Chapter 15: Other Causes of the Final Apostasy

Other causes of the final apostasy of the Jewish church — Cessation of prophecy — Summary of the causes — Degrees of apostasy — The first foundation of Mosaic Theology — The defection of the apostates from it — The origin of traditions — And of sects — The foundation of the oral law — The rise and nature of the oral law — Born after the destruction of the city — Jewish observances not continued in the institution of the evangelical church. II. Now, as the fullness of time was hastening, in which that great prophet, promised to the church from the foundations of the world, was to be manifested in the flesh.

The Final Apostasy of the Jewish Church. [Book 5. and God had strictly commanded the people to attend to the law of Moses until He came, and with that word had, as it were, laid a final hand upon the revelations of the Old Testament (Malachi 4:4-6) — there ceased entirely for several centuries that prophetic and extraordinary ministry which God had variously employed from the very beginnings of that church for its reformation. From the death of Malachi to the preaching of John in the wilderness (who was not sent for this reason — to recover that church from the ruin of apostasy into which, by God's will, it was then hastening — but to prepare the way for the great builder of the new church), for four hundred years, no one was appointed by God outside the ordinary order to call back the people, who were inclined to every wickedness, to better ways. And so, since the church was destitute of prophecy, Mosaic Theology corrupted by the philosophy of the Gentiles, the common people mingled with the nations, forgetful of the holy tongue, leaning on teachers who rejected the Holy Spirit, given over to the manners and vices of the age, gradually and universally defecting from all the principles and foundations of Mosaic Theology, it fell into final ruin. The traces of that apostasy must therefore be briefly traced in the next section.

II. The first foundation of Mosaic Theology was placed in the authority of the Holy Scriptures. We demonstrated this at length above. For after God had committed His word to writing, He willed that it alone should be the norm and rule of all faith, obedience, and religious worship; and He strictly forbade the church and all theologians to add anything to it under any pretext whatever. This theological principle is the foundation and fence of all the others. The ringleaders of the apostates were the first to make it void. There was nothing in the doctrine or conduct of the impious Pharisees that our Lord Jesus Christ rebuked more severely; and He teaches that they introduced countless inventions into the worship of God and religious observance under the name and pretext of "the traditions of the elders" — that is, of teachers who first dared to depart from the pure word of God. It is probable that, immediately upon the departure of the prophets, certain men who considered themselves wise, pretending to give expositions of the legal customs and Mosaic institutions, thrust upon the people new ceremonial rites and new theological precepts. Once this window was opened, and the widest possible field was given for the vain ingenuities of petty teachers to exercise themselves, with one treading in the footsteps of another, the collection of arbitrary institutions and rites gradually grew to such a multitude that their observance came to occupy nearly the whole of religion. For once a man has decided that the bounds of the divine commandment are to be transgressed, there is nothing to prevent him from wandering into the boundless. What the teachers of one century discovered, those of the next called "traditions." Once these began to win favor and authority with the people — who were most ready to prefer the inventions of men to the institutions of God — whatever novel thing anyone devised was imposed under that name upon the credulous common people, who were ignorant of the divine law. And when many had applied themselves to this work in various places, there arose at last among the precepts of the teachers and the traditions, as they were called, not only discrepancy and diversity, but (nor could it have been otherwise) contradiction and contrariety as well. So great was the multitude of new fables that it was by no means easy for anyone to receive and comprehend them in such a way as to be competent to instruct the people in their religion and observance. Hence schools arose — not rivals of those ancient ones in which the sons of the prophets devoted themselves to the worship of God and the study of the sacred writings, but rather resembling those which the Greeks had established for perpetuating philosophical disputes and brawls. These were nothing other than a confusion of wranglings over the most absurd ancient traditions, and workshops for new ones. But as each head teacher of a school became renowned — of whom the most ancient who are remembered were Shammai and Hillel — his decisions, sayings, and dogmas were devoutly revered by his disciples and the people as though they were divinely delivered. It was also from the diversity of traditions that the crowd of doctors burst into various sects. The three most ancient and best known of these were those of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes; to which Judas of Galilee added a fourth during the days of the census, according to Josephus, and the headless Herodians a fifth. The atheism of the Sadducees is said to have sprung from a saying of one teacher misunderstood. For when he had declared, under the pretext of the greatest love toward God Himself, that no one ought to render obedience with a view to eternal reward, they say that his foolish disciples, ready to swear by the words of their master, concluded that he denied the resurrection and eternal life. So writes the author of Tzemach David in the Chronicle, under the second temple, at 4460: [Hebrew text] — "Tzadoc," he says, "and Bajethosus were two disciples of Antigonus, and they erred concerning the saying of their master, in that he had said, 'Be not like servants ministering to a master in hope of receiving a reward.' One said to his companion, 'Behold, the master in his exposition taught that there is neither reward nor punishment for man;' and having seized this occasion, they say that they fell away from the faith." All these traditions tended either to the plain and direct abrogation of all authority from the commandments of God, or at least to their being so interpreted that no one was bound by their authority to render that obedience which God required — which amounts to the same thing — while the arbitrary commandments of the teachers themselves were to be observed most scrupulously under penalty of eternal death. Wherever, then, this Pharisaism flourishes — by which, through devised delusions and perverse interpretations, the virtue, efficacy, and perfection of God's commandments are enfeebled, while the arbitrary prescriptions of men are severely imposed under whatever pretext — there apostasy flourishes and reigns apart from all true theology. Nor is it necessary for me to demonstrate at greater length that the Jewish church before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ was stained and corrupted with this poison,

