Hillel remained to the day of his death as poor as in his j'outh (Geiger. loc. cif.). The teaching of Hillel showed some capacity for wider thoughts. His personal char- acter was more lovable and attractive. While on the one side he taught from a mind well stored with the traditions of the elders, he was, on the other, anything but a slavish follower of those traditions. He was the first to lay down principles for an equitable construction of the law with a dialectic precision which seems almost to imply a Greek culture (Jost, i, 257). When the let- ter of a law, as e. g. that of the year of release, was no longer suited to the times, and was working, so far as it was kept at all, only for evil, he suggested an interpre- tation which met the difficulty or practically set it aside. His teaching as to divorce was in like manner an adap- tation to the temper of the age. It was lawful for a man to put away his wife for any cause of disfavor, even for so slight an offence as that of spoiling his dinner by her bad cooking (Geiger, loc. cil.). The genial charac- ter of the man comes out in some of his sayings, which remind us of the tone of Jesus the son of Sirach, and present some faint approximations to a higher teaching: "Trust not thyself to the day of thy death." "Judge not tliy neighbor till thou art in his place." "Leave nothing dark and obscure, saying to thyself, I will ex- plain it when I have time ; for how knowest thou wheth- er the time will come?" (comp. James iv, 13-15). "He who gains a good name, gains it for himself; but he who gains a knowledge of the law, gains everlasting life" (comp. John v, 39; Aboth, ii, 5-8). In one memorable rule we find the nearest approach that had as yet been made to the great commandment of the Gospel: "Do nothing to thy neighbor that thou wouldcst not that he should do to thee." The contrast showed itself in the conduct of the followers not less than in the teachers. The disciples of Shammai were conspicuous for their fierceness, appealed to popular passions, used the sword to decide their controversies. Out of that school grew the party of the Zealots, fierce, fanatical, vindictive, the political bigots of Pharisaism (Jost, i, 267-269). Those of Hillel were, like their master (comp. e. g. the advice of Gamaliel, Acts v, 34-42), cautious, gentle, tolerant, unwilling to make enemies, content to let things take their course. One school resisted, the other was dis- posed to foster, the study of Greek literature. One sought to impose upon the proselyte from heathenism the fidl burden of the law, the other that he should be treated with some sympathy and indulgence. See Proselvtk. One subject of debate between the schools exhibits the contrast as going deeper than these ques- tions, touching upon the great problems of the universe. " Was the state of man so full of misery that it would have been better for him never to have been? Or was this life, with all its suffering, still the gift of God, to be valued and used as a training fur something higher than itself?" The school of Shammai took, as might be ex- pected, the darker, that of Hillel the brighter and the wiser, view (Jost, i, 264),
Outwardlj' the teaching of our Lord must have ap- peared to men different in many ways from both. While they repeated the traditions of the elders, he "spake as one having authority," " not as the scribes" (Matt, vii, 29; comp. the constantly recurring "I say unto you"). While they confined their teaching to the class of scholars, he "had compassion on the multitudes" (ix, 36). While they were to be found only in the coun- cil or in their schools, he journeyed through the cities an<l villages (iv, 23 ; ix, 35 ; etc.). While they spoke of the kingdom of (iod vaguely, as a thing far off, he ]iro- elaimed that it had already come nigh to men (iv, 17), But, in most of the points at issue between the two par- ties, he must have appeared in direct antagonism to the school of Shammai, in sympathy with that of Hillel. In the questions that gathered round the law of the Sab- bath (xii, 1-14; 2 John v, 1-16; etc.) and the idea of puri- ty (Matt. XV, 1-11, and its parallels), this was obviously the case. Even in the controversy about divorce, while
SCRIBES, JEWISH
473
SCRIBES, JEWISH
his chief work was to assert the truth, which the dispu- tants on both sides were losing sight of, he recognised, it must be remembered, the rule of Ilillel as being a true interpretation of the law (xix, 8). When he summed up the great commandment in which the law and the prophets were fultilled, he reproduced and ennobled the precept which had been given by that teacher to his disciples (vii, 12; xxii, 34-40). So far, on the other hand, as the temper of the Hillel school was one of mere adaptation to the feeling of the people, cleaving to tra- dition, wanting in the intuition of a higher life, the teaching of Christ must have been felt as unsparingly condemning it.