But the New Testament view of marriage and divorce reveals a very different tendency (Matthew and Mark, locc. citt.; Paul, First Epistle to the Corinthians, vii.). As in all the teaching of the Gospels, so here the important thing is individual salvation. For the sake of his individual salvation it is better that a man should not marry at all, but should “suffer,” and be “a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.” But he who has not strength to suffer may enter into the covenant of marriage with a woman; only this covenant, too, is an individual matter, based on religious mysteries, not a social and moral act, and therefore it can never be annulled, even if it results in injury to the life of society. “He which made them at the beginning made them male and female and said ... they twain shall be one flesh. Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” From this standpoint it is immaterial whether there is love or hatred between the couple, whether their union is or is not a good thing for the life of the family and of society. All this does not affect the real point: God has united them, and how shall man dare to separate them?[[175]]

The Catholic Church, correctly understanding the Gospel teaching, has built countless houses of refuge for celibates of both sexes, and has forbidden divorce absolutely, without regard to all the evil results of this prohibition in the embitterment of the life of families and the moral corruption of thousands of men and women. Other Christian Churches have stopped short of this extreme, but have still been unable to free themselves from the Gospel standpoint, so that until recently they have tried to restrict and render ineffective the recognition of divorce. But now at last all Christian nations are beginning to see that this standpoint is not productive of good to the world, and are approaching nearer to the Jewish view.[[176]]

But Christian theologians, in commenting on the Gospels, cannot give up that great principle of theirs, that the Gospel teaching is always based on a higher morality than that of Judaism. And in this case, too, they have found a way—rather far-fetched, it is true—of establishing the truth of their principle. In forbidding divorce, they say, Jesus only meant to protest against the injustice of Judaism to the wife, who could be divorced but could not divorce. He therefore took the right of divorce away from the husband, so that he should have no advantage over the wife. Here, then, is moral “progress,” a battle on woman’s behalf against the oriental barbarism of the Jews, and so forth. We might perhaps point out that there was a more sensible way of bestowing equality on the wife, if that was Jesus’ object—to wit, by giving the wife also the right of divorce. And we might ask, further, how it is that Matthew, who allows the husband to divorce his wife for her unfaithfulness, never hints at any right on the part of the wife to demand a divorce from the husband on the ground of his unfaithfulness.[[177]] Where, in fact, is the vaunted assertion of the wife’s rights? The commentators vouchsafe no answer to these plain and simple questions. But, indeed, there is no need of much questioning. It must be perfectly clear to all who read these passages in the Gospels without pre-conceived ideas that Jesus, in prohibiting divorce, had not the remotest notion of fighting the wife’s battle. The plea is from beginning to end a theological invention, designed to bolster up the theory.

Let us now see what our Jewish commentator has to say on this subject (pp. 235-42, 508-10, 688-92). Whoever has not the leisure or the inclination to read the whole eleven hundred pages of Mr. Montefiore’s book will find it sufficient to read the pages given to this question, in order to obtain an adequate idea of the real spirit which prevails among our author’s following. As he repeatedly pours out the vials of his wrath in harsh and crude denunciations of the Jewish law of divorce, his tone is that of a monk just emerging, Gospel in hand, from his retreat, who has no desire to know anything whatever as to the views which prevail at the present day in the world around him. It is “to his eternal dishonour” that Hillel allowed divorce on other grounds than that of unchastity; it is “most unfortunate” for the Rabbinic law that it endorsed his decision. But “the unerring ethical instinct of Jesus led him to put his finger upon the weak spots and sore places of the established religion,” and “of all such weak spots and sore places this was the weakest and the sorest.” Hence “in no other point was the opposition of Jesus to the Rabbinic law of profounder significance” (p. 235). In this strain our author continues, with a varied selection of choice phrases. Nor does he forget to adopt from the Christian commentators the theory that the Gospels were fighting the wife’s battle; he repeats it several times, here also in a tone of harsh condemnation of Judaism and grateful praise of Jesus (p. 240 and elsewhere). It does not occur to him that the Christian commentators were driven to invent this theory because they saw that from the standpoint of our own age the prohibition of divorce is not in itself a sign of moral progress. But if the recognition of divorce on other grounds than that of unfaithfulness is “an eternal dishonour,” then of course there is no need to invent this plea of a battle for the wife’s rights, the mere prohibition being sufficient proof of “progress.” Nay, there seems to be more lost than gained by this “battle,” for if that was really the intention of the prohibition of divorce, then the prohibition must of necessity be absolute (to the exclusion even of the ground of unfaithfulness), since otherwise we are at a loss to understand why the wife, too, was not permitted to obtain a divorce on that ground. But our author himself admits that the prohibition of divorce in case of unfaithfulness had very evil results (p. 242). Where, then, is the “unerring ethical instinct”? There are other similar difficulties, and even plain inconsistencies, to be found in our author’s treatment of this subject. But we have already dwelt on it at sufficient length. Whoever reads all the related passages in the book will be satisfied that there is here neither logic nor “science,” nor true, unbiassed judgment, but such partiality to Jesus and the Gospels as the most pious Christian might envy.

