Pharisaism, Its Aim and Its Method

by R. Travers Herford

The Torah, which, it will be remembered, includes both the written word and the unwritten interpretation embodied in the Tradition, was regarded as containing the full and final revelation which God had made. It was a body of divine truth, partly explicit, partly implicit, according as its contents had or had not been drawn forth and clothed in words. But it was truth, to be apprehended and learned, to be received in the mind by the understanding before it could be made the guide of conduct or could minister in any way to spiritual wants. The reader will remember that all the terms used in connection with the appropriation of the contents of Torah are variations on the theme of teaching and learning. "Talmud," "Mishnah," "Midrash," all express these ideas, and Torah itself is divine teaching. The significance of this is that the religion of Torah had its deepest root in the intellectual, rather than in the moral or spiritual, region of the mind. The moral and the spiritual were by no means neglected or unprovided for; very far from that. But, if I may so put it, they came in under the intellectual. The moral sense of the Pharisee was strong, and his piety genuine, but the exercise of both was conditioned by the contents of the Torah, duly interpreted. He must be put in possession of certain knowledge, in order to act either morally or devoutly. For him, the "seat of authority in religion," and also in morals, was the Torah; and, while it is quite true that to a large extent he made the Torah the exponent of his own moral and religious conceptions, reading into it or finding there a great deal which does not appear on the surface, it is also true that he regarded it as an external authority to which he must submit. He had no difficulty in doing this, since he believed the Torah to be the full and final revelation of God. It was all good and holy and divine; and there could be no surer guide for him in all that he had to do and all that he could think and believe in respect of his relation to God. The function of conscience was, for the Pharisee, not to pass moral judgments independent of, still less contrary to, the Torah, but to co-operate with it, and to confirm its authority. Conscience would be, in him, clear upon the distinction between right and wrong; but what was right and what was wrong would be decided by the authority of Torah, not by the immediate intuition of conscience and reason. And I think that a Pharisee would be quite unable to understand how any action could be right which was not in accordance with Torah.[21] Certainly it could not be right for him.

So, too, in regard to his relation to God and his worship of Him, the thoughts and feelings of the Pharisee, the sincere and devout utterance of his spiritual being, would flow, naturally and with no sense of compulsion, in the channels provided by the Torah, in such forms of belief and such expressions of aspiration as were in harmony therewith. I lay stress on the phrase "naturally, and with no sense of compulsion"; because it is very difficult for the Christian, whose supreme authority is not the Torah, to realise the position of the Pharisee in this matter, and to understand that he did not feel himself to be under constraint. Of course, wherever there is authority, there is that which on occasion will constrain; and the Christian is, to that extent, no less under constraint than the Pharisee. But it is not an oppressive burden, though it may be a hard duty, to submit to an authority which is owned to be supreme. And the Pharisee, regarding the Torah as the supreme authority, since it was the expression of the will and mind of God, did not feel himself oppressed by the duty of submitting to it. He would entirely agree with what was said, in a very different connection (John viii. 32):—"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." He claimed that he did know the truth; it was given him in the Torah, from God Himself; and in making his life and thought and action conform thereto, he found his true freedom. "None is free," says the Talmud, "save he who is employed in the study of Torah" (M. Aboth. vi. 2). Whether the range of freedom is not wider when its limits are prescribed by direct allegiance to a person instead of to a mental conception like that of Torah is another question altogether, and one upon which the Pharisee and the Christian will have each his own opinion. And while it must not be forgotten that the Pharisee also owed allegiance to a person, felt himself to be in immediate relation to God, looked up to Him and prayed to Him, yet he would expect to find the intimations of the divine will in the Torah, and not in his own intuitions. It is not that the Pharisee was without the essentials of a spiritual experience, real faith in God, real communion with Him, real devotion to His service; for these he certainly had. It was that these were realised by him only when expressed in terms of Torah. Whatever could be so expressed took its place at once as part of his religious or moral consciousness. Whatever could not be so expressed remained outside, or, at best, held no prominent position in his thought.

