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tenance to a grossly selfish ethical theory; that he is perfectly consistent with himself, and does not fall below his usual lofty spiritual tone. Dr. Hooykaas says, truly enough, that there is a vast difference between working for an extrinsic reward and working for a reward which is inherent in the task itself. And it was this latter which was all the apostle wished for even in the passage before us. "To see of the travail of his soul"— that was his aim, that was his reward. Is it the mark of a man of a low and mercenary spirit, to be miserable and despairing when he finds his life has been all a mistake? Do we reproach St. Paul because he felt he would be utterly wretched if the cares and dangers which were already furrowing his brow and blanching his hair had been undergone for nought? Do we think that he ought to have had a light heart in the reflection that he had been encircling his followers with a halo of mystical illusion; that while he had foolishly conceived he was pouring upon them the full-flooded splendour of the eternal glory, they had simply been receiving the exhalations of earth tinted with the glowing colour of his fervid imagination? Surely not. Is it not rather an evidence of his moral intensity that at the very suspicion of the overturning of his system-a system which he knew by a blessed experience to be able to save the soul-he should be blinded with grief, overwhelmed with despair? Surely it was only natural, it was only right, that he should say to his followers if he felt his faith in God and Christ waning: "I have been deceived; I have lost my clue. Not Jesus of Nazareth, but Epicurus, seems to have solved the painful riddle of the earth.' The worldlings, after all, are right. Follow me no longer. Obey the behests of your own hearts, and enjoy the sweets of a mere earthly existence. If there be no other than this visible world for which you are to live, I have no message: for you."

ANDREW MILLER.

A CONTROVERSY ON THE TALMUD.

AN interesting and instructive controversy on the Talmud

Α

has recently taken place in Holland between Professor Oort, of Leiden, and Rabbi Tal, of Amsterdam. The former. had contributed an article to a popular Dutch journal (Eigen

Haard, 1880, No. 1), in illustration of a picture by de Haan, in which he gave a short account of the Talmud, with specimens of Talmudic reasoning. Rabbi Tal, disliking the tone of this article, and detecting certain inaccuracies in it, made a violent attack upon Dr. Oort, which led to the prolonged controversy to which we allude.*

Rabbi Tal's main thesis is that the ethical system of the Talmud is identical with that of the Gospel, and that any discredit thrown upon the former necessarily falls upon the latter also, and his most important contribution to the controversy is contained in his elaborate survey of Matthew v., with citations of Talmudic parallels to every verse. Many interesting or beautiful passages have been gathered by Rabbi Tal into his collection, and together with a number of familiar citations, we find others that are probably not generally known to Christians. We have, for instance, the following touching legend: On the night before the crossing of the Red Sea "the angels wished to raise a song of triumph over the deliverance God was about to send to Israel. But the Eternal said, 'What! so many of My creatures are to be drowned in the sea, and you will raise a song g!" The following is cited in connection with Matt. v. 21-26: "The first temple was wasted because Israel was corrupted by idolatry, murder, and inchastity. But why was the second temple destroyed? Did not men live after the laws of God, fulfil their religious duties, and even give alms to the poor? Why, then? Because, in spite of all this not love dwelt in their hearts, but hate. This shows us that to cherish hate against one's brother is reckoned as great a misdeed as idolatry, murder, and inchastity." Of alleged verbal coincidences, perhaps the most remarkable is "that he who makes peace is called a son of God." But when taken in the mass Rabbi Tal's quotations appear to be very far from vindicating his thesis: That the main lines of all developed systems of religious ethics must have much in common; that all alike will insist on honesty, on the forgiveness of private injuries, on chastity, and so forth, may be taken for granted. But when we inquire into the spirit in which these general principles were applied and

* Rabbi Tal in Israel's Niewsbode, Jan. 30, Feb. 6, 13, 1880; and in a pamphlet, Een blik in Talmud en Evangelie, Amsterdam, 1881; Dr. Oort in de Gids, 1880, No.4; and in a pamphlet, Evangelie en Talmud, uit het oogpunt der zedelijkheid vergeleken (Gospel and Talmud compared from the ethical standpoint). Leiden, 1881.

worked out, Professor Tal's own pamphlet gives us striking proofs that the spirit of the Talmud is legal and traditional in the highest degree, and in so far opposed to the spirit of the Gospel. We can hardly restrain a smile at the naïveté of Rabbi Tal's citation of the following sentiment amongst the parallels to Matthew v. 6-(Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.) "He whose good deeds exceed his evil deeds, even by one, to him shall it be well; his days shall be lengthened, and at last he shall obtain eternal blessedness." Again, the following story furnishes an interesting illustration of its better known companion, in which Hillel declares the "golden rule" (in its negative form) to be the "whole law"-" A heathen came to Shammai and said to him, 'I want to be a Jew, but only to believe in the written, and not in the traditional, law.' Shammai chased him out of the house with words of wrath. The heathen went to Hillel with the same proposal. Very good,' said Hillel, I will accept you.' The first day Hillel taught him the Hebrew letters. The next day Hillel said the letters in the wrong order. That isn't right,' said the heathen. You taught me differently yesterday.'

