The life and work of St. Paul

THE SCHOOL OF THE KABM. 81
himself uses spermaia in 1 Cor. xv. 38 and that the Greek spervnaia, in the
sense of " offspring," would be nothing less than an impossible barbarism.
The argument, therefore if it bo an argument at all, and not what tho
Rabbis would have called a sod, or " mystery "
does not, and cannot, turn,
as has been so unhesitatingly assumed, on the fact that sperma is a singular
noun, but on the fact that it 5s a collective noun, and was deliberately used
instead of "sons" or "children;" 1 and St. Paul declares that this collective
term was meant from the first to apply to Christ, as elsewhere he applies it
spiritually to the servants of Christ. In the interpretation, then, of this word,
St. Paul reads between the lines of the original, and is enabled to see in it
deep meanings which are the true, but not the primary ones. He does not
say at once that the promises to Abraham found in Christ as in the purpose
of God it had always been intended that they should find in Christ 2
their
highest and truest fulfilment; but, in a manner belonging peculiarly to the
Jewish style of exegesis, he illustrates this high truth by the use of a collective
noun in which he believes it to have been mystically foreshadowed. 3
This passage is admirably adapted to throw light on the Apostle's use of
the Old Testament. Rabbinic in form, it was free in spirit. Though he does
not disdain either Amoraic or Alexandrian methods of dealing with Scripture,
St. Paul never falls into the follios or extravagances of either. Treating the
letter of Scripture with intense respect, he yet made the literal sense of it bend
at will to the service of the spiritual consciousness. On the dead letter of tho
Urim, which recorded the names of lost tribes, he flashed a mystic ray, which
made them gleam forth into divine and hitherto undreamed-of oracles. The
actual words of the sacred writers became but as the wheels and wings of the
Cherubim, and whithersoever the Spirit went they went. Nothing is more
natural, nothing more interesting, in the hands of an inspired teacher
nothing is more valuable, than this mode of application. We have not
in St. Paul the frigid spirit of Philonian allegory which to a great
extent depreciated the original and historic sense of Scripttire, and was
chiefly bent on educing philosophic mysteries from its living page ; nor have
we a single instance of Gematria or Notarikon, of Atbash or Albam, of
Hillel's middoth or Akibha's method of hanging legal decisions on the horns
of letters. Into these unreal mysticisms and exegetical frivolities it was
impossible that a man should fall who was intensely earnest, and felt, in tho
vast mass of what he wrote, that he had the Spirit of the Lord. In no
single instance does he make one of these general quotations the demonstrative
basis of the point which he is endeavouring to impress. In every instance
1 See Lightfopt, ad loc., p. 139.
- As in Gen. iii. 15. The Jews could not deny the force of the argument, for they
interpreted Gen. iv. 25, &c., of the Messiah. But St. Jerome's remark, "Galatis, quoa
paulo ante stultos dbcerat, factus est stultus," as though the Apostle had purposely used
an " accommodation " argument, is founded on wrong principles.
8 The purely illustrative character of the reference seems to be clear from the
diif ereut, yet no less spiritualised, sense given to the text in Rom. ir. 13. 16, 18 j is. 8 ;
Gal. jii. 28, 29.