High Priest of Judaism

“ Even some of the younger priests forsook the temple for the gymnasium. Unconsciously but surely Judaism was drifting from its old moorings toward Hellenism, until the perfidy of its high priests and the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes aroused it to a full realization of its peril. The apostates in Jerusalem found a leader in Jeshua, who had assumed the Greek name of Jason. He was the brother of Onias III, the reigning high priest, and had been sent to represent him at the Syrian court. ”

“ Not that we have the old law with its wearisome and burdensome ritual perpetuated in the Christian Church. That law was a yoke too heavy for man to bear. But, then, the highest and best elements of the old Jewish system have been perpetuated in the Church. There was in Judaism by God's own appointment a public ministry, a threefold public ministry too, exercised by the high priest, the priests, and the Levites. There is in Christianity a threefold ministry exercised by bishops, presbyters or elders, and deacons. ”

“ Judaism was a religion of a temple, of sacrifices, of a sacrificial priesthood: Christianity is a religion in which the Spirit of God
"Doth prefer
Before all temples the upright heart and pure."
It is a religion in which there is no more sacrifice for sin, because the one perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction, has been consummated for [Pg 219] ever. It is a religion in which there is no altar but the Cross; in which there is no priest but Christ, except so far as every Christian is by metaphor a priest to offer up spiritual sacrifices which alone are acceptable to God. ”

“ The most prominent feature of Judaism, the Priesthood of Aaron, is transferred to this new dispensation, and is curiously coupled with the higher priesthood of Melchisedek. It is distinctly held that a priesthood is essential to the being of a Church; and one writer distinctly implies that upon the completion of their temple, animal sacrifices are to be renewed for the daily sins of the people. Tithes are paid, as of old—the proselyte giving one tenth of his entire substance, and ever after a tithe of his labor, time and income, accumulating a fund for the advancement of public interests. ”

“ Above all, the legacy from the past came to Judaism hallowed and humanised by all the experience of redemption and suffering which had marked Israel's course in ages past, and was to mark his course in ages to come. The Exodus, the Exile, the Maccabean heroism, the Roman catastrophe; Prophet, Wise Man, Priest and Scribe,—all had left their trace. Judaism was a religion based on a book and on a tradition; but it was also a religion based on a unique experience. The book might be misread, the tradition encumbered, but the experience was eternally clear and inspiring. ”

“ But why a man should be less fit to exercise those powers because he wears a beard, because he does not eat ham, because he goes to the synagogue on Saturdays instead of going to the church on Sundays, we cannot conceive.
The points of difference between Christianity and Judaism have very much to do with a man’s fitness to be a bishop or a rabbi. ”

“ The epoch of the Priest was over, the Altar was outlived—one of the ideals of the Prophets was attained. Again necessity was the teacher and adversity was found to "wear a precious jewel in its head." Furthermore, the creation of a centre of Jewish authority outside of Jerusalem freed Judaism from bondage to a particular locality. Its complete fulfilment was now confined neither to a city nor a nation. The whole earth could become its legitimate home. ”

“ The few facts that have been preserved regarding the external history of the Judean community during the last century of the Persian rule are in striking contrast to the inner life and hopes of the people. At their head were the high priests, whose names we know, Eliashib, Johanan, and Jaddua. They constituted a hereditary aristocracy intrenched in the temple, which controlled not only the religious but also the civil life of the Jews. ”

“ Any Christian priest who puts the observance of human ordinances— fast-days, for example—at all on the same level as such duties as charity, generosity, or purity, is teaching, not Christianity, but that debased Judaism against which St. Paul waged an unceasing polemic, and which is one of those dead religions which has to be killed again in almost every generation. ”

“ Thus these visions reveal the hopes that inspired certain of the Jewish race in its period of supreme trial: the belief that Jehovah through his angel would speedily overthrow the power of the heathen persecutor, that he would establish a universal kingdom in which his own people should have chief place, and finally that even the bonds of death would not hold those who had died for the law. Thus at last out of this struggle Judaism emerged with a new-found faith in individual immortality. ”

“ For though it became the typical nation of the Jews to have an high-priest involved in the same guilt of actual transgression with his brethren, who was therefore to offer first for his own sin, before he presumed to offer for the errors of the people; yet such an high-priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners, Heb. vii. 26.—It is also worthy of notice, that of all those beasts the first-born was most acceptable, and according to the law, all such were holy unto the Lord. ”

“ The result is that the word "Israel" is found nowhere in the book of Proverbs. The teachings there found are both individual and universal and apply to Gentile as well as Jew, to the present as well as the past. The gradual disappearance of the prophets during the latter part of the Persian period, and the fact that the priests ever devoted themselves more and more to the ritual and less to teaching, left a great need in the life of Judaism which called to the front the wise. At the same time the problems of the individual became more and more complex and insistent. ”

“ There is no backwardness nor hesitancy on the part of modern Jewish thought in acknowledging the greatness of the teacher of Nazareth, the sweetness of his character, the power of his genius. But, as a matter of course, we accord him no exceptional position as the flower of humanity, the special incarnation of the Divinity. Judaism holds that every man is the son of God. Jesus was a Jew of the Jews. The orthodox Christianity of to-day he would scarcely recognize, as its chief dogmas were unknown to him. ”

