The gradual change by which the Jews, from being an agricultural people, became a people devoted to commerce, is illustrated by many Tal- mudic passages : e.g. ' Rabbi Eleazar said. There is no worse trade than agriculture ; and Rabbi Rab adde<l. Commerce is worth all the har\'ests of the world' (Jehmnoth, 63. 1). This change, however, took place only very slowly ; the time of Christ was the transition period, and while there were many pious Jews wno did not hesitate to
* See art. "Trade and Commerce ' in Elii p. 51J>2a.
t lb.; cf. also To l'-', where a .Jew is the honoured purveyor (ij/opoKTTrt) of a foreign monarch, and his nephew is steward and accountant (1^).
engage in foreign trade, there were others who viewed it with suspicion and dislike, and some who would have nothing to do with it. The Essenes abjured trade, apparently, at least among them.selves (li.J II. viii. 4). The two things which laid a stigma upon it were (I) the extensive con- tact with foreigners which it involved, and the consequent risk of cereiiioiiial pollution ; and (2) the moral deterioration which it seemed to brinj^.
The fact that Sirach has several passages emphasizing the latter danj^er indicates the prevalent fear that, with the growth of Hellenistic influences, there was coining in a relaxation of Hebrew strictness and integrity : e.g. ' A merchant shall hardly keep himself from doing wrong, and a huckster shall not be acquitted of sin ' (Sir 2(i^) ; ' Sin will thrust itself in between buying and selling' ('27'-); 'Take not counsel with a merchant about exchange nor with a buyer about selling ' (37").
Delitzsch, indeed, thinks that it was not until about ."iOO years after Christ that the Jewish people began to show any special preference for those branches of trade which deal in work fur- nished bj' others (./ewish Artisan Life, in the time of Christ, p. 19), but the passages which he quotes api>ear to be not so much indicative of the Jew's aversion from trade, as such, as instances of the feeling that a commercial occupation is hardly com- patible with a devout life : e.g. 'Wisdom, says Rabbi Jochanan, in reference to Dt 30I-, is not in heaven, — that is to say, not to be found among the proud ; nor beyond the sea — that is to say, you will not find it among traders and travelling merchants ' (ib. and Entbin, 55a).
In the NT there is no disparagement of trade as such. A passage like Ja 4i3 'Go to now, ye that say, To-day or to- morrow we will go into this city and spend a year there and trade (iuTopiOoiMti)' is not directed against trading, but only against that commercial spirit which leaves God out of account. The passage Kev 18' i^- (based on Ezk 27) suggests, not the prevalence of an anti-trade spirit in the early Christian com- munity, but a Puritanic protest against the excessive luxury of a materialistic society.* Whatever the obscure passage Rev 1316 ' that no man should be able to buy or to sell save he that hath the mark, even the name of the beast or the number of his name,' may mean, the writer can hardly be taken to mean more than that the habits of trade were so mixed up with pagan practices that it was difficult for a Christian to be a trader without becoming stamped with the 'mark of the beast.' In this connexion it may be notc-d that Deissmann (Bible Studies. p. 241 ff.) finds a reference to seals, bearing the name of tne Roman emperor, which seem to have been necessarj' in docu- ments of a commercial nature. We ma\-, at any rate, set over against Delitzsch's assertion that ' in the whole Talmud there is scarcely a word in honour of trade,' the statement that in the NT there is no word in its dishonour.
3. Commercial morality. — From some of the passages already quoted it might be inferred that trade in the Roman Empire in the 1st cent, was particularly corrupt. Was this actually so ? It is, of course, not difficult to put together a number of instances in which the trader apjiears as a per- .son of smirched reputation. Autolycus had his parallel in Palestine. The merchants of Lydda seem to have been notorious for dishonesty (ac- cording to Pcnachim, 62J). Sirach (29''^) dwells upon the difficulty of getting loans repaid, and ujion the ready excuse of ' bad times.' Zaccha?us (hk 19'"'"), who probably farmed the revenues from the famous oal.sam-gardens of Jericho (see Jos. BJ IV. viii. 3, Ant. XIV. iv. 1 ; cf. G. A. Smith, HGHL p. 267, note), was, according to the generally received interpretation, given to un- scrupulous exaction. In the parable of the Unjust Steward (Lk 16'"*') we have a graphic jiicture of a factor whose dealings are a tissue of knavery. It is probable, too, that the publicans, who appear in the Gospels with so poor a reputation, owed this partly to a shady connexion with the traffic which passed through their hands. But it is obviously unfair to assume from such data as these that tliere was any more dishonesty among Jewish than among other traders. Herzfeld justly claims (p. 276 f. ) that, though the reproach of usury attached to the Jews of the Middle Ages, it ap- pears that among the Jews of earlier times the rate of interest was lower than among other peoples engaged in trade. The enemies of the