without writing; and though the doctrine they maintained was good at the bottom, they mixed a great many superstitions with it. They believed in fate, moderated by free-will, or rather by providence, which guides it. The Sadducees, who were a sort of Deists, imputed all to free-will. They acknowledged only the five books of Moses as divine, and these they interpreted literally, and pretended that they did not oblige them to believe a resurrection, or the immortality of the soul, or that there were angels or spirits. Thus they served God only for a temporal reward, and gave themselves up much to sensual pleasures. They had little agreement among themselves, and but small authority with the people. Their number was not great; but they were the chief of the nation, and even many of them priests. The common people were more attached to the Pharisees, who kept up an outward shew of great piety. Queen Alexandra gave them considerable power in the minority of her sons.† The sect of the Essenes was the most singular. They avoided living in great towns, their goods were in common, and their diet very plain. They spent a great deal of time in prayer, and meditating upon the law. Their manner of life was very like that of the prophets and Rechabites. Some of them too observed a perfect continence, leading a life altogether contemplative, and in such purity that many of the fathers have taken them for Christians. They were a very *Acts xxiii. 8. † Joseph. Bell. i. 4. Ibid. ii. 7. simple simple and upright people, and are never reprehended by Christ or his Apostles. The Pharisees lived in the midst of the world, in great amity with one another, leading a plain and outwardly strict life: but most of them were interested, ambitious, and covetous. They valued themselves on a great exactness in the outward performance of the law.* They gave tithes not only of large fruits, but of the smallest herbs, as cummin, mint, and anise. They took great care to wash themselves, to purify their cups, their plate, and all their furniture. They kept the sabbath so scrupulously, that they made it a crime in our Saviour to moisten a bit of clay at the end of his finger,† and in his disciples to pluck some ears of corn to eat as they passed along. They fasted often, many of them twice a week,§ i. e. on Mondays and Thursdays. They affected wearing their philacteries and borders of their garments much larger than ordinary. The philacteries are scraps of writing, containing some passages of the law, fastened upon their forehead and left arm, in obedience to the command of having the law of God always before their eyes or in their hands.¶ The fringes were of different colours, and they were ordered to wear them on the borders of their garments, that they might look upon them, and remember the commandments of God.** The Jews even to this day wear these outward marks of religion, when they go to the synagogue; but *Matt. xxiii. 23. Mark vii. 2. + John ix. 6. upon upon working days only; for upon the sabbath and feast-days they pretend they have no occasion for these remembrancers.* The Pharisees gave alms in public, and made their faces yellow to look like great fasters.† For an unclean person to touch them was reckoned the highest affront: and such they esteemed not only the Gentiles and public sinners, but all that were of any odious profession. In short, most of them were devout only out of interest; they misled ignorant people by their specious discourses, and the women even stripped themselves of whatever was valuable, to enrich them; and, under pretence that they were the people of God, with whom the law was deposited, they despised the Greeks and Romans, and all the nations upon. earth. We still see in the books of the Jews these traditions, of which the Pharisees made so great a mystery from time to time, and which were written about a hundred years after the resurrection of Christ. It is hardly possible for a Christian to conceive the frivolous questions with which these books are filled; as, Whether it be lawful on the sabbath-day to get upon an ass to take it to the water, or whether it must be led by the halter? Whether one may walk over new sown land, because one runs a hazard of taking up some grains with the foot, and consequently of sowing them? Whether it be permitted on that day to write as many letters of the alphabet as will make sense? If it be lawful to eat an egg laid on the sabbath the same day? *Buxtorf. Synagog. Jud. c. 4. + Matt: vi. 2, 5, 16. About About purifying the old leaven before the passover: Whether they must begin again to purify a house, if they should see a mouse running across it with a crumb of bread? If it be lawful to keep pasted paper, or any plaister that has flour in it? If it be lawful to eat what has been dressed with the coals that remain after the old leaven is burnt?* and a thousand of other such cases of conscience, with which the Talmud and its Commentaries are stuffed. Thus the Jews forgot the greatness and majesty of the law of God, applying themselves to mean and trifling things; and were now stupid and ignorant in comparison of the Greeks, who reasoned upon more useful und elevated subjects in their schools, and who, at least, were polite and agreeable, if not virtuous. Not but there were always some Jews more curious than the rest, who took pains to speak Greek correctly, read Greek books, and applied to their studies, as grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy. Such a one was Aristobulus, a peripatetic philosopher, preceptor to Ptolomý Philometor; and such were Eupolemus, Demetrius, and the two Philos'. Some of them wrote histories in Greek, and after the Greek manner; as Jason of Cyrene; and the author of the second book of Maccabees, who has abridged his works; and Josephus the celebrated historian. Most of the Jews that studied Greek lived at Alexandria. Others were content to speak * Buxtorf. Synag. cap. xi. † 2 Macc. ii. 23. Greek Greek so as to be understood, that is, badly, and always retaining the turn of their native language: and it is in this compound Greek that the translations of the Old Testament, and the original of the New, are written. The apostles and evangelists thought it sufficient to write in a clear concise manner, despising all ornaments of language, and making use of that which was most easy to be understood by the common people of their own nation; so that, to understand their Greek perfectly, one must be acquainted with Hebrew and Syriac. The Jews of these later times employed themselves much in reading their law, and the holy Scriptures in general. They were not satisfied with expounding them according to the letter: they found out several senses in them, expressed by allegories and divers metaphors: we see it not only in the new Testament, and the writings of the most antient fathers in controversy with them, but by the books of Philo, the Talmud, and oldest Hebrew commentators upon the law, which they call great Genesis, great Exodus, and so on.t. They held these figurative senses by tradition from their fathers. But to say all at once, the manners of the Jews in those times were excessively corrupt. They were ridiculously proud of being descended from Abraham, and puffed up with the promises of the Messiah's kingdom, which they knew to be near, and imagined would abound with victories and all manner of temporal pros * Justin. Dial. cum Tryph. Bereshith Rabba, &c. |