CHAPTER II

The Theory of Torah

In the preceding chapter I sketched the historical development of Pharisaism from its source in the work of Ezra to the time when it had found its literary expression in the Talmud and the Midrash. I said that from first to last what was developed was the religion of Torah. It is therefore essential to the understanding of Pharisaism that the reader should, first, obtain a clear conception of the meaning of Torah, and, second, that he should bear that conception always in mind in his further study of Pharisaism. It will be my task in the present chapter to show what Torah meant, and what form the religion of Torah actually, and perhaps necessarily, assumed. If I succeed, then the reader will understand how it was that Rabbinical devotion to Torah could express itself quite naturally in terms which to the unenlightened Gentile appear to be extravagant—as, for instance, when it is said that God studies Torah for three hours every day (b. A. Zar. 3b).

There would be no particular difficulty in understanding what is meant by Torah, if it were not that it is commonly supposed that the word “Law” is the just equivalent of it. The Greek, alike of the Septuagint and of the New Testament, renders “Torah” by νὁμος [Greek: nómos]; and while the translators of the New Testament rightly rendered νὁμος [Greek: nómos] by “Law,” they nevertheless perpetuated what was a misconception on the part of those who used the Greek word to represent “Torah.” It is to avoid that misconception that I have already used, and shall continue to use, the word “Torah” untranslated, as a technical term whose full implication cannot be expressed in any one English word. It is true that the word “torah” is simply and correctly translated by the word “teaching”; but, as used in the later Judaism, it denotes a particular kind of teaching, and also the sum-total of what was taught as well as the vehicle or medium by which it was given. It further denotes any particular portion of that teaching. In short, it is a word into which the Rabbis compressed more meaning than can be found in any other word in their language; and we shall more readily grasp that varied meaning if we keep to the word Torah, as being unspoiled by erroneous associations.

The original meaning, then, of the word Torah is simply “teaching,” any kind of instruction given by any person to any other person; for instance, Prov. i. 8, “Forsake not the ‘torah’ of thy mother.” More specifically, it was religious teaching, conceived as given either by God to Israel, or by man to his fellow-man. Thus, Isa. li. 7, “the people in whose heart is my Torah” (where the speaker is God); and, for human instruction, Deut. xvii. 11, “according to the tenor of the ‘Torah’ which they shall teach thee,” “they” being the priests. This last passage gives the clue to the further developments of the word. It had been for ages the custom in Israel for the priests to give instruction to the people upon matters connected with religion, explanations of duty, decisions of disputes, intimations of the will of God. This was, of course, Torah; and it was Torah which was regarded as being given by God through human agency. The Torah which the Lord gave by the hand of Moses would not originally imply any code or book, but simply such ancient sayings, precepts or otherwise, as were traditionally ascribed to Moses as the great teacher of Israel in the days of old. The connection of Torah with Moses, though others might have given Torah as well as he, had this result, that gradually a body of traditional teaching was accumulated, ascribed to him and bearing his name; and the several attempts to collect and codify these are to be seen in the various strata of the Pentateuch. They are mostly in the form of precept and command, as was only likely, since they were intended for the guidance of conduct. But that was not why they were called Torah. If Moses had taught something that was not commandment at all, it would still have been Torah, because it was taught.

In this sense, Israel had never been without Torah; and the prophet no less than the priest owned that in it God had continually taught His people. Prophecy itself was only a form of Torah, for the prophet spoke the word of the Lord.

Now, whatever else Ezra introduced that was new, it was not Torah. If he had religious teaching to give, as of course he had, he only followed in the train of the prophets and priests from Moses downwards. And when he offered Torah to the people, they knew what he was referring to. Nor did the novelty consist in the fact that Ezra made known to them a larger body of Torah than they had previously been acquainted with. It does not greatly matter, for the present purpose, whether the book which Ezra read to the people was the Priestly Code, or the whole Pentateuch substantially, though not finally, complete. For even if the earlier documents had not been as yet welded into one whole with the Priestly Code, they were nevertheless in existence, and were already owned as Torah of Moses.

What Ezra did was to lay a much greater emphasis upon the need of obedience to what was contained in the book of Torah (or the books) as being the duty of every Israelite. What was in fact the collected accretions of centuries, was regarded by Ezra, and by all Israel, as Torah from God communicated by Moses, and therefore entitled to precedence over any Torah imparted to anyone else. The book, or books, in which it was recorded contained all that God had chosen to reveal for the instruction of His people. The five books of Moses were the written form of the Torah. They were not the Torah itself. It is only for convenience that the Pentateuch is often called the Torah. The two are not identical. The Pentateuch differs from the Torah as the vessel differs from its contents, even though there be but one unique vessel in which those contents are preserved. Ezra, then, offered for the acceptance of Israel, in the book that he read to them, what he believed to be the full revelation which God had made. But he went beyond those who had preceded him, beyond even those who had carried through the reform of which the book of Deuteronomy is the manifesto, by reason of the stress which he laid upon personal and individual acceptance of it. Deuteronomy, no doubt, contained over and over again the demand, “Thou shalt observe to do” according to all these commandments, and it enforced the demand by the appalling catalogue of curses upon the disobedient which may be read in the 28th chapter. But Deuteronomy was written before the Exile, and Ezra lived after it. The priests had given Torah, and the prophets had proclaimed God’s revelation of His nature and of man’s relation to Him and consequent duty. They had been pre-eminently preachers of righteousness. But yet, in spite of the zeal of the prophets and the teaching of the priests, the bitter lesson of the Exile had proved that Israel had not served his God as he ought to have done. It was Ezra’s function to apply the lesson of the Exile and to direct the religious life of Israel into such lines that no similar disaster should again be experienced; or rather, that no such sin should again be committed as had led to that disaster. Ezekiel, indeed, had been the first to perceive the necessity of a change in the direction of Israel’s life; but he had lived at a time too early for a real beginning to be made. Yet it can hardly be doubted that the seed, which Ezekiel sowed among the captives in Babylonia, bore fruit in the ideas which underlay the reformation of Ezra. When Ezra came forward with the book of the Torah, he did so not in any sense as an opponent of the prophets, or as making a breach between their ideas and his own. He came forward to enforce their teaching, to apply it, and to get from it a larger result of practical righteousness than it had produced in their time. It was just because the prophets had so splendidly revealed God to Israel, had proclaimed to him the full grandeur of his privilege, that Israel must now be taught to do his part as he had never done it before. The greater the privilege the greater the responsibility. So far from being at variance with the ideas of the prophets, Ezra was the one to complete them, or at least to put his people in the way of completing them. There is a difference of method between Ezra and the prophets; there is no difference of principle. And as the Pharisees and the later Rabbis did but carry out the method and the principle of Ezra, they stand in the same line with him as the legitimate successors and continuators of the prophets.2 It may be said with truth that of the later types of Judaism—Hellenism, Apocalyptic, and Rabbinism—the last, and only the last, carried on and handed down the inheritance which the prophets had left. What Hellenism and Apocalyptic had to give went to Christianity, so far as it survived at all.

The purpose of Ezra was to lay stress on the embodiment, in the practical life of the individual Jew, of the teaching of the prophets (including Moses) concerning God and Israel. The main point for Ezra was that God had taught certain things—knowledge of Himself, knowledge of His will. What had been taught must be learned and taken to heart, and, so far as it was of the nature of precept, must be carried out in practice. It was not enough to know; the Israelite was required to do and to be.

The practical application of this idea needed the acceptance of it on the...