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viving. "Whose wife in the resurrection, when people shall rise," they scoffingly ask, "shall this sevenfold widow be ?" The Pharisees, if we may judge from Talmudical writings, had already settled the question in a very obvious way, and quite to their own satisfaction, by saying that she should in the resurrection be the wife of the first husband. And even if Jesus had given such a poor answer as this, it is difficult to see-since the answer had been sanctioned by men most highly esteemed for their wisdom-how the Sadducees could have shaken the force of the reply, or what they would have gained by having put their inane and materialistic question. But Jesus was content with no such answer, though even Hillel and Shammai might have been. Even when the idioms and figures of His language constantly resembled that of previous or contemporary teachers of His nation, His spirit and precepts differ from theirs toto caelo. He might, had He been like any other merely human teacher, have treated the question with that contemptuous scorn which it deserved; but the spirit of scorn is alien from the spirit of the dove, and with no contempt He gave to their conceited and eristic dilemma a most profound reply. Though the question came upon Him most unexpectedly, His answer was everlastingly memorable. It opened the gates of Paradise so widely that men might see therein more than they had ever seen before, and it furnished against one of the

1 It must be steadily borne in mind that a vast majority, if not all, tho Rabbinic parallels adduced by Wetstein, Schöttgen, Lightfoot, &c., to the words of Christ belong to a far subsequent period. These Rabbis had ample opportunities to light their dim candles at the fount of heavenly radiance, and "vaunt of the splendour as though it were their own." I do not assert that the Rabbis consciously borrowed from Christianity. but before half a century had elapsed after tho resurrection, Christian thought was, so to speak, in the whole air.

commonest forms of disbelief an argument that neither Rabbi nor Prophet had conceived. He did not answer these Sadducees with the same concentrated sternness which marked His reply to the Pharisees and Herodians, because their purpose betrayed rather an insipid frivolity than a deeply-seated malice; but He told them that they erred from ignorance, partly of the Scriptures, and partly of the power of God. Had they not been. ignorant of the power of God, they would not have imagined that the life of the children of the resurrection was a mere reflex and repetition of the life of the children. of this world. In that heaven beyond the grave, though love remains, yet all the mere earthlinesses of human relationship are superseded and transfigured. "They that shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; neither can they die any more; but are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection." Then as to their ignorance of Scripture,1 He asked if they had never read in that section of the Book of Exodus which was called "the Bush," how God had described Himself to their great lawgiver as the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. How unworthy would such a title have been, had Abraham and Isaac and Jacob then been but grey handfuls of crumbling dust, or dead bones, which should moulder in the Hittite's cave!

1 Jesus proved to them the doctrine of the resurrection from the Pentateuch, not from the clearer declarations of the Prophets, because they attached a higher importance to the Law. It was an à fortiori argument, "Even Moses, &c.” (Luke xx. 37). There is no evidence for the assertion that they rejected all the Old Testament except the Law. "The Bush" means the section so called (Exod. iii.), just as 2 Sam. i. was called "the Bow," Ezek. i. "the Chariot," &c. The Homeric poems are similarly named.

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"He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore do greatly err." Would it have been possible that He should deign to call Himself the God of dust and ashes? How new, how luminous, how profound a principle of Scriptural interpretation was this! The Sadducees had probably supposed that the words simply meant, "I am the God in whom Abraham and Isaac and Jacob trusted;" yet how shallow a designation would that have been, and how little adapted to inspire the faith and courage requisite for an heroic enterprise! "I am the God in whom Abraham and Isaac and Jacob trusted;" and to what, if there were no resurrection, had their trust come ? To death, and nothingness, and an everlasting silence, and "a land of darkness, as darkness itself," after a life so full of trials that the last of these patriarchs had described it as a pilgrimage of few and evil years! But God meant more than this. He meant-and so the Son of God interpreted it-that He who helps them who trust Him here, will be their help and stay for ever and for ever, nor shall the future world become for them "a land where all things are forgotten."1

1 R. Simeon Ben Eleazar refuted them by Numb. xv. 31 (Sanhedrin, 90, 6). It is, however, observable that the intellectual error, or ȧoparía, of the Sadducees was not regarded by our Lord with one-tenth part of the indignation which He felt against the moral mistakes of the Pharisees. Doubt has been thrown by some modern writers on the Sadducean rejection of the resurrection, and it has been asserted that the Sadducees have been confounded with the Samaritans; in the above-quoted passage of the Talmud, unless it has been altered (Geiger, Urschrift, 129 n), the reading is op, not " (Derenbourg, Hist. de Palest. 131). Some writers have said that the Sadducees merely maintained that the resurrection could not be proved from the Law (D); if so, we see why our Lord drew His argument from the Pentateuch. That some Jewish sects accounted the Prophets and the Kethubhim of much less importance than the Law is clear from Midr. Tanchuma on Deut. xi. 26. (Gfrörer, i. 263.)

CHAPTER LII.

THE GREAT DENUNCIATION.

"Prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy."-EZEK. xxxiv. 2.

The

ALL who heard them even the supercilious Sadducees— must have been solemnised by these high answers. listening multitude were both astonished and delighted; even some of the Scribes, pleased by the spiritual refutation of a scepticism which their reasonings had been unable to remove, could not refrain from the grateful acknowledgment, "Master, thou hast well said." The more than human wisdom and insight of these replies created, even among His enemies, a momentary diversion in His favour. But once more the insatiable spirit of casuistry and dissension awoke, and this time a scribe,1 a student of the Torah, thought that he too would try to fathom the extent of Christ's learning and wisdom. He asked a question which instantly betrayed a false and unspiritual point of view, "Master, which is the great commandment in the Law?"

The Rabbinical schools, in their meddling, carnal,

1 Matt. xxii. 34-40; Mark xii. 28-34. St. Matthew says, voμikds, a word more frequently used by St. Luke than papuaтeus, as less likely to be misunderstood by his Gentile readers; similarly Josephus calls the scribes nyntal vóμov (comp. Juv. Sat. vi. 544).

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superficial spirit of word-weaving and letter-worship, had spun large accumulations of worthless subtlety all over the Mosaic law. Among other things they had wasted their idleness in fantastic attempts to count, and classify, and weigh, and measure all the separate commandments of the ceremonial and moral law. They had come to the sapient conclusion that there were 248 affirmative precepts, being as many as the members in the human body, and 365 negative precepts, being as many as the arteries and veins, or the days of the year: the total being 613, which was also the number of letters in the Decalogue. They arrived at the same result from the fact that the Jews were commanded (Numb. xv. 38) to wear fringes (tsitsith) on the corners of their tallîth, bound with a thread of blue; and as each fringe had eight threads and five knots, and the letters of the word tsitsith make 600, the total number of commandments was, as before, 613.1 Now surely, out of such a large number of precepts and prohibitions, all could not be of quite the same value; some were "light" (kal), and some were "heavy" (kobhed) But which? and what was the greatest commandment of all? According to some Rabbis, the most important of all is that about the tephillîn and the tsitsith, the fringes and phylacteries; and "he who diligently observes it is regarded in the same light as if he had kept the whole Law."2

Other Rabbis reckoned 620, the numerical value of the word ? {kether), “a crown." This style of exegesis was called Gematria (Buxtorf, Syn. Jud. c. ix.; Bartolocci, Lex. Rabb. s. v.). The sages of the Great Synagogue had, however, reduced these to eleven, taken from Ps. xv., and observed that Isaiah reduced them to six (Isa. lv. 6, 7), Micah to three (vi. 8), and Habbakuk to one (ii. 4) (see Maccoth, f. 24). Hillel is said to havo pointed a heathen proselyte to Lev. xix. 18, with the remark that "this is the essence of the Law, the rest is only commentary."

2 Rashi on Numb. xv. 38-40. When R. Joseph asked R. Joseph Ben