We propose here to study the educational methods ot the Israelites historically. For this purpose it will be convenient to group the material at our disposal under three historical periods, as follows : —
i. Hebrew Education from the Conquest to THE Exile. — When the Hebrews came to settle in the valleys west of the Jordan, they found them- selves among a race or races immensely their superiors in all the arts of civilization and culture. Of this there can be no reasonable doubt, though we may doubt whether the country was so thickly studded with schools, teachers, and libraries as has recently been maintained.? In any case the troublous times of the conquest were not the most suitable for assimilating tlie higher civilization of the Canaanites. Reading and still more writing (Jg S") must rather have been the accomplishment of the few than the custom of the many. How- ever that may be, one fact of Hebrew history remains indisputal)le, namely, that throughout the long period closing with the exile, education was exclusively domestic and private. It is true that the late Jewish writings, Talmud, Targum, and Midrash — those storehouses of magnificent anachronisms — represent even the patriarchs as attending school and college, but sucli statements are merely harmless flights of fancy. In the whole range of pre-exilic literature there is no trace of any provision by public authority for either elementary or higher education. The word ' school ' occurs neither in tlie OT nor in the Apocrypha, and in the NT only of the lecture- room of a Greek rhetorician at Ephesus (Ac 19"). The explanation is that the home was the school, and the parents, in all but the highest ranks of societj', were the only teachers. The duty of reverence for and obedience to parents imposed on children by the oldest legislation (Ex 20''^), had its counter- part in the duty incumbent on the parents (and in particular on the father) to instruct their children in religion and morals. This aspect of parental responsibility is rejieateilly emphasized in tiic Book of Deuteronomy (4" 6'), 'Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittost in thine house, and when
• Quotations from Aboth will be made from 'The Authorized Dail^v Prayer-Book of the United Hebrew Congretfutions of the British Empire' (ed. Singer), as providing the most easily acoes-sible text and translation. Refereiit-es to other treatisea of the .Mishna are given ace. to the sections of Jost's edition.
f Contrast this with the statement of Ivvan Miiller ; ' Special instruction in religion was not known to either the Oreeks or thfl Romans of antiquity '(i/OTMift. d. ktats. AUrrthumgicieeeiuchaJt^ iv. p. 451 6).
1 Esp. by Sayce in Patriarchal Paleitine ipauim), and elvy where.
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thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, anil when thou risest up' (C*""" ll'" 3i2«). The special provision of Dt SI'"'", requiring the presence of the children at the reading of the law in ' the year of release,' i.e. every seventh year, can have had only a very limited application before the great calamity of tlie exile (cf. Dt 31"" with Neh 8"). In the families of the aristocracy the place of the parents, the child's natural teachers, was taken by tutors (O'jjx 2 K 10'- '). The infant Solomon, according to the simplest rendering of 2 S 12", was entrusted to the care of the prophet Nathan.
It is now impossible to form an exact estimate of the extent to which education, as tested by the ability to read and write, was common among the people. The standard of learning would naturally be liigher in the cities than in the country dis- tricts, highest of all in the neighbourhood of the ooort. Yet such facta as that Amos and Micah among the literary prophets belonged to the ranks of the people ; that Mesha, king of Moab, could count on readers for the stele commemorating his victories ; that the workmen who excavated the tunnel from the Virgin's spring to the pool of Siloam carved in the rock the manner of their work, — these facts, taken along with more than one passage of Isaiah (8' 10" 'a child may writ* them' ; cf. 29"- " the distinction between the literate and the illiterate), should make us j)ause before drawing the line of illiteracy too high m the social scale.
A single word must sutUce for the schools of the prophets (an expression with no scriptural authority), of which so much was made by scliolars of former days. All that the Scripture narrative warrants ns m holding is that in a few centres, Buch as Bethel (2 K 2>), Jericho (2»), and Gilgal (4®), men of prophetic spirit formed associations or brotherhoods (hence the name 'sons of the pro- phets ') for the purpose of stimulating their devo- tion to J" through the common life of the brother- hood. Edification, not education, was the main purpose of these so-called 'schools.'
ii. From the Exile to Simon nEN-SHETACii, e. u.C. 75. — The arrival in Jerusalem of Ezra the • ready scribe ' (n?5) in the law of Moses ( Ezr 7*) was an event of epoch-making importance in the educa- tional not less than in the reli'^ious history of the Jews. For Ezra had set his heart to sttt^ij (a-\-\h) the law {Torafi) of J" and to do it, and to teach (1?^^) in Israel statutes and judgments (Ezr 7'°). The story of Ezra's activity belongs to the genersJ history of the period. For our present purpose it is enough to recall the fact that the culmination of that activity was the acceptance by the Jewish community of the Torah, in its written form, as the regulating norm in every relation of life. From this time onwards the Jews were pre- eminently 'the people of the book.' But in order that the moral precepts of a book may be obeyed, and its ritual requirements duly observed, the book must be circulated, must be read and studied. The first step in this direction was the great assembly of which we read in Neh 8 ff. The centre of interest throughout is not the living word of a prophet, but the book of the law and the ex- position of its contents by accredited teachers (note Neh 8'- ' d'vjc, the same word as is rendered ' teacher' in 1 Ch 25" and in Kzr 8" UV). We would gladly know what measures were taken by Ezra and his associates for the continuance of the puldic instruction so auspiciously begun. Unfortunately, we have no information on this point from con- temporary records, and what a late age has to tell of the work of the so-called 'Great Svnagcjgue' belongs to the world of fahle.* There can be little