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Studies in the Life of Christ

By Andrew Martin Fairbairn

Chapter 10

JESUS AND THE JEWS.

There are three things that at once characterize Jesus and His disciples, and distinguish them from the men who have founded the other great religions of the world. (1) What may be termed their secular and social sanity; (2) the calm religious temper and reasonable religious spirit in which they lived and acted; and (3) the entire absence of political character and motive in their words and works, methods and aims. Men deeply moved tend to become extravagant, the victims of passions so molten as to consume, or so liquefied as to quench, their common sense. When the motives that move are religious, come from the sudden and intense realization of the spiritual and eternal, the extravagance assumes one or both of two forms: either hatred of the world, its comforts, its wealth, its pursuits, whatever is every-day and present, attractive and loveable on earth and in time; or the passion after extraordinary relations, unnatural modes of intercourse with the unseen, ecstasies, visions, dreams, trance-like states that transcend nature, invade the awful presence of God, and snatch, as it were, from His hand mysteries beyond the grasp and hidden from the eye and ear of mortals. But in the spirit of Christ there lived a serene and radiant sanity. He loved the world, did not hate its wealth or its wisdom, or awaken fanaticism against the art that had beautified, or the thought that had dignified, or the treasures that enriched, earth and the life of men. And the Spirit that lived in Himself He made to reign in the men and society He formed. The knowledge of God He communicated created relations with Him so sweet and peaceful that they needed no other and desired no more. His disciples were lifted to a higher plane than the one known to the men who crave after extravagant or ecstatic modes of speaking to God, or being spoken to by Him. And as was their knowledge, so was their temper and spirit. Christ created an enthusiasm too real to be noisy, too deep to be evanescent, too sober and sane in nature to be unwise in action. Their aims and methods were His because He had made His thoughts and spirit theirs; they lived for the kingdom of God, and did not concern themselves about the kingdom of man.

But while within the new society a fine process of assimilation t its Founder was going on, without it an opposite process was in active and ominous operation. Antagonism was being evolved, suspicion was growing into aversion, silent dislike into manifest and articulate hatred. Jesus was not like Judas, the Gaulonite, a theocratic zealot, a rebel against Rome, resolved to expel the foreigners and free Israel. He had not, like the Baptist, invaded the arena of politics, and attempted to become a teacher of courts and kings. And Rome did not feel as if it had a quarrel with one who had no quarrel with it; or Herod, as if he must crush one whose path and purpose were too elevated to cross his. But the extraordinary thing is, that Christ's abstinence from politics helped to evoke a hatred that made the men who claimed to be the most pious and patriotic in Israel His absolute foes. While the Baptist had been full of strong stern words, had denounced scribes and Pharisees as a "viper's brood," worthy of " the wrath to come," they had yet gone to his baptism and been "baptized of him in the Jordan, confessing their sins." But though Christ had been gentle in spirit, soft and sweet in speech, always and everywhere benevolent and beneficent, yet they had never stood in the circle of His disciples; had, instead, met Him with a hate so deep, that to be gratified it was willing to sink its hitherto deepest hatred. Now, why this difference of feeling, of attitude and action? Why did they applaud the John who filled the air with his poisoned epithets, and pierced them through with his sharp invectives, while they condemned and crucified Him who did not cry, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street, who did not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax? The question has interest enough to deserve an attempt at an answer.

It certainly does at first sight look strange that the opposition to Jesus should have originated with the Pharisees, and been by them conducted to the disastrous point where the tragic end became not only possible, but inevitable. They were the party of conviction, devoutly religious, splendidly patriotic. They were not like the Sadducees, an aristocracy of blood and office but a school or society penetrated and possessed by commanding religious beliefs. Their devotion to their theocratic national ideal was equal to almost any sacrifice, rose into a fanaticism that became now and then sublime. It were an insult, not simply to historical criticism, but to historical truth, to imagine that these men were in their opposition to Christ hypocritical^ or in any way dishonest to their own convictions. They were even tragically honest too terribly in earnest to be hypocritical. But this only makes their attitude and conduct the more strangely pathetic and instructive. It is indeed a most significant problem, How could men so enthusiastically loyal to a pure and lofty monotheism become so fanatically opposed to the spiritual truths and subsublime monotheistic beliefs that were personified in Jesus?