The Final Apostasy of the Jewish Church. In this most pernicious error the horrible and final apostasy of that church had its beginning. And this was the foundation of that oral law, which for many centuries now has filled both pages in the religion of the apostates. For after the mass of traditions had grown to immense proportions, and blind apostates destitute of the Spirit of God delighted in them alone, and since their origin was, as happens in a long series of events and years, no longer known, new teachers arose who attributed all of them to Moses himself. I will condense the long fable as best I can. It is summarized in the Tractate Pirke Avoth, ch. 1: [Hebrew text] — that is, "Moses received the law from Mount Sinai, and delivered it to Joshua; Joshua to the elders; the elders to the prophets; the prophets delivered it to the men of the great synagogue." By this they mean the oral law. Rabbi Moses Maimonides narrates the entire fable more fully in the preface to Yad Hazakah: [Hebrew text] — that is, "The precepts that were delivered to Moses at Sinai were all given together with their exposition, according to that word, 'I will give you there the tablets of stone, and the law and the commandment'; the law, namely, the written law, and the commandment, that is, its exposition. Moreover, God commanded us to observe the law according to the commandment, and the commandment is the oral law." He adds, "Our teacher Moses wrote out the entire law with his own hand before he died, and entrusted a copy to each tribe. One copy he deposited in the ark as a testimony, according to that word, 'Take this book of the law, and put it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord our God, that it may be there as a witness against you.' But the commandment, or exposition, Moses did not write, but charged it to the elders and to Jehoshua, and to all the other Israelites, according to that word, 'Every word that I command you, you shall be careful to do.' Therefore it is called the oral law. And this oral law, although it was not written, our teacher Moses taught in its entirety to the seventy elders in his assembly. Eleazar, Phinehas, and Joshua, those three received it from Moses; Joshua then delivered it to his disciple." And so he continues in a long order reviewing the names of those who, from the days of Joshua down to Rabbi Judah the Prince, received this oral law from their predecessors and handed it on to others; and at last he adds, [Hebrew text] — "Our holy Rabbi" (that is, Rabbi Judah) "composed the Mishnayoth." This, of course, is what he would have us believe: that those futile, inept, and absurd traditions which that Rabbi Judah compiled in the Mishnayoth were that oral law, the exposition of the written law, which they fable Moses received from God on Mount Sinai.

That this labored fable is a rabbinic invention has long since been demonstrated by others. Yet it is the foundation of all present-day Judaism. For with very few exceptions — those whom they call and curse as Karaites — the religion of the whole nation has rested