The life and work of St. Paul

34 THE LIFE AND WORK OF 8T* PAUL.
the question which mainly occupied the thoughts and interests of the Pales-
tinian and Babylonian Rabbis, and which almost constituted the entire
education of their scholars, was the Halacha, or " ''
rule ; and if we compare
the Talmud with the Midrashim, we see at once that some Jewish scholars
devoted themselves to the Hagada almost exclusively, and others to the
Halacha, and that the names frequent in the one region of Jewish literature
are rarely found in the other. The two classes of students despised each
other. The Hagadist despised the Halachist as a minute pedant, and was
despised in turn as an imaginative ignoramus. There was on the part of
some Babbis a jealous dislike of teaching the Hagadoth at all to any one who
had not gone through the laborious training of the Halacha. "I hold from
my ancestors," said R. Jonathan, in refusing to teach the Hagada to R. Samlai,
" that one ought not to teach the Hagada either to a Babylonian or to a
southern Palestinian, because they are arrogant and ignorant." The conse-
quences of the mutual dis-esteem in which each branch of students held the
other was that the Hagadists mainly occupied themselves with the Prophets,
and the Halachists with the Law. And hence the latter became more and
more Judaic, Pharisaic, Rabbinic. The seven rules of Hillel became the
thirteen rules of Ishmael, 1 and the thirty-three of Akibha, and by the intervention
of these rules almost anything might be added to or subtracted from
the veritable Law. 2 The letter of the Law thus lost its comparative simplicity
in boundless complications, until the Talmud tells us how Akibha was
seen in a vision by the astonished Moses, drawing from every horn of every
letter whole bushels of decisions. 3 Meanwhile the Hagadists were deducing
from the utterances of the Prophets a spirit which almost amounted to con-
tempt for Levitical minntise * were ; developing the Messianic tradition, and
furnishing a powerful though often wholly
unintentional assistance to the
logic of Christian exegesis. This was because the Hagadists were grasping
the spirit, while the Halachists were blindly groping amid the crumbled
fragments of the letter. It is not wonderful that the Jews got to be so jealous
of the Hagada, as betraying possible tendencies to the heresies of the minim -
i.e., the Christians that they imposed silence upon those who used certain
suspected hagadistic expressions, which in themselves were perfectly harmless.
" He who profanes holy things," says Rabbi Eliezer of Modin, in the PirJce
Abhoth, "who slights the festivals, who causes his neighbour to blush in
public, who breaks the covenant of Abraham, and discovers explanations of
the Law contrary to the Halacha, even if he knew the Law and his works
were good, would still lose his share in the life to come." 6
It is easy to understand from these interesting particulars that if the
Hagada and the Halacha were alike taught in the lecture-room of Gamaliel,
1 See Derenbourg, Palest, p. 397.
2 Even R. Tshmael, who snares with R. Akibha the title of Father of the World,
admits to having found three cases in which the Halacha was contrary to the letter of
the Pentateuch. It would not be difficult to discover very many more.
3 MenacMth, 29, 2. Isa. i. 1115; Iviii. 57; Jer. vii. 2L
* Pirke Abh6th, iii. 8 ; Gratz, ill 79,