Geiger has said,¹ " Pharisaism is the principle of continuous development," and Protestantism is only its "perfect reflected image." The first statement is, when properly qualified, finely true; the second, curiously incorrect. There is a development marked by the increasing authority of the letter over the spirit, and a development characterized by the increasing superiority and dominion of the spirit over the letter. The former is Pharisaism, the latter, Protestantism. There is nothing so unethical as an authoritative letter, nothing so moral as an awakened and regnant spirit. The one tends to make and keep man conscious of the morality embodied in his own nature, of the God who lives and speaks in his own conscience; but the other makes him the victim of arbitrary rules, that become with increasing authority increasingly minute, exercising a tyranny fatal to the faintest freedom. The continuous development of the letter is but the progressive enslavement of the spirit, with the consequent death of independent morality i.e., the reign of God through the conscience.

Now Pharisaism signified the authority and continuous growth of the letter. It believed that God was present and active in Judaism, that its unfolding was but the unfolding of His Will. It ascribed to the traditions of the Fathers, or the elders,² legal i.e., Divine authority. The scribes and Pharisees sat in Moses' seat, and made laws as authoritative as His.³ Moses was said to have received the law on Sinai and then committed it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, the elders to the prophets, the prophets to the men of the Great Synagogue, who thus, as the makers of the oral, took their place beside the creators of the scriptural, law. And the oral became in reality more authoritative than the written. Rabbi Eleazer had said, " He who expounds the Scriptures in contradiction to

JESUS AND THE JEWS. 169

tradition has no inheritance in the world to come; " and so the Mishna recognizes the voice of the interpreter as more authoritative than the voice of the interpreted. " It is a greater crime to teach against the words or ordinances of the scribes than against the Scriptures themselves."⁴ Now a living and speaking letter is, in some respects, worse than one written and dead; is more absolute, can be less easily eluded, is more ubiquitous, can at once be more ruthlessly comprehensive in its grasp and more fatally minute in its details. Where the right of the individual reason to interpret the law is allowed, there may be liberty; where the right is denied, there must be bondage; escape is impossible; an infallible interpreter is an absolute authority. And under this authority the Pharisees stood, and their obedience was as fanatical as the authority was exacting. The Moses and prophets they knew were not those of history, but those of the schools. Their God was the God of oral tradition, infinitely concerned about legal minutiae, not the God of the great spirits that had made the faith of Israel, infinitely concerned about righteousness and truth. They had faith enough, were believers of the most strenuous sort; but a faith is great, not by virtue of its subjective strength, but by virtue of its objective reality. The belief that the best thing God could do for the world was to create the traditions and institutions of Judaism, was a belief that could generate the fanaticism of the tribe, but could not inspire the enthusiasm of humanity.

