The life and work of St. Paul

THE HEBOD3 IN THE ACTS. 735
we shall see that the part he had to play was not always an easy one, and even led to
serious complications.
L The Talmud relates that on one occasion, at a festival, a lizard was found in the
royal kitchen. It appeared to be dead, and if so the whole banquet would have become
ceremonially unclean. The king referred the question to the queen, and the queen to
Eabban Gamaliel. He asked whether it had been found in a warm or a cold place. "In a
warm place," they said. "Then pour cold water over it." They did so. The lizard
revived, and the banquet was pronounced clean. So that, the writer complacently adds,
the fortune of the entire festival depended ultimately on Eabban Gamaliel. 1
ii. The other story is more serious. It appears that at a certain Passover the king
and queen were informed by their attendants that two kinds of victims a lamb and a
kid either of which was legal had been killed for them, and they were in doubt as to
which of the two was to be regarded as preferable. The king, who considered that the
kid was preferable, and was less devoted to the Pharisees than his wife, sent to ask the
high priest Issachar of Kephar-Barcha'i, thinking that since he daily sacrificed victims,
he would be sure to know. Issachar, who was of the same haughty, violent, luxurious
temperament as all the numerous Sadducean high priests of the day, made a most contemptuous
gesture in the king's face, and said that, if the kid was preferable, the lamb
would not have been ordained for use in the daily sacrifice. Indignant at his rudeness,
the king ordered his right hand to be cut off. Issachar, however, bribed the executioner
and got him to cut off the left hand. The king, on discovering the fraud, had the right
hand cut off also. 1 It is thus that the story runs in the Pesachlm, and further on it is
said that when the doubt arose the king sent to the queen, and the queen to the Rabban
Gamaliel, who gave the perfectly sensible answer that as either victim was legal, and as
the king and queen had been perfectly indifferent in giving the order for the Paschal
yktims to be slain, they could eat of the one which had been first killed. 3
As this story was not very creditable to Agrippa I., we find a sufficient reason tor the
ilence of Josephus in passing over the name of Issachar in his notices of the High
Priests. 4 His was not a name which could have sounded very agreeable in the ears of
Agrippa II. The elder Agrippa seems to have been tempted in this instance into a
violence which was not unnatural in one who had lived in the court of Tiberius, but
which was a rude interruption of his plan of pleasing the priestly party, while Cypros
took the Pharisees under he. special patronage. Issachar seems to have come between
Theophilus, son of Hanan, and Simon, son of Kanthera the Boethusian. 5 Whatever may
have been the tendencies of Cypros, and his own proclivities, it was important to
Agrippa that he should retain the support of the sacerdotal aristocrats ; and they were
well pleased to enjoy, in rapid succession, and as the appanage of half-a-dozen the burdensome dignity of Aaron's successor.
families,
The Pharisees, on the other hand, recounted with pleasure the fact that no sooner
had Agrippa arrived at Jerusalem than he caused to be suspended on the columns of the
oulam, or Temple portico, the chain of massive gold which he had received from Gaius as
6 that he was most munificent in his presents to
an indemnification for his captivity ;
the nation ; that he was a daily attendant at the Temple sacrifice ; that he had called
the attention of the Legate Petronius to the decrees of Claudius in favour of Jewish
privileges, and had thereby procured the reprimand and punishment of the inhabitants
i
PesaeMm, t. 88, 2.
*
Pesachim, t 57, 1. In KeriUth, t 28, 2, it is told with some variations, and the king Is called
Jannaeus. It is, however, a fashion of the Talmud to give this name to Asmonsean kings (Deren-
,
iDourg, p. 211). May this wild story have been suggested by the indignation of the Jews against the
first High Priest who wore gloves to prevent his hands from being soiled ?
s Id. 88 ft. When I was present at the Samaritan passover on the summit of Mount Gerizim,
ix lambs and one kid were sacrificed. * Antt. xx. 10, 1.
Herod the Great had married a daughter of Boethus.
MiddOth, ill. 7. Josephus (Antt, xix. 9, 1) says that it wa huny " OTCT the treasury."