The principle here laid down will be sufficient, I believe, to explain the chief characteristic differences between the Pharisaic and the Christian type of mind, disregarding, of course, individual variations. It has been pointed out, in a previous chapter (p. 171), that Christianity in all its forms centres upon a person, namely, Christ; and that Judaism in all its forms, and Pharisaism most of all, centres upon an idea, namely Torah, and will recognise no person as the object of its devotion, save only God Himself. This is not a proud resistance to the appeal of a great personality; it is simply a natural and necessary result of making the Torah the central feature of religious thought. There cannot be two centres, two authorities both regarded as supreme. If the Torah be raised to the highest place, as the expression of the divine will and the medium of the divine revelation, then there can be no other to divide the allegiance. And not only so, but the demand, or the appeal, to recognise such a one can only appear as an infringement of the sovereign rights of the Torah. A Pharisee might admit that it was conceivable that God should have chosen some other means than that of Torah as the medium of His revelation. He could not admit that God actually had done so, without surrendering the Torah altogether. And this is the ground on which I said, in the third chapter, that the opposition between Pharisaism and the religion of Jesus was fundamental and irreconcilable. Not, indeed, that the religion of Jesus himself centred on a person, as the religion of Paul and all later Christians did; but that Jesus himself was that person; and his personality could by no means be expressed in terms of Torah.

It is evident that devotion to a Person will produce a type of mind very different from that produced by devotion to an Idea; and the difference will be this, that the seat of moral authority and the source of spiritual inspiration will be transferred from the Torah without to the heart, conscience, and reason within. With the result, of course, of imparting to these a freshness and vigour which they had not, and could not have, before. Certainly, heart, conscience, and reason were by no means inactive when applied to Torah; but responsibility for what they did rested on Torah and not on themselves. They followed, gladly and willingly, the lead which God had given in the Torah; but they followed a lead. But in devotion to a person, heart, conscience, and reason, so to speak, act from themselves, and the responsibility rests upon them. And the note of the character so formed is not obedience, but consecration of self. And this, I believe, is the reason why there is such a marked difference of tone and spirit between the New Testament and the Rabbinical literature. The former is the result of the quickening power of a newly awakened devotion to a person, while the latter is the result of steadfast and most faithful devotion to an idea. Nor is that all. The devotion to a person leads to a different form of expression, as the experience to be clothed in words is different. The New Testament contains abundance of moral and religious teaching, as the Talmud also does; but the New Testament puts it in the form of direct appeal to the Christian to do and be so and so, that he may be a disciple of Christ, and well pleasing unto God. The Talmud puts it in the form of maxims of conduct, or lessons drawn from Scripture, to be accepted and acted on because they are portions of Torah, divine truth and wisdom offered to man, for his good, but not making any direct appeal to him. And whereas, in the New Testament, the spiritual fervour of the teacher could utter itself in the glowing rapture of Paul, in the Talmud the spiritual fervour of the teacher (sometimes not less than that of Paul) was spent upon the study of Torah: in the one case God was sought and found through the person of a revealer; in the other, he was sought and found through the medium of a body of knowledge. The watchword of the New Testament is Love. The watchword of the Talmud is Wisdom. And each can claim, as its ideal, the highest and fullest and noblest meaning of its own watchword.

I pass to the consideration of another effect produced by the conception of Torah as the controlling factor in Pharisaic religion. Within the lines of Torah there was room for a highly developed spiritual life, a pure morality, a devout piety. Also, for warm sympathy and generous kindness, and in general for the virtues which make human nature lovable.

