the Talmud is Wisdom. And each can claim, as its ideal, the highest and fullest and noblest meaning of its own watchword.
I pass to the consideration of another effect produced by the conception of Torah as the controlling factor in Pharisaic religion. Within the lines of Torah there was room for a highly developed spiritual life, a pure morality, a devout piety. Also, for warm sympathy and generous kindness, and in general for the virtues which make human nature lovable. ”

“ They would say, "Why do on the Sabbath what could be done on another day, if the doing of it would break the Sabbath? The Torah says that the Sabbath is to be kept holy; and this is done by refraining from certain kinds of action, in themselves perfectly right and proper. We believe that the right way of fulfilling the Torah—doing the will of God—is to do so-and-so. And we believe that in order to save life, when it is in danger, it is the will of God that we should break the Sabbath, in any way that may be necessary. ”

“ It had been for ages the custom in Israel for the priests to give instruction to the people upon matters connected with religion, explanations of duty, decisions of disputes, intimations of the will of God. This was, of course, Torah; and it was Torah which was regarded as being given by God through human agency. The Torah which the Lord gave by the hand of Moses would not originally imply any code or book, but simply such ancient sayings, precepts or otherwise, as were traditionally ascribed to Moses as the great teacher of Israel in the days of old. ”

“ Pharisaism is usually judged from the outside, as seen by not very friendly eyes; and, even of those Christians who have studied the Pharisaic literature and who thus know it to some extent from the inside, there are few who seem able to imagine what it must have been to those whose real religion it was. No one but a Jew, of whom it may be said that the Talmud runs in his blood, can fully realise the spiritual meaning of Pharisaism; but sympathy can show even to a Christian much of that meaning, and it is on the strength of that sympathy that I rest my hope of carrying out my present task. ”

“ Christianity could by no possibility have remained in union with Pharisaism; what Jesus began, and what Paul completed, was a severance as inevitable as it was painful. But it was painful because it was the dividing, not of the living from the dead, but of the living from the living. The Judaism of the Pharisees, from which Christianity tore itself away, was no obsolete formalism, but a religion having the power to satisfy the spiritual wants of those who were faithful to it. ”

“ Whether the range of freedom is not wider when its limits are prescribed by direct allegiance to a person instead of to a mental conception like that of Torah is another question altogether, and one upon which the Pharisee and the Christian will have each his own opinion. And while it must not be forgotten that the Pharisee also owed allegiance to a person, felt himself to be in immediate relation to God, looked up to Him and prayed to Him, yet he would expect to find the intimations of the divine will in the Torah, and not in his own intuitions. ”

“ It is the duty of man to obey Him. He has made known His will; He rewards those who fulfil His command, and punishes those who disobey. He has made all the human race; but Israel stands in a special relation to Him, because only Israel is bound to Him by a covenant. The Torah was offered to the other nations, but they would not have it. They are therefore outside the range of God's favour. They can only come within it by learning from Israel the Torah. There are, nevertheless, good men amongst the other nations. ”

“ However, I will come down to a time when the Pharisees, if they ever became such as the New Testament represents them, must have long acquired that character. Here is a prayer which dates from the second century of our era, and is part of the liturgy still in daily use:—"Lord of the worlds! not trusting in our righteousness, do we cast our entreaties down before Thee, but trusting in Thine abundant mercies. Who are we? What is our life? What is our virtue? What is our righteousness? What is our deliverance? What is our strength? ”

“ It may be true that nothing in the Pentateuch rises to the height of spiritual grandeur attained by the great prophets. It may be true that their free inspiration denoted a power and fulness of religious life greater than could be developed by the Torah as a body of teaching, or even regarded as a final revelation. But however sublime the religion of the great prophets had been, the religion of the ordinary Israelite had by no means attained to the same degree of power and fulness. ”

“ The difference that does exist is due to the fact that Pharisaism was the religion of Torah. For here the divine approval or disapproval was necessarily associated in an especial degree with the "Mitzvōth," the precepts which expressed the will of God for the conduct of man. To say that there is a reward for doing a "Mitzvah" is no more out of keeping with true piety than to say there is a reward for praying to the Father which seeth in secret. ”

“ The service is everything; the reward is God's way of showing that the service is acceptable. Moreover, the reward, if it were expected to be anything more than the present consciousness of divine approval, was not looked for in this world, but would be part of the bliss of the world to come. "Thou wilt find," said a Rabbi, "no single Mitzvah in the Torah, to which a reward is attached, which does not depend on the raising of the dead. ”

“ Pharisee and Paul upon this point is, in appearance, very great; but, in fact, is very small. Both are agreed that there must be the imparting of divine influence to the human soul. With that influence, the quickening of the life of the soul by the divine power and inward presence, the soul is enabled to will the good and to love God. Without that influence it would perish. The Pharisee held that the divine influence was imparted direct from God to the soul, without any intermediary. It was not the Torah that imparted it, but God Himself. The Torah was given to teach him ”