“ In the degree that the great ideas of Israel ripened, the priesthood lost its power. The institution of synagogues had given to the interpreter of the Law, to the doctor, a great superiority over the priest, There were no priests except at Jerusalem, and even there, reduced to functions entirely ritual, almost, like our parish priests, excluded from preaching, they were surpassed by the orator of the synagogue, the casuist, and the sofer or scribe, although the latter was only a layman. The celebrated men of the Talmud were not priests; they were learned men according to the ideas of the time. ”

“ Those whom the worship of the synagogue and the temple no longer attracts either become wholly sceptical and indifferent, or, as is often the case, transfer their allegiance to the new humanitarian doctrine which is fast assuming the character of a religion in the ardor it inspires and the strong spiritual union it cements. For the great body of the Jews, however, the central doctrine of Judaism remains unshaken, and doubtless, so long as Christianity exists, Judaism as a distinct creed will coexist with it. ”

“ Europe is quarrelling with imperfectly developed Jews; but it long ago lost its heart to the typical Jew, as seen in Vision, though as yet it knows not what it was that it saw. Christ, as he exists in Christian tradition, is not so much the historical Jesus as personified Judaism. The simple manliness of Jewish piety has so dazzled us, that we have invented a whole system of theology to account for its difference from our own more effeminate graces. ”

“ One of the commonest and most comprehensive of these objections, is that which is advanced against the whole Doctrine of an Authoritative Ministry in the Church, though more especially against the notion of a Descended Priesthood; viz. That it is a going back to “beggarly elements,” a perpetuation of Judaism in the Church. They who urge this, do not scruple to deny all similarity of office between the Christian and the Jewish Priesthood, and they represent it as essentially Anti-christian in any man in these days p. ”

“ And it is the duty of our rabbis in the present just as it was in the past to lead us and strengthen us in our Judaism. A conference of rabbis to-day properly recognizes that Judaism consists no longer in the minute observances of the law; that the Jewish people are asking for the inner meaning of their religion, and not for dry formulas. In all humility as a layman, I say to them that the Jewish people again needs to be taught that what the Lord requires of them is "to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with their God." ”

“ It is clear that the Jews, here as in the Old World, and more rapidly here than in the Old World, are losing the faith of their fathers. Judaism, divine in its origin, but no longer invested with the divine sanction nor inspired or guided by the Holy Ghost, is undergoing the same process of disintegration and decay which the Protestant sects are suffering. ”

“ IT is impossible to understand modern Christian ecclesiasticism without a careful study of ancient Judaism. It is reported that Jesus himself said, “Salvation is of the Jews.” The gospel was to be preached “to the Jews first.” The common belief to-day is, that the Christian Church represents the substance of what Judaism was the promise, and that the New Testament contains the fulfilment and realization of what was foreshadowed in the Old Testament. ”

“ The truth is that a remiss Christianity always becomes very much a Judaism. Such Christianity assumes that a life of respectable conventions, carried on within sacred institutions, will please God and save our souls. ”

“ A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit. And if the fruit be good, then, in the one case as in the other, the tree must be good. No adverse opinion of the Judaism which has suffered and survived, and which, be it remembered, is the Judaism of the Pharisees, can be justified in face of the witness of Israel to the faith once delivered to its saints.
There is further to be considered the fact that before the time of Paul, and indeed ever since, the Pharisees had for their spiritual nourishment the Scriptures of the Old Testament, including the prophecies and the Psalms. ”

“ The old Jews at Jerusalem were but little drawn toward a sect of provincials, moderately advanced in the single science that a Pharisee appreciated—the science of the law. The position of the little Church in regard to Judaism was, as with Jesus himself, rather equivocal. But every religious or political party carries in itself a force that dominates it, and obliges it, despite itself, to revolve in its own orbit. The first Christians, whatever their apparent respect for Judaism was, were in reality only Jews by birth or by exterior customs. ”

“ Of non-Christian nations they stand by far the highest; and among the orthodox Jews who still keep firm to the national traditions, and teach the ancient Scriptures diligently to their children, there is often seen a piety and a confidence in God, a submission and a hopefulness which put to shame many who profess to have hope in Christ. Even in our day, when agnosticism and denial of the supernatural is eating into Judaism more than into almost any other creed, [50] a book like Friedländer's The Jewish Religion gives us a very favourable idea of the spirit and teachings of orthodox Judaism. ”

“ Make them Jews, that they may enjoy Christ's privileges, which are lodged in Judaism; teach them those rites and ceremonies, circumcision and the like, which hitherto have been dead ordinances, and now are living; and so the Apostles seem to have understood them (ibid. p. 65) .
So far as Nazarenism differentiated itself from contemporary orthodox Judaism, it seems to have tended towards a revival of the ethical and religious spirit of the prophetic age, accompanied by the belief in Jesus as the Messiah, and by various accretions which had grown round Judaism subsequently to the exile. ”

“ He was not baptized; he was not a member of the Church and therefore was incapable of heresy, which was the object of inquisitional functions. He might, however, render himself subject to it by proselytism, by seducing Christians to embrace his errors, and this was constantly alleged against Jews, although their history shows that, unlike the other great religions, Judaism has ever been a national faith with no desire to spread beyond the boundaries of the race. As the chosen people, Israel has never sought to share its God with the Gentiles. ”

“ Although the orthodox priest found much in the book to criticize, he was forced to commend its ability.--It insists on the importance of the spiritual and moral aspects of the faith delivered to Abraham, and deprecates a superstitious reverence for the mere letter of the law. It presents Judaism as a religion of love, and the Old Testament as the inspiration of the teachings of Jesus. Written more than half a century ago, the book is widely read to-day by students of the Jewish religion. ”