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Well then,' said Hillel, if you trust me in my way of teaching you to read the written law according to fixed rules why will you not trust me when I teach you to interpret the law according to the fixed rules of the oral tradition?'" We may remind our readers that Hillel was the inventor or systematiser of a wonderfully elaborate method of Scriptural interpretation, which enabled the Rabbis to prove anything they liked from Scripture.

Dr. Oort's thesis is as follows:-"The morality of the Gospel is in many respects diametrically opposed to that of the Talmud. Not only is the former far purer and more exalted than the latter, but their characters are so diverse that if a man is to understand and comply with the demands of Jesus he must shake himself entirely free from the morality of the Talmud." Dr. Oort defends this position w great vigour and penetration, and carries the controversy into a region where the precepts and illustrations of morality are shown in due subordination to the spirit and principles that underlie them. The comparison of Gospel and Talmud cannot be fairly made on the strength of selected "parallels." But perhaps the most noteworthy portion of Dr. Oort's pamphlet will be found in his examination of some of the alleged parables themselves. The results he gives.

us serve to impress upon our minds the extreme caution with which we should receive statements we are most of us quite unable to check concerning the Talmud and its contents. For instance, Rabbi Tal cites as a parallel to Matt. v. 33-37 (the prohibition of oaths) the following story from the Talmud:-"Once, in a time of famine, a man gave a golden denarius to a widow to keep for him. She put it into her meal-measure, and it got into the meal, and finally into a loaf which the widow gave away to a poor man. After a time the owner came and asked for the coin, and, of course, it could not be found. Then the widow cried, May the poison of death strike one of my children if I have had any profit from your piece of gold.' A few days afterwards one of her children died. When the Scribes heard of this they said, 'See! so heavily is he punished who adds oaths to his assurances, even if they are perfectly true. How stern, then, shall the penalty be of him who swears falsely?” Here Rabbi Tal breaks off. But Dr. Oort corrects and continues his translation, by a reference to the original, thus:-"If it goes thus with him who swears in good faith, how much more to him who swears deceitfully.' Why [was she punished]? She was punished because she had profited by the space occupied by the coin." That is to say, she had more meal left for her own use than she would have had if the loaf she had given away had not had the coin in it! Her oath was, therefore, false, though sworn in good faith, and she was punished. The reader may now judge of the aptness of this citation to dispel the belief that the Talmud deals in hair-splitting subtleties, and to foster the conviction that its morality is identical in spirit with that of the Gospel.

Perhaps a still more instructive lesson is taught by the following passage. Rabbi Tal, to show the gentle and forgiving spirit of the Talmud, cites: "If you should meet your friend's beast bowed down under his burden, and your enemy should be standing near, and should need your help to load his beast, then you should help your enemy first. Even if your friend's beast must suffer pain a few moments longer as he lies under his burden, yet help your enemy first. For you must not cherish any hate against your brother in your heart, and sternly to repress the evil disposition to do so, must go before everything." Now, we are prepared to learn that translations from such a book as the Talmud must not be made too literal if they are to be made intelligible. But with all due allowance for this necessity, we are

a little startled to learn from Professor Oort that the passage so freely rendered by Rabbi Tal runs thus when translated literally: "One must help a friend to unlade, an enemy to lade. We are bidden to help the enemy in order to restrain his hatred. If cruelty to animals were forbidden in the Law, then must not the first [unlading the friend's beast] have precedence? Yes, but to restrain his passion comes first." Dr. Oort shows that the passage comes in a long and complicated discussion of the question whether cruelty to animals is or is not forbidden in the Law, and shows also from the context, and from the best Jewish authorities, that the "passion" which is to be so carefully restrained is not our hatred of our enemy, but our enemy's hatred of us-which might be dangerously excited if we gave our friend the precedence!

Enough has been said to indicate the extreme interest of the controversy we have been reviewing. It is a matter of congratulation that the Talmud is at last being attacked by Christian scholars who decline to submit themselves blindly to the Jewish tradition, and are determined to see with their own eyes. When Christians make an independent study of the Talmud, availing themselves of Jewish learning, and Jews make an independent study of the New Testament, availing themselves of modern criticism, we may hope to leave behind us the period of barren recriminations, and enter a fruitful epoch of intelligent and friendly co-operation between equally candid and earnest minds approaching with different and mutually supplementing traditions the same great problems of history and criticism.

PHILIP H. WICKSTEED.

DR. J. H. STIRLING'S TEXT-BOOK TO KANT.'-REMARKS ON SOME POINTS IN THE TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC.

WE may take it as a proot of the intrinsic worth of Kant's

thinking, that the centenary of the publication of his. greatest work is signalised by the appearance in various parts of the world of a quite surprising amount of Kantian literature. But this revived interest in the exposition and criticism of Kant's writings is, in this country at least, not wholly, or perhaps even chiefly, due to any hope of finding in Kant an

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