Pharisaism, Its Aim and Its Method

by R. Travers Herford

I shall therefore make such use of the Psalms as will help my purpose, and will supplement the study of them by an examination of the few Pharisaic prayers to be found in the Talmud and the early liturgy. Something was said about the Psalms in the second chapter, and I shall not repeat it. Here I would go into more detail upon particular points.

On looking through the Book of Psalms, it is seen at once that there are some which proclaim themselves unmistakably as Torah Psalms. Notably, Ps. cxix. and the second part of Ps. xix. It is quite inconceivable that these should have been written before Ezra had instituted the religion of Torah. Ps. i., also, the general introduction to the whole collection when finally completed, evidently moves within the circle of ideas associated with Torah. Occasional phrases in other Psalms may also reveal the same fact, even though the particular Psalm, as a whole, may not be specially devoted to the thought of Torah. Thus, in Ps. xxv. 10, the reference to "covenants" and testimonies, and in Ps. xviii. 22, "statutes and judgments." Indications like these, however, cannot be safely relied on; because, as stated in the second chapter, there was Torah before Ezra, and such phrases as those just quoted occur in Deuteronomy. The Psalms in which phrases are found, such as "Torah," "covenant," "testimony," "statute," "judgment," "precept," and the like, may be interpreted in various ways, and not necessarily in terms of the specific religion of Torah due to Ezra. But there is no need to draw any hard and fast line between those which are and those which are not Torah Psalms; for the religious frame of mind peculiar to the Torah Psalmist can be studied in detail in Ps. cxix. That is a Pharisee Psalm, beyond any question. I do not mean that the writer can be shown to have been a Pharisee in the technical sense, a member of a pledged company of separatists.[20] Very likely he was; but whether he were so or not, he looked upon the Torah exactly as the Pharisees did, as the supreme and perfect revelation of God.

Ps. cxix., as everyone knows, is made up of groups containing eight verses, each beginning with one of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. There are thus one hundred and seventy-six verses in all. From an artistic point of view, the structure of the Psalm is stiff and mechanical; the divine name is introduced twenty-two times, corresponding to the twenty-two groups of verses. The changes are rung upon a series of ten words—Torah, statute, righteousness, precept, judgment, way, ordinance, word, saying, and faithfulness—the number corresponding, perhaps, to the ten commandments given on Sinai. With one exception, v. 122, every verse contains one or other of the ten words in the list just given. The result is a certain monotony, and the Psalm is not amongst those most generally admired and loved by the ordinary reader. Whether there is any progression of thought is open to question; it would not, apparently, make very much difference if the verses were rearranged according to another pattern. But once we get past the barrier of artificial method there is thought and feeling in abundance. The one object of thought is the Torah; and the feeling is devout wonder in regard to it, and adoration of God who gave it. The ten words are only so many aspects of Torah, and serve mainly to give variety to the thought of the divine revelation.

