STACK 
 
 ANN8JC 
 
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 The Crucifixion 
 
 ^ iewed from a Jewish Standpoint 
 
 A LECTURE DELIVERED BY INVITATION 
 BEFORE THE " CHICAGO INSTITUTE FOR 
 MORALS, RELIGION AND LETTERS" 
 
 BY 
 
 IRev. 5>r. 
 
 6, Htrecb 
 
 
 
 
 
 $ 
 
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 SECOND EDITION 
 
 BLOCH 
 
 CO. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1892, BLOCH PUBLISHING Co.
 
 THE CRUCIFIXION 
 
 VIEWED FROM A JEWISH STANDPOINT 
 
 WHEREVER religion builds her altars, there flames a 
 burning bush, and he who would draw near to it in 
 the proper spirit, must be mindful of the caution ad- 
 dressed to the old Hebrew shepherd: " Veil thy coun- 
 tenance, take off thy shoes, for the ground on which 
 thou standest is holy." Religion is ever thought about 
 the highest and deepest themes and motives of life. 
 He who has no religion, may scoff at the convictions of 
 another; but one who himself cherishes as the best he 
 has, his own religious principles, will only reverently 
 enter upon the discussion of his neighbor's religious 
 creed, and even when he differs from him or has reason 
 to reject one or the other fact upon which his brother 
 rears his temple, he will never for the mere purpose of 
 denial, or to fill a vacant hour with a ribald jest, pre- 
 sume to raise his voice in the other man's sanctuary. 
 
 The subject which I am to handle, is fraught with 
 great difficulties. It centers in a tragedy which for 
 millions of the human family symbolizes the supreme 
 moment of all history. The cross, which is the sign 
 of that majestic and awful event, has spelled for thou- 
 sands and thousands the message of hope, making life 
 bearable under stress, testing to the utmost human 
 endurance. As such token of redemption, it wel-
 
 comes the new-born babe, and speeds the parting soul 
 to the realms of light. How often has it steeled with 
 courage despairing hearts! How often has it whis- 
 pered words of love unto lonely souls! Its gleam 
 sends joyfully the soldier to the battle; consoles him 
 when wounded, and upholds him when facing terror 
 and danger! But the very same crucifix, which for so 
 many is emblematic of the noblest and highest that 
 ever graced earth, recalls, too, a charge under which 
 now for fifteen centuries the Jews have pined, an 
 accusation which brought upon and still brings upon 
 the kinsmen of him who was the central figure of the 
 supposed drama, sufferings beggaring description, and 
 distrust most bitter to bear. Is that charge well- 
 founded ? No Jew can be indifferent to what the an- 
 swer to this question will be. He need not deny, and 
 he will not deny, the providential mission of Christian- 
 ity, nor the rich blessings which it conferred upon the 
 races of men. 
 
 Whatever the Jew's religious bias may be, believer 
 in divine government, as he is, he will, confronted with 
 so stupendous a phenomenon, as is the growth and 
 power of Christianity, willingly acknowledge that 
 under God's purposes, this grand movement was neces- 
 sary, dowered and destined to lift toward the stars 
 beings altogether too prone to grovel in the dust. But 
 for all this, the Jew, remembering his own history, 
 cannot shirk the duty of examining the accounts upon 
 which the charge is based, that his ancestors at the 
 most promising period of his history, laid heavy hands 
 upon one who was, if not more, the noblest type of 
 humanity. Assuming this task, no thought can be 
 further from his mind than the desire to change the re-
 
 ligious convictions, or to shake the religious hopes of 
 even the least among his fellow-men. Not in defiance, 
 but in defense, must the Jew voice his views on that 
 catastrophe which has forever made gloomy Golgotha 
 most glorious in the eyes of Christendom, while at the 
 same time it has rendered the name of that hill a 
 synonym, not of love, but hatred, to which were ex- 
 posed the children of those whom he who died there 
 with a prayer on his lips in behalf of his enemies, 
 would willingly have called his brethren. 
 
 Today, one might, if so minded, dispose of the whole 
 matter most briefly, and in a few words, by urging as 
 correct what many non-Jewish writers have claimed, 
 and to prove which, many thick and learned books 
 have been published, that Jesus never lived. Of 
 course, if there never was a teacher of Nazareth, there 
 never could have been such a close of his life as the 
 concluding chapters of the gospels tell us there was. 
 If Bruno Bauer's theory, as most finely spun in his 
 work, "Christ and the Caesars," is accepted, the Jew 
 is at once purged of the guilt of having put to death 
 the Messiah. But I, for one, cannot concede that the 
 figure of the Nazarene is altogether an after-thought or 
 an after-formation. Though the critics of the school 
 to which Bauer belongs, and which today is ably 
 represented by Dutch professors, display considerable 
 scholarship to make out the case, that Christianity is 
 the impersonal outcome of an alliance between Stoi- 
 cism and Hellenistic Alexandrian Judaism, and Jesus 
 the assumed and freely invented personal incarnation 
 of an impersonal movement; I, with many others, 
 must hold that such great historical processes always 
 take their rise from personal sources.
 
 After due allowance for whatever circumstances may 
 have contributed toward the making of Christianity, 
 and toward its spread in the world, and after the de- 
 duction of whatever the conditions of the Judean and 
 non-Judean mind at this critical period have undoubt- 
 edly produced, we are still face to face with a remainder 
 for which the non-personal forces give no satisfactory 
 explanation. There is no doubt that Stoic philosophy 
 acted as the plow, preparing the ancient world for the 
 reception of the new seed. Nor can it be questioned 
 that without Alexandrian Judaism, Christianity would 
 be suspended like the coffin of Mohammed, in mid-air. 
 But the point of contact where two movements of this 
 kind meet, lies always in one great heart, is always one 
 great creative mind, in whom, unconsciously and yet 
 potently, all the scattered rays gather, who thus be- 
 comes the focus which sends out again with greater 
 intensity, flashes of light into succeeding darkness. If 
 now it be said that Paul the Apostle is this great per- 
 sonality creating Christianity, much truth is voiced in 
 this statement, and still the whole truth is not ex- 
 hausted. Of course, without the activity of Paul, 
 Christianity would never have become what it has. 
 As a dogmatic system, it has to recognize in him of 
 Tarsus its founder, but he utilized a personal Jesus as 
 the incarnation of his Christ idea. Such a personal 
 life was not the free invention of his imagination; he 
 himself had heard the story of the life of Jesus from 
 others who had known him. Around the carpenter's 
 son of Nazareth he wove Messianic ideas of his own, 
 as modified by the thoughts which Judean Greek phi- 
 losophy and the Stoic schools had worked out. 
 
 But while I will not question the personal element in
 
 the origination of Christianity, I must insist, all the 
 more strenuously, upon the fact that the accounts 
 which pass as a biography of Jesus, are the works of 
 men, and of a period that never had from personal 
 contact or conversation, knowledge of him. In other 
 words, we have no biography of the teacher of Naza- 
 reth. He must have spent his life in comparative re- 
 tirement. The influence he exercised upon his co- 
 temporaries could not have been as deep and great as 
 we generally suppose from our acquaintance with the 
 gospels. For how can one account otherwise for the 
 strange fact, that not one of the historians or writers 
 living at or shortly after the time during which we must 
 suppose him to have moved about in Palestine teach- 
 ing and exhorting, preserves even his name. Josephus 
 does not mention him; for the often-quoted passage 
 in which an allusion to him occurs, is unmistakably an 
 interpolation. 
 
 In the Jewish writings of that period, as in the non- 
 expurgated editions of the Talmud, there are about 
 twenty passages which seem to have a reference to him. 
 But the connection and the character of these plainly 
 indicate that they are the echo, blurred and indistinct, 
 of some New Testament tradition. Historical data con- 
 cerning the life and the end of the founder of Chris- 
 tianity, are not found in the Talmud. The Palestinian 
 sources are utterly silent on this whole matter, even 
 the name under which Jesus there is indicated, is, at 
 the earliest, a creation of the third century. What the 
 Babylonian Talmud offers in this connection, con- 
 sists of a few conceptions which were formed clearly 
 after Christianity had become the religion of state, 
 about the beginning of the fourth century, and are de-
 
 rived from notions, which, based upon the condition 
 of the Christianity of that time, were transferred, 
 although without historical value, and altogether un- 
 corroborated by tradition, to the founder of the re- 
 ligion. The early ecclesiastical fathers know little 
 more of Jesus than a few anecdotes, and the writings 
 of St. Paul show that the apostle was not acquainted 
 with the details of his life. 
 
 The gospels, this is the incontrovertible result of 
 modern criticism as carried on by eminent Christian 
 scholars in Germany and Holland, are not the works 
 of the men whose names they bear. They are not the 
 recorded recollections of eye-witnesses. Even if we 
 discredit the theory of the Tuebingen school, we must 
 acknowledge, and the more conservative scholars ac- 
 knowledge, that our four gospels are a collection of 
 fragments which received their present shape, at the 
 earliest, during the opening years of the second Chris- 
 tian century. Bauer may have overstated the case 
 when he claimed that first there was a gospel written 
 in Aramaic, now lost, the so-called Hebrew gospel, 
 reflecting altogether the opinions of the Ebionites, and 
 believed to be the work of Matthew and Peter, from 
 which the present Matthew is a free elaboration of a 
 less narrow Judaeo-Christian character, and with a 
 broader universalistic tendency; Luke, originally a 
 Paulinian gospel, but remodeled later, representing the 
 Jndsean or Ebionite party; Mark, occupying a neutral 
 ground between these two, and consisting of extracts 
 from both. 
 
 But even according to the most recent criticism 
 which has largely departed from the Tuebingen school, 
 Mark is considered to be the earliest form in which the
 
 life of Jesus was reduced to writing. But it was pre- 
 ceded by a collection of sayings now worked into the 
 account by both the authors of Matthew and Luke, 
 each one following in doing this, a plan of his own, the 
 former being more artificial, because more systematic. 
 Taking then the most conservative estimate of the date 
 of our gospels, we must conclude that at least two gen- 
 erations intervened between those who wrote down the 
 events and those who could have been eye-witnesses to 
 them. This date, however, upon closer examination, 
 proves to be still too early. If we bear in mind that the 
 gospels in many particulars betray a strange lack of 
 acquaintance with the institutions, the thoughts and 
 the parties of the Jewish people during its national 
 existence, the impression becomes almost certainty 
 that the final authors must have lived in times when 
 Jewish national life with all of its aspirations and am- 
 bitions had long ago ebbed out; that is to say, after 
 the Hadrian war of rebellion. 
 
 The quotations occurring in the New from the Old 
 Testament reveal ignorance of the Hebrew text; they 
 are made, if not altogether from the Seventy, from a 
 version closely akin to it, and thus they indicate a con- 
 dition of things which reigned only at a period when 
 among the Christian writers the Greek version had re- 
 placed entirely the text of the Massorites. Or, in 
 other words, this circumstance, too, points to the close 
 and not the beginning of the second Christian century, 
 and to men who had entirely severed all ties binding 
 them to the religious thought and national conviction 
 of Judaism. From a side light which falls from Jew- 
 ish literature upon the struggles of the nascent church, 
 we may infer also that the gospels were not extant
 
 10 
 
 in written form before the close of the second 
 century. 
 
 Certain expressions of Jewish teachers of the third 
 century show that they were acquainted with the writ- 
 ten gospels, and the Mishna itself, probably, was re- 
 duced to writing only after the new church had made 
 inroads upon Judaism, and in order to counteract the 
 influence of the written documents of Christianity. 
 This could hot have been before the time of Juda 
 Hanassi (end of the second century). Up to that time 
 the story of Jesus's life passed orally from mouth to 
 mouth. Various attempts may have been made to fix 
 it in writing before this, but none succeeded well 
 enough to check all later amplifications. That in the 
 course of such traditions, the legendary element should 
 sprout most luxuriously is natural. A simple tale was 
 embellished, enlarged, overlaid with miraculous stories, 
 and finally cast in the mold of a theological tendency. 
 
