The life and work of St. Paul

702 A.PPKITDIX.
Talmud, and which IB still so prevalent among Oriental Jews, as also among Mohammedans,
1 that they never allow their women to be unveiled in public lest the Shedim, or
evil spirits, should injure them and others. 2 To this very day, for this very reason,
Jewish women in some Eastern cities wear an inconceivably hideous headdress, called
the khalebt, so managed as to entirely conceal the hair. It exposes them to derision and
inconvenience, but is worn as a religious duty, " because of the spirits."
Again, in Rom. iv. 5, 13, Paul evidently accepts the tradition, also referred to by St.
Stephen, that Abraham had been an uncircumcised idolater when he first obeyed the call
of God, and that he then received a promise unknown to the text of "
Scripture that
he should be the heir of the world." 3 In Bom. ix. 9 it has been supposed, from the form
of his quotation, that he is alluding to the Rabbinic notion that Isaac was created in the
womb by a fiat of God ; in Gal. iv. 29 to the Hagadah that Ishmael not only laughed,
but jeered, insulted, and mis-treated Isaac 4
; and in 2 Cor. xL 14 to the notion that the
angel who wrestled with Jacob was an evil angel assuming the semblance of an Angel of
Light. These three latter instances are slight and dubious ; but there is a remarkable
allusion to the smitten rock in the wilderness, which in 1 Cor. x. 4 is called " a spiritual
following rock." The expression can have but one meaning. Among the many marvellous
fancies which have been evolved from the thoughts of Jewish teachers, occupied for
centuries in the adoring and exclusive study of their sacred books, was one to which they
repeatedly recur, that the rock, from which the water flowed, was round and like &
swarm of bees, and rolled itself up and went with them in their journeys. "When the
Tabernacle was pitched, the rock came and settled in its vestibule. Then came the
princes, and standing near it exclaimed, "Spring up, O well; sing ye unto 5
it," and it
sprang up. How are we to regard these strange legends ? Can we suppose that wise and
sensible Rabbis like Hillel and Gamaliel took them literally? There is no ground what-
ever for supposing indeed, it is essentially impossible that any one could have accepted,
au pied de la Icttre, all the fables of the Talmud, which are in many instances both
senseless and contradictory. Many of them were doubtless regarded as mere plays of
pious fancy mere ingenious exercises of loving inference. Others were only an Oriental
way of suggesting mystic truths were, in fact, intentional allegories. Others, in their
broad outlines, were national traditions, which may often have corresponded with fact,
and which, at any rate, had passed into general and unquestioned credence in ages little
troubled by the spirit of historical criticism. 6 Though St. Paul might quite naturally
glance at, allude to, or even make use of some of these latter, it would be an utter
mistake to assume that he necessarily attached to them any objective importance. If he
alludes to the simplest and most reasonable of them, he does so ornamentally, inci-
dentally, illustratively, and might in all probability have attributed to them no value
1 Bee the very remarkable story of Khadijah, who discovers that it is really Gabriel who has
appeared to Mohammed by his flying away directly she takes off her veil, " knowing from Wai-oka
that a good angel must fly before the face of an unveiled woman" (Weil, Mahomed, 48). (See Dean
Stanley's exhaustive note, Cor. p. 187.)
3 "
See BeracMth, t. 6, 1 : Abba Benjamin says that if we had been suffered to see them, no one
would stand before the hurtful demons. Rav Huna that each of us has 1,000 at his left aud 10,000
at his right hand (Ps. xcl 7),"&c. &c. The reason why Solomon's bed was guarded by sixty valiant
men with drawn swords was " because of fear in the night " (Cant iii "
7, 8). Walk not alone at
night, because Egrath, daughter of Machlath, walks about she and 180,000 destroying angels, and
every one of them individually has pel-mission to destroy " (Pesachtm, 112, 2). They are called
ruchM, shedim, l-ilin, tiharim,, ftc. (Hamburger, .. " Gespenster "). The only other view of the
passage which seems to me even possible (historically) is that of St Chrysostom, " because good
angels present at Christian worship rejoice to see all thiugs done decently and in good order."
Rom. iv. :18. Of. Josh. xxiv. 15.
* Sanhedr. t s
89, 2.
Num. xxL 17.
s The Rabbis themselves draw a distinction between passages which are to be accepted literally
in 'Db) and those which are meant to be " hyperbolical," in ordinary Oriental fashion ('Nin Vf>
.nd, Antt. Hebr., p. 140). It must further be remembered that much of the Talmud consists of
cryptographs which designedly concealed meanings ^wravra ovvtrofcrtr from "persecutors" aud
heretics." Space prevents any further treatment of these subjects hew, but I may refer those who
are interested in them to my papers on the Halaclm and the Hagada, Talmudic cryptographs, &c., in
the Sxpofitor for 1877.