the whole Law whilst he stood on one foot. Shammai, indignant at the thought that the Law could be taught so simply and so shortly, drove him forth with the staff which he held in his hand. The Gentile went to Hillel, who accepted him, and said: What thou wouldest not thyself, do not to thy neighbour. This is the whole Law, and its ap'plication is, "Go and do this."'1 We start as we read the familiar rule, but even Hillel was not the first who uttered it. Already it had dropped from the lips of Isocrates in Greece,2 and Confucius in China, yet not the less original was it in the mouth of each; and most of all was it original in the mouth of Him who, in the next generation, made it not the maxim of a sage, but the golden rule'3 of a world. "Wish not to be better than the whole community, nor be ""confident of thyself till the day of thy death." This,' Ewald remarks, is a strange truth for a Pharisee to have ' uttered, one which, had the Pharisees followed, no Pharisee 'would have ever arisen. Yet,' he adds, with true appreciation of the elevation of the best spirits above their party, it ' is not the only example of a distinguished teacher protesting ' against the fundamental error of his own peculiar tendencies.' 'Think not of anything that it will not be heard, 'for heard at last it surely will be; think not that thou 'canst calculate on the time when thou shalt have anything, for how easily will it come to pass that thou shalt never 6 have it at all.'4 'The more meat at his banquets a 'man hath, so much the more is the food for worms; the 6 more wealth he hath, so much the more care; the more 6 ' wives, so much the more opening for superstition; the more 'maidservants, so much the more temptation to licence; the Ewald, v. 70, 71. Isocrates to Nicocles, and see Lecture XLV. Matt. vii. 12. Hillel himself repeated the maxim in another form: 'Judge not thy neighbour till thou more slaves, so much the more room for plunder. But the 'more of Law, so much the more of life; the more of schools, 'so much the more of wisdom; the more of counsel, so much 'the more of insight; the more of righteousness, so much the more of peace. If a man gains a good name, he gains 'it for himself alone; if he gains a knowledge of the Law, it ' is for eternal life.' These are maxims which are more than philosophical; they are almost apostolical. It is not needed to multiply these stories, or to recite the legendary portents which hovered round the name of Hillel. What has been said is enough to show that, as in modern times there have been those who, amongst heretics and sectarians, yet were catholic-amongst the rigidly orthodox, were yet full of the freedom which belongs to scepticism or heterodoxy-so among the Pharisees was at least one man in whom was foreshadowed the spirit of the coming age, in the life of whose maxims was the death of his sect, in the breadth of whose character was the pledge that he or his disciples should at last inherit the earth, and be the teachers in that Jerusalem which, being above, is free. In the schools of his native land he founded a dynasty of scholars: Simeon, Gamaliel, and the second Hillel- his son, his grandson, and Death of his great-grandson. Ah! the tender-hearted, the pious, the disciple of Ezra,' was the lament over his grave.1 In the same grave he and his rival Shammai rest side by side at Meiron,2 amidst the Rabbis who were drawn thither from Safed, the holy city of a later age. But his fame soon perished; it is only now, after an obscurity of many centuries, that he has been recognised to be, of all the teachers of Judæa at that time, the one who most nearly approached to the Light that was to lighten the heathen nations, and to be the glory of the people of Israel. Yet, strange as it may seem, we must look for this 1 Jost, i. 263. 2 Robinson's Researches, vol. iii. 334; Later Res. 37. Hillel. A.D. 6. The 6 realisation, even for this preparation, not to the schools of Jerusalem, but to classes in which Hillel hardly ventured to expect it. No uneducated man,' he said, ' easily avoids sin; 'no man of the people can be pious. Where there are no 'men, study to show thyself a man.' The first part of the saying partakes of the contraction of the Pharisaic circle in which he moved; the last part shows how he rose above it. On the one hand he believed that, except in the schools of the learned, no real excellence could be found; on the other hand he felt that, even where all seems blank and void of interest, it is never too late to hope that a true man may discover himself. How far he was wrong in the first of these sayings, how far he was right in the second, we shall see as we proceed. From the small casuistry and occasional flashes of inspiration in the schools of Jerusalem we pass to the different world or worlds, which even within the narrow limits of Palestine were to be found, containing elements of life as unlike those which prevailed in the cloisters of the Temple as if they had