 The general trustworthiness of Jewish tradition 
 which passed orally from generation to generation, 
 without materially altering the context and verbal text, 
 will not weaken the suspicions of later additions and 
 overworkings in the gospels; for it must be borne in 
 mind that the tradition of the Jews was a living force, 
 dealing with and regulating the practice of every-day 
 life; and where it was not this, the schools had a care 
 and an interest to guard it from foreign intrusions. 
 But the Talmud itself shows to what powerful aids to 
 memory the rabbis had to resort in order to preserve 
 tradition; and moreover, where the legal element is 
 not at stake, in the "Hagadic" portions even Hebrew 
 tradition is not so perfect a channel of the original lim- 
 pid stream fresh from the virgin spring. The gospels
 
 11 
 
 have all the characteristics of Hebrew "Hagadas." If 
 the suspicion is warranted, that even in respect to the 
 "Halakhas," Hebrew 7 tradition was not so absolutely 
 reliable as is generally supposed, what shall be said of 
 Hagadas passed beyond the pale of the mother, 
 Judaism ? 
 
 In one regard, however, the composition of the 
 Mishna may be cited as an analogon. It is constructed 
 without plan; its arrangement is entirely mechanical. 
 The composition of the gospels shows the same charac- 
 teristics. No attempt is made at chronological order; 
 a fact which is recognized by Reuss. The sentences 
 and sayings of the Master are grouped together, as are 
 those of many old Hebrew prophets, not with reference 
 to their own context, but to their verbal form. In 
 this connection, it is extremely interesting to compare 
 the fourth gospel with the three synoptics. That the 
 fourth (toes not agree with the others is revealed at the 
 very first glance. In its very introduction, it betrays 
 itself to be a philosophical reconstruction of the life of 
 Jesus, nor are the discrepancies in the related events 
 less striking; situations and occurrences, persons and 
 places are introduced, of which no other account makes 
 mention. The scene of the fourth evangel is not 
 Galilaea but Judaea, or more especially Jerusalem, 
 where Jesus finds his adherents and. also, from the very 
 beginning, his opponents. The three excursions to 
 Galilaea are treated as mere episodes. In this manner 
 disappears the common stem of events in which the 
 synoptics are agreed, and thus a whole series of the 
 most important traits of former accounts. Most of the 
 synoptic miraculous deeds are wanting. In this life of 
 Jesus, there are no lepers nor publicans and sinners.
 
 Like the local, so is also the temporal scheme en- 
 larged. 
 
 According to the three gospels, the public activity 
 lasts but one year the same length of time which the 
 fathers of the early church also knew according to the 
 fourth, three years is the duration of Jesus's public 
 career. Nor is the day of death of Jesus the same. 
 While in the three, he dies on the 15th of Nissan, in 
 John he expires on the 14th, a change which is cer- 
 tainly the result of theological considerations, the ten- 
 dency being to make Jesus himself the Paschal Lamb 
 of the world, a change which no one could have had 
 an interest to make before the famous controversy as 
 to the proper time of celebrating Easter, which raged 
 in the Churches of Asia Minor during the second half 
 of the second Christian century. 
 
 Not to tarry too long by these and other details of 
 difference, I may sum up the character of the fourth 
 gospel in contradistinction to the others, as an ideal, 
 pneumatic work. Its home was not Palestine but 
 Asia Minor, and the date of composition cannot be 
 placed earlier than 150 after Christ. This comparison 
 of the fourth gospel with the three others, shows how 
 the pictures of Jesus gradually formed and changed, 
 enlarged and deepened. Current in the mouth of his 
 disciples and among the young churches, were many 
 stories about his deeds, his birth, his life and his death. 
 As is the case always with such tradition, they grow 
 steadily from small beginnings as they pass from mouth 
 to mouth, and from generation to generation, and often 
 are enlarged by the addition of foreign elements. 
 
 This process goes on unconsciously, until finally 
 under the treatment of skilled minds, when about to be
 
 13 
 
 reduced to writing, the material is sifted, arranged and 
 recast in accordance with principles and conceptions, 
 treasured as being of truth absolute. Orthodox writ- 
 ers infer that under the dissolving acids of criticism of 
 this kind, the writers of Biblical books, will all appear 
 to be mere impostors, inventors either themselves of 
 deceptions, or victims of fraudulent delusions. Those 
 who, by such argument, desire or attempt to brush 
 aside the results of critical studies, merely betray their 
 own ignorance of the operations of those laws according 
 to which the creative genius of all time and place, molds 
 unconsciously the soft clay of legend and tradition, and 
 shapes it so as to express ideas and ideals accepted as 
 undoubted truth. Impostors are always conscious of 
 their impositions. The writers of the Biblical books 
 are ignorant of the fact that they do not write history. 
 They had not the least suspicion that tradition had 
 often enlarged and as frequently reduced the original 
 figure. But what they give us, notwithstanding their 
 ignorance, is of greater importance than all the his- 
 torical facts which they could have collected. They 
 allow us to peep into the very soul of their own times. 
 They thus throw light on ideas and truths, which in 
 themselves may not be facts, but which are the very 
 butments upon which facts always must rest. 
 
 The gospels, as we have them, cannot have been the 
 unstudied writings of fishermen. They all have marks 
 which betray the literary skill of men trained in the 
 handling of the pen. Take, for instance, Matthew. 
 The genealogy with which he opens his account, is 
 clearly systematically constructed so as to bring out 
 three series of generations, consisting of twice seven 
 members. In fact, all throughout he works in sets of
 
 14 
 
 three or seven. In the desert we have three tempta- 
 tions, as also in Gethsemane. Seven is the number of 
 his parables, as it is that of the Lamentations, while 
 ten (seven plus three) are the miracles. 
 
 Such being the age and the character of the gospels, 
 one might well despair of ever succeeding in separating 
 the later additions and the artificial elements from the 
 earlier and historically trustworthy, so as to recon- 
 struct approximately the early life of Jesus, were it not 
 that the history of cotemporaneous Judaism affords 
 powerful aids to the student endeavoring to glean an 
 insight into the positive work and the life of the Naza- 
 rene. Most of his modern biographers have neglected 
 to take this into account; and, in consequence, they 
 have written novels, spun on dogma, or pinned to pre- 
 conceived idealizations, but not histories. Of course, 
 an orthodox need scarcely weigh the determining fac- 
 tors of cotemporaneous conditions. Christ, for him 
 stands outside of all historical nexus. The laws of 
 historical development cannot be applied to him. But 
 whosoever recognizes that even genius is rooted in time 
 and place, will not forget to probe, as far as possible, 
 into the surroundings into which great persons and per- 
 sonalities, were born. 
 
 A Jesus who does not belong to the Jewish people, 
 and is represented as opposed to the best for which the 
 Jewish spirit then worked and hoped, remains a fig- 
 ment of fancy, but not a figure of flesh and blood that 
 could have been seen of men on earth, and at the time 
 when we must hold him to have walked among men in 
 the body. Had the writers on Jesus remembered this, 
 long ago, the charge which even today is repeated in 
 the pulpits and taught as voicing truth to the young in
 
 15 
 
 the Sunday schools, that the Jews were instrumental 
 in affixing to the cross Jesus of Nazareth, would have 
 been modified, or perhaps have been silenced alto- 
 gether. Should even the criticism of the gospels as 
 literary productions, such as I have attempted to out- 
 line, be disproved by riper scholarship and more care- 
 ful examination hereafter, should even the most ortho- 
 dox view of the origin of the New Testament prevail, 
 the question would still remain: What interest might 
 the Jews living at that time have had, in removing that 
 teacher to whom the multitude listened with joy ? 
 
 Whenever a crime is committed, the perpetrator of 
 which is unknown, but must be detected, those charged 
 with the duty to bring criminals to justice, will attempt 
 to establish above all, the one fact in whose interest the 
 crime could have been committed. "Cui prodest?" is 
 the guiding question of every trained penologist con- 
 fronted with murder whose mystery awaits to be cleared 
 up. Allowing, for argument's sake, that the gospels do 
 present a biography in the sense in which most ortho- 
 dox Christians claim, forgetting all that we have said 
 about the composition, the age, and the authors of the 
 New Testament historical books, we would ask this 
 selfsame question as the detective puts it to himself 
 whenever duty calls him to strain his ingenuity in 
 tracking a murderer. W^ho had, in those times, an in- 
 terest in the removal of Jesus ? W T ho was profited by 
 his death ? Who was disturbed by his teachings ? In 
 whose eyes could his activity have been dangerous? 
 And in whom could his personality have been provoca- 
 tive of antipathy and aversion ? 
 
 The supposition that his religious opinions and prac- 
 tice clashed with the Judaism of his time, is clearly un-
 
 16 
 
 tenable. While it cannot be denied that the religious 
 susceptibilities of the people were strung to the highest 
 tension, nothing, however, appears, even in those ac- 
 counts of Jesus's life that have come to us, which 
 would make it plausible that he taught or did aught 
 which could have aroused religious opposition on the 
 part even of the most punctilious among the Jews. He, 
 himself, disclaims any intention of founding a new re- 
 ligion. As he is pictured in the gospels, especially 
 according to Matthew, he is national in his sympathies 
 to the core. He shares the national antipathy to the 
 non-Jew; he would not throw pearls before the swine, 
 or invite to the banquet such as are not of his people, 
 while his own compatriots are hungering for the 
 bread. 
 
 Salvation, according to him, is only for the Israel- 
 ites. His position thus agrees, without the possibility 
 of a modification, with the prevalent conceit of the rul- 
 ing party in Judaism. For him, as for them, religion 
 is co-incident and co-extensive with nationality. He is 
 far from disregarding the law. He emphasizes his mis- 
 sion as one come to fulfill but not to abolish it. The 
 term "fulfill" in this connection can only be understood 
 if translated back into its original Hebrew or Aramaic. 
 It certainly cannot have the bearing generally attrib- 
 uted to it by the current Christian theology. Fulfill- 
 ment in the sense in which Paul and the church after 
 him have taught it, is a concept altogether foreign to 
 the thought world of the Jew. The phrase attributed 
 to the Nazarene cannot but be that which we find in 
 the daily prayers as preserved up to the present day in 
 the common ritual of the synagogue: "I am not come 
 to destroy, but to fulfill," recalls to one familiar with
 
 17 
 
 Jewish liturgy, the passage in which is voiced the peti- 
 tion for "understanding to do and fulfill (U quay em) 
 all the words of the Thorah." 
 
 The controversies in which Jesus is represented to 
 have been engaged with the Pharisees and the Scribes, 
 reveal riot even one single trait that would countenance 
 the assumption of a departure on his part from the 
 well-recognized principles and standards of Jewish 
 orthodox practice. His saying that the Sabbath is 
 made for man and not man for the Sabbath is an 
 echo of a well-known rabbinical contention: "The Sab- 
 bath is given in your charge, you are not given in its 
 charge." That to save life and to help the sufferers, 
 the most rigid prohibition could be set aside on the 
 Sabbath, is a fact which none will deny who has never 
 so superficial an acquaintance with Talmudical dia- 
 lectics. The argument, thus, that on account of his 
 peculiar religious doctrines or his disregards of the 
 rights of the synagogue, Jesus aroused the hostility of 
 the Jews among whom he moved and lived, is not 
 worthy of serious attention. 
 
 Nor is the Lord's Prayer as novel a revelation as 
 many have insisted. The simplicity, the sublimity of 
 this prayer, are beyond all question. Its influence over 
 men has been one of the richest sources of idealism 
 from which humanity ever has been privileged to drink 
 in invigoration. Its brief but stirring petitions have 
 been stammered by the innocent lips of childhood re- 
 peating the sacred accents after the devoted mother, 
 transported to higher peaks of joy by the thought and 
 the sweetness of her duty to teach her little babe, in 
 those grand old terms, to invoke the help and protec- 
 tion of the divine father. That prayer appeals to the
 
 18 
 
 rich and to the poor; it wings with courage drooping 
 souls; it chastens exuberant joy; it lifts the load of 
 guilt from sinbeset hearts; it strengthens the well-set 
 purpose of him who is intent upon doing good in his 
 generation. From lips of soldiers ready to follow the 
 bugle calling " to arms," it sounds the farewell message 
 to the dear ones whom they must leave behind as they 
 march forth to the defense of hearth and home; its 
 rhythmic lines are breathed heavenward by wife and 
 mother whose fears go out to the husband or son, 
 ploughing with a frail hull the treacherous depths of 
 the oft-angry sea. 
 
 In the wilds of Africa, this prayer has brought light 
 to the explorer, in the very gloom of pest-ridden camps, 
 and in palaces flushed with artificial suns, it had the 
 power to remind the oft-reckless tenant to remember 
 of such as wanted for their daily bread. But beautiful 
 as this prayer is, quick with inspiration both by its 
 thoughts and the associations that cluster about it, 
 Judaism may claim it as its own. It is not original 
 with him who taught his disciples to speak it when lost 
 in reverence before the altars of the Most High. It 
 is a collection of pearls taken from the jewel-casket 
 of the synagogue and strung together upon one thread. 
 Not one of its blessed phrases but at once awakes to 
 sound a corresponding petition treasured in the lit- 
 urgy still in use today wherever Jews gather to sing 
 the praises of their God in Heaven, as a chord thrilled 
 into sound, sets vibrating another attuned to the 
 same key. 
 