We must now imagine Christ and the Pharisees face to face. They were like personalized antitheses, the Pharisees representing tradition, Christ the rights of the spirit inspired of God. The contradiction was absolute. It is ridiculous to say, with the latest historian of the sect,⁵ that " the antagonism existed only as to questions of conduct." The conduct of the Pharisees was but the natural and inevitable result of their beliefs. If their conduct was offensive to Christ, their beliefs were more offensive still. On their own principles their conduct was excellent; it was only when measured and tested by His that it became bad. And as He condemned their behaviour they condemned His, and for similar reasons. His embodied His spirit, His ethical and religious ideal; and men who held the ideal to be false could not admire the reality as beautifuL The opposition as to conduct thus masked a deeper antagonism, one as to the nature and essence of religion, as to the 1-aw, as to the truth and character of God, His purposes and relations towards man. Their aim was to make their people the people of the law, every man throughout obedient to its every precept. The aim seemed great and noble; but in such matters everything depends on the nature of the law to be realized. Here it represented no high ideal, but only a multitude of juristical and ceremonial prescriptions. The cardinal duties were of course enforced Moses had secured that but the law that solived and grew as to be a progressive revelation after a very curious sort, was a law of ritualistic acts and articles, a species of inspired or revealed casuistry. Moses had commanded the Sabbath day to be kept, but this finely general command had to be interpreted. It was declared that there were thirty-nine kinds of work prohibited, but each kind specified became in turn the subject of new discussions, distinctions, and prescriptions. It was, for example, pronounced sinful to tie or to loose a knot on the Sabbath. But there are many kinds of knots, and it was not always possible to be certain whether an exception might not be made in favour of some knot or knots of a special sort. So it was explained that if a knot could be loosed with one hand it was not a sin to loose it; but a sailor's knot or a camel-driver's must not be touched.⁶ Then the prescriptions related not simply to works forbidden on the Sabbath, but to acts or chances that involved only a possible profanation. The tailor was not to go out in the dusk with his needle, or the writer with his pen, lest he should forgetfully allow himself to do the same after the Sabbath had begun. ⁷ And these are but typical acts of legislation. An ideal constructed on such lines may be fanatically loved, but the love can as little ennoble the law as dignify the man.

We can but ill imagine how abhorrent to Christ must have been the notion that such laws were God's, and the obedience they created pleasing to Him. The strength of His love to the theocratic ideal can alone measure the greatness of His aversion to its miserable counterfeit. He condemned equally the conduct of the Pharisees and their perversions of the law, and found in their unveracious dealing with the Scriptures the secret and explanation of all their other unveracities. Their traditions transgressed the commandments of God.⁸ Moses, like a wise lawgiver, certain that the family was the basis of society and the state, had made honour to parents the first and fundamental duty of man to man; but they had set the Rabbi above the Father, made the teacher of wisdom stand, as to His claims on obedience and service, above the parent,⁹ and had instructed the people how, under the pretext of doing honour to God, they might neglect father and mother.¹⁰ The most absolute slave of the letter is always the man who does it most violence. While he professes to be devoted to the law, he devises interpretations that annul its most distinctive precepts; and so the blamelessly faithful Pharisee was inwardly unfaithful and impure.¹¹ The one Christ drew, praying in the Temple,¹² was but a type of the man their beliefs tended to create, and was possibly so familiar and true that the sect could hardly understand the reason and righteousness of the judgment it was designed to express; might rather, in a bewildered away, regard it as a portrait they would have praised, had it not so evidently embodied its painter's disgust. Yet Christ's condemnation did not here reach its severest point. That point was reached only when He denounced their infidelity to their own laws, as well as to God's, so touching the last and most awful depth of the unveracity produced by the worship of the letter. It was the boast of the scribes that they loved the law, the truth and wisdom of the Fathers, too well to teach for fee or reward; ¹³ yet they " devoured widows' houses, and for a pretence made long prayers."¹⁴ It was no wonder that Christ warned His disciples against "the leaven of the Pharisees,"¹⁵ and declared to them, " Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven."¹⁶

The antagonism of Christ and the Pharisees was thus essential and radical. It was so sharp and direct that they could not regard Him otherwise than with mingled amazement and horror. It appeared a most impious thing to deny and deride tradition, the more so that the denial rested on a conception of God and His Word that contradicted the conception of those schools whose voice had been to them for generations as the voice of God. They never imagined that He could be right, or they wrong. How could they, when they believed that they possessed this absolute and exclusive inspiration of God? They could not pause to examine His claims or meaning that had implied the possibility of His truth and their error. There was only one thing possible an antagonism of action and feeling as sharp and bitter as the antagonism of thought and speech. His gentle spirit, His beautiful character, His winsome ways and words, might make opposition a sore thing to their souls; but the more the cruel inconsistency of love and duty, of the things wished with the thing that must be done, was felt, the more would their conduct become the Pharisaic counterpart of the higher heroism. They could not allow their Judaism to perish, and it was better that they should ruin Christ than that He should ruin it. How the antagonism of idea became an antagonism of act is what we have now to study, that we may the better understand the gathering of the forces that were so soon to break at Jerusalem, and in the cross.