All these were present, in varying degree, as truly as they are present in Christians. But how about those who stood without the pale of the Torah? What did the Pharisee consider to be his relation to them? In practice, of course, this would depend largely on the individual Pharisee; and no doubt examples might be found of every degree of exclusiveness, from tolerant regret for those who were deprived of the unspeakable blessing of the divine revelation down to the arrogant contempt which said (John vii. 49), "This people that knoweth not the Torah is accursed." But I shall deal only with the theory, not with the practice, of the application of the Torah to "them that are without." It was said above, that what could not be expressed in terms of Torah either remained outside the religious consciousness of the Pharisee, or, if admitted, held no prominent place there. It goes therefore without saying, that Israel's possession of Torah must influence its attitude towards the rest of mankind. The Pharisees were by no means blind to the fact that among the Gentiles there were "those who feared God and worked righteousness"; but, if the Torah was the final and complete divine revelation, there could not be an equality, still less a real feeling of brotherhood, between those who did and those who did not accept the Torah as the guide of their lives. And this would remain true, even though there were, as there was in the best minds among the Pharisees, a real concern for the Gentile, and a desire that he too might share in the blessing vouchsafed to Israel. The Pharisee by no means rejected the visions of the prophets as, that "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." But how could that be realised unless the Gentiles came in by the way of Torah, and united themselves with Israel? It was concern for the Gentiles, amongst other motives, which prompted the assertion, to be found often in the Midrash, that when God gave the Torah, He offered it to all the nations of the world. They all, except Israel, rejected it; but at least they had their chance. It was no arbitrary decree of God which deprived them of it. His will was to do them good, if they would have it; and presumably they might yet have it, if they would. In such ways the Pharisee looked out across the barrier which separated him from the Gentile, not without the hope and the desire that "all men might be saved," but unable to see how that could be brought about, except by the coming of the Gentile within the lines of the Torah. To obliterate those lines was necessarily, to the Pharisee, unthinkable. It would be to renounce the very blessing for the sake of which they desired that the Gentiles should come in. And, even if there were no Gentiles, the Torah was still the very life and soul of Israel; to part with it would be death; a fact to which Israel has borne witness through the centuries. In the nature of things, the religion of Torah as held by the Pharisees could not free itself from Particularism; and though it could and did cherish a vision of Universalism, the vision was for the far future, and only floated fitfully before the gaze of the Pharisee. It hardly counted amongst those present realities of his religion of which he was most conscious, and to which he gave his chief thought.

I have tried to indicate what I believe to have been the effects of the conception of Torah as the controlling factor in the religion of the Pharisees, having, so far as I am aware, no other purpose than to get at the real truth about them; in other words, to do them justice. That I have not refrained from pointing out the deficiencies as well as the excellences of their form of religion will show that my object has not been to offer a mere panegyric upon them; they deserve better than that. I shall attempt, in conclusion, to describe the kind of mind and character produced by the influence of the ruling conception of Torah, the Pharisaic ideal aimed at, and more or less realised in practice. Individual Pharisees, of course, would present many and marked variations from the type, just as is the case among Christians; and I take no account of them, except to say that whatever may be true in the matter of the common charges of hypocrisy, pride, self-righteousness, and the like, is due to individual defection from the ideal, and is not an inherent quality in it.

