The life and work of St. Paul

84 THE LIFE AND WORK OB1 ST. PAUL.
and feed them with the flesh of Behemoth, and Leviathan, and the bird Bar
Juchne, and pour at their feet the treasures of the sea! And to say that
Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah to suppose that all the splendid
prophecies of patriarchs, and seers, and kings, from the Divine Voice which
spoke to Adam in Paradise, to the last utterance of the Angel Halachi all
pointed to, all centred in, One who had been the carpenter of Nazareth, and
whom they had seen crucified between two brigands to say that their very
at the instance of their
Messiah had just been "hung" 1
by Gentile tyrants
own priests ; this, to most of the hearers in the synagogue, would have,
seemed wicked if it had not seemed too absurd. "Was there not one sufficient
and decisive answer to it all in the one verse of the Law " Cursed by God is
he that hangeth on a tree P" a
Yet this was the thesis which such a man as Stephen no ignorant
Galilsean, but a learned Hellenist undertook to prove, and did prove with
such power as to produce silence if not assent, and hatred if not conviction.
For with all their adoration of the letter, the Rabbis and Pharisees had but
half read their Scriptures, or had read them only to use as an engine of
religious intolerance, and to pick out the views which most blended with their
personal preconceptions. They had laid it down as a principle of interpretation
that the entire books of the Canon prophesied of nothing else but
the days of the Messiah. How, under these circumstances, they could
possibly miss the conception of a suffering as well as of a triumphaid
Messiah, 3
might well amaze us, if there had not been proof in all ages that
men may entirely overlook the statements and pervert the meaning of their
own sacred books, because, when they read those books, the veil of obstinate
prejudice is lying upon their hearts. But when the view of ancient prophecy,
which proved that it behoved Christ thus to suffer and to enter into His
glory, 4 was forcibly presented to them by the insight and eloquence of one
who was their equal in learning and their superior in illumination, we can
understand the difficulties to which they were reduced. How, for instance,
could they elude the force of the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, to which their
Rabbis freely accorded a Messianic interpretation ? The Messianic application
of what is there said about the Servant of Jehovah, and the deep humi-
liation borne for the sake of others, is not only found in the Targuin of
Jonathan and in many Rabbinic allusions, down even to the Book Zohar, but
seems to have remained entirely undisputed until the mediaeval Rabbis found
.
3 Dent. xxi. 23, .car)pa/ieV