THERE are two large divisions of Rabbinic lore, which may be classed under the heads of Hagadôth, or unrecorded legends, and Halachôth, or rules and precedents in explanation of dubious or undefined points of legal observance.1 It is natural that there should be but few traces of the latter in the writings of one whose express object it was to deliver the Gentiles from the intolerable burden of legal Judaism. But though there is little trace of them in his writings, he himself expressly tells us that he had once been enthusiastic in their observance.2 “I was making,” he says to the Galatians, “continuous advance in Judaism above many who were my equals in age in my own race, being very exceedingly a zealot for the traditions handed down from my fathers.”3 And there are in the Epistles abundant signs that with the Hagadôthhe was extremely familiar, and that he constantly refers to them in thought. Thus in 2 Tim. 3:8 he traditionally names Jannes and Jambres, two of the Egyptian magicians who withstood Moses. He adopted the current Jewish chronologies in Acts 13:20, 21. He alludes to the notion that the Adam of Gen. 1. is the ideal or spiritual, the Adam of Gen. 2. the concrete and sinful Adam.4 The conception of the last trumpet,5 of the giving of the Law at Sinai by angels,6 of Satan as the god of this world and the prince of the power of the air,7 and of the celestial and infernal hierarchies,8 are all recurrent in Talmudic writings. When, in 1 Cor. 11:10, he says that “a woman ought to have a veil9 on her head because of the angels,” there can, I think, be no shadow of doubt in the unprejudiced mind of any reader who is familiar with those Jewish views of the subject in which St. Paul had been trained, that he is referring to the common Rabbinic interpretations of Gen. 6:2 (LXX. Cod. A, “the angels”), where the Targum, and, indeed, all Jewish authorities down to the author of the Book of Enoch (quoted in the Epistle of Jude),10 attribute the Fall of the Angels to their guilty love for earthly women. St. Paul could not have been unaware of a notion which for many ages seems to have been engrained in the Jewish mind11—a notion which is found over and over again in the Talmud, and which is still so prevalent among Oriental Jews, as also among Mohammedans,12 that they never allow their women to be unveiled in public lest the Shedîm, or evil spirits, should injure them and others.13 To this very day, for this very reason, Jewish women in some Eastern cities wear an inconceivably hideous headdress, called the khalebí, so managed as to entirely conceal the hair. It exposes them to derision and inconvenience, but is worn as a religious duty, “because of the spirits.”
Again, in Rom. 4:5, 13, Paul evidently accepts the tradition, also referred to by St. Stephen, that Abraham had been an uncircumcised idolater when he first obeyed the call of God, and that he then received a promise—unknown to the text of Scripture—“that he should be the heir of the world.”14 In Rom. 9:9 it has been supposed, from the form of his quotation, that he is alluding to the Rabbinic notion that Isaac was created in the womb by a fiat of God; in Gal. 4:29 to the Hagadah that lshmael not only laughed, but jeered, insulted, and mistreated Isaac;15 and in 2 Cor. 11:14 to the notion that the angel who wrestled with Jacob was an evil angel assuming the semblance of an Angel of Light. These three latter instances are slight and dubious; but there is a remarkable allusion to the smitten rock in the wilderness, which in 1 Cor. 10:4 is called “a spiritual followingrock.” The expression can have but one meaning. Among the many marvellous fancies which have been evolved from the thoughts of Jewish teachers, occupied for centuries in the adoring and exclusive study of their sacred books, was one to which they repeatedly recur, that the rock, from which the water flowed, was round and like a swarm of bees, and rolled itself up and went with them in their journeys. When the Tabernacle was pitched, the rock came and settled in its vestibule. Then came the princes, and standing near it exclaimed, “Spring up, O well; sing ye unto it,”16 and it sprang up. How are we to regard these strange legends? Can we suppose that wise and sensible Rabbis like Hillel and Gamaliel took them literally? There is no ground whatever for supposing—indeed, it is essentially impossible—that any one could have accepted, aupiedde lalettre, all the fables of the Talmud, which are in many instances both senseless and contradictory. Many of them were doubtless regarded as mere plays of pious fancy— mere ingenious exercises of loving inference. Others were only an Oriental way of suggesting mystic truths—were, in fact, intentional allegories. Others, in their broad outlines, were national traditions, which may often have corresponded with fact, and which, at any rate, had passed into general and unquestioned credence in ages little troubled by the spirit of historical criticism.17 Though St. Paul might quite naturally glance at, allude to, or even make use of some of these latter, it would be an utter mistake to assume that he necessarily attached to them any objective importance. If he alludes to the simplest and most reasonable of them, he does so ornamentally, incidentally, illustratively, and might in all probability have attributed to them no value beyond their connexion with loving reminiscences of the things which he had learnt in the lecture–hall of Gamaliel, or in his old paternal home. In this very passage of the Corinthians the word “following” (ἀκολούθουσης) is only a graceful allusion to the least fantastic element of a legend capable of a spiritual meaning; and St. Paul, in the instant addition of the words “and this rock was Christ,” shows how slight and casual is the reference to the purely Hagadistic elements which, in the national consciousness, had got mingled up with the great story of the wanderings in the wilderness.18 Meanwhile— since it is the spiritual and not the material rock which is prominent in the thoughts of St. Paul—is there any one who holds so slavish and unscriptural a view of inspiration as to think that such a transient allusion either demands our literal acceptance of the fact alluded to, or, if we reject it, weakens the weight of apostolic authority? If a modern religious writer glanced allusively at some current legend of our own or of ancient history, would it be at once assumed that he meant to support its historical certainty? If he quotes Milton’s line about Aaron’s breastplate “ardent with gems oracular,” is he held to pledge himself to the Rabbinic theory of the light which moved upon them? Does any one think himself bound to a literal belief in seven heavens, because St. Paul, in direct accordance with Jewish notions, tells us that he was caught up into Paradise as far as the third?19
There is one respect in which these traces of Judaic training are specially interesting. They show the masterly good sense of the Apostle, and they show his inspired superiority to the influences of his training. That he should sometimes resort to allegory is reasonable and interesting; but when we study the use which he makes of the allegorising method in the case of Sarah and Hagar, we see at once its immense superiority to the fantastic handling of the same facts by the learned Philo. How much more soberly does St. Paul deal with the human and historic elements of the story; and how far more simple and natural are the conclusions which he derives from it! Again, when he alludes to the legends and traditions of his nation, how rational and how purely incidental is his way of treating them! Compare St. Paul with Philo, with the Talmudists, with any of the Fathers in the first three centuries, and we can then more clearly recognise the chasm which separates the Apostle from the very greatest writers both of his own nation and of the early Christian Church.