For the basis of such a description of the Pharisaic ideal, I take a remarkable passage now included in the Mishnah, in the treatise called the Pirké Aboth, or Sayings of the Fathers (M. Aboth. vi. 6). The whole chapter, which is later than the rest of the book, is called "The Acquisition of Torah." This is the passage:—"Greater is Torah than Priesthood or Kingship. For Kingship is acquired by thirty stages (i.e. there are thirty qualities necessary to the ideal King), and Priesthood is acquired by twenty-four; but Torah is acquired by forty-eight things. And these are they:—Study, the listening ear, ordered speech, the discerning heart, dread, fear, meekness, cheerfulness, purity, attendance on the Wise, discussion with associates, argument with disciples, sedateness; Scripture, Mishnah; having little business, little intercourse [with the world], little luxury, little sleep, little conversation, little merriment, forbearance, a good heart, faith in the Wise, the acceptance of chastisements, [He is one that] acknowledges God, that rejoices in his lot, that makes a fence for his words, that claims not goodness for himself, that is loved, that loves God, that loves mankind, that loves deeds of charity, that loves uprightness, that loves reproofs, that shuns honour [i.e. when offered to himself], that puffs not up his heart with his learning, that is not insolent in his teaching, that bears the yoke along with his companion, that judges him favourably, that establishes him upon truth, that establishes him on peace, that settles his heart in his study, that asks and answers, that hears and adds thereto, that learns in order to teach, and that learns in order to do, that makes his teacher wise, that makes sure what he hears, that repeats a word in the name of him who said it." The remainder of the passage has no bearing on the general subject, being only a note upon the last clause. The author is unknown. The list, which includes fifty-one qualifications instead of the forty-eight announced at the beginning, varies slightly in different editions; but it may be taken as representing substantially the ideal character developed by and under the religion of Torah. It may usefully be compared with the enumeration of Christian virtues in Rom. xii.; and, if that comparison is made, there will be noticed that difference of tone and spirit to which I have already alluded. But it will also appear, from such comparison, that there is no contrast as between black and white, hypocrite and holy. The Pharisaic ideal may seem to be drawn in terms of more level prose than the Christian ideal as set forth by Paul, and, moreover, to be one more capable of being attained, in actual life. There is an element of sober matter-of-fact in Judaism, and especially in Pharisaic Judaism, which may not be sublime, but has great value, nevertheless, in the practical conduct of life, even the religious life. Some of the items included in the Pharisaic list may seem to be of but little importance, such as those having immediate reference to the study of Torah—argument with disciples, attendance on the wise, and the repeating a saying in the name of him who said it. These, and similar items, have to be judged, of course, by the standard of the supreme worth of the Torah. What that meant to the Pharisee, how much more than the mere study of a book, I do not now need to repeat, after all that has been said in previous chapters. But many of the items indicate the great and substantial virtues and graces which belong to the higher human nature alike of the Pharisee and of the Christian. They include love to God, love towards all mankind (let it be noted especially, that love is not restricted to Israel alone), sympathy, kindness, forbearance, purity, meekness, cheerfulness, contentment, patience under trial, and that which a great Rabbi once said excelled all other qualifications for the perfect life—a good heart. A man who should strive after such an ideal of character and conduct would follow no unworthy quest; and, however different be the form in which he expresses his religious ideas from the form familiar to Christians, there is no fundamental difference between them in the desire to seek God and serve Him with the noblest powers that He has given to the human soul. It is not quâ man, but quâ Pharisee that the adherent of the religion of Torah is sundered from the Christian. There was in him the same human nature, capable of high development in its relation both to God and to man. And the conception of Torah was for the Pharisee the agent in that development; while for the Christian the controlling factor is personal relation to Christ. I am not concerned to judge between these two. I am concerned only to maintain that the development of human nature through the agency of Torah did in fact take place, and did produce very great and noble results.

Pharisaism in history has had a hard fate. For there has seldom been for Christians the opportunity to know what Pharisaism really meant, and perhaps still more seldom the desire to use that opportunity. It has served as a foil to Christianity, the way for such use being prepared by the New Testament. Its supposed blemishes have been held up to view, in order that the excellences of the Christian religion might shine the more brightly by comparison. If learned men like Lightfoot, Wagenseil, and especially Eisenmenger, explored the Rabbinical literature well-nigh from end to end, it was mainly for the purpose of reviling what they found there. And, in our own day, though there is no longer to be found amongst Talmudic scholars the scurrilous rancour of an Eisenmenger, there is still the inveterate habit of regarding Rabbinical Judaism as a means of exalting Christianity; there is nearly always the criticism of Judaism from the Christian point of view, and judgment given upon premises which it never recognised. There is scarcely any attempt to learn what it really meant to those who held it as their religion, who lived by it, and who died by it, and have done for two thousand years.