The words about the cleansing of cups and platters, and about the tithing of mint, anise, and cummin, certainly sound so contemptuous as to compel us to ask whether Jesus set any value what- ever upon the ceremonial side of the Law, and, in particular, upon the special casuistical precepts of the scribes. The question may be answered pro- visionally and generally : Jesus was not a Pharisee, and this means that His attitude towards many of the scribal maxims was a dissentient one ; He was
not a Judiean, but a son of the Galilsean peasantry, who knew how to evade the authority of Pharisaic doctors and lawyers, and who were, in consequence, liable to the curse merited by those who ' know not the law '(Jn 7^'); and, accordingly. He regards Him- self and His followers likewise as above tlie Phari- sees' rules about purifying. But we also find ex- plicit remonstrances against the ' traditions of the elders ' so dear to the scribes (Mk 7^- "• '^) ; He char- VOL. I.— 35
acterizes them summarily as the ' prescriptions ' (EV ' tradition ') of men (7*), thus contrasting them with the commandments of God. In tliis He evinces His independent attitude, for a genuine Pharisee could live only by the belief that the additions to and amplifications of the Law, even if devised by human teachers, were yet expressive of God's will. But Jesus goes still further, affirming positively that in their concern for these traditions the scribes reject, pervert, and even make void the commandment of God (7*- "). He gives as an ex- ample the gross case of one who evades the plain human duty of supporting his parents by the manoeuvre of dedicating to the Temple the money he might have spared for them : once the fateful word ' Corban ' is spoken, then every penny so consecrated belongs to God, and is, as sacred pro- perty, interdicted from all secular uses, and so from that of the parents. It is bad enough that a son should so act ; but that jurists and theologians iiho\x\A. permit him henceforward to turn his back upon father ahd mother, should declare his pledge to be inviolable, and refuse to ' release ' him from it, is neither more nor less than the disannulling of the Fifth Commandment.*
Now the assertion that the great moral de- mands of God's law are of more importance than any ceremonial obligations, is primarily directed only against the traditions and prescriptions of the Rabbis ; in reality, however, it is a principle which threatens the very foundations of the Mosaic system. Already in the OT we see the strained relations between prophetic piety and priestly legality — brothers again and again at variance. In the personality and preaching of Jesus the pro- phetic religion reappears with unparalleled force and clearness, and braces itself to the work of overthrowing the fabric of Levitical ceremonialism. To treat the ethical and the ritual law as of equal validity belongs to the very nature of the priestly theocracy : the moment the former is placed on a higher level the whole edifice becomes insecure. In this reference St. Mark preserves a short but pregnant saying of Jesus (7'°), viz. ' There is nothing from without the man that going into him can defile him, but the things which proceed out of the man are those which defile him.' As He is here speaking of clean and unclean meats. He says, ' Nothing going into the man,' but He might equally well say, and certamly means, ' Nothing from without the man coming to him,' i.e. coming into contact with him. But this is the reverse of what stands in the Law. For the whole complex of the Mosaic-Levitical legislation rests upon the postulate that a man is defiled by outer contact and contamination, or by partaking of certain foods, i.e. that he thereby becomes separated from God, is excluded from the sanctuary and segregated from the sacred community. Now the principle enunciated by Jesus cuts the ground from under all the particular commandments of the ceremonial law. It carries, indeed, a dissolving and explosive force. But His standpoint differs from mere rationalistic ' illuminism by having a profoundly religious basis. Jesus had so intense a conception of man's relation to God as an ethical one, that He could not tolerate the thought that God would exclude any one from His presence merely because he had touched a corpse or eaten swine's flesh. It is the evil will, tlie impure lieart, the false nature, that separate men from God.
All this, of course, is self-evident to us ; but when Jesus uttered it, and acted upon it. He found Himself at cross purposes -with the most ex- emplary personages of His generation, and com- pelled to resist the drift of an age-long tradition. He raised His voice not only against the scribes, * Cf. J. Weiss, oj). cit. i. 1, p. 124
546
ETHICS
ETFIICS
but against the very spirit of the Law they ex- pounded. Moreover, in actual practice, His bearing towards the Law is quite unconstrained. He add.s to the exceptions already conceded by the Eabbis {e.g. works of necessity on the Sabbath), and allows both Himself and His disciples a certain freedom, without taking counsel of the specialists. When challenged, He appeals to the example of David (Mk 2"-^). It is manifestly gratifying to the narrator that Jesus was able to justify His action so adroitly by the methods of Rabbinical exposition. But tliis is only an ex post facto justification, of which the disciples certainly were not thinking as they plucked the com ; they had acted witlxout deliberation, simply availing them- selves of the freedom whicli their fellowship with Jesus had made a matter of course. We learn the true meaning of Jesus from the twofold declaration subjoined by St. Mark (2'-"-). Doubtless wliat the writer means is that the 'Son of man,' i.e. tlie Messiah, is Lord of the Sabbath, and can absolve His disciples from its observance ; but originally the saying must have run thus : ' Man has full power also over the Sabbath,' wliicli, again, is of essentially the same tenor as the other, viz. ' the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sab- bath.'* This saying, too, is more than an article in a confession ; it is really a declaration of war against Mosaisra. Scribe and doctor regard tlie Law as an end in itself, and obedience to it as the final purpose of human life, even if such obedience involve sacrifice, and indeed the surrender of life itself. But the assertion of Jesus tliat the Law is given for man's sake, as something designed for his benefit, and the inference that he is free from it whenever its observance conflicts with liis welfare, proceed from an entirely different point of view, and have far-reaching implications. The rigid and doctrinaire aspect of tlie Law is thus cancelled ; its behests are viewed as means for the realization of God's purposes of love towards men. All this, however, shows but the birth-struggle of an entirely new religious conception, destined in its further growth to do away altogether with the Law rt,9 Intij. A similar instance is the declaration (Mk IC-) that the Mosaic regulation regarding divorce was a concession to the Israelites' hardness of heart, and that it stands in antitliesis to the statute originally promulgated in Paradise, wliich alone is the will of God and the precedent for man. Here tlie Mosaic ordinance is represented as something adventitious, as merely marking a stage meant to be left behind.