“ It is indeed difficult to believe that they would have survived, if the policy of Ezra had not been carried out. And if they had not, what would have become of the Jewish religion? And how would the great spiritual treasure of the prophets (to say nothing of the Torah itself) have become available for those who, in a later age, were to depend so largely upon it? Whether the [70] policy of separation is to be for ever kept up, is a question which the future must decide. But that Ezra saved the Jewish religion and the Jewish people is hardly open to dispute. ”

“ And even if the Torah which they studied had been nothing but precepts, yet these included a personal devotion to the service of God which was practically unthinkable without worship of Him. It was as natural that those who met in the Synagogue should join in prayer together, as that they should read or hear the book of the Torah, and should edify one another by expounding its contents. That is what they did; and the Synagogue did not fail to become a most important factor in deepening and strengthening the spiritual life of the people at large. ”

“ I am not without hope that a small book may be read where a large one would be passed by, and that the ends of justice—in this case justice to the Pharisees—may thereby be the better attained. I have not sought to write a panegyric on them, but, so far as may be possible for one who is not a Jew, to present their case from their own standpoint, and not, as is so often done, as a mere foil to the Christian religion. This is one reason why I have not referred to the writings of other scholars, except in the one case of Weber. ”

“ It is the privilege of Israel to have been found worthy to receive the Torah, and his highest aim is to fulfil it, not only by doing what it sets before him as the divine will, but by taking to heart all that it teaches him concerning sacred things.
The Pharisee believed himself to be under the immediate care of God. Nothing happens [253] to him except by the divine permission. God sees, and knows all that he does and all that he is going to do. Nevertheless, his will is free. He is not compelled either to obey or to disobey. If he obeys, God is pleased with him. ”

“ But Paul's condemnation of Pharisaism would include, not only that Scribe, but all of his nation in whom goodness and piety might be thought to have shown. And not only so, but these were by so much the more to be condemned in that they gave fullest expression to the principle of Torah. If the system was wrong, evidently those who most completely and consistently acted up to it were most deeply tainted with its error. Paul's universal negative challenges the contradiction of all the saints, martyrs, and heroes of Israel. ”

“ All these different views find varied expression in the utterance of Pharisaic teachers, and there is no attempt to set up one as true to the exclusion of the rest. And when the Pharisee spoke of reward and punishment, he meant to indicate his belief that in some way it went well with the man who did good, and ill with the man who did wrong, and both by the divine appointment.
In the Gospels, Jesus also speaks of reward, as every reader knows; and many readers have winced when they read:—"Pray to thy Father, ... and thy Father shall reward thee." "Great is your reward in Heaven." ”

“ There will be found, not indeed a complete and unrestricted license to any man to say and teach and believe what he liked, but a liberty to differ where each had what seemed to him good warrant for his belief. Uniformity of religious belief was never required by the Pharisees; and the most that was done in that direction was to recognise that there were certain limits beyond which a Jew could not go and still remain within the Jewish communion. Thus, even if he claimed to prove from Scripture that there were other gods than the One, he would cease to be acknowledged as a Jew. ”

“ But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, That, wherewith thou mightest have been profited by me, is Corban, that is to say, Given to God, ye no longer suffer him to do aught for his father or his mother; making void the word of God by your Tradition; and many such like things ye do." Now, even if the charge brought against the Pharisees were true, that they would not allow a man to be released from a vow in order to honour his parents, they would not thereby be "making void the word of God by their Tradition." ”

“ A well-known prayer, still used in the liturgy, runs thus:—"Blessed art Thou, O Lord, our God, King of the world, that Thou hast not made me a Gentile ... a slave ... a woman." Much scorn has been poured out upon those who have offered that prayer, as if it were nothing but the utterance of arrogant vainglory. But, however it may sound to Gentiles, what the Jews meant, and mean, by it is this, that God is thanked for having given in the Torah the opportunity of serving Him, in the "Mitzvōth," which were not enjoined upon Gentiles, slaves, or women. ”

“ That I take to be the theory of the Haggadah, the explanation which a Haggadist would give of the reason for his peculiar treatment of Scripture. Haggadah, like Halachah, is a natural, perhaps even a necessary, development of a religion of Torah. Both are [243] integral parts of Torah; and a thorough understanding of the nature and function of each is necessary for the understanding of the whole. Halachah and Haggadah, together with the personal spiritual life of the individual, cover the whole field of the religious consciousness of the Pharisee. ”

“ And, in our own day, though there is no longer to be found amongst Talmudic scholars the scurrilous rancour of an Eisenmenger, there is still the inveterate habit of regarding Rabbinical Judaism as a means of exalting Christianity; there is nearly always the criticism of Judaism from the Christian point of view, and judgment given upon premises which it never recognised. There is scarcely any attempt to learn what it really meant to those who held it as their religion, who lived by it, and who died by it, and have done for two thousand years. ”

“ There cannot be two centres, two authorities both regarded as supreme. If the Torah be raised to the highest place, as the expression of the divine will and the medium of the divine revelation, then there can be no other to [319] divide the allegiance. And not only so, but the demand, or the appeal, to recognise such a one can only appear as an infringement of the sovereign rights of the Torah. A Pharisee might admit that it was conceivable that God should have chosen some other means than that of Torah as the medium of His revelation. ”