The question as to whether St. Paul had or had not read Philo is not easy to answer. Gfrörer’s work on Philo might seem a decisive proof that he had done so. Undoubtedly many passages may be adduced from the voluminous pamphlets of the eloquent Alexandrian which might lead us to repeat the old remark that “either Paul Philonises, or Philo is a Christian.” Philo, like St. Paul, speaks of the Word of God as the antitype of the manna, and the smitten rock, and the pillar of cloud and fire; and as a Mediator, and as begotten before the worlds, and as the Heavenly Man. He speaks of the strife between the fleshly and the rational soul; of the assisting grace of God; of the milk of doctrine; of seeing God as through a mirror; of the true riches; and of the faith of Abraham. And, besides agreement in isolated phrases, Philo resembles St. Paul in his appeal to overwhelming revelations,20 in modes of citing and interpreting Scripture, in his use of allegory, in the importance which he attaches to the spiritual over the carnal meaning of ordinances, and in many other particulars. But when we look closer we see that many of these expressions and points of view were not peculiar to Philo. They were, so to speak, in the air. They fall under the same category as the resemblances to Christian sentiments which may be adduced from the writings of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, and may therefore be explained as having been due rather to the prevalent currents of moral and religious sentiment, than to any imitation or conscious interchange of thought. And side by side with these resemblances, the differences between Paul and Philo are immense. The cardinal conception of Philo is that of the Logos, and it is one which, in thissense, is never used by St. Paul. St. Paul makes but one or two distant and slighting allusions to the ancient Greek philosophy, which Philo regarded as of transcendent importance. St. Paul makes but the most subordinate use of the allegoric method, which with Philo is all in all. To Philo the Patriarchs become mere idealised virtues; to St. Paul they are living men. Philo addresses his esoteric eclecticism to the illuminated few; St. Paul regards all alike as the equal children of a God who is no respecter of persons. Philo clings to the Jewish ritualisms, though he gives them a mystic significance; St. Paul regards them as abrogated for Gentiles, and non–essential even for Jews. Philo still holds to the absolute superiority of the Jew over the Gentile; St. Paul teaches that in Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor Gentile. In Philo we see the impotence of Hellenising rationalism; in St. Paul the power of spiritual truth. Philo explains and philosophises in every direction; St. Paul never recoils before a paradox, and leaves anti–nomies unsolved side by side. Philo, like St. Paul, speaks much of faith; but the “faith” of Philo is something far short of a transforming principle,21 while that of St. Paul is a regeneration of the whole nature through mystic union with Christ. The writings of Philo are a collection of cold abstractions, those of St. Paul a living spring of spiritual wisdom. “Philo,” says Professor Jowett, “was a Jew, St. Paul a Christian. Philo an eclectic, St. Paul spoke as the Spirit gave him utterance. Philo was an Eastern mystic, St. Paul preached the resurrection of the body. Philo was an idealiser, St. Paul a spiritualiser of the Old Testament. Philo was a philosopher, St. Paul a preacher; the one taught a system for the Jews, the other a universal religion. The one may have guided a few more solitaries to the rocks of the Nile, the other has changed the world. The one is a dead, unmeaning literature, lingering amid the progress of mankind; the other has been a principle of life to the intellect as well as to the heart. While the one has ceased to exist, the other has survived, without decay, the changes in government and the revolutions in thought of 1,800 years.”22
Of the Apocryphal books there was one at least with which St. Paul was almost certainly acquainted—namely, the Book of Wisdom. No one, I think, will question this who compares his views of idolatry, and the manner in which he expresses them, with the chapters in which that eloquent book pursues the worship of heathenism with a concentrated scorn hardly inferior to that of Isaiah; or who will compare together the passages to which I have referred in a former note. If the books for which St. Paul wrote from his last imprisonment were any but sacred books, we may feel a tolerable confidence that the Book of Wisdom was among their number.23