 It is not true, as oft it has been contended, that the 
 term "Father" was unknown in Israel to bring near to 
 the heart of the worshiper the ruler of the universe.
 
 19 
 
 That God is Father, is an assurance which the prophets 
 long before the reign of Augustus had learned to utter; 
 the book of prayers which the Jew opens on the most 
 solemn days, addresses Him in whom we live and move 
 and have our being, as the "Father," and this soft 
 term was, indeed, not borrowed from the exordium of 
 the New Testament formula, but from the source from 
 which it itself drew its own "Our Father which art in 
 heaven." "Hallowed be thy name" Is this not in- 
 corporated in that prayer, which more than any other 
 prayer was the prayer of the people, written in their 
 own language, recited formerly whenever Jews would 
 gather to study the law, come down to us and regarded 
 today yet as so sacred that none would dare even 
 change its phraseology or propose to replace it by a 
 translation in a modern tongue; the prayer which to- 
 day in the most tearful hours, when death has snatched 
 from loving bosoms one dear and near, from grief- 
 rent hearts wells up to the lips of the mourners, and is 
 intended, by pointing out to them the providence of 
 God, and His eternal purpose, to soothe the burning 
 pain ? 
 
 It is not too bold an assumption, that in very truth 
 the Quaddish, our Quaddish, is the prototype upon 
 which the Lord's Prayer is patterned; and the Jewish 
 original is anterior to the promulgation of the New 
 Testament copy. In the synagogues of Galilee, Jesus 
 must have heard the Aramaic words, exalting and 
 sanctifying the name of the Highest, and asking that 
 His kingdom come speedily in the world which He had 
 made according to His will. "Thy kingdom come, 
 thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" are thus 
 familiar strains, oft intoned by the voices of the wor-
 
 
 
 shipers in the synagogue. The simile which repre- 
 sents the heavens as the place where God's decree is 
 executed, is founded on an Old Testament metaphor, 
 which names the powerful agents in nature, the messen- 
 gers of God hastening to do His bidding; and many a 
 prayer incorporated in the Jewish ritual utters the same 
 conviction. God is often addressed as one around 
 whose throne the hosts of angels are gathered, united 
 in love, thrilled with awful reverence, doing the will of 
 their creator. 
 
 The question which should be the form in which to 
 clothe a brief prayer, was considered carefully by the 
 rabbis of the Talmud, and one of them proposes that 
 this be it: "Thy will be done in heaven, and peace of 
 heart come to those who revere thee on earth." "May 
 it be thy will" is the standing introduction to all peti- 
 tions which the pious Jew would lay before the throne 
 of grace. "Give us this day our daily bread" is also 
 a brief contraction of a prayer which we meet in the 
 Talmud (Ber. 29 b.). "May it be thy pleasure to 
 grant to each what he needs for his sustenance." There 
 is reason to suspect that the real intention of the Mas- 
 ter in making use of this expression, "our daily bread," 
 was to lay near to the heart of his followers a thought 
 that often we find among the rabbis. He had in mind 
 at least I should hold so the rabbinical caution, not 
 to harbor anxiety about the provisions for the coming 
 day. If the daily needs were filled, trust in God should 
 steel the soul of the faithful with confidence that He 
 who creates the day would also provide the wherewith 
 to nourish man. Says Rabbi Eliezer: "He who has 
 enough for one day and asks, 'what shall I eat tomor- 
 row?' is faint of faith." (Conf. Wuensche, page 87.)
 
 21 
 
 "Forgive us our sins," is indeed here expressed in strict 
 accordance with the Talmudical notion, that man for- 
 ever stands in the relation of a debtor to God, his 
 creditor. 
 
 Petitions for remission of sin are by no means unfre- 
 quent in the Jewish order of prayer; and that man 
 should release those who were in debt to him for this 
 is the meaning of the second half of this petition in the 
 Lord's prayer; reflects certain well-known provisions 
 in the Old Testament legislation in favor of the debtor 
 class, as well as similar injunctions, not to be hard- 
 hearted, with which Talmudical writings teem. To 
 understand the next succeeding passage, "Lead us not 
 into temptation," we need but open the old Hebrew 
 prayer-book, and we find among the very first prayers 
 ordained for daily use at rising, the request, not to 
 bring us into the hand of temptation, or into that of 
 shame, and the concluding, "Deliver us from all evil," 
 would not be a mooted point between the old and the 
 new revised version of the New Testament, where in 
 the new, we have the translation "from the evil one," 
 as though the qualification had reference to Satan, if 
 the very Jewish prayer to which I just now have re- 
 ferred, had been consulted. 
 
 The Jew prays in the morning to be delivered from 
 an evil neighbor and from bad association. Though 
 the analogies and parallel passages between the Lord's 
 prayer and the ritual of the synagogue have not been 
 exhausted by the preceding quotations, enough, I 
 think, of them have been adduced to substantiate the 
 claim that Jesus prayed as all the Jews of his time did; 
 that no one could take exception to his proposed for- 
 mula, let alone be shocked bv it. Everv thought of that
 
 22 
 
 grand epitome of the Jewish prayer-book is bone of our 
 bone and flesh of our flesh. His prayer did not pro- 
 voke opposition; it did not rouse slumbering suspi- 
 cions of possible adversaries. On account of his re- 
 ligious views, his attitude to the law and to worship, no 
 Jew could have found pretext to protest against the 
 teacher of Nazareth. 
 
 But it is said that Jesus virtually taught a new mo- 
 rality, and that therefore the anger of the rabbis was 
 stirred against him. This plea can look back on a 
 history of fifteen hundred years, a history which is a 
 sad commentary on the rigid antithesis between the 
 morality of Judaism, which is said to be one of the law, 
 and that of Christianity, which is praised as the mes- 
 sage of love. Error should not be tolerated on the 
 throne of Truth, however long the usurper may have 
 been the lessee. It was never true that the New Tes- 
 tament morality occupied higher planes than did that 
 of Judaism, as taught by the teachers who were co-eval 
 with the rise of Christianity. The fact that even lib- 
 eral Christian pulpits still ring the changes on the sup- 
 posed opposition between Jewish morality and that of 
 the New Testament, does not prove their fundamental 
 proposition, which is, was, and ever will be an infer- 
 ence due to the general ignorance of co-temporaneous 
 Jewish life and writings an assumption which love of 
 truth should induce, at least liberal-minded persons, to 
 lay aside as an intruder not worthy of further hos- 
 pitality. 
 
 There is not a single maxim in the Sermon on the 
 Mount, in the parables attributed to Jesus, but may be 
 more than duplicated by passages of similar import in 
 the rabbinical writings of that period. Yea, many say-
 
 23 
 
 ings of Jesus have failed of their true interpretation, 
 simply because of the neglect to compare them with the 
 Talmudical sources from which they have flown. The 
 method pursued in the New Testament throughout is 
 that of the Jewish Midrash. Jesus must have learned 
 it in the school-house of his native town, at the feet of 
 Jewish teachers, from the mouth of the Jewish preach- 
 ers to whom he undoubtedly listened Sabbath after 
 Sabbath. Conceding, for argument's sake, which on 
 critical grounds I cannot allow, that the gospels pre- 
 serve authentic sermons of the Aggadist of Nazareth, 
 I still will and can insist that in none of them 
 is found aught but is rooted in the teachings, the 
 Biblical interpretations of the Jewish synagogues 
 of that age. 
 
 The so-called golden rule had been taught by Hillel 
 eighty years before. Before him we find it in the book 
 of Tobit, as it is well known that among the Greeks, 
 Isocrates, and among the Chinese, Confucius had in- 
 culcated the principles of reciprocity. That love for 
 the neighbor as love for God is the sum of the law, is a 
 triumphant confirmation transmitted in the name of 
 more than one rabbi in the rabbinical literature. The 
 term neighbor is not restricted to one of the people of 
 Israel, it embraced all men, in the interpretation of 
 famous Talmudical authorities. What in the ethics of 
 Jesus has been misconstrued into an emphasis on non- 
 resistance as a cardinal virtue, is shown by the study 
 of the rabbinical writings to be merely a figurative w T ay 
 of impressing the duty not to insist upon the strict con- 
 struction of the law in our dealings with men, but to 
 go one step further and give full scope to equity, which 
 frequently demands sacrifice of one's rights for the sake
 
 of that peace which is the very corner-stone of human 
 society and social life. 
 
 "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" though 
 literally quoted from the text of the Pentateuch, was not 
 the standard of rights which obtained even at that 
 time, among the Jews. Only prejudice can he blind 
 to the modification of the cruel law of taliation, and 
 this law, mark well, existed among all barbaric and 
 semi-barbaric communities, worthy parent as they were 
 to the most' "civilized" nations renowned in history, 
 which had materially in rabbinical legislation, altered 
 the character of its prescription, substituting the money 
 value of the injured organ as ransom and penalty for 
 injury to the organ itself. Long before the sweet voice 
 of this preacher was heard on the mountain, the cruelty 
 of the antecedent barbaric stage of legal development 
 had been turned by the Jewish law, into a just retribu- 
 tion, stern but by no means atrocious, for the wrongs 
 committed and the bodily lesions caused. And as in 
 this instance, the principles enunciated in the gospels 
 were without exception, anticipated by the Jewish 
 mind and heart, so every ethical maxim incorporated 
 in this anthology of ethical sayings, is an echo of the 
 teachings of the synagogue and the schools, with which 
 not merely the learned, but the common people were 
 familiar. 
 
 That Jesus never could have pretended that hatred 
 toward the enemy was inculcated by Judaism, if not 
 commanded, stands to reason. Nowhere in the Old 
 Testament can the precept be found, which is put into 
 his mouth as a quotation, "Ye shall hate your enemy." 
 The difficulty of reconciling the text of Matthew v., 
 verses 43-48, with the contents of the Pentateuch, or of
 
 25 
 
 the other books of the Old Testament, is patent.* In- 
 terpreters bent upon saving by all means the authentic 
 traditions of the gospels, and overlooking the circum- 
 stances that probably in these verses we are confronted 
 with a corruption of the text, as Jesus, familiar as he 
 was with the literature of his people, could have never 
 made the statement here imputed to him, have held 
 that the point of the controversy and protest of the 
 
 * The resentment of injury and insult was considered 
 a prime virtue by the savage nations, with whom, in 
 this regard, even the most cultured peoples of antiquity 
 vied. As we know, this was the case among the Egyp- 
 tians and Creeks. Speaking of a demotic papyrus, M. 
 Eugene Revillout says that it was one of the guiding 
 principles of the Egyptians, that the famished stomach 
 has no ears, and that to entertain ideas of justice and 
 gentleness, of honesty and forbearance, is contrary to 
 natural instincts sanctioned by the divine order of 
 tilings, in which all living beings are predestined to de- 
 vour one another. "One who orders to kill shall be 
 killed himself as a retribution." (Transactions of the 
 Society of Biblical Archaeology, Vol. III., 12,) And 
 the greatest moral teachers of the Greeks held, that it 
 was the destiny of man to excel friends in doing good 
 to them and the enemies in inflicting injury upon them. 
 (Schmidt, Die Ethik der alien Griechen. II., p. 309.) 
 And even the Stoics thought it no wrong to injure one 
 who had by insult offered provocation, (lacessitus in- 
 juring Among the Arabs the Muruwwa enjoined re- 
 sentment of insult and injury as one of the most manly 
 virtues. Aus b. 'Hajar sings: "Evil I pay to him who 
 evil has done, good to him who good has wrought." 
 AVhile another poet says : "A man among men is he, 
 who late and early thinks how to the enemy damage, 
 to the friend good, he may work." (Goldziher, Mu 
 hammedanische Studien, I., 16-18.)
 
 26 
 
 Master, is directed, not against the Old Testament, but 
 against its peculiar interpretation on the part of the 
 scribes, who they say taught the duty, or if this is too 
 strong a term, excused the tendency to hate one's 
 enemy. 
 