The Psalmist meditates upon the Torah, thus variously indicated, from two points of view: first, that of its divine excellence and the goodness of God in revealing it; and, second, that of his own endeavour to fulfil the precepts contained in it. In reference to the first head, it is clear that the Psalmist was filled with delight, gratitude, and praise. The Torah and all connected with it inspired him with joy. There is not the faintest trace of any feeling of oppression, as if he were burdened by the precepts; and, for what is not precept but simply instruction, he received it with devout rapture, as being a precious gift which God had been pleased to bestow. That God had given that revelation was to the Psalmist the greatest of all his blessings. There is in the Psalm but little reference to the past history of Israel, as showing the divine providence. The Psalmist was deeply conscious of God in the immediate present, and of his own close relation to Him. Of course, the Torah, so far as it was a written record, included the history of all the divine dealings with Israel, down to the time of Moses; but it was not this aspect of religion which chiefly appealed to the Psalmist. The providential mercy of God served to give fuller and richer meaning to the thought of Him as the object of worship. The following phrases will serve to indicate the Psalmist's attitude towards God:—v. 7, "I will give thanks unto Thee with uprightness of heart." v. 12, "Blessed be Thou, O Lord; teach me Thy statutes." v. 18, "Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy Torah." v. 41, "Let Thy loving kindness come unto me, O Lord; Thy salvation, according to Thy promise." v. 49, "Remember Thy word unto Thy servant; for Thou hast caused me to hope." v. 57, "Thou art my portion, O Lord." v. 64, "The earth is full of Thy mercy, O Lord." v. 68, "Thou art good and doest good." v. 75, "I know, O Lord, that Thy judgments are righteousness, and that in faithfulness Thou hast afflicted me. Let Thy loving kindness be for my comfort, according to Thy promise unto Thy servant. Let Thy tender mercies come unto me, that I may live." v. 90, "Thou hast established the earth and it abideth. They stand this day, obedient to Thine ordinances; for all beings are Thy servants." v. 132, "Turn Thou unto me, and have mercy on me; as Thou usest to do unto those that love Thy name." And v. 176, "I am like a lost sheep; seek Thy servant." These are only a few of the characteristic phrases of the Psalmist. He evidently feels towards God reverence, trust, and hope; and, no less evidently, does not feel that God is far off and unapproachable, an abstraction rather than a living presence. God was, for the Psalmist, the creator of the world; but He was also the guide and protector of those that know Him and keep His commandments. And it was the privilege of such that they should have been allowed to know Him, and hold communion with Him. The Torah was the means by which that privilege was made available to Israel; and the "precepts," "ordinances," etc., were the particular occasions on and through which that privilege might be realised and enjoyed, and the devout worshipper might come into communion with God. The Psalmist never lost sight of the purpose of the precepts, in the mere doing of what they enjoined. For him the doctrine of the opus operatum would have been a frivolous and mischievous perversion of the truth; in modern phrase, a "soul-destroying heresy." There is nothing of the taskmaster in the Psalmist's conception of God; he does not indeed call Him the Father in Heaven, but that term would more truly express his thought than any phrase of bondage and compulsion. And we can see how naturally the term Father in Heaven would take its place in the language of devotion, when once it had occurred to someone so to use it.

The Psalmist's conception of God, though it is mostly defined in relation to Torah, does not contradict in any way that which is set forth or implied in the rest of the Psalms, or in the highest teaching of the prophets. Compare Ps. ciii., by common consent one of the noblest utterances of pure spiritual theism that the Old Testament contains:—"But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him, and His righteousness unto children's children; unto such as keep His covenant, and to those that remember His precepts to do them." In Ps. ciii., the changeless mercy and love of God are especially dwelt on—His forbearance towards human frailty; while in Ps. cxix. the main thought is of God as having given Torah, divine teaching. But neither Psalmist excludes what the other chiefly dwells upon. The Psalmist in Ps. cxix. cannot be said to have narrowed the conception of God. He was in accord with all that the prophets and the other Psalmists had believed of the greatness and goodness of God. What this Psalmist did was to utter his praise of God, so conceived, from the point of view of the means of grace which He had given, the conditions which He had appointed for personal knowledge and service of Himself. Unless this be understood, Ps. cxix. is wholly misjudged; and the fact that it appeals less than almost any other Psalm to the reader, at all events the Christian reader, is due to unfamiliarity with the Psalmist's point of view. Once that is found, the whole Psalm shines from end to end with pure devotion and fervent, genuine piety.

Second, as to the Psalmist's feeling in regard to his own efforts to fulfil the precepts, and to live in accordance with the Torah. As these were to him the means of realising his personal relation to God, and of entering into communion with Him, he was not in despair when he failed in obedience. He prayed for forgiveness, believing that, if he repented, God would forgive him. When he broke a precept, he sinned and knew that he sinned; but he was not conscious of having thereby set up an insurmountable barrier between himself and God. A barrier certainly; but one which penitence on his part and forgiveness on that of God both could and did remove. All the ideas about bondage under the Law, to which Christians have been accustomed, rest upon a conception of the meaning and purpose of the Torah which Jews have never held, at least those who remained Jews. The writer of Ps. cxix. never held it.