We have, then, to imagine Jesus living and teaching in Galilee. In Jerusalem the jealousies and suspicions that had been awakened by His deeds and words at the feast had not been soothed to sleep. His career in Galilee was watched, His sayings duly reported and considered. The conflict He had shunned rather than courted was forced on Him, penetrated into His happy and beneficent seclusion. In the crowds that assembled to hear Him, dark and disputatious faces began to appear. His fame drew those who suspected and disliked, as well as those who loved and trusted. The enthusiasm was still in flood, but save in the innermost circle it was an enthusiasm of the sense rather than of the spirit. The possessed of devils had been dispossessed, the palsied strengthened, the lepers cleansed, the blind restored to sight. Jesus, weary of miracles and the curious crowds that followed Him, their souls in their eyes, had returned to Capernaum. Soon the house was filled, the door besieged, and Jesus seized the meet moment to speak the words of truth. While He preached, friends came bearing a man "sick of the palsy," but finding the crowd too great to get near Jesus, mounted on the roof, and let the man down into the house. It is possible that some relation may have existed between the man's physical and His spiritual state. Or it is possible that Jesus was sick of the physical, and wished to escape into the spiritual sphere, by working a moral where He had been expected to work only a bodily change. Whatever the reason, it is certain that His word to the man was, not, " Be whole," but, " Son, thy sins be forgiven thee." Into this saying was condensed the whole question of His claims. It asserted by implication His idea of the new kingdom, His right to be the king, His power to exercise the highest kingly functions. It was so interpreted by certain scribes who were present, and who by gesture or otherwise showed their denial of his claims. He blasphemed forgiveness was the prerogative of God. Christ's answer was characteristic, one of act rather than word. The Pharisee believed that miracles were of God a sign from heaven, a proof of its inspiration and authority. So Jesus, calling in the one proof they admitted and did not dare to deny, said to the sick man, "Arise, and take up thy bed." Yet there is no insult a man resolved not to be convinced so much resents as an argument he cannot answer. It only confirms his antagonism by intensifying his hate. The scribes might have forgiven the blasphemy; the miracle that proved it sober truth they could not forgive.

The conflict thus commenced must proceed. The offensiveness of Jesus to the Pharisees grew daily. His society was to them a standing affront. He was preaching the Messianic kingdom, yet daring to associate with " publicans and sinners." It was an open outrage against their theocratic and religious idea. Their kingdom of heaven was a kingdom of the Jews, its laws those Mosaic and traditional laws they so fanatically loved, yet so finely contrived to elude and disobey. Within the land and over the people sacred to Jahveh no alien could righteously rule. He was their only lawful sovereign. For a Gentile to exercise regal authority in Judaea was for Him to usurp the place and functions of God; for a Jew to become a minister or agent of His rule, was treason against the Most High. And this was what the publican had become. He farmed and raised the taxes of Caesar, not only so acknowledged the authority of the Gentile as to deny the authority of Jahveh, but also extorted from his brethren the tributes and taxes that were the signs of their bondage. And so the Pharisee as a patriot hated the publican as a traitor, while as a son of Abraham and the law he hated him still more as false to his faith and his God. And so the publican became an out-caste in Israel, detested and shunned as only the out-caste can be. Isolation made him reckless, exacting, insolent. Excommunication he answered by extortion, and the more extortionate he grew, the deeper became the religious hate, the higher the barrier which excluded him from the society and worship of Israel. Yet, though the exclusion made him worse, it could not disinherit him; he remained a child of Abraham, with the instincts that had made his people the people of God living in him neither silent nor dumb. But they craved in vain, their yearning but nourished the despair which he only can feel who has so broken caste as to have destroyed all hope of restoration or return. And so the publicans were the pre-eminent sinners of Judaism, the hating and hated, at once apostates and traitors.