 But even the Talmud, great conservator of rabbin- 
 ical ethics as it is, nowhere preserves even the faintest 
 traces of such an attitude on the part of the rabbis. 
 They did not countenance hatred. Twist and contort 
 as one may some passage or other selected at random, 
 and separated from its context, into a corroboration of 
 the fact that the Jews hated all non-Jews, and were 
 affected with what Tacitus calls, "the hostile odium" 
 against all other men; before the light of strictly hon- 
 est examination of the passages bearing on this point, 
 the airy constructions and misconstructions which have 
 been multiplied to save this verse in Matthew, cave in, 
 because no foundation supports them. 
 
 Quite to the contrary, there is no difficulty to verify 
 the contention, that in the doctrine of the rabbis, in the 
 morals of the Talmud, tolerance, the spirit of concilia- 
 tory consideration toward non-Jews, as well as toward 
 one's personal enemies, is most urgently recommended. 
 Says, for instance, the Talmud in Sanhedrin 38a. 
 "One man was the ancestor of all men, so that the just 
 might not claim to have been descended from a just 
 person, and the wicked might not excuse their conduct 
 by pointing to their origin from a wicked parent; so 
 that the later generations might not become proud one 
 against the other, so that none might later think to have 
 the right to kill his fellow-man, his brother, to rob from 
 or to use violence against him." R. Akiba, certainly 
 not on friendly terms with the Romans, is recorded
 
 27 
 
 (B. Q. 113a.) to have taught, that theft from heathens 
 is strictly prohibited. Honesty in one's dealings with 
 pagans is according to rabbinical exegesis, directly com- 
 manded in Leviticus xxv. 50, and another sentence 
 (B. Q. Tosephita X.) calls attention to the fact that 
 theft committed against a non-Jew, is greater than one 
 of which an Israelite is the victim. (Conf. Midrash 
 Rabba Debarim, Eqebh; Maimonides, H. Mekhira, 
 XVIII., I., H. Genebha, I., 1, 2, H. Gezelah, I., 2.) 
 
 Exceedingly numerous are also the passages which 
 prohibit taking advantage of customers by misrepre- 
 sentation, or even by suppression of facts, though they 
 be not of Jewish faith, while directly the duty is incul- 
 cated to extend aid to the poor of the heathens in the 
 same manner as to the Jewish recipients of charity 
 (Gittin 61a.). The honors, due according to the law, 
 to the hoary-headed, were shown to the aged of the 
 non-Jew as well (Qiddooshin 32b. 33a.). The right- 
 eous of all nations were promised to share in the blessed 
 state of the hereafter (Sanh. Tosephta XIII.). The 
 efficacy to work a remission of sin attributed to the 
 Jewish sacrifices, was accorded to the good deeds of 
 the non-Israelites (B. B. 10b.). It is said that a non- 
 Jew who lives a moral life, is entitled to the same re- 
 spect as Israel's High Priest (Conf. Siphra to Lev. 
 xviii. 5). 
 
 These sentiments and many similar ones readily sug- 
 gest themselves to one in the least degree familiar with 
 the rabbinical writings, breathe certainly a spirit as far 
 removed from hatred toward the non-Jew as such, as 
 is the pole from the equator. Personal enmity also, is 
 most strongly condemned in the Old Testament books, 
 as well as in the ethics of the Fathers, and in manv
 
 28 
 
 oases the wants of the enemy are pressed to take prece- 
 dence before the attention required by the friend. It 
 is now generally contended, that for all this, the posi- 
 tion of the New Testament is grounded on loftier senti- 
 ment, because in the Talmudical ethics, consideration 
 for the enemy is always placed on the ground of pru- 
 dential policy. Those who urge this, have not taken 
 the trouble to understand the true bearing of the Tal- 
 mudical phrase, which in these connections appears, 
 "On account of the ways of peace" or one of similar 
 import, "On account of the maintenance of the 
 world." Far from anchoring the injunction which 
 rests upon this principle, to low calculation, the Tal- 
 mudists have brought out in this motive, the thought of 
 the solidarity, the brotherhood of all men, as essential 
 to the preservation of society; they have emphasized 
 in this wise, the folly of selfishness, which is the root of 
 all hostility and enmity, and counselled its conquest by 
 a remembrance of the higher relationship of reciprocal 
 service, which should bind man to man, and triumph 
 over the petty animosities sprouting from competition 
 and selfish interests. 
 
 The peculiar moral doctrines, then, which Jesus 
 taught according to the gospels, could in no manner, 
 have even aroused suspicion, let alone opposition, on 
 the part of the Jews, whether learned or simple. His 
 ethics certainly furnished no explanation why either 
 the governing party or the people at large, should have 
 desired to remove the teacher of Nazareth. 
 
 But what about his unqualified condemnation of the 
 Pharisees ? Are we not told that he lashed them with 
 indignant tongue, spared no words, however cutting, 
 to expose their hypocrisy, hurled at them such epithets
 
 29 
 
 as ''whitened sepulchers," denounced them as "de- 
 vouring widows' houses," as men that "said and did 
 not do." and "made pretense at offering long prayers ?" 
 Did he not in the parable of the Pharisee and the Pub- 
 lican picture the former as burning with a desire to be 
 seen of men in order to get all the credit he thought he 
 deserved ? It is true, it is in these terms that Jesus is 
 represented as calling to account the Pharisees. But 
 one, who like Jesus, must have stood in the very center 
 of the Jewish national life and the national hopes of 
 his times, could not have addressed such reproaches to 
 those to whose party he undoubtedly belonged. A pen 
 writing at a time when the temple had long been in 
 ruin, and the political and national life of the Jews 
 lingered merely like a faint echo on hills about to be 
 shrouded in the folds of a night broken only by a star, 
 the twinkle of which seemed to prophesy a distant res- 
 toration, traced indeed this ungainly portraiture of the 
 most prominent party, not to say sect, that during the 
 reign of the first Roman emperors, influenced most 
 deeply the religious, the social and the political ambi- 
 tion of their people. 
 
 The Pharisees were not hypocrites, and Jesus, one of 
 their number, could not so have misjudged them . The 
 oft-quoted enumeration of the seven classes of Pharisees 
 which we find in a Baraitha (Sota, 22a.), fails to cor- 
 roborate the estimate of the Pharisees as crystallized in 
 the New Testament description. There is no doubt in 
 my mind that this very rabbinical passage is itself a 
 reflection of the New Testament reproaches. Joel,* 
 among others, has made it plain that the New Testa- 
 
 * Blicke in die Religionsgeschichte, I. and II.
 
 30 
 
 ment writings influenced in more than one regard the 
 traditions of the rabbis. The whole context of this 
 Talmudical passage, in which the different types of the 
 Pharisees are numbered, confirms the suspicion that it 
 dates from a time when even the name had become 
 a mere matter of etymological speculation, and had 
 passed out of consciousness of the people, as standing 
 for a definite idea expressed by it. (Sota, 20a., 22a.) 
 (Conf . nenia nt?N as though D^lts was the same 
 name.) 
 
 The investigations of Geiger have shown conclu- 
 sively, though some of the details of his theory are open 
 to modification, that neither Josephus nor the New 
 Testament furnishes a correct account of the true char- 
 acter of the sects or parties into which Judaism, co- 
 temporaneous with Jesus, was cleft. Josephus wrote 
 under the spell of an ambition to represent his people 
 in the most favorable light to the Romans. For this 
 reason all his statements are open to the suspicion of 
 exaggeration, if not willful misrepresentation. Where 
 he describes the opinion of the Sadducees and the 
 Pharisees, he is clearly actuated by the desire to im- 
 press the Romans, for whom primarily he wrote, with 
 the idea that the Jews, as well as they, could be proud 
 of philosophical schools flourishing on their soil. At 
 least, he employs the terms current among the Stoics, 
 to characterize the doctrines on which the sects parted 
 company from each other. 
 
 Remembering this, the student must dive beneath 
 the surface in order to utilize the information furnished 
 \>y the protege of the Flavian emperors. Religious 
 questions did not so much divide the people as did na- 
 tional political issues. The Pharisees represented the
 
 31 
 
 hope of national independence. As their name in- 
 dicates, they were the separatists or particularists. As 
 long as Israel was under foreign dominion, it could not 
 execute its mission; to throw off the galling yoke of 
 Roman insolence is the day dream of even the mod- 
 erate, while the zealots among them, impatient to defer 
 action for the consummation of their fond ideal, restive 
 under restraint, held at this period already the hand on 
 the hilt of the sword or dagger, waiting for the word, the 
 chance to draw the whetted weapon from the scab- 
 bard. Closely involved in their national ideas is the 
 doctrine, which according to Josephus, is pointed, as 
 he puts it, in their faith in providence, their belief in 
 the angels, and the dogma of resurrection which they 
 taught. And even what Josephus represents as belief 
 in the immortality of the soul, or the future life, is con- 
 nected with their hope of national restoration, and finds 
 in it its proper explanation. 
 
 The Jewish doctrine of providence at this stage of 
 its development, viewed divine government much 
 rather in its relation to the destinies of nations than the 
 fate of individuals. If the Pharisees, to use Josephus's 
 phraseology, believed in providence, while the Sad- 
 ducees rejected this doctrine, the gist of the contro- 
 versial opposition is this, that the Pharisees held, with 
 every fibre of their heart, to the thought that Israel was 
 destined by God himself to be an independent nation, 
 owner of the Holy Land, defiled now by the foreign 
 despot, but to be cleansed of the intruder; if they 
 taught the existence of angels, th'ey had in mind a no- 
 tion which the Talmud also figuratively expresses, that 
 over every nation presides a guardian angel, while over 
 Israel God himself rules as the protector. Their an-
 
 32 
 
 gelology thus, of which Josephus makes so much, has 
 the same bearing as their doctrine of providential gov- 
 ernment. What Josephus formulates as the doctrine 
 of immortality refers to their expectation of "the world 
 to come." The term "world to come" 'Olam Haba 
 does not connote the state of the individual soul after 
 death. This question, both in Biblical and in the first 
 post-Biblical periods, had but little weight. What the 
 Pharisees expected was a re-adjustment of conditions 
 here on earth; the cycle ('Olam} of present wickedness, 
 represented by Rome having run its length, would give 
 way to a new cycle of goodness, which was bound to 
 confer independence and triumph on Israel. When 
 this revolution should have been accomplished, even 
 ihose generations that had to descend into the gloom 
 of the grave before their hope had been realized, that 
 suffered without requitement, and pined without satis- 
 faction, would re-rise from their resting places in the 
 dust, and share the glories of that promised new condi- 
 tion on earth, bathed in the sunlight of God's justice 
 triumphant. 
 
 This is the bearing of the Jewish doctrine of resur- 
 rection as held by the Pharisees; in the Messianic king- 
 dom the dead will return to enjoy with the living its 
 blessedness. The apocalyptic books prove amply this 
 construction of the Pharisaic hope of resurrection; it 
 is a now 7 w r ell-conceded fact that most of these apocalyp- 
 tic writings originally were Jewish, though in the form 
 in which we possess them, they have undergone ;i 
 process of retransformation at the hands of Christians. 
 National independence is also the key-note of the Mes- 
 sianic confidence of the Pharisees. The Messiah, for the 
 Jew, is never the redeemer from original sin. He is,
 
 33 
 
 however, the restorer of the state. He is King David, 
 come again to rule over an independent people, freed 
 from the dominion of the foreigners. Such a Messiah 
 the Pharisees expected; many of them willing to bide 
 the time of his coming; many others of them chafing 
 under restraint, eager to speed his advent by open re- 
 sistance, by bold combat. 
 
 If these were the political ideals of the Pharisees, the 
 Sadducees had with them no sympathy. The Phari- 
 sees represented the party of the people; they pro- 
 tested that every Jew by birth was a priest; that the 
 priesthood of the people was as sacred as was the priest- 
 hood of the temple. In fact, the religious symbolism 
 crystallized in rabbinical ritualism, owes, in many re- 
 spects, its rise to this protest of the Pharisaic fraternity. 
 As the priests wore a certain garment typifying their 
 purity, so every Jew was entitled to appear clad in the 
 cloak emblematic of his priestly vocation (Tallith). 
 As they carried on their head-gear the inscription, 
 "Holy to the Lord," so every faithful Jew was to en- 
 circle his forehead with a band recalling his service to 
 the Most High (Phylacteries). The door-post of every 
 house was to indicate that there was the entrance to a 
 temple (Mezuzah) . The table around which the family 
 would gather, or the fraternity ('Haberim) would con- 
 vene, represented the altar, and the meal the sacrifice, 
 and as the priest before the service would wash his 
 hands, so ablution was necessary before partaking of 
 the food. 
 
