The life and work of St. Paul

THE SCHOOL OF THE EABBI. 33
descendants of Agar, the Gentiles into the seed of Abraham and heirs of the
Promise. 1
This very ranging in corresponding columns of type and antitype, or of
the actually existent and its ideal counterpart this Systoichia in which
Agar, Ishmael, the Old Covenant, the earthly Jerusalem, the unconverted
Jews, &c., in the
opposites, Sarah,
one column, are respective counterparts of their spiritual
Isaac, the New Covenant, the heavenly Jerusalem, the
Christian Church, &c., in the other column is in itself a Rabbinic method
of setting forth a series of conceptions, and is, therefore, another of the many
traces of the influence of Rabbinic training upon the mind of St. Paul. A
part of the system of the Rabbis was to regard the earth as
" But the shadow of heaven, and things therein
Each to the other like more than on earth is thought."
This notion was especially applied to everything connected with the Holy
People, and there was no event in the wanderings of the wilderness which
did not stand typically for matters of spiritual experience or heavenly hope. 8
This principle is expressly stated in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, 8
where, in exemplification of it, not only is the manna made the type of the
bread of the Lord's Supper, but, by a much more remote analogy, the passing
through the waters of the Red Sea, and the being guided by the pillar of
cloud by day, is described as " being baptised unto Moses in the cloud and in
the sea," and is made a 4
prefigurement of Christian baptism.
But although St. Paul was a Hebrew by virtue of his ancestry, and by
virtue of the language which he had learnt as his mother-tongue, and although
he would probably have rejected the appellation of " Hellenist," which is
indeed never applied to him, yet his very Hebraism had, in one most impor-
tant respect, and one which has very little attracted the attention of scholars,
an Hellenic bias and tinge. This is apparent in the fact which I have already
mentioned, that he was, or at any rate that he became, to a marked extent,
in the technical language of the Jewish schools, an Hagadist, not an Halachist. 5
It needs but a glance at the Mishna, and still more at the Gemara, to see that
1 Other specimens of exegesis accordant in result with the known views of the Rabbis
may be found in Rom. ix. 33 (compared with Is. via. 14, xxviii. 16 ; Luke ii. 34), since
the Eabbis applied both the
"
passages referred to the rock of offence," and " the
corner-stone "
to the Messiah ; and in 1 Cor. ix. 9, where by a happy analogy (also
found in Philo, De Victimat Offerentibus, 1) the prohibition to muzzle the ox that
treadeth out the corn is applied to the duty of maintaining ministers (1 Cor. ix. 4, 11 ;
Eph. iv. 8). The expressions in Rom. v. 12 1 ; Cor. xi. 10 ; 2 Cor. xi. 14 ; Gal. iii. 19,
iv. 29, find parallels in the Targums, &c. To these may be added various images and
expressions in 1 Cor. xv. 36 ; 2 Cor. xii. 2 ; 1 Thess. iv. 16. (See Immer, Neut. The I.
210 ; Krenkel, p. 218.)
8 "Quicquid evenit patribus slgnum flliis," &c. (Wetstein, and Schottgen ad 1 Cor.
x. 11). (See Wisd. xi., xvi. xviii.)
8 1 Cor. x. 6, TOVTO & Tvirot T)/O? rftvrj8ii