It may be worth while, by way of completing the picture, to add just one further point. When our author reaches the end of the passage in Matthew, where the “eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake” are extolled, he finds himself in some perplexity (pp. 690, 691). Clearly, his moral sense is revolted. But how gentle is his language! You will find nothing here about “eternal dishonour” or the like. He lowers his voice in submissive reverence, and tries to find excuses for the Gospel, so that you cannot recognise in him that “higher tribunal” which condemned without mercy what he thought the “weak spot” in the law of his ancestors. True, this fact demands no comment; but I am reminded of the author’s anticipation (Introduction, p. xix) that Christian critics would find him too Jewish, and Jewish critics too Christian, and I merely wish to remark that this difference of attitude will stamp him, even in the eyes of Jewish critics, as, in one respect at least, too much of a Jew.

After what has been said above, it may perhaps appear to many that it was not worth while to give so much attention to such a book, and possibly from the point of view of scholarship and literature they are right. But, as I have already hinted, the book deserves special attention as a revelation of the psychology of a certain section of Jews. It shows us a new kind of Jew, hitherto unknown to history, who has lost every trace of the mighty sorrow which his ancestors felt for the exile of the nation and the exile of the Shechinah,[[178]] and who yet has a sorrow of his own—the sorrow of a meaningless isolation. He sees that the world has gone its own way, leaving the Jews alone with their Torah. This isolation is not unbearable so long as the Jew understands or feels that it is necessary to the preservation of his sacred ideals; but the real need for it can certainly not be felt by those Jews who think that the difference between themselves and their neighbours is “external and artificial,” and for whom Judaism is nothing but a dear inheritance, which must be preserved out of respect for their fathers. Hence they seek in various ways to escape from their isolation. Thirteen years ago they believed that they could attain their object by basing Judaism on certain universal beliefs of the Theists. Now they recognise that this is not enough; they go a step further, and tack on Jesus and the Gospels. This development appears clearly from many passages in the book under notice, of which I will quote here one of the most explicit:

“Dogmatic Christianity in the course of centuries may disappear; Trinitarianism may be succeeded by Unitarianism; but the words of Jesus will still continue to move and cheer the heart of man. If Judaism does not, as it were, come to terms with the Gospels, it must always be, I am inclined to think, a creed in a corner, of little influence and with no expansive power. Orthodox Jews would, I suppose, say that they want no more. Liberal Jews should be less easily satisfied” (p. 906).

We can certainly understand the state of mind of these Jews; but they themselves ought also to understand it aright. They would then see that their state of mind has no relation to the question of “orthodox” and “liberal” Judaism in the usual sense of the words. A Jew may be a liberal of liberals, without forgetting that Judaism was born “in a corner” and has always lived “in a corner,” apart from the great world, which has never understood it, and therefore hates it. Such was the lot of Judaism before the rise of Christianity, and such it has remained since. History has not yet satisfactorily explained how it came about that a tiny nation in a corner of Asia produced a unique religious and moral point of view, which has had so profound an influence on the rest of the world, and has yet remained so foreign to the rest of the world, unable to this day either to conquer it or to surrender to it. This is a historical phenomenon to which, despite a multitude of attempted answers, we must still attach a note of interrogation. But every true Jew, be he “orthodox” or “liberal,” feels deep down in his being that there is something in the spirit of our people—though we know not what it is—that kept it from the high-road taken by other nations, and impelled it to build up Judaism on those foundations for the sake of which the people remains to this day confined “in a corner” with its religion, being incapable of renouncing them. Let them who still have this feeling remain within the fold; let them who have lost it go elsewhere. There is no room here for compromise.

INDEX