Pharisaism, Its Aim And Its Method

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g of Pharisaism that the reader should, first, obtain a clear conception of the meaning of Torah, and, second, that he should bear that conception always in mind in his further study of Pharisaism. It will be my task in the present chapter to show what Torah meant, and what form the religion of Torah actually, and perh

on the part of those who used the Greek word to represent "Torah." It is to avoid that misconception that I have already used, and shall continue to use, the word "Torah" untranslated, as a technical term whose full implication cannot be expressed in any one English word. It is true that the word "torah" is simply and correctly translated by the word "teaching"; but, as used in the later Judaism, it denotes a particular k

evelopments of the word. 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. The connec

han the priest owned that in it God had continually taught His people. Prophe

was referring to. Nor did the novelty consist in the fact that Ezra made known to them a larger body of Torah than they had previously been acquainted with. It does not greatly matter, for the present purpose, whether the book which Ezra read to the people was th

again the demand, "Thou shalt observe to do" according to all these commandments, and it enforced the demand by the appalling catalogue of curses upon the disobedient which may be read in the 28th chapter. But Deuteronomy was written before the Exile, and Ezra lived after it. The priests had given Torah, and the prophets had proclaimed God's revelation of His nature and of man's relation to Him and consequent duty. They had been pre-eminently preachers of righteousness. But yet, in spite of the zeal of the prophets and the teaching of the priests, the bitter lesson of the Exile had proved that Israel had not served his God as he ought to have done. It was Ezra's function to apply the lesson of the Exile and to direct the religious life of Israel into such lines that no similar disaster should again be experienced; or rather, that no such sin should again be committed as had led to that disaster. Ezekiel, indeed, had been the first to perceive the necessity of a change in the direction of Israel's life; but he had lived at a time too early for a real beginning to be made. Yet it can hardly be doubted that the seed, which Ezekiel sowed among the captives in Babylonia, bore fruit in the ideas which underlay the reformation of Ezra. When Ezra came forward with the book of the To

d and Israel. The main point for Ezra was that God had taught certain things-knowledge of Himself, knowledge of His will. What had been taught must be learned and ta

s thus drawn, this enclosure marked off from the Gentile world, the Jew was to live his whole life, and the Torah was to be his guide in doing so. The limits were drawn in order to make it possible for the Jew to live up to the Torah. The limits themselves are not part of the Torah; and hence it follows that a Jew could live with complete loyalty to the Torah, and yet be but little conscious of the limits within which he enjoyed his spiritual freedom and privileges. Unless occasion reminded him of the fact of separation between him and the Gentiles, he could give his whole mind to the immediate concerns of his religious life-meditation, prayer, and the doing of his duties towards God and man. His thought was not taken up with a painful study of precepts, but was free to range over the whole relation in which he stood towards God. The Torah was his guide to the whole meaning of that relation, not merely to the performance of specified duties. And therefore, when Ezra prevailed on the Jews to become a separate community, he was not condemning them to a life of barren legalism, cutting them off from a free communion with God; he was pr

Torah becomes so marked, and insistence on it so emphatic; why, in short, from that time, the Torah dominates the whole field of religion for those who followed the lead of Ezra. They virtually declared that they would stand or fall by the Torah. For them, the Torah was the medium through which religion became real to them; as it were, the glass through which they viewed all the dealings of God with their own race in the past, and with mankind in general. This will be

, was to deepen the spiritual life of the ordinary Jew; it gave him a stronger sense of personal responsibility, and opened out to him regions of religious experience of which he had seldom if ever been aware. The effect of thus exalting the Torah was not, as it is so often said to have been, to cramp and harden the spiritual nature of the Jew, by confining it within definite limits and oppressing it by precise commands. I would not say that this never happened; because it is not wise to assert a universal negative. But it certainly was not the primary or the usual effect. The Torah made the religion of Israel personal and individual to a far greater degree than it had been before; and it did so by conveying to the individual Jew not merely the legal precept but the prophetic fervour, the joy and the inspiration of personal communion with God as well as the high privilege of serving Him. The introduction of the Torah was not the signal for a decline in the national religious life, but the beginning of a new and strenuous advance; and whereas, before, the prophets had towered high above the mass of the people, who had remained at a

on the face of it; because the contents of the Pentateuch (which is the written embodiment of the Torah) include much else beside precept. As a Rabbi pointed out, long afterwards, if the Torah had been only precept, it would have been sufficient to begin it at Exod. xii. 2,