 The Pharisees are virtually the builders of the syna- 
 gogue. They emphasized its equivalence to the tem- 
 ple. They set the prayers, if not over and against the 
 sacrifices, at least on one plane with them. The Phari-
 
 34 
 
 sees, of course, were burdened also with certain weak- 
 nesses. Piety, in their sense, presupposed learning. 
 The danger was great, and the Pharisees did not escape 
 it, that pride would find lodgment in their souls, pride 
 sprung from their erudition, and leading them to de- 
 spise the common people. In fact, the Pharisees were 
 the aristocratic order of intellect and piety, entrance to 
 which was gained through the gateway of scholarly 
 attainments. With the working, toiling masses of the 
 people, notwithstanding their democratic fundamental 
 principles as directed against the priestly aristocracy, 
 admission to whose ranks was conditioned upon birth, 
 the Pharisees had but little in common. They held 
 themselves aloof from them, for they accounted them 
 sinners, who, on account of their ignorance, had no 
 knowledge of the many requirements of a truly relig- 
 ious life, and who often wilfully to their material ad- 
 vantage neglected to discharge to the full their religious 
 obligations. The "people of the country" were alto- 
 gether too careless about the duty not to contaminate 
 themselves in their free intercourse with the pagans. 
 But enough of them. 
 
 The picture of Jesus as drawn in the gospels, gives 
 indication that, on the whole, he was of one mind with 
 the Pharisaic party. It has for a long time been held, 
 and the error also in our day occasionally is repeated 
 by men who occupy even Jewish pulpits, that Jesus 
 was a member of the Essenic order. We know but 
 little of this band of ascetes. The etymology of their 
 name is still under dispute, and has so far baffled the 
 ingenuity of competent scholars. Legion is the num- 
 ber of the derivations proposed from both the Greek 
 and the Hebrew- Aramaic. The former, including that
 
 35 
 
 of Philo (from <>"<r{nj9, Sfftot), which has found for 
 a long time greater favor than others, are clearly wild 
 and random guesses. But the Hebrew or Aramaic 
 root from which the title of this monastic fraternity is 
 a sprout, is far from definite settlement. While 'Hazan 
 (fTfi) "strong;" Jesse (the proper name '>') or 
 'Hasha (K'B>n), "to be silent" (Bishop Lightfoot), and 
 even asi (tTDK) "healers,"* scarce merit serious en- 
 tertainment, even the proposition of Frankel to con- 
 nect the name with "tzanua" (jflJV) "retired" is open 
 to suspicion, as is Graetz's NHD "to bathe, "with trans- 
 position of the letters. Hitzig, Ewald, Lucius, main- 
 tain that Es'sene is a translation of the (Syr.) HDX, 
 pon, N'Dn, pious ('Hasa, 'Hasin, 'Hasaya) a view 
 which Schuerer (Zeitgesch. II., 469) calls "the most 
 attractive" (ansprechend) . But "enigmatical" as is 
 their name, still more so is their origin. Perhaps, it 
 was an exotic growth, pointing to India as its home. 
 
 Of the habits, the tenets and the character of these 
 sectaries we are, however, better informed. Though 
 some of Philo 's books, from which formerly the facts 
 were largely drawn, have been proven to be spurious 
 compositions of a much later Christian century and to 
 describe monastic orders which have no connection 
 with the strange phenomenon of Jewish history, enough 
 material of a trustworthy character is at ready com- 
 mand to draw the outlines of the picture. A few traits 
 in Jesus's life bear a similarity to the conceits of the 
 Essenes. But his celibacy, his seemingly communis- 
 
 * This etymology rests irt the confusion of Oepa 
 (physicians) as the Essenes are nowhere called, with 
 sov (servants of God).
 
 36 
 
 tic leanings are certainly insufficient to make him out 
 to have been one of their number. Nowhere is it re- 
 corded that he clad himself in white garments; neither 
 does he carry the "ax" or wear the "apron" (nept- 
 /*), which were the regalia of this freemasonry; 
 he shrank not from meeting women, he practiced not 
 the ablutions which were an essential rite in Essenism; 
 if he was baptized, immersion in running waters (rp*3B) 
 was on certain occasions, a Pharisaic ordinance. 
 
 The Essenic spirit of Jesus's sermon must, therefore, 
 be rejected. Jesus was a Pharisee. He seems, how- 
 ever, to have belonged to the moderate wing of the 
 party, unwilling to resort to violent measures to accom- 
 plish the desired liberation. His counsel, "to give unto 
 Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's," 
 is proof in point. With the common people, however, 
 he was in closest touch. He shared not the aversion 
 of the learned toward the 'Ame-Haaretz. But certainly 
 these two traits, even if still more pronounced and em- 
 phasized in conduct than in words, would not consti- 
 tute a flagrant departure from the Pharisaic standards ; 
 nor Avould they be sufficient to account for a possible 
 enmity toward him in Pharisaic circles. If the Naza- 
 rene was a pretender to Messianic dignity, he could 
 expect that around him would rally the very Pharisees, 
 whose daily prayer, undoubtedly, at that time was that 
 the long-expected scion of the house of David would 
 appear to break the fetters which Rome, in her greed, 
 had forged. There is a stronger presumption that if 
 one of the two parties had an interest to silence the 
 voice of the Galilean, it must have been the Sadducees. 
 About this "sect" the New Testament is singularly 
 reticent. Matthew mentions them but four times: iii.,
 
 37 
 
 7; xvi., 1-6, together with the Pharisees. (The paral- 
 lel verses of Mark viii., 11-15; Luke ix., 16, 29; xii., 
 1-54, omit them;) xii., 23, where they appear as deny- 
 ing the resurrection. In Mark, their name occurs but 
 once (xii., 18), as it does in Luke (xx., 27); while they 
 have entirely passed out of the recollection of John. 
 
 With more assurance, than justice to trestle it, the 
 opinion has sometimes gone the rounds that the teacher 
 of Nazareth must have in many points agreed with the 
 Sadducean doctrines; as in the New Testament rec- 
 ords, the dogma of the resurrection is Ihe only problem 
 at issue between him and them. Jesus is held to have 
 emphasized the spirit over against the letter, and as the 
 Sadducees were supposed to have rejected altogether 
 oral tradition and rabbinical amplifications of the law, 
 they have paraded in books as the promoters of the 
 spiritual element in religion, and thus, as virtual allies 
 of one "preaching the worship of the Father in the 
 spirit." But this reasoning starts with fallacious 
 premises. The very rabbinical subtleties, elaborated 
 in the Pharisaic schools, were the outgrowth of the 
 clear effort to allow the growing life freedom of move- 
 ment, hemmed in and hampered under the letter of the 
 law. The Pharisaic methods of interpretation asserted 
 the supremacy of the actual conditions over the despot- 
 ism of a remote past. 
 
 The Pharisees were the men of progress; the Sad- 
 ducees the reactionary nobility. Recruited exclusively 
 from the priestly families; according to common par- 
 lance, they were the literalists, rejecting tradition, 
 while closely contending for the strictest observance of 
 the written law as incorporated in the Pentateuch. If 
 this conception of their attitude be correct, they must
 
 38 
 
 have been in many regards the predecessors of the 
 later Qaraites and had certain affinities with the Samar- 
 itans. But this view must not be strained too far; it 
 requires serious modification. As the Pharisaic am- 
 plifications of ritualism were directed against them, we 
 cannot wonder that they looked with but little favor 
 upon the attempts of their opponents to dignify with 
 priestly character every Jew, to project the national 
 hope into vital importance, and to vest with essential 
 prominence the house of learning and the synagogue, 
 to such a degree; as almost to overshadow the glory of 
 the Temple and its sacrificial and sacerdotal institu- 
 tions. In so far, the Sadducees antagonized rabbinical 
 tradition; but even they had a tradition, and were 
 forced to venture beyond the crystallized word of the 
 written code. They insisted upon their priestly birth- 
 right, the select and elect sanctity of the Aaronitic 
 families. 
 
 As it was the policy of Rome never to interfere with 
 the religious institutions of those whom she conquered, 
 the Roman being himself the skeptic of all skeptics, the 
 cynic scoffer at all religion, and therefore, not deeming 
 it worth his while, under ordinary circumstances to 
 interfere with such puerilities as temple service and 
 priestly prerogatives; the Sadducees had no reason to 
 object to a continuation of Roman supremacy. Their 
 privilege could not be larger, if Judea was once more 
 to be independent. On the contrary, as the expected 
 king would not be of their rank, and as they remem- 
 bered that the assumption of the princely title by the 
 priestly Asmoneans had opened the flood-gates of op - 
 position and distrust on the part of the Pharisees, they 
 had everv reason to fear that under the order of "things
 
 39 
 
 to coine," in a state virtually controlled by the "Puri- 
 tans," these fanatics of learning, their preponderance 
 and influence might be somewhat diminished, and their 
 berth be less comfortable. No wonder that they were 
 extremely lukewarm in their national patriotism, and 
 in inverse proportion favorably disposed toward the 
 Romans. 
 
 The appearance of a Messiah would be, for them, 
 from their narrow point of view, almost a calamity, 
 certainly a very untoward event. This accounts for 
 the statement made by Josephus that they rejected the 
 belief in providence, tradition, the resurrection of the 
 dead, concepts which, as I have shown before, are inti- 
 mately interwoven with the national aspirations of the 
 Pharisees. The Sadducees, if any among the Jews, 
 might have had an interest in the removal of one, ac- 
 claimed by the populace, as the Messiah. But so 
 strong could not have been this possible antagonism 
 on their part to this claimant to Messianic honors, 
 as to lead them to steep their hands in innocent 
 blood. 
 
 From the shedding of blood the Jews and their laws 
 recoiled. The zealots, who at that time began to ter- 
 rorize the people, were driven to this last extreme by 
 provocation of the most galling character. The Sad- 
 ducees, as a class, did not share the tactics, or the 
 methods of the Jewish Nihilists of those days, and their 
 frame of mind was anything but one of a blood-thirsty 
 temper. So, all things considered and carefully weighed, 
 the conclusion is inevitable that even the Sadducees, at 
 least, as we shall see, the larger portion of them, could 
 have had scarce a motive for committing the crime 
 which has been charged upon the Jews these sixteen
 
 40 
 
 centuries. The Romans, and the Romans alone, could 
 be profited by such an act of violence. 
 
 Let us cast, in order to make this as clear as possible, 
 a glance at the conditions of things prevailing in Pales- 
 tine at this critical period. The people had become 
 restive under foreign domination. Mistaking patience 
 for absolute stolid indifference, the Roman commanders 
 had often outraged the religious susceptibilities of the 
 people, over whom they ruled in wanton insolence. In 
 their pride and presumption, they had ventured upon 
 adding insult to injury under the thin disguise of put- 
 ting the loyalty of the province to the test. They had, 
 without the shadow of a right, misappropriated the 
 funds of the Temple; they had carried the emblems of 
 Roman supremacy, the figures of the Roman emperors, 
 divi though human being, and thus so distasteful to 
 every Jewish heart, in pomp and parade, defiantly 
 through the streets of Jerusalem (Jos., Antiquities, 
 xviii. 3, 1, 2; B. J., ii. 9, 2, 3, 4); the tax-gatherers 
 plied their shady avocation without pity, sucking, 
 vampire-like, the very aorta of the people dry to the 
 last drop. 
 
 Nowhere were these indignities and the consequent 
 sufferings, felt more deeply and borne more impatiently, 
 than in the villages and hamlets dotting the Galilean 
 hill-tops. The mountains are the homes of freedom, 
 so sings a German poet. His description of the ruling 
 passion of the sturdy mountaineers, corresponds not 
 only to the temper of the free son of the Helvetian 
 Alps, learning to love his liberty in the unapproachable 
 caverns of the eternal snow, but tallies also with what 
 stirred the souls of the poor and indigent, hardy and 
 rough dwellers on the Galilean uplands. Many a one
 
 41 
 
 at that time had sounded the call to arms, tearing him- 
 self away from the embrace of wife or mother, and 
 dashing himself to death with proud courage, even 
 though in fruitless folly, against the power of Rome. 
 Rome took no pity on these loyal sons, struggling for 
 an almost lost cause. As soon as they apprehended 
 one of them in their nets, they affixed him to the cross 
 as a rebel deserving no better fate. Some of these 
 martyrs to their patriotism are known by name to us, 
 among them especially, is one who is remembered as 
 the heroic leader of a sturdy band, Judas the Gal- 
 ilean. 
 
