ness of heart Moses allowed you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so’ (Mt 198 || Mk). The question was one on which Jewish schools were divided, and Jesus legislates upon it in independence, indeed, of Dt 24), but in harmony with the law embodied in the creation narrative, Gn 2%, From the point of view of legalism it is impossible to say why the authority of Dt should be relative and that of Gn absolute; and the itiveness with which Christ pronounces marriage indissoluble, except by the sin which, ipso facto, annuls it, shows that He has completely tran- scended the legal standpoint. (See, further, art. MARRIAGE). The same holds of His criticism of the Sabbath law, the subject on which He came most frequently into contlict with His country- men: cf. Mt 191-15 (the disciples pinching the ears of corn; the healing of the withered hand); Lk 13°17 (the woman with a spirit of infirmity), 1416 {the dropsical man); Jn 517 (the paralytic at Bethesda) ; Jn 9 (the blind man restored to sight). Cf. Lk 6° (Ὁ ; the incident of the man working on the Sabbath). Here it is impossible to say that Jesus was hostile to the law of God, or to any ideal of the Sabbath having its rootsin the OT. But He was irreconcilably hostile to the accumulation of tradi- tional human precepts into which the prohibition of labour, in the interest of man and beast, had been expanded by the Neha ingenuity of the scribes (ef. Schiirer, GJV® ii. 470ff. [HJP τι. ii. 96f.]). He was hostile to the method of interpretation which defeated God’s purpose in giving the law, and changed a Beatie into a burden. He was espe- cially indignant that on a day which was made for man He should be forbidden to do works of humanity, by exercising His power to heal. As Son of Man, the head of the kingdom in which humanity was to come to its rights, He claimed to be Lord of the Sabbath, and to judge all statutes concerning it according to their agreement or disagreement with its humane intention. It is in connexion with conflicts of this kind that we first read of His enemies plotting His death (Mk 35): He wounded their pride in their legal holiness too deeply to be forgiven. It is one of the defects of legalism that the less the grounds of the law can be discerned—in other words, the more positive and arbitrary it is—the greater seems the merit of punctually observing it. Hence the numberless pee binone into which the fourth commandment ad been developed had a greater importance for the legally-trained conscience than the weightier matters οἱ the law ; and the assumption of free- dom toward them, as by Jesus, was regarded as the most daring impiety. How far the teaching and practice of Jesus were immediately grasped by His followers we cannot tell; there are indica- tions in the Gospel (Lk 13) that there were many prepared to appreciate them. Butif in relation to the Sabbath and to the law of marriage we can say that Jesus criticised the legalistic practice of His time by reference to the ideal enshrined in the OT Stcelé, we are on different ground when we come to consider—
(7) The attitude of Jesus to what we should call the ritual law—that part of the law and custom of the Jews which was purely positive, and in which there was really no Ean content. As far, indeed, as this was represented by the cultus of the nation, He treated it with at least silent respect. We do not know that He was ever
resent at a sacrifice, but neither do we hear that
e ever denounced sacrifice. He certainly spoke of the temple as His Father's house, and as destined to be a house of prayer for all nations; and in a flame of zeal He drove from it the traders who
made it a Sanaa tpn and aden of robbers (Mt | AS 1e temple tribute, not, indeed, | He predicted its fall, and with it the collapse of
2118). He paid t
because He was bound to do so,—on the contrary, He, and His disciples also, as the king’s children, were free from such imposts,—but to avoid offence (Mt 17%"), He did not shrink from touching the leper (Mt 8-4), being raised above the thought of ceremonial pollution; but He told him to go and show himself to the priest, and offer the gift which Moses commanded, for a testimony to them. There is a combination here of inward liberty and indifference, with a formal outward respect determined by circumstances, and _neces- sanly ceasing with them. Cf. also Lk 174. (In this connexion it may be noted that the idea of σκάνδαλον as a thing to be avoided in conduct is part of the new moral ideal of Jesus, dependent on the primacy He gives to love; we are bound to consider others—as He did, for instance, in paying the temple tax—with a consideration which we may not need ourselves; and to deny this con- sideration, and out of selfishness injure others or lead them into sin, is denounced by Him in the most passionate words, Mt 18"). But there is one point in which, according to the evanyelic tradition, Jesus completely broke not only with the practice of His time, but with the law of Moses itaelt—-the distinction, namely, between clean and unclean foods, and the observance of various ritual purifications by washing, Mk 7+, Mt 15'**. ‘The discussion here starts from the violation by His disciples of ‘the tradition of the elders.’ To this, naturally, Jesus could allow no authority; but He went further, and assailed it as a morally malignant thing which practically annulled the law of God. He appealed to Scripture (e.g. to the fifth commandment, Mk 7%) against this tradi- tion—to the law of God against the ordinance of man—precisely as the Reformers appealed to the Bible against the Church (Holtzmann, NT 7heo/. i. 141). But in explaining to the people (‘ Hear me, all of you, and understand’) the principle on which He acted, He went further still, and, as the evangelist expressly asserts, ‘made all meats clean’ (καθαρίζων πάντα τὰ βρώματα, Mk 7). In Lk 1157 the same subject is treated more from thie point of view of indifference ; it is only when the dish is filled with the proceeds of rapine that there is anything offensive in insisting on its being out- wardly (i.e. Levitically) clean; but in Lk 107 (the mission of the Seventy) there may be a reference to the more thorough view. The missionaries are to eat and drink what they are offered, with no needless scruples. This decisive breach with the law was felt to be what it was both by the opponents of Jesus and by Jesus Himself: ‘Then came the disciples and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?’ ... ‘Let them alone,’ He answered ; ‘they are blind guides; and if the blind guide the blind, both shall fall into a pit’ (Mt 1512".