belonged to another country. We first turn to the neighbourhood of the capital. It is one of the peculiarities of the Herodian age that the valley of the Jordan then leaped into vast prominence. The palaces, the baths, the racecourses, of the forests and gardens of Jericho became the resort of the fashionable world of that time. But side by side with these sprang up, as in gipsy encampments, a host of ascetics. In those wild jungles, or in the maze of verdure which clings to the spring of Engedi,1 and clusters on the little platform by the shores of the Dead Sea, screened from the upper world behind the rocky barrier of the crags which overhang that mysterious lake, swarmed the Essenian hermits. It is true that in every town in Palestine some of them were to be found. They were not Plin. H. N. v. 15. 2 Jos. B. J. ii. 8, 4; Philo, Frogm., 632. 2 entirely separated from the movement of the capital. There was a gate in the city which bore their name as if from their frequenting it. More than once we hear of their appearances in the Temple. Menahem, the Essene, in his playful manner, had foretold Herod's greatness when yet an innocent child, and, remaining faithful to him in his later years, was raised by him to the second place in the Sanhedrin, in the room of Shammai, next to the illustrious Hillel. But, as in Egypt their chief haunt was by the shores of the Lake Mareotis, so in Judæa their main home was the insulated oasis beneath the haunts of the wild goats. Their form of religion, in many respects, was merely Pharisaism in excess. Their chief rites were Pharisaic ordinances raised to a higher level. The common meals, which the Pharisees established in imitation of the solemn banquets3 of the Priests after the Temple sacrifices, were elevated by the Essenians to be an essential part of their worship. But, whereas the Pharisees, though not Priests, yet often frequented the Temple ceremonies, the Essenians, in their isolation, were constrained to invent a ritual for themselves-a ritual so simple that it almost escaped observation at the time, yet so expressive that its near likeness has, in altered forms, not only survived the magnificent worship of Jerusalem, but become the centre of ceremonials yet more gorgeous. For the first time, the common meal without a sacrifice, became a religious ordinance, in which the loaves of bread were arranged by the baker, and the blessing asked and the solemnity that their little 1 B. J. vi. 4, 2. 2 See Lightfoot, ii. 200, on Matt. xvii. Derenbourg, 142–162. The Essenes are described in Jos. Ant. xiii. 5, 9; xviii. 1, 5; B. J. ii. 8, 2-13; Plin. Ep. v. 15, 17; Philo, ii. 457, 471, 632. For ample discussions, which supersede any need for repast transacted with such dining-halls seemed for the further detail here, see Dr. Ginsburg's article on the Essenes, in Kitto's Cyclopædia, Keim's Jesus of Nazara i. 358-368, and the exhaustive essays of Professor Lightfoot on the Colossians, 83-94, 115-178. B. J. ii. 8, 5. The mention of the cook seems to imply something else than bread-probably fish. moment to be transformed into the appearance of a consecrated enclosure. 'The Pharisees,' said their Sadducaic rivals, 'want to 'clean the face of the sun.' And so to the Essenes cleanliness was not only next to godliness, but, as regards worship, we may almost say that it was godliness.1 The badges of initiation were the apron or towel for wiping themselves after the bath, the hatchet for digging holes to put away filth. Some Churches in later days have insisted on the absolute necessity of immersion once in a life. But not only did the Essenes go through the bath on their first admission, but day by day the same cleansing process was undergone; day by day it was held unlawful even to name the name of God without the preliminary baptism; day by day fresh white clothes were put on; day by day, after the slightest occasion,2 they bathed again. Down to the minutest points cleanliness was the one sacramental sign. The primitive Christians had their daily Communion; the Essenes had their daily Baptism.3 In the deep bed of the neighbouring Jordan, in the warm springs and the crystal streams of Engedi, in the rivulets and the tanks of Jericho, they had ample opportunities for this purification which in the dry hills and streets of Jerusalem they would have lacked. When from these outward signs of the society we descend to its inner life, the difficulty of tracing its affinities is increased. In this respect the Essene is the great enigma of Hebrew history.' On the one hand, it is no wonder that the solution of the enigma should have been sought in the conclusion that the early Christians concerning 6 Jos. B. J. ii. 8, 5, 7; Professor Lightfoot on Colossians, 120; Kuenen, iii. 128, 129, 131, 133. 2 Derenbourg, 170. This was the case, even without identifying them with the ἡμερο 5 Barrioral, daily or morning bathers. • Professor Lightfoot, 82. See the ingenious essays of De Quincey, vi. 270, ix. 258. |