[593] Even their recorded fundamental principles bear this out. That of Shemajah was: Love labour, hate lordship, and do not push forward to the authorities.' That of Abtalion was: Ye sages, be careful in your words, lest perchance ye incur banishment, and are exiled to a place of bad waters, and the disciples who follow you drink of them and die, and so in the end the name of God be profaned.'
[594] On Hillel and Shammai see the article in Herzog's Real-Encyklop.; that in Hamburger's; Delitzsch, Jesus u. Hillel. and books on Jewish history generally.
[595] Eduj. 1. 4.
[596] A number of points on which the ordinances of Hillel were more severe than those of Shammai are enumerated in Eduj. iv. 1-12; v. 1-4; Ber. 36 a, end. Comp. also Ber. R. 1.
[597] Jer. Ber. 3 b, lines 3 and 2 from bottom.
[598] Ber. R. 98.
[599] St.Matt. ii. 4.
[600] On the chronology of the life of Hillel &c., see also Schmilg, Ueb. d. Entsteh. &c. der Megillath Taanith, especially p. 34. Hillel is said to have become Chief of the Sanhedrin in 30 b.c., and to have held the office for forty years. These numbers, however, are no doubt somewhat exaggerated.
[601] Jer. Kethub. 35 c; Kethub. 104 b.
[602] The police laws of the Rabbis might well serve us as a model for all similar legislation.
[603] At the same time I can scarcely agree with Delitzsch and others, that this was the dialect called Sursi. The latter was rather Syriac. Comp. Levy, ad voc.
[604] Professor Roberts has advocated, with great ingenuity, the view that Christ and His Apostles used the Greek language. See especially his Discussions on the Gospels.' The Roman Catholic Church sometimes maintained, that Jesus and His disciples spoke Latin, and in 1822 a work appeared by Black to prove that the N.T. Greek showed a Latin origin.
[605] For a full statement of the arguments on this subject we refer the student to Böhl, Forsch. n. e. Volksbibel z. Zeit Jesu, pp. 4-28; to the latter work by the same writer (Aittestam. Citate im N. Test.); to a very interesting article by Professor Delitzsch in the Daheim' for 1874 (No. 27); to Buxtorf, sub Gelil; to J. D. Goldberg, The Language of Christ'; but especially to F. de Rossi, Della lingua prop. di Cristo (Parma 1772).
[606] Thus Hillel was said to have hired a horse, and even an outrunner, for a decayed rich man.
[607] Bemid. R. 14; ed. Warsh. p. 59 a.
[608] Baba K.
[609] Jer.Shabb. 7 d.
[610] Shabb. 149 a.
[611] Kel. xiv. 6.
[612] Tos. Shabb. xiii. ed. Zuckerm. p. 130.
[613] Shabb. x. 4.
[614] Shabb. 19 a.
[615] Rosh haSh. 9 b.
[616] Tos. Shabb. xviii.
[617] Shabb. 62 b.
[618] Comp. Shabb. 62 b, last line and first of 63 a.
[619] Kel. xxiv. 16; xxviii. 9.
[620] On ch. iv 2.
[621] See the Introduction to the Midrash on Lamentations. But some of the descriptions are so painful - even blasphemous - that we do not venture on quotation.
[622] Meg. 15 a. __________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER III. THE ANNUNCIATION OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST
(St. Luke i. 5-25.)
It was the time of the Morning Sacrifice. [623] As the massive Temple gates slowly swung on their hinges, a three-fold blast from the silver trumpets of the Priests seemed to waken the City, as with the Voice of God, to the life of another day. As its echoes came in the still air across the cleft of the Tyropoeon, up the slopes of the Upper City, down the busy quarters below, or away to the new suburb beyond, they must, if but for a moment, have brought holier thoughts to all. For, did it not seem to link the present to the past and the future, as with the golden chain of promises that bound the Holy City to the Jerusalem that was above, which in type had already, and in reality would soon descend from heaven? Patriot, saint, or stranger, he could not have heard it unmoved, as thrice the summons from within the Temple-gates rose and fell.