The better rabbins did their best to guard against these evils. Anxious to exclude all unworthy converts, they grouped them, according to their motives, with a somewhat quaint classification :
"1. Love-proselytes, where they were drawn by the hope
of gaining the beloved one. (The story of Svllseus
and Sidonie [Josephus, A7\t. xvi, 7, § t>] is au example
of a half-finished conversion of this kind.) "2. Mau-for-womaii, or Woman -for-man proselytes,
where the husband followed the religion of the wife,
or conversely. "3. Esther-proselytes, where conformity was assumed to
escape danger, as in the original Piirim (Esth. viii,
17). "4. King's-table proselytes, who were led by the hope of
court favor and promotion, like the converts under
David and Solomon. "5. Lion-proselytes, where the conversion originated in a
superstitious dread of a divine judgment, as with the
Samaritans of 2 Kings xvii, 26''
(Gemara Ilieros. Kiddush. lxv, C; Jost, Judenth. i, 448). None of these were regarded as fit for admission within the covenant. When they met with one with whose motives they were satisfied, he was put to a yet further ordeal. He was warned that in becoming a Jew he was attaching himself to a persecuted people, that in this life he was to expect only suffering, and to look for his reward in the next. Sometimes these cautions were in their turn carried to an extreme and amounted to a policy of exclusion. A protest against them on the part of a disciple of the Great Hillel is recorded, which throws across the dreary rubbish of rabbinism the mo- mentary gleam of a noble thought. "Our wise men teach," said Simon ben-Gamaliel, " that when a heathen comes to enter into the covenant, our part is to stretch out our hand to him and to bring him under the wings of God" (Jost, Judenth. i, 447).
Another mode of meeting the difficulties of the case was characteristic of the period. Whether we may transfer to it the full formal distinction between prose- lytes of the gate and proselytes of righteousness (see below) may be doubtful enough, but we find two dis- tinct modes of thought, two distinct policies in dealing with converts. The history of Helena, queen of Adia- bene, and her son Izates, presents the two in collision with each other. They had been converted by a Jew- ish merchant, Ananias, but the queen feared lest the circumcision of her son should disquiet and alarm her subjects. Ananias assured her that it was not neces- sary. Her son might worship God, study the law, keep the commandments without it. Soon, however, a strict- er teacher came — Eleazar of Galilee. Finding Izates reading the law, he told him sternly that it was of lit- tle use to study that which he disobeyed, and so worked upon his fears that the young devotee was eager to secure the safety of which his uncircumcision bad de- prived him (Josephus, Ant. xx, 2, 5; comp. Jost, Ju- denth. i, 341). On the part of some, therefore, there was ( a disposition to dispense with what others looked upon ! as indispensable. The centurions of Luke vii (prob- ; ably) and Acts x— possibly the Hellenes of John xii. 20 and Acts xiii, 42 — are instances of men admitted on the former footing. The phrases oi otfiouivoi irpom)- \vtoi (Acts xiii. 43), oi fTf/3<>//fi;oi (xvii. 4, 17; Jo- sephus, A nt. xiv, 7, 2), aveptq ti'Xafitlc (Acts ii, 5 ; vii, 2), are often, but inaccurately, supposed to describe the same class — the proselytes of the gate (see Cremer, Worterb. der neuiest. Gracitdt, ii, 476). The probabil- ity is either that the terms were used g-enerallv of all
PROSELYTE
6G0
PROSELYTE
converts, or. if with a specific meaning, were applied to the full proselytes of righteousness (comp. a lull ex- amination of the passages in question by X. Lardner, On //>'■ Decra of Acts xv, in Works, xi. 305). The two tendencies were, at all events, at work, and the battle between them was renewed afterwards on boiler ground and on a wider scale. Ananias and Eleazar were n presented in the two parties of the Council of Jerusalem. The germ of truth had been quickened into a new life, and was emancipating itself from the old thraldom. The decrees of the council were the sol- emn assertion of the principle that believers in Christ were to stand on the tooting of proselytes of the gate, nut. df proselytes of righteousness. The teaching <>! St. Paul as to righteousness and its conditions, its depen- dence "ii faith, its independence "f circumcision, stands out in sharp, clear contrast with the teachers who taught that that rite was necessary to salvation, ami confined the term "right i-nos-" to the circumcised convert.
5. From tin- Destruction of Jerusalem downwards.— III.' teachers who carried on the rabbinical succession consoled themselves, as they saw the new order waxing and their own glory waning, by developing the decay- ing system with an almost microscopic minuteness. I hey would at least transmit to future generations the full measure of the religion of their fathers. In propor- tion as they ceased tn have any power to proselytize, they dwelt with exhaustive fulness on the question how proselytes were to be made. To this period ac- cordingly belong the rules and decisions which are often carried back to an earlier age, and which may now be conveniently discussed. The precepts of the Talmud may indicate the practices and opinions of the Jews from the second to the fifth century. They are very untrustworthy as to any earlier time.