f the Torah was narrowed into the meaning of mere legal precept." It was at no time thus narrowed. And if, as is often admitted, Judaism, after Ezra and before Christ, allowed of a considerable degree of spiritual attainment on the part of those who were under the Torah, there is no ground for denying the possibility of such spiritual attainment on the part of Jews in or after the time of Christ, because the conception of the Torah remained the same i

terature) is entirely in accord with similar praise of Torah in the Psalms, we must nevertheless not forget that here (i.e. in the Talmud)

of the Torah in the later books of the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms; and that is all that matters at present. It is of importance to realise that the spiritual life of Israel not merely ought to have done, but actually did increase and develop under the influence of that Torah which Ezra had exalted t

f for an indefinite time from their native land, and the Temple of their God. It was not only that they were prevented by distance from "going up to the Temple to pray"; it was that the Temple itself was destroyed, and its services no longer performed. There was thus no national worship of God at all. Yet God was still there, to be worshipped. Trust in Him had not died out from Jewish hearts when Jerusalem fell. What more simple and natural, for all that it was in fact an unheard-of innovation, than that here and there a company of brothers in exile should meet together, and pray to the God of their fathers? So far as I know, there had never been, in the world's history, any form of congreg

s surely this, that they have been found to answer their purpose so well that no change was felt to be needed. Whoever first devised the form of the Synagogue service came, no doubt unconsciously, upon one of the fundamentals of the spiritual nature of man, made one of the discoveries which determine the future development of the race for all time. The Synagogue perhaps grew up rather than was intentionally created; and it was accepted because it so exactly met the needs of those who first made use of it. During some twenty-three centuries it has served the purpose of common worship, both in its Jewish and its Christian form; and when it is considered how enormous has been the influence of the practice of meeting for common worship, such as the Synagogue first provided and made possible, then it becomes highly significant that the Synagogue appeared in close connection with the labours of Ezra and the new emphasis laid on the Torah. Whether, on the supposition that the Synagogue arose on Babylonian soil, it owed its origin to the conception of Torah as Ezra understood it, we have no means of knowing. But it is certain that its rapid spre

have represented a protest against the deadening influence of Torah. But in actual fact there has never been, at all events till quite recent years, any such opposition between the Synagogue and the religion of Torah. On the contrary, it was precisely the religion of Torah which t

than with the stately and official celebrations of the Temple. It might indeed be said that some of the Psalms are too personal even for the congregational worship of the Synagogue, if we did not know, from common usage, that hymns of that character are constantly sung in Christian worship. There is hardly any one of the Psalms which could not have been quite well sung in the Synagogue; while there are many which have no obvious fitness for the service of the Temple. But, in any case, it was not until after Ezra had made Torah the dominant factor in Judaism that the book of Psalms was collected and arranged, and in part composed, as we have it now. It contains hymns of an older date, in some cases perhaps a much older date. And it is possible that some smaller collections had been made in times before Ezra. But there are several Psalms which quite clearly owe their origin to the idea of Torah as the supreme revelation, bes

enough, perhaps, has been said to show that the Judaism to which Ezra gave its distinguishing character by raising the Torah to its supreme place there, was thereby enriched and not impoverished

has as yet been said? Ezra may have been such as has been described; but it is the Pharisees who are commonly said to have been mere legalists in their ethics, and formalists in their worship." I am quite ready to meet th

hey owned in like manner, with entire assent, the duty of conforming in thought, word, and deed to the divine teaching therein contained. In what, then, did the Pharisees differ from Ezra? In what directions wa

It must never be forgotten, that in all the developments of Pharisaism and Rabbinism on the lines of theology and the practical conduct of life, the spiritual and devotional side is always involved. The men who built up the huge fabric of Talmudic casuistry were men who prayed to their Father in Heaven (calling Him by that name), and who, in simplicity of heart, "worshipped him in spirit and in truth." If this is challenged, (though it would not be challenged by anyone who really knows the Rabbi

nistered to. The two lines of development are indicated by two words, of which I have just mentioned one-H?lāchah and H?ggādah. To grasp the significance of these terms is essential for the right under

d by any man who would serve God is How he shall serve Him. What shall he refrain from doing? How shall he know, if he is in doubt, whether he ought to do this or that? And again, many things are d

ise which were not expressly dealt with in the written Torah; and in such cases it became the duty of those who had most deeply studied it, to give a decision according to what they believed to be the intention of the Torah. They would infer from what it enjoined in a given set of circumstances, what it would enjoin in a somewhat different set of circumstances. This is what the ear