 In these times out of joint the women about to be- 
 come mothers, dreamt that they were destined to give 
 birth to the Messiah, for all the portents of these years 
 agreed with what the prophets had described as the 
 preparatory conditions, leading up to the Messianic 
 advent. Gog and Magog were indeed marshaling 
 their impious forces for the desperate conflict. Vice 
 stalked through the land; injustice squatted, grinning 
 in its impudence, on the throne, a heartless ^ usurper 
 throttling the voice of the erst beautiful queen from 
 whom the scepter had been promised not to depart. 
 All ties of order seemed to be snapped; bands of rob- 
 bers traversed the length and breadth of the land, com- 
 mitting outrage and filling their greedy stomach with 
 the gain of pillage, respecting neither age nor innocence; 
 breaking most shamelessly and shamefully, both the 
 laws of God and the ordinances of man. The night 
 was indeed at its darkest. Was then the hope out of 
 rhyme, that now the light was nearest its dawn ? The 
 signs all spelled the old scriptural account of these 
 fearful forerunners of the great dav of the Lord; vea,
 
 42 
 
 Israel's hour of freedom was near at hand. He was 
 about to come, sure he would come now, presently, who 
 would put to flight the vast hosts of iniquity. 
 
 But if thus the hopes of the people were strung to 
 their highest pitch, the watchfulness of the Romans 
 increased proportionately. The least outward indica- 
 tion of a rebellious spirit was visited with dire punish- 
 ment, and no outrage was too great, no injustice too 
 glaring, but was without compunction committed by 
 those who had power over life and death. Crucifixions 
 were a common occurrence, a daily event almost. Op- 
 position was crushed with an iron heel. Sedition was 
 immediately squelched; those spared in the broil and 
 brush with the Roman troopers, were hurried to the 
 most ignominious death on the cross. 
 
 Into such times was born the child of Bethlehem. 
 Amidst the influence of these discordant years he grew 
 up. He was a Galilean himself. But while as a rule 
 the children of these mountain villages carried with 
 them something of the atmosphere of their rude birth- 
 place, and were rough of speech and rougher still of 
 touch, he was gifted with gentle temper, and a tongue 
 of sweet eloquence. He felt that he could speak and 
 therefore must speak. His word awoke an echo in the 
 breasts of his friends. Before even leaving his home 
 and hamlet, he must have drawn around him a small 
 band of devoted followers. These probably urged 
 upon him the thought which grew apace within him, 
 that he was indeed the one whom the nation expected; 
 the "Messiah," anointed king; that he was the re- 
 deemer announced in the sermons of the many preach- 
 ers of repentance, who even now, clad in the hairy robe 
 of hermits, traveled from village to village, and called
 
 43 
 
 the people to think on their shortcomings, in order to 
 be prepared for the awful day. 
 
 What mattered his lowly birth ? Had not David 
 risen, because God raises from his lowliness the 
 needy to set him with the princes; yea, the princes of 
 his people ? True, his personality was not cast in the 
 lines which the prevailing opinions of the people attrib- 
 uted to the Messiah. The dreams of the nation had 
 woven the picture of one who was a man for war, 
 wielding the flashing sword, to cut asunder the cords 
 by which was bound the first born of God's children. 
 
 Jesus was a man of peace; he had nothing of the 
 zealot about him, daggered to pierce if must be, the 
 Roman to the heart. He was prone to submit in the 
 unshaken faith that the despot, the foreign usurper, 
 Edom, the arch enemy, would speedily run the length 
 of his tether, and in his pride, invite crushing retribu- 
 tion to fall upon his wicked head; that the trust of the 
 faithful would be rewarded by a. harvest of joy reaped 
 from the seeds of tears. The idea of the Messiah, as a 
 man of suffering and patient submission, as ,an Ijob, 
 befoed but not bcfoeing, must at this time, as it did later, 
 have asserted itself by the side of the stronger impres- 
 sion of his leadership for combat. The "Ebedyahwe" 
 of the second Isaiah, the "servant of God," this ideal- 
 ization of faithful Israel in exile, had, no doubt, begun 
 to mix the colors on the palette of that universal artist, 
 popular poetic vision. Jesus felt himself to be of one 
 rhythm with that tender-hearted sufferer who bore and 
 forbore that others might be healed. His disciples be- 
 lieved in him, from them he learned to believe in him- 
 self. 
 
 As the love and loyalty of his friends grew firmer and
 
 44 
 
 firmer, and his own enthusiasm warmer and warmer, 
 lie lent a willing ear to the appeals of his followers, and 
 the urging of those inner voices which men like him 
 always hear, that he was the chosen instrument of 
 providence to realize the great ends of his people's 
 destiny. Under the sway of this idea he leaves the 
 hamlet of Galilee, where, protected by the mountains 
 and guarded by the living ramparts of hearts cuirassed 
 in love for him, he was safe from the talons of the Roman 
 eagle. He descends into the plain, and enters Jerusa- 
 lem during the Paschal week. He has that trust of all 
 great souls that the Father who has sent him, the God 
 who has called him, will not forsake him now. He 
 may venture into the very den of the lion, and a second 
 Daniel, will not be scathed by the brute's hungry teeth. 
 But alas, his trust, so tender and so touching, fra- 
 grant flower of a noble soul, fruitage of a faith the like 
 of which the world has witnessed but rarely, is not 
 armor proof against the sword of Rome. A -rebel he, 
 in the eyes of the powerful, what care they for his con- 
 victions, the struggles of his soul, the confidence of his 
 heart; what matters it to them that gentle his speech, 
 that to the laden and weary, the halting and the limp- 
 ing, he has winged the words of consolation and of 
 cheer? Why should they pause to weigh that he has 
 counseled forbearance, and never encouraged armed 
 resistance? Enough for them that the dreamer calls 
 himself the Messiah, the King of the Jews. Why 
 should they wait for further development; why show 
 him more consideration than to the thousand others 
 who durst question the legitimacy of Roman suprem- 
 acy? Crucifixion was the mode of execution of Ro- 
 man criminals. To the cross with him. The greater
 
 45 
 
 the injustice the more beneficial the results. It will 
 strike terror into the hearts of those minded like him. 
 It will teach those who rely upon their sword that if 
 the gentle was not spared, the bold need not hope for 
 mercy. Acting upon this reasoning, the Roman pro- 
 curator had Jesus arrested, and in accordance with 
 Roman precedent and procedure, affixed to the cross. 
 Typical Roman as he was, he embittered the agony of 
 his prisoner by jest and ribaldry, scoffing at his pre- 
 tended royal dignity, and mocking with a crown of 
 thorns his expectancy of the royal diadem. To the 
 Romans the would-be Messiah was dangerous; to a 
 majority of the Jews, his coming was the signal of joy. 
 The Jews, be they Pharisees or Sadducees, had no 
 motive for either betraying the Nazarene youth to the 
 Romans, or pronouncing upon him the supreme pen- 
 alty of the criminal code. 
 
 That the writers of the gospels themselves felt that 
 the Jews, the population of the capital were altogether 
 innocent of the final catastrophe, is most tellingly 
 brought out by their picture of Jesus's entrance into 
 the capital. Of course this scene which they paint so 
 vividly in all the colors of triumphant exultation, is not 
 to be credited with historical authenticity, or even ac- 
 curacy. It, like so many other incidents in the gospel 
 " biographies," is a Midrashic actualization of an Old 
 Testament verse and description. The rabbinical 
 books overflow with similar textual applications, and 
 in reading the chapters of this Christian Haggadah one 
 expects at every turn to meet with the standing TH3T NH 
 "this is what is writ." In fact, it is there. For the 
 phrase that "might be fulfilled" is the equivalent of 
 this rabbinical introduction to Biblical quotations.
 
 46 
 
 But as told by our authors, the welcome extended to 
 the Nazarene, remained significant. Good psycholo- 
 gists, the old writers or compilers were, though his- 
 torical difficulties or discrepancies did not disturb 
 them. They overlooked the circumstance that the as- 
 sumed betrayal by Judas Iscariot at once jeopardized 
 their account of the popular and public reception of 
 Jesus. 
 
 A man passing through the gates in the manner 
 Jesus is by them recorded to have passed, could not re- 
 main unknown to the Romans or the priests. The 
 cynosure of all eyes on Sunday, he could not have so 
 speedily relapsed into such obscurity that the despicable 
 venality of Judas itself again a trait worked out sim- 
 ply in the fashion and method of the Midrash had 
 to be utilized to single him out from among his com- 
 panions. What lies at the root of Judas's treason, will 
 appear in another connection presently. While thus 
 not successful in harmonizing the details which, drawn 
 from various and varying sources, they, with poor his- 
 torical discrimination, worked together in the story, the 
 men to whom \ve are indebted for the description were 
 well enough acquainted with human nature to under- 
 stand that, however fickle and unstable popularity may 
 be, the transition here supposed, within that short in- 
 terval of four days, from the heights of fiery favor to 
 the depths of frenzied fury, without any apparent 
 cause, is totally unreasonable. The same men who on 
 Sunday shouted "Hosannah" could not have been 
 those that on Friday succeeding clamored for the blood 
 of him, whom they had greeted so rapturously with 
 fervent demonstrations of transported, affectionate 
 enthusiasm.
 
 47 
 
 Jesus had, however, aroused the hostility of a certain 
 influential family, high in authority, and on terms of 
 the closest intimacy with the Roman Procurator. It 
 would seem that the unholy traffic carried on in or 
 near the Temple, had excited the indignation of his 
 pure soul. There is to my mind nothing so impressive 
 in his whole career as his bold burst of righteous 
 wrath at the presumption of the money-changers. 
 This gentle man, scourging these hawks from the holy 
 courts, is so true in its psychology, so correct in its con- 
 ception, that it belongs to those gems which make one 
 feel like begging cold criticism to spare. But I have 
 reason to suppose that this very occurrence lifts a little 
 corner of the thick veil of haze and darkness which 
 have settled on the last act of this drama. 
 
 The Talmud preserves the fact that the sale of the 
 pigeons, and the changing of money, for sacrificial pur- 
 poses was a monopoly of the family of Hannan. That 
 this Hannan is identical with the Annas ("Jwa?) of 
 the New Testament and the Annanos ^Avvavos ) of 
 Josephus, admits of no doubt. Caiaphas was the son- 
 in-law of the proprietor of this bazar. The practices 
 in vogue there are an object of comment by the rabbis 
 (j. Pea, I. 6). To break the exorbitant prices, no less 
 a man than R. Shimean b. Gamliel interfered. (Keri- 
 toth I. 7.) Jesus was thus brought into direct conflict 
 with the most powerful friends of Rome. They were 
 stung to the quick; they felt the lash as though it had 
 fallen on their own back. They lost no time to remove 
 all possibility of this further meddling with their affairs. 
 In order to do this, they had no need to buy the services 
 of one who had won his affection. All they had to do 
 was to denounce him to Pilate as a rebel, for they had
 
 48 
 
 the ear of the Procurator. The rightful succession of 
 Caiaphas to the priesthood is more than doubtful. He 
 held the pontifical seat by appointment and connivance 
 of Rome. Nor was it at all necessary that they should 
 go through the form, not to say the farce of a trial. 
 
 Rome, when desirous of putting out of the way a 
 rebel, was never particular about the order of his going. 
 Pilate acted promptly upon the suggestion of his 
 friends. Straatman (Theol. Tijdschrift, 1880), a Dutch 
 theologian who has attempted to disentangle the knotted 
 strands of the skein of tradition, holds that this bold 
 deed of Jesus was the very means of calling the atten- 
 tion of the Romans to his presence and pretensions. 
 According to him, this was the succession of events: 
 On the eve of the Passover, Jesus ate the Passover 
 meal with his disciples; at its conclusion he retired to 
 Gethsemane to prepare himself for his public appear- 
 ance. Early on the fifteenth of Nissan he repairs to 
 the Temple to accomplish its cleansing. A tumult en- 
 sues; he is captured along with others. The priests 
 lodge complaint against him. He is a rebel, a Messiah, 
 a Galilean, whose home is the very cauldron of insub- 
 ordination. He does not deny his pretensions ! Enough 
 evidence to seal his fate. "To the cross with him," 
 as was the usual summary course with others of his 
 kind. The order is at once carried out. The Romans, 
 possibly goaded on by Caiaphas, crucify him. 
 