And Jesus invited these men into His kingdom nay, made one an apostle, a minister and chosen friend. The act was grandly declarative, proved that Christ's was a spiritual theocracy, indifferent to accidental or civil distinctions, alive to the spiritual possibilities or realities in men. But it was a mortal offence to the Pharisees. It contradicted their strongest convictions, crossed their most cherished prejudices, mocked their deepest and most righteous hatreds. It must have been with an altogether indescribable horror that they saw One whose special mission it was to preach the kingdom of heaven opening it to " publicans and sinners." Hence came many conflicts. The first thing that shocked them into speech was the call of Matthew, and the subsequent feast in his house. Christ's answer to the question, "Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?" "They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick,"¹⁷ expressed His mission as He understood it, showed the essential contrast of His idea to theirs. But they were too possessed with their own to comprehend His idea. They knew the force of a stinging epithet, and named Him " the Friend of publicans and sinners." But their scorn could not break Him from His friendship, only wrung from Him some of His noblest words. Of these, two are pictures of the Pharisee, presenting him as he is before God and towards man. In the one he is made to appear as an elder brother,¹⁸ who conceives himself to have been ever obedient; entitled, therefore, to everything his father has to give, free to feel angry and wronged when a younger brother, who has been a prodigal, returns home penitent and is received with joy. The image is most moving, eloquent, real. He is pictured as " in the field," no idler, a toiler, indeed earning his very inheritance. Then he comes from the field and hears in the house "musick and dancing." The sound of joy creates in him the suspicion of wrong; but he is not above suspecting his father, and does not believe that even in his house gladness can be quite innocent. When he hears the cause of the joy " what these things mean " he is angry, and will not go in. He has no sense of brotherhood, no love for the lost that can kindle into joy over the found. He is altogether absorbed in himself and in what is due to him. So when the father entreats him to enter, the answer is characteristic. " Lo! these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandments, and yet thou never gavest me a kid that I might make merry with my friends." There it was, unrequited toil, unrewarded obedience, the very gifts of God below the merits of the man. Then, too, it is a curious obedience, can co-exist with its opposite. He is, while proclaiming his obedience, disobedient; refuses to obey God while declaring that he never at any time transgressed His commandments. The obedience he fancied he gave to God was really given to his own passions and prejudices. He was pious and contented only so long as his will was a law to God. In him dislike to his brother became distrust of his father, and in his mind to receive the one he hated was to cast away himself. The Pharisee could not allow the God who loved the publican to love him, could not condescend to be received by a Messiah who received sinners.

The other picture is presented in the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican.¹⁹ Consciousness of virtue lives alike in the attitude and prayer of the Pharisee. He has nothing to ask from God; he possesses everything that is worth having. His prayer is a thanksgiving for his own perfection, which is made the more complete by contrast with the men about him, and especially the publican before him. He is not like other men an extortioner, or unjust, or an adulterer, or even like the publican yonder; he fasts twice in the week, and give tithes of all he possesses. The self-complacency, so finely flavoured by a comprehensive uncharitableness, is inimitable. He is good the rest of mankind bad. He thanks God he is so good that he may, in a euphemistic way, thank himself. When he comes to the list of his positive virtues, the catalogue is remarkable and significant. He fasts and gives tithes these are his pre-eminent virtues, and in them his glory and his condemnation alike live. But the publican stands afar off, ashamed to stand amongst godly and devout men, conscious of sin, guilty and humble before God, with no prayer but the short sharp cry, " God be merciful to me the sinner." Christ's moral is the Publican is justified rather than the Pharisee: in the one there was the semblance of religion, in the other the reality. God accepts penitence, but rejects sacerdotal arrogance; and the acceptance of God authorizes and vindicates acceptance by His Christ. The man who so worships has a right to the kingdom which God recognizes and ratifies; and where He does so, what matters the contradiction of the Pharisee?