he Torah. The Torah was not merely the written word of the Pentateuch, but the divine thought behind it. And to interpret the Torah was not to read something fresh into the written word, but to get something fresh out of it. If a Pharisee were asked, Where is the Torah to be found? he would answer: "The written word and the unwritten tradition together make up the Torah." And he would further say that the unwritten was more important than the written, because the unwritten unfolded what was concealed in the written, and extended its application. But it was all the Torah; and however far the process might be extended, however detailed the interpretation might come to be, it would still all be the Torah. For the Torah was in its

tion that a man might do. That could be learned from the Torah; and if it could be, it ought to be. No amount of study was too great, if, by that means, something more might be learned of how God willed that a man

one by anyone who would rightly serve God, because they were what God Himself had taught in the Tora

the actions which it prescribed. It was the Halachah which gave rise to the common opinion that Torah is the same as Law. It is the Halachah which has laid the Pharisees open to so much misrepresenta

hat was to be regarded as Halachah was only determined after careful deliberation, guided by the recorded opinion of earlier teachers, where known, and also by recognised rules of interpretation. The end proposed in such discussion was either to define in minuter detail some general rule of conduct derived from the Torah, or else to connect some already existing usage with the Torah so as to show that it had divine sanction. The masters of Halachah were not engaged upon the construction de novo of a syste

l and criminal law based upon, or derived from, the Torah, and resting for its sanction upon the divine revelation therein contained. And if the Halachah, in dealing with such subjects as must be dealt with in a code of civil and criminal law, goes into minute detail, makes subtle distinctions, draws very fine lines between what is and what is not lawful, it only does what any adequate system of law is bound to do. And to say that the mass of detail and minute precept of the Halachah was, or must have been, oppressive to the ordinary Jew, is as true, or untrue, as to say that the ordinary Englishman is oppressed by the mass of detail and minute precept in the body of statute and common law by which his actions as a citizen are regulated, and which he is presumed to know. In the

ly well that they were. But the Pharisee never regarded the mere doing of the action as sufficient; in all and every case there must be the purpose of serving God, the intention of pleasing Him. If he were assured that God had directed such and such a thing to be done, in a given case, then he would not say, "This is a trivial thing," or "This is a great thing"; but, "This is precisely what God would have me do at this moment and under these circumstances," and he felt a joy in doing it as exactly as he could. All this is widely different from what Christians are accustomed to, in determining their actions; but my object is to make clear the point of view of the Pharisees, and to show that on the lines of their theory they were perfectly justified in those precise definitions of conduct, even in matters which on other lines would be considered trifling. However small might be the details upon

y the number of them. "The 'Mitzvōth,'" said a famous Rabbi, "were only given in order to purify Israel. The things commanded made no difference to God" (Rab, in Ber. R. § 44, p. 89a). They were so many opportunities given, by the sheer kindness of God, for man to do his Maker's will. Why God should be pleased to direct that such things should be done just in that way and in no other, it was not for man to inquire.

s do not cleanse. But it is a decree of the King of kings. The Holy One, blessed be He, hath said, 'I have ordained my statute; I have decreed my decree. Man is not entitled to transgress my decree.' As it is written (Num. xi

h have been charged upon the Pharisees as a class. The Pharisees themselves were perfectly well aware of the danger, and that it was not always successfully averted. But most distinctly, such formalism and hypocrisy were only the perversion of Pharisais

ress, in the "tithing of mint, anise, and cumin," the wearing of their phylacteries just so and not otherwise, in their scrupulous regard to "clean" and "unclean," "lawful" and "forbidden," and the like. And it was only for the sake of being in a position to carry out more fully what they deemed to be the will of God, in all these and many other matters, that they separated themselves from tho

ed according to what the Pharisees themselves meant by it, and its worth to be estimated by what they found in it, without comparison with other and widely different conceptions of the theory or practice of the service of God. I shall make no such comparisons, either now or later. My whole object is t

n mind that in addition to the Halachah, with its strenuous and salutary discipline of thought and action; there was the whole range of meditation upon divine things-speculation, imagination, inquiry into the mysteries of nature and human experience, devout wonder at the ways of God and the marvels of His world, all, by the light which He had given in His Torah. For great as the Halachah was, and divine and holy, the Torah was greater, for in it God had given all that He had to give. "Greater," said a Rabbi, "is one single word of Torah, than all the 'Mitzvōth' contained in it." And another: "All the world is not equivalent to one single word of Torah" (j. Peah. 15d), meaning that the beholding of the perfect revelation of God

speculative theology, was included in the Torah and formed part of the religion of those w

ship of the Synagogue and the home, which looked to Him with love and humble trust, and knew Him t

ry Christian that the full glory of his religion was realised either in him or by him, but true as the full e

n, there was nevertheless the communion of living souls with the living God; and however different was the way in which they felt called to walk, from that in