In his famous article on the Talmud {Qu. Review, Oct. 1867), the late Emanuel Deutsch pronounced a warm panegyric on ' the chieflj' Pharisaic masters of the Mishnic period ' for their ' wisdom, piety, kindness, and high and noble courage ' {Literary Remains, 29). C. G. Montefiore {Hibbert Joxirnal, Jan. 1903) has called attention to the ' new and large material, so interest- ing, so counter to current conceptions and verdicts,' produced by Schechter, ' the foremost Rabbinic scholar of his age,' in his articles in the JQR (1894-1900). But ' Schechter confesses that the view he has to give of Rabbinical religion presents a blank at the important period ' — the time of Christ. ' We are driven back, therefore, on the Gospels.* . . . The evidence they afford appears irresistible . . . and an appeal to the principles of the religion as set forth in the OT and in the Mishnah cannot prevail to discredit the facts there recorded ' (Menzies, Hibbert Journal, July, 1903). There is thus no reasonable ground for doubt that during our Lord's lite on earth the scribes and Pharisees were immersed in that externalism and religious affectation which He so vividly depicted ; and it was their implacable hostility to His spiritual teaching, begun at a very early period in His ministry (Mk 36), that in the end brought about His crucifixion.
Mk 1421 (II Mt 2624, Lk 22^2) oval Si ry avdpibTrip eKeivip 5i ov 0 vios tov avOpdnrov irapaSldorai ; Lk. has Tr\r]v oval, bringing out with emphasis the responsi- bility of Judas, who was free to act, notwithstand- ing the rb wpifffiivov. This, which is perhaps the saddest sentence in the Gospels, was spoken with- out vindictiveness, although it undoubtedly reveals that our Lord was wounded to the quick by the treachery of Judas. The eKelv(^ seems to set him finally outside the circle of the disciples (cf. West- cott on Jn 132''). But this Woe is not an impreca- tion like Ps 109. It is not the devoting of Judas to destruction. Similarly the words which follow, KoKbv avT(^ el ovk iyevvridr) 6 dvdpwTros eKeivos, are ' not to be pressed with logical rigoar' (Meyer), but are to be understood as meaning, ' Better not to have lived at all than to have lived to betray the Son of Man.' The whole saying witnesses to the anguish that our Lord felt on account of the perfidy of this false friend (cf. Ps 4P, Jn 131"^); and we can sym- pathize with Keim when he says (Jesus of Nazara, V. 286) that we should have to greet it as the removal of a hundred-pound weight from the heart of Christendom if the treachery of Judas could be proved to have had no existence. But this is as impossible as to remove the burden, ' Tiberio im- peritante, supplicio adfectus erat,' from the heart of mankind.
There still remain the four Woes which in Lk 024-26 a^j.g gg(. Q^gj. against the four Beatitudes in
* Ch. 7 of the Assumption of Moses (not later than a.d. 30), which has been supposed to refer to the Pharisees (Hastings' DB, Extra Vol. 53*), is more probably a description of the Sadducees (Charles, Eneyc. Bibl. i. 236).
vv. 20-23. Their authenticity, as well as that of the Beatitudes in their Lukan form, is called in ques- tion by many distinguished scholars (Hastings' DB, Ext. Vol. 16 ; Encyc. Bibl. iv. 4383), but on grounds that are very far from convincing. The objection taken to the Woes from their being omitted in Mt. is not of much weight. The data for determining the precise relation between the sermons in Mt. and Lk. are wanting. Each of the writers may have had before him a different report of the same Sermon ; or there may have been two similar but different Sermons, reported in two distinct documents, of which the one was used by Mt. and the other by Luke. In either case, the omission of the Woes in Mt. would be sufficiently accounted for (cf. Sanday, Expositor, 1891 (i. ), 31 1 If. ; Loisy, Le Discours sur la Montague, quoted in Expositor, 1904 {iL), lOS). The external form in which the Woes (and also the Beatitudes) are set forth illustrates our Lord's method of teaching ' by aiming at the greatest clearness in the briefest compass' (Wendt, Teaching, i. 130, 134 ; cf. ii. 68) ; the characteristics stated were comprehensive and significant enough to enable His hearers to under- stand who were the persons intended. When He began by saying, ' Blessed are ye poor : for yours is the kingdom of God,' He gave His hearers the key to the meaning of the other utterances which followed. For ' the poor ' (the 'dniyyim) was a term that had long had an ethical and spiritual connota- tion (cf. Driver, art. ' Poor ' in Hastings' DB iv. 19, 20; Harnack, What is Christianity? 92); and this would prevent our Lord's utterances from being interpreted in a materialistic sense. See artt. Ebionism, Poor, Poverty, Wealth.
In our opinion it is more probable that the Woes are authentic than that they are inferences from our Lord's teaching (Bruce, Kingdom of God, 10), or that they ' arose in consequence of the affliction of the persecuted Christians' (Meyer, Com. on Lk., p. 55), or that they 'were constructed for the purpose of strengthening and interpreting the Beatitudes, after the model of Dt 2T^^^-, Is 5^«- ' (Holtzmann, Hand-Commentar, 104). In view of the social conditions that exist at the present day, can it be said that their admonition is unneeded, or that they are not still living utterances? See al.so artt. Beatitude and Sermon on the Mount ; and cf. Moulton, art. ' Synoptic Studies ' in Expositor for August 1906.