 The gospels present no clear account of the last days 
 of Jesus. Certain traits are certainly incongruous 
 with each other. Of one we have already spoken. 
 Jesus entering in great state the city of Jerusalem, 
 thronged by the multitudes come to celebrate the Pass- 
 over, is welcomed with loud acclaim by the populace,
 
 49 
 
 who meet him waving palm leaves and singing hosau- 
 nas. And the same populace, so rejoiced at his com- 
 ing, w r e are asked to believe, demanded his blood a few 
 days later. Yea, he to whom almost royal honors were 
 paid, us he passed through the gates of the city, is pic- 
 tured as so little known that a traitor had to be hired 
 to point him out to his captors. 
 
 Here is a clear discrepancy, which to reconcile, taxes 
 indeed the ingenuity of all for whom the Bible must be 
 literally true. These obscurities, however, are natural, 
 and due to the process of development which the story 
 of Jesus underwent, and which has left its indelible 
 traces on the records as we have them. Nor are the 
 gospels more definite in their account of when the trial 
 took place, and on what day the death sentence was 
 executed. In the Synoptics, Jesus dies both on the 
 14th day and on the loth day of Nissan. The first of 
 these two days was the eve of the Passover festival: 
 (icapaurxeoTj) , and on the evening of that day began the 
 "great Sabbath," as the fourth evangelist correctly 
 remarks. But we now find in Matthew, xxvii. 62, the 
 high priests and the Pharisees convened on the morn- 
 ing after the day of the death of Jesus, before Pilate 
 to request of him that a guard be stationed at the 
 grave. 
 
 From the words of the gospel we glean that this 
 morning must have been the 15th day of Nissan, from 
 which it would appear that Jesus died on the eve of 
 the Passover, that is to say on the 14th, although ac- 
 cording to xxvi. 19 and 20, he sat down on the eve of 
 this very day, with his disciples, to the Paschal meal. 
 Mark, in chapter xiv., relates, that Jesus had partaken 
 of the meal described on the day fixed for it by the law,
 
 50 
 
 that is to say, the 14th day of Nissan; he assumes thus 
 the 1.5th day to have been the day of the death; but in 
 chapter xv. 42, he nevertheless writes: "And when 
 even was now come, because it was the preparation, 
 that is the day before the Sabbath" from which it 
 would appear that Jesus had been crucified, not on the 
 15th day, but on the 14th. In Luke, we have the same 
 confusion. According to him, Jesus eats the Passover 
 with his disciples, this must have occurred on the 14th 
 day. On the succeeding day he dies, and yet in chap- 
 ter xxiii. 54, the day of death is not distinct from the 
 day of preparation, "when the Sabbath drew on." 
 
 This want of harmony has been noticed long ago. 
 According to Clemens of Alexandria, Jesus celebrated 
 the Passover on the 13th day of Nissan, and took occa- 
 sion thus to present himself as the veritable Paschal 
 Lamb. The uncertainty which marks the dates of the 
 gospel, is in fact a consequence of the controversy that 
 agitated for many years the church, as to the proper 
 time for celebrating Easter. Two ideas, both incorpo- 
 rated in the gospels but conflicting with each other, 
 have left their impress of these discordant details. 
 There is first, the marked tendency to urge the com- 
 munion service as a substitute instituted by Jesus, for 
 the Hebrew Paschal meal. In order to carry out this 
 design, Jesus had to partake of this meal at the proper 
 hour of the day fixed for it by the Pentateuch. On the 
 other hand, is the desire to emphasize the fact, that 
 Jesus himself was the lamb offered at Eastertide, there 
 fore his death had to take place on the very day pre- 
 ceding the "great Sabbath," or the day before the first 
 of the Passover. The omission of the lamb on the 
 table around which Jesus and his disciples were gath-
 
 51 
 
 ered to eat the "last supper," is a proof the value of 
 which none will underrate that all these accounts 
 must have been written after the destruction of the 
 second Temple, when the sacrificial service ceased alto- 
 gether among the Jews. 
 
 There are other indications, too, that the writers of 
 the gospels, while apparently fixing the execution for 
 the 15th day of Nissan, had no comprehension of the 
 character of that day as a holiday in the Jewish festal 
 cycle. But the supposition is that it was the first day 
 of Pessa'h. According to the law, on such a festal day, 
 all unnecessary work of the ordinary kind had to be 
 interrupted and cease altogether. But, according to 
 the New Testament description, on the day of the exe- 
 cution, that is to say, the festival, we find the people at 
 work as though the hour had no special religious sig- 
 nificance. Simon, of Cyrene, returns unconcernedly 
 from his field. Rich Joseph of Arirnathea, pur- 
 chases fine linen in order to wrap in it the body and to 
 deposit it in the grave, which, according to Matthew 
 xxvii. 60, he himself must* have hewn out in the 
 rock. 
 
 Furthermore, the three synoptics call the day on 
 which the verdict was found simply -aftaffxsurj , Prep- 
 aration, nyy JIN, that is to say, Friday, without indi- 
 cating that it must have had a higher character than 
 the ordinary precursor of the Sabbath. This is strik- 
 ingly in contrast with the manner in which other pas- 
 sages of the gospels (Luke, ii. 42; John, iv. 45, vi. 4, 
 vii. 8, xxxvii. 11 and 56, xii. 12; Acts ii. 1, and espe- 
 cially Acts xii. 3) speak of the Jewish festivals and 
 show deference to them. That the account in John 
 is totally at variance with the day of the other gospels,
 
 52 
 
 has been noticed, before.* These facts would be suf- 
 ficient in themselves, if not to invalidate, to throw serj- 
 ous suspicion on the authenticity of the tradition, which 
 places the responsibility for. Jesus's death upon the 
 Jews, or the Jewish authorities of that time. This sus- 
 picion, however, is changed into certainty, when we 
 remember that years before the year in which these 
 events are placed, the Jewish courts had lost the right 
 to pronounce the death penalty. 
 
 A certain degree of autonomy imperial Rome ac- 
 corded the provinces. These administered, after a 
 certain system of home rule and local self-government, 
 their own affairs according to their own laws. Ordi- 
 nary civil and criminal jurisdiction was not taken from 
 the home courts. But the jus qladii, or the potestas 
 (jladii, the power over life and death was, as in all other 
 provinces, so in Judaea, the unquestioned and exclusive 
 prerogative of the imperial legatus (of senatorial rank) 
 and of the procurators. (Schiirer, Zeitges. I., 389.) 
 John is cognizant of the fact that the Jewish author- 
 ities lacked the right to execute the sentence of death. 
 (John, xviii. 31.) The Jerusalemic Talmud [Sanhe- 
 
 wv afyiuuv (Matth. xxvi. 17) or the 
 r t iJ.ifta rwv &ujuov art -<> xdff%a lOouv (Mark, xiv. 
 12) and the r^iifiu TK '>/.>, jj eVJej 0i>ffOat TO xa<T"/a 
 (Luke, xxii. 7) cannot denote any other day than the 
 fourteenth of Nissan; and its peculiar designation as 
 the "first of the unleavened," etc., is grounded on 
 the terminology of Exodus, xxii. 15-20. Therefore, the 
 fifteenth, i. e. the festal day itself is supposed in 
 these three chapters to have been the day of execu- 
 tion, with which John, xix. 14, and its ^ 
 cannot be harmonized.
 
 53 
 
 drin I., 1. (18a) and VII., 2 (245)] fixes the time when 
 this right to try capital cases ceased in Israel as forty 
 years before the destruction of the Temple; the num- 
 ber is clearly a free assumption, for ever since Judaea 
 was under Roman control ^ine*O niK'SJ TT l^cn has 
 this been the case. 
 
 It is very easy to assume as Thomson ("Books Which 
 Influenced Our Lord") and even Schiirer do, that there 
 were exceptions to this rule; and to prove their assump- 
 tion by the incidents related of the trial of Jesus. But 
 the trial is the very fact which needs proof; unless 
 such exception can be substantiated by other evidence, 
 the presumption is that the usual legal state of affairs 
 prevailed. Even if the Sanhedrin had the power to 
 pronounce sentences of death, a trial such as is pic- 
 tured in the New Testament, is a simple impossibility 
 on the well-established principles of Jewish penal pro- 
 cedure. The death penalty was inflicted only in very 
 rare and extreme cases. While the Jewish law had 
 not abolished it, it had thrown such safeguards around 
 the life of the accused as to render the supreme^ penalty 
 almost an impossible verdict. 
 
 The court was chosen with special reference to the 
 kind-heartedness of its members. None was allowed 
 to sit as a judge unless he had children, on the supposi- 
 tion that parental hearts were more inclined to mercy 
 than those who had never tasted the joys and felt the 
 responsibilities of fatherhood. Men of cruel disposi- 
 tion and quick temper were specifically excluded. 
 Moreover, so strong was the aversion to capital punish- 
 ment among the Jews that a court which once in seven 
 years, or as another version has it, in the space of 
 seventy years, pronounced the death penalty, was
 
 54 
 
 branded as composed of murderers. Circumstantial 
 evidence was not admitted. The confession of the 
 accused was not sufficient to lead to his conviction; at 
 least two witnesses had to testify to the facts, and, 
 furthermore, they had to prove that the defendant had 
 been warned before the act of the consequences of his 
 proposed or expected offense. The trial had to take 
 place in a certain hall of the Temple, in day-time, 
 never at night. 
 
 If we believe the gospels, the court convened in the 
 house of the high priest, and sat during the night. In 
 matters affecting life and death the trial had to last 
 two days, and one night always had to intervene in 
 order to give the judges time for reflection, and thus 
 keep open the possibility of a change of their verdict 
 in favor of the accused. The court was polled twice. 
 Once at the close of the first day, and the second time 
 on the succeeding day; the younger members voting 
 first, so as to guard against undue influence on them 
 by the authority and weight of their elders. Those 
 who on the first ballot had voted guilty, were allowed 
 to change on the second ballot, which took place on the 
 next morning, their vote to not guilty. Those who had 
 favored acquittal had not the privilege to alter their 
 verdict. For this reason no trial could take place on 
 the eve of a Sabbath or a festal day, a provision which 
 is clearly violated if we accept the date of the three 
 first gospels. Immediately on the finding of the final 
 verdict, the convicted culprit was led to execution. 
 But such precautions were taken as looked even then 
 yet for new evidence to acquit. 
 
 It would appear from a Tosephta (Sanh. II., 7) that 
 a certain class of criminals were not executed at once,
 
 55 
 
 but were brought to Jerusalem and there kept until 
 the next succeeding pilgrim festival, with a view to 
 carrying out the command in Deuteronomy, xiii. 12, 
 that "all the people may hear and see, and shall no 
 longer sin defiantly" TiJ? pIT &O- This rabbinical 
 passage, which, as it has parallels also in the Mishna 
 and in Siphre, has been urged to prove, that, as the 
 case of Jesus would fall into the category of offences 
 mentioned, his execution may have lawfully been 
 fixed for the holiday. Joel, in order to blunt the 
 edge of this argument, claims that the passage in 
 question is a precipitate of the very gospels which 
 make the statement that Jesus was crucified on the 
 Passover. 
 
 However ingenious this explanation by Joel is, it has 
 been well refuted by L. Wagenaar in Isr. Letterbode 
 IX., pp. 65 ff., who calls attention to the significance 
 of the term used, which is Regel ^JT and not Yomtob, 
 31D DV the former standing for the festal season, while 
 the latter indicates the festal day itself. TIB DV is the 
 technical term used in the Mishna, where trials are 
 prohibited for the Sabbath eve or the day preceding a 
 holiday. (Sanhedrin, V., 1.) Crucifixion was not a 
 mode of execution among the Jews. There is even not 
 a word for it; the word employed meaning hanging, 
 and not crucifying p"r>n- Affixion to the cross before 
 death had ensued, as we are led to assume, was the 
 punishment of Jesus, was an outrage which sent a cold 
 shudder and chill through the very marrow of tin- 
 Jews, and is clearly denounced as a pagan custom. 
 (Conf. Siphre, Deut. xxvii. 23: inix p^n l.T by 
 ptny nvatan ima "n xinea. Philo and Josephus 
 abound in passages testifying to the utmost horror
 
 56 
 
 which the Jew entertained of crucifying one who was 
 not dead. 
 
 The Jewish law ordained four methods of inflicting 
 the supreme penalty: Death by the sword, by throt- 
 tling, by lapidation, and by burning. The last two 
 mentioned were only formally executed, in every case 
 means being taken to kill the wretched convict before 
 either stone was thrown, or the lighted wick thrust 
 down his throat. Certain it is that the body of the 
 dead criminal w r as scrupulously guarded against mu- 
 tilation, a provision of the Jewish law which is violated 
 in the description of the New Testament. Never could 
 more than one execution take place at the same time. 
 The circumstance that two thieves were affixed to the 
 cross simultaneously with Jesus clinches the argument 
 that in his execution the Jews had no voice. 
 