This Psalm is marked by careful, sometimes almost painful, introspection. The Psalmist is continually dwelling upon the precepts as they affect himself, his love for them, his desire to keep them, his delight in them, his longing to learn them, and to be more perfectly in accord with them, his fear lest he should wander from the way of them. Indeed, the whole Psalm is made up of such meditation, in forms varied but continually repeated. Which goes to show that a Psalm written under the immediate influence of the idea of Torah could scarcely fail to be introspective. And this Psalm is an illustration, on a fairly large scale, of the fact that the change effected by the work of Ezra, in turning the religion of Israel into the channel of Torah, tended to make that religion far more personal and individual than it had been before.

The value of Ps. cxix., as evidence for the spiritual meaning of Pharisaism, is this, that it shows what was possible under the religion of Torah, by way of piety and devotion. The Pharisees held precisely such ideas about the Torah as are expressed in this Psalm; and I know of no ground for saying that they were without the piety and devotion with which the Psalmist quickened those ideas.

As has already been said, the Talmudic literature does not contain any hymns by Pharisees; at least, I have never met with any. Perhaps the Pharisees felt that the Psalms gave them all that they needed; perhaps they lacked the gift of sacred poetry. But though there are no hymns in the Talmud and the Midrash, there are prayers, both public and private; and these will throw some light upon the spiritual side of Pharisaism. The earliest prayers of all are those which form the opening and the close of the so-called Eighteen Benedictions, the "Shemoneh Esreh." These are ascribed, in the Rabbinical tradition, to the Men of the Great Synagogue; and though so great an age cannot be proved for them, it is certain that they are very old. They are the earliest existing portions of the liturgy used in the Synagogue; and though they are somewhat bare in their unadorned simplicity, they serve to show something of the religious spirit of the men who were making "a hedge about the Torah," and they indicate that there was something else in that operation besides waning faith and waxing formalism. I quote one or two of them:—"Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God and the God of our fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. God most high, creator of Heaven and earth, our shield and the shield of our fathers."... "We give thanks to Thee, O Lord, our God, for all the benefits, the favours, which Thou hast shown to us. Blessed art Thou, to whom it is good to give thanks. Bestow Thy peace upon Israel, Thy people, and bless us all as one. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who makest peace." These prayers, as they are found in the liturgy now, are very much longer; I have given what are believed to be the oldest parts of the three which I have quoted out of the eighteen. If there is not much warmth in these prayers, as there certainly is not, neither is there any of the vainglory and self-righteousness which are supposed to be characteristic of the Pharisees. And it should be borne in mind that there can be no great difference in date between these prayers and Ps. cxix.

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? What is our might? What shall we say before Thee, O Lord God and the God of our fathers? Are not all the mighty as nothing before Thee? and the men of name as though they had never been? And the wise are without knowledge, and the understanding as those who are without discernment. For the multitude of their deeds is nothing, and the days of their life are a breath before Thee" (b. Joma. 87^b, mentioned by R. Joḥanan). Christians usually get their notion of what a Pharisee's prayer was like from Luke xviii. 11, 12; and I do not deny that Pharisees may sometimes have prayed after that manner. Nevertheless, what I have just recited is more true to the real spirit of Pharisaism than the prayer in the Parable. And even to that there is another side. 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. It is not self-righteousness which is expressed in that prayer, but the acknowledgment of special obligation, a higher calling, in no way inconsistent with humility and reverence. The prayer in the Parable was doubtless intended by its author to represent Pharisaic piety in an unfavourable light; but the example I have just given is enough to show that a Pharisee would put a different interpretation upon it.