The life and work of St. Paul

228 THE LIFE AND WOEK OF ST. PAtTL.
narrow litoralists of the school of Shammai intervened, that Proselytes of
the Gate -were taught that their faith and their holiness were valueless unless
they assumed the badge of Proselytes of Righteousness. 1
Izates and Monobazus,
as was sure to be the case with timid and superstitious natures, had
risked all to meet the views of these uncompromising zealots, just as from
baser motives Aziz, King of Emesa, and Polemo of Cilicia had yielded in
order to win the hands of the wealthy and beautiful princesses of the house of
Herod. 2 But it was quite certain that such an acceptance of Mosaism would
continue to bo, as it always had been, extremely exceptional ; and Paul saw
that if Christianity was to be degraded into the mere superimposition of a
belief in Christ as the Jewish Messiah upon the self-satisfaction of Sham-
maite fanaticism, 3 or even on the mere menace of the Law, it was not possible,
it was not even desirable, that it should continue to exist. The force of habit
might, in one who had been born a Jew, freshen with the new wine of the
Gospel the old ceremonialism which had run to the lees of Rabbinic tradition.
In Jerusalem a Christian might not be sensible of the loss ho suffered by
chaining his new life to the corpse of meaningless halachoth ; but in Antioch,
at any rate, and still more in the new missionfields of Asia, such bondage
could never be allowed.
"Wo can imagine the indignant grief with which St. Paul watched this
continuous, this systematic* attempt to undo all that had been done, and to
render impossible all further progress. Was the living and life-giving spirit
to be thus sacrificed to the dead letter ? Were these new Pharisees to coin-
pass sea and land to make one proselyte, only that they might add the pride
of the Jew to the vice of the Gentile, and make him ten times more narrow
than themselves ? Was the superstitious adoration of dead ordinances to
dominate over the heaven-sent liberty of the children of God? If Moses
had, under Divine guidance, imposed upon a nation of sensual and stiffnecked
slaves not only a moral law of which Christ Himself had indefinitely
deepened the obligation, but also the crushing yoke of " statutes which wert
of the Bible) as having submitted to circumcision, and also a Roman senator (Abhdda Zara,
10 ; Hamburger, s.v. " Beschneidung "). The Roman Metilius saved his life by accepting
circumcision (Jos. B. J. ii. 17, 10). Antoninus forbade it injthe case of Gentile proselytes
(Gieseler, i., 38).
1 "
So great is circumcision," said Rabbi [Jehnda Hakkadosh], "that but for it tha
Holy One, blessed be He, would not have created the world ; for it is said (Jer. xxxiii. 25),
'But for My covenant [i.e., circumcision] I would not have made day and night, and the
ordinance of heaven and earth'" (Ncdarim, f. 31, 2). "Abraham was not called
'
perfect '
till he was circumcised. It is as great as all the other commandments " (Exod.
xxxiv. 27), (Id. f. 32, 1). It was one of the laws in the case of which the Jews preferred
death to disobedience (Shabbath, f. 130, 1). The "good king" in Pseudo-Baruch ( 61,
66) is one who does not allow the existence of an uncircumcised person on the earth.
2 Izates and Monobazus would have been called "lion-proselytes," and Aziz and
Polemo "Shechemite proselytes."
3 " How many laws have you ?" asked a Gentile of Shammai. "Two, "said Shammai,
"
the written and the
" "
oral." I believe the former," said the Gentile, not the latter ;
accept me as a proselyte on condition of learning th written law only." Shammai
ejected him with a curse (Shablath, f, 31, 1),
4 Acts XT. 1