(d) Jesus' attitude to current modes of interpre- tation.— The teaching of Jesus was recognized by His contemporaries as being diflerent in character from that of the scribes ; yet He employed, to some extent, the same methods. He based Ilis teaching upon that of the OT, which He interpreted not in their manner, but on authoritative lines of His own. The objections that He urged against the current modes of interpretation were that thej- hid under an accumulation of worthless tradition the real truths which the Divine word was designed to teach ; while His own method, in the first place, made clear the meaning of the original utterance ; and, secondly, interpreted it in a clearer and fuller manner to those whom He addressed. His method of dealing with current interpretation can best be studied in the records of His controversies with His opponents. For example, they based their teachings on divorce on the permission given in the Law of Moses ; Jesus goes behind it to the narrative of the Creation, and shows how husband
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and wife were destined to be one higher and dis- tinct unity from the very beginning. Tliis note of idealism and spirituality is manifest in all our Lord's teaching, and marks it out as distinct from the verbal trilling of His contemporaries. He was not afraid to tell some of those who prided themselves on the subtlety of their arguments that they were in error, and unable to understand those very Scriptures which they professed to interpret (Mt 22-9, Mk 12-2J- 27). In His judgment many of those who were the professional interpreters of Scripture were doing more harm than good by their methods. ' Ye have made void the word (or law) of God because of your tradition ' (Mt 15^, Mk 7^^), He said, meaning that what they considered to be an im- provement upon the original commandment was so contrary to its spirit as absolutely to make of none effect its purpose. But in the case of His own teaching, however revolutionary it might at first sight appear, He claimed that it constituted a fulfilment of the Law ; and not only so, but He asserted that loyal obedience to the command- ments, both in act and precept, would be the ground of advancement in the Kingdom of heaven (Mt 5^^- ^"j. There is even a stronger passage in the same Gospel, where our Lord is represented as enjoining upon His disciples observance of all the precepts taught by the scribes and Pharisees, since they are the legitimate successors of Moses (Mt 23^) ; but the whole passage in which the words occur shows considerable traces of the influence of later ideas, and can scarcely be pressed into the service of a definite statement of Christ's own personal teaching. There may be in it a trace of Jewish prejudice in favour of the letter of the Law ; but the immediate context, in which the Pharisees are most severely criticised, proves that the prejudice, if it existed at all in the mind of the writer, cannot have gone very deep, and we may be justihed in seeing in the words at least an accurate reflexion of the teaching of Jesus in this matter. If we may so regaid it, it is then clear that He had the very highest estimate of the spiritual and ethical teaching of the OT, and ob- jected only to such interpretation of it as obscured its meaning or altered its emphasis.
(e) We now turn to the very important and some- what difficult section of our subject wdiich deals with Christ's discussion or use of special passages in the OT. The first passage in which we meet this is in the narrative of the Temptation. This is, of course, a pictorial representation of an in- ward struggle, which must have been related to His disciples in the parabolic form in which we now possess the story. But it is nevertheless extremely important to find Him reverting time and again to that one book in the OT (Deut.) which we have already discovered was one of His favourites. In its higliest spiritual teaching He seems to have found the best antidote against the poison of the evil suggestions that reached Him from the current conception as to the Messianic Kingdom preva- lent among His contemporaries, and which also attected even the inner circle of His disciples. In following the course of the First Gospel, we next come upon the long series of teachings contained in the so-called ' Sermon on the Mount,' and there (5P) the first passage to be considered is that which consists of a condemnation of quotations from Ex. and Deut. where the old Law had spoken of killing. Jesus interprets its meaning as signi- fying an attitude of the inward temper rather than an outward act, and, according to the form in Avhich the saying has reached us, increases the severity of the judgment in proportion to the con- tempt shown in the expression of inward hatred used against a brother. Here again, however, the whole nature of the expressions employed
seems to point toward a colouring of this original saying under the influence of a later Christian tradition ; and it is probably a narrowed and in- tensified form of some simpler word of Jesus which the early Christian community edited in such a way as to contain a severe and solemn warning against careless speech — a fault which, as is evident both from the Gospels and the Ejnstle of James (3^'''^ 4"- ^2)^ ^vas sadly prevalent. In the same passage of Mt. (5^^) we have the first reference to Gehenna, a word which occurs frequently in the records of our Lord's teaching. This name for the jjlace of pun- ishment of the dead had become familiar in the literature of later Judaism, meeting us frequently, for instance, in the Book of Enoch (see 27" 84^ 90^''). A similar elevation and intensification of the law of purity is found in w.-''-^'^. In Mt 5^^ we have quotations from Num. and Deut. with reference to false swearing. Here, in interpreting the passage, Jesus goes much further than the precept of the older Law, and inculcates such jjerfect truthfulness as not to necessitate any form of oath. Again we are reminded of the Epistle of James (5'^), so that we feel ourselves in the atmo- sphere of the early Christian assemblies. But there is nothing to prevent the statement, sub- stantially as we find it, being attributed to Jesus. Such teaching had already been given in Judaism, and a close parallel is found in Sir 23''"", in the course of which we read : ' Accustom not thy mouth to an oath, and be not accustomed to the naming of the Holy One. A man of many oaths shall be filled with iniquity, and the scourge shall not depart from his house.' In the book of the Slav- onic Enoch also (48^) the sons of Enoch are taught not to swear bj' heaven, by earth, or by any other creature. The next citation deals with the law of retaliation (v.^*), and here again the interpreter goes even further, and practically reverses the theory of the OT. In place of exacting an equiva- lent for any injury. He definitely inculcates the principle of rendering voluntary service where unreasonable exaction has already been practised. To the next quotation (v.'*^) no direct parallel can be discovered, the nearest equivalent to the senti- ment, ' Hate thine enemy,' being Dt 23* ' Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days for ever ' ; so that we are compelled to assume that the form of the word here quoted by Jesus either represents some traditional form of the Law which has not been otherwise preserved, or that it embodies in a succinct form an idea that had hardened itself into ordinary practice.