 Nor is it clear on what accusation Jesus was cited 
 before the tribunal. It is generally supposed that he 
 was arraigned for misleading the people into sin JVDD. 
 But neither before his trial nor at his trial did Jesus 
 say or do aught that from a Jewish point of view could 
 be misconstrued into a substantiation of this charge. 
 The incident related, that the high priest and his asso- 
 ciates rent their garments at an utterance of Jesus, 
 would suggest that he had been indicted and was tried 
 for blasphemy. But here again all the well-established 
 precedents, rules and circumstances, which in the eyes 
 of the Jewish law constitute the offense, fail us in the 
 trial recorded in the New Testament. Blasphemy 
 (GiddoopK) according to all authorities (Sanh. VII., 5) 
 consisted in cursing God with the direct pronuncia~ 
 tion of his ineffable name. DB>n trial" ny T'n ir epaon 
 The saving attributed to Jesus, that he could destroy
 
 57 
 
 the Temple and rebuild it within three days, can by no 
 stretch of construction be contorted into that offense 
 for which the' Jewish law provides lapidation as the 
 punishment. 
 
 As the witnesses repeat his boast, they utterly fail of 
 making out a case. Nor is Jesus's answer to the high 
 priest's question (Matt. xxvi. 64) such proof as the law 
 required. In the first place, he does not utter a blas- 
 phemy. He refrains from pronouncing the "name;" 
 he substitutes for it the word "power" mi23 as pious 
 Jews are wont to do. Even if he had spoken blas- 
 phemy, his own admission was insufficient to convict 
 him. Conviction for this 'offense was, in fact, most 
 difficult under the Jewish code. There is on record 
 the case of a certain false prophet, Ben Sotada. In 
 order to secure the necessary evidence, "two sages 
 were hidden in the outer chamber so that they might 
 hear his voice, and as the inner room was lit up, they 
 were able to see him." Upon detection by this ruse, 
 the culprit was stoned to death. (Tosephta Sanhedrin 
 X., 11.) This precedent of Ben Sotada is, indeed, a 
 most curious parallel to Jesus's case, as related in the 
 New Testament. It explains the part Judas Iscariot 
 played. The betrayal, as practiced according to the 
 gospels, is improbable in the highest degrees. 
 
 As said before, it is not clear why one was needed to 
 point out the suspect, who must have been known to 
 the Romans, since he had entered the city in royal 
 state, 'midst the shouts of a rejoicing throng. But if 
 there is any substratum to the reported defection of 
 one of the disciples, it is none other than such a course 
 as is outlined in this Baraitha. One of his disciples 
 (or two) may have consented to play the eavesdropper.
 
 58 
 
 But, the truth of the matter is that the story of Ben 
 Sotada and that of Jesus have influenced one the other. 
 While it is perfectly plain (see Derenbourg, Essai de 
 Vhistoirc, etc., p. 486, Note ix.) that in the rabbinical 
 records there is question of another man and another 
 place than Jesus and Jerusalem, still the violations of 
 the law in this one instance (sentence of death on the 
 first day, or in the night), are as plainly indistinct 
 reminiscences and impressions of the gospel story, 
 which, as the history of the various versions of the one 
 trial of the Talmudical accounts proves, left in the 
 rabbinical text traces of its own gradual development 
 and crystallization. (See Joel, Blicke in die Religions- 
 yescli., II.; Dr. Sam'l Hirsch, Lettresur les usages et lois 
 dea Juifs, Gaud, 1865.) 
 
 On the other hand, this incident of Lydda, where 
 Ben Sotada was so summarily stoned to death, reacted 
 upon the gospels. They had, however, to such a de- 
 gree lost all touch with Jewish life and law, that they 
 could not fit into the frame the role of the tricky dis- 
 ciple. Instead of a witness, in hiding, they, regardless 
 of the difficulty of harmonizing with it their other de- 
 tails of a public entrance into the city, make him a 
 traitor. Be this as it may, Jesus could not be sen- 
 tenced on such evidence as brought out, either as a 
 Mesith JVDO seducer to idolatry, or as spao a blas- 
 phemer. The open confession, that he considers him- 
 self the "son of God," constituted neither an offense 
 nor a sin in Jewish eyes. 'r6 D'J2 "Sons of God," the 
 prophets often enough had called the people. Every 
 Jew is a son of God as is every human being. 
 
 The conduct of Pontius Pilate is another strange 
 anomaly calling for some comment. He acts the cou -
 
 59 
 
 ard, who, while wishing to save Jesus, does not even 
 raise one hand to accomplish his professed purpose. 
 Such conduct as this is altogether incompatible with 
 what we know of his character. As his consent was 
 necessary to make the sentence legal and effective, it 
 is surpassing strange that he should not, at least, have 
 given the Jews permission to carry out the verdict ac- 
 cording to their law, but handed Jesus, for whom he 
 felt compassion, over to his own soldiers. The Jews, 
 certainly, would have spared him the agony of suffer- 
 ing on the cross; they would have stoned him to death, 
 which, as said before, meant death in a most humane 
 manner, before the first stone was hurled. They 
 would not have added insult to injury by adorning the 
 cross with the ironical inscription, "Jesus of Nazareth, 
 King of the Jews." They would not have scourged 
 him. 
 
 That Pilate understood how to handle mobs is well 
 attested by many a bloody day, visiting the presump- 
 tion of the Jews to resent insult offered to their most 
 religious sentiment, with cruel attack and the unre- 
 stricted privilege to kill and to sack given to the sol- 
 diers by this procurator of Rome. According to Philo, 
 Pilate was of a violent temperament, stubborn in the 
 extreme, who could never make up his mind to treat 
 the Jews with consideration, let alone to yield to their 
 wishes. (Legation to Caius, M. 2, pp. .590.) Agrippa 
 I. charges him with venality, violence, robberies, insult- 
 ing behavior, intolerable cruelties; continued execu- 
 tions of death sentences without "previous trials." The 
 Roman emperor, Tiberius himself, characterized the 
 policy of Pilate by declaring that "a good shepherd 
 tends his sheep without cutting their throats." Pilate
 
 60 
 
 was indeed a cut-throat, "a fly who had sucked itself 
 full of blood from wounds struck most wantonly." 
 Such a man would be the last one to listen to the cries 
 of infuriated Jews clamoring for the blood of one whom 
 he w r anted to protect. 
 
 Nor is it at all apparent why the Jews should have 
 insisted upon the execution of Jesus. Is it at all ten- 
 able that the very same people who welcomed him 
 with such signal demonstration of affection and love 
 only four days previously, should now, all of a sudden, 
 without any provocation, have made the market-place 
 .shake with the cry for blood the blood of one who 
 was of their own flesh and bone; who was known to 
 have for the people the warmest heart; who was pa- 
 triotic if any were; who had not imperiled their peace, 
 but who had resisted the arrogance of the ruling priest, 
 for whom the people at large had but little regard, who 
 had indicated that the government of Rome, so in- 
 iquitous and so cruel, would speedily pass away in 
 order to make room once more for Jewish freedom and 
 Jewish independence? Josephus tells us that when 
 the brother of Jesus, Jacob, was stoned to death, in 
 consequence of the intrigues of this very Annanus's 
 son, the people of Jerusalem protested most emphat- 
 ically against this outrage, in consequence of which 
 denunciation Annanus was deposed from the high 
 priesthood. A people who had so much consideration 
 and pity for the brother of Jesus, would certainly not 
 have so far forgotten themselves as to insist upon the 
 cruel execution of the other brother, who still more 
 must have been beloved by them. 
 
 Thus, from whatever point of view we study this 
 problem, the conclusion is forced upon us that the re-
 
 61 
 
 sponsibility for the death of Jesus must forever rest on 
 the Roman authorities. The Jews could not have been 
 profited by his removal. He had taught nothing or 
 done nothing but what a most pious Jew could teach 
 or do. He had claimed nothing but what many more 
 claimed. He had won the affection of the people and 
 not its hatred. He was an object of suspicion to the 
 ruling priestly family, who denounced him as a traitor, 
 a possible dangerous rebel to Pilate, who, on footings 
 of great intimacy with this priestly family, speedily 
 complied with their request, and in true Roman fashion 
 ended the suspect's career. 
 
 But, if even the Jews had committed the atrocious 
 deed for which they have been hated and hounded, 
 now these weary centuries, and for which they are held 
 guilty today by the prejudice of many among their 
 neighbors, the question still remains and recurs, whether 
 if. what the church insists on, the divine character and 
 mission of Jesus must be allowed, the Jews were free 
 to act otherwise, than according to Christian view they 
 did. It is in a most serious vein, though hesitatingly, 
 that I put the question. It is far from my mind to 
 treat irreverently a dogma which bodies truth for many 
 of the best of men who now draw breath under the 
 sun. But if that dogma is true, and Jesus was God, 
 come to redeem by his blood the world from the fatal 
 corruption of the first sin, were the Jews aught else in 
 the hands of Providence than a blind tool ? Can man 
 presume to oppose the purpose of God ? Had Jesus 
 not died, would man be cleansed of his guilt, washed by 
 the blood of Golgotha ? 
 
 If such redemption is the consummation of the divine 
 scheme of salvation, it was ordained in God's own
 
 62 
 
 councils, that he who appeared in the flesh should die 
 on the cross, and far from hating the Jews for thus help- 
 ing along as they had to, but the sightless agents in the 
 hands of the all-directing God, the glorious work of 
 redemption, those who rejoice that the death of Jesus 
 has taken from them the taint of guilt, should turn 
 with gratitude to the Jews, but for whom such salva- 
 tion would not have been wrought for the waiting, 
 worrying, lost and laden race of men. 
 
 But let me not lose myself in such theologic subtle- 
 ties. History has spoken; her facts, immovable as the 
 eternal rocks, pedestal the innocence of the Jews of 
 that day. Streams of tears and rivers of blood have 
 washed the rocky, stony road, along which, sore of 
 foot, weary of wandering, the Jew has groped his way 
 through the lands of the earth. Driven from his own 
 home to carry into a larger world the knowledge of the 
 one God indwelling in every man, the Father who has 
 never forsaken his children on earth, never doomed 
 one to die for the guilt of another, never affixed taint of 
 weakness upon one for the disobedience of the first 
 progenitor of all. 
 
 Wherever he came, the Jew, the charge that he 
 had nailed to the cross the noble son of his race fol- 
 lowed him. Eyes looked at him askance; pure souls 
 drew back from him; hatred sharpened her sword, 
 bigotry lit her torch. With fire and flame, with dungeon 
 and danger, the world attempted to wrest from the 
 Jew the confession that he had committed the foul 
 murder. He would not confess because he could not. 
 He knew that his fathers had no reason for hurrying to 
 the criminal's grave the gentle teacher whose voice had 
 made musical the rough crags of the Galilean hills.
 
 63 
 
 A better time is dawning now. The east is golden 
 now even with the promise of the coming day. The 
 old conceits, that like so many jealous clouds have so 
 long intercepted the full glory of the radiant sunshine 
 of mutual trust, are fast disappearing. Among these 
 that Avill go sooner or later is also this accusation, 
 which for so many hundred circuits of the revolving 
 sun has been the source of misery and of anguish for 
 the very kinsmen of the prophet of Nazareth. 
 
 When that day will have risen to the zenith, the 
 noon-tide round, the heavens, indeed, will be full "of 
 the glory to the Highest, and peace will obtain and 
 good will among men on earth." Then will Jew take 
 by the hand the non-Jew and feel the warm response 
 of the grasp. Then will be hushed the old cries, and 
 a new song will roll its music from pole to pole. The 
 Jew himself will then take up the pathetic petition, 
 "Father, forgive them, for they knew not what they 
 were doing." He will pardon most willingly those 
 that trespassed against him in their ignorance of the 
 sequence of events which led up to the catastrophe of 
 Golgotha. 
 
 But until the last mists will have been cleared away, 
 every Jew will and must protest that not his fathers, 
 not the people, not the teachers of Jerusalem, had con- 
 demned Jesus. For his death none other must be held 
 accountable than Pilate, the typical Roman, who was 
 Roman cruelty incarnate and Roman selfishness tri- 
 umphant. The Jews did not crucify Christ.
 
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