But these points of conflict only prepared the way for others. The controversy had to advance from Christ's personal claims and authority, from the nature and constituents of His kingdom, to His and its relation to the old Law. If there was anything sacred in Judaism, it was the Sabbath; the most awful sanctities and sanctions hedged it round. It seemed essential to their monotheism, necessary alike to their faith and worship. It stood to them indissolubly connected with the origin of the world and of their nation. The Creator had rested on the seventh day, and the Jahveh who had delivered their fathers from Egypt required the Sabbath to be sacred to Him. They were bound to observe it by reasons alike religious and political; it was the symbol and seal of their right to be the people of God, possessed of the law He instituted that they might obey. But the day of rest they had made toilsome through sacerdotal observances and minute legal regulations. The Sabbath of Jahveh had been lost in the Sabbath of the scribes. The greatest of the prophets had declared that He could not endure their " new moons and sabbaths; "²⁰ but the scribes proved mightier than the prophet, and their day of tyrannical prescriptions and observances was identified with God's. Against this idolatry of the Sabbath Christ protested in the most direct and practical way. He walked through the cornfields, and allowed His disciples to pluck the ears of corn.²¹ He healed,²² and in one case made the man He healed carry the bed on which he had before lain.²³ The scandal was great: such profanity had not been seen in Israel. Christ's answers were most significant, each covering the whole question alike of His truth and His relation to the law. In the first case His justification of Himself was elaborate and full, (1) The act was not unprecedented, (a) David had done a so-called profane thing and was blameless supreme need was to him perfect justification. And (b) the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath: what is proper for the priests is not wrong for the people. (2) Their notion of the Sabbath was fatal to all true worship. Mercy was the best service man could render to God better than sacrifice. (3) They failed to understand the true end or function of the Sabbath. It was for man; man was not made for it. Laws that turned it into a burden, destroyed it; where the service of God was made toil, man could not rest. (4) The Son of Man was Lord of the Sabbath had the right to order it for man's good, to institute or modify it so as to serve his true weal. In the second case Christ but illustrated His own principles. If man needed help, he had the right to it. If the sick could then be healed, they ought to be healed; the act was worthy of the day. In the third case He added a great principle to His previous justification it was God-like to do good on the Sabbath. God's rest is activity, not idleness. He has everywhere and always been working, and where He works man need not fear to do the same. The action of God nobly vindicates the action of His Son.

The antagonism was thus progressive, advanced from; the personal claims of Jesus to the truth and rights of the new King and His kingdom as against the law of the Scribes and the Schools. And so Jesus was to the Pharisee a contradiction that became ever deeper and more exasperating. But while His words and conduct became daily more offensive, His acts grew ever more remarkable. In ordinary circumstances it would have been easy to trace His sayings to the inspiration of the devil: but the circumstances were not ordinary. His antagonism to Satan was as direct and apparent as His antagonism to them. He was miraculously successful in casting out devils. His power over them could not be denied. He was thus a cruel paradox to the Scribes and Pharisees. His words were like lies, but His acts were like the evidences of victorious truth. He was in speech like one who blasphemed, but in action like the very Messiah. They perceived in their blind way that speech and action must have a common root; both must be alike false or alike true. The cruel dilemma thus presented only deepened their exasperation. They resented the acts as an insult, a reflection on their veracity. They had either to abandon their hostile attitude, or frame a theory of the acts that would not only justify, but demand it. Consistently enough they chose the latter. The acts were as evil as the speech; the Actor, like the Speaker, was in league with Satan. They said, " He casts out devils by Beelzebub."²⁴ He is but an embodied falsehood, speaking lies, working a lie, professing to cast out Satan, that He may the better serve him. But the charge was as unwise as unveracious. The answer was easy: " If Satan cast out Satan, how shall his kingdom stand? If he work against himself, how can his works serve him? Then, if I cast out devils by Beelzebub, by whom do your disciples cast them out? By Beelzebub too? Let them be your judges."²⁵

The cycle was completed; fanatical resistance to the light had become fanatical denial of its existence. It was little wonder that Jesus met the deputation from Jerusalem with the question, " Why do ye transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?... Ye hypocrites! well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me."²⁶ "ye hypocrites! ye can discern the face of the sky, but can ye not discern the sign of the times?"²⁷