Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 69:276 (Oct 1912)
Article: Jesus The Rabbi
Author: Lester Reddin

BSac 69:276 (Oct 1912) p. 693

Jesus The Rabbi

Lester Reddin

The years of the public ministry of Jesus (26–29 a.d.) fell within a period of very great didactic activity on the part of the leaders of thought in Israel. Such destitution of religious instruction as is predicated of the land of Judah in the period immediately preceding the reforms of Asa, when the people were “without a teaching priest” (2 Chron. xv. 3), could not now be found in Palestine. In the conception of these people, religion was the paramount concern for-themselves, their children, and their neighbors; therefore their most vigorous endeavors were for the conservation and propagation of the faith which they had received as a heritage from their fathers. Not only had their zeal for proselyting the Gentiles reached that degree of intensity which called forth from the lips of him who spake as “never man spake” the hyperbolical statement, “Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte” (Matt. 23:15); but even greater effort was put forth for the instruction of the native sons of the Covenant in the distinctive tenets of Judaism. When the Nazarene first appeared on the scene of John’s baptism and began to gather disciples about him, the echo of the voices of Hillel and Shammai could still be heard in Jerusalem; Gamaliel, a supposed descendant of King David, was now rising to the height of his influence as the chief exponent of the more liberal type of Rabbinism in the city which was once the capital of his royal ancestor. Perhaps young Saul of Tarsus was just completing his theolog-

BSac 69:276 (Oct 1912) p. 694

ical studies at the feet of this great teacher when Jesus, early in his ministry, “went up into the mountain” and “taught” those who had gathered around him. The maxim of Hillel, “An ignorant man cannot be truly pious,” had become a settled conviction; and, consequently, the Scribe, whose function was no less the teaching of the Law than its theoretical development, was by no means an inconspicuous person in Jerusalem. No effort was spared to popularize religious instruction. A “parochial school” (ביתהפר) in connection with each synagogue afforded instruction in the Law to boys above the age of six or seven years, thus preparing them for membership in the synagogue, and citizenship in the community. The Scribal College (ביתהמדרש), analogous to the modern theological seminary, gave more technical instruction in the text and traditional interpretation of the Law to those who in turn became teachers of the people.

Perhaps this condition of affairs was due, in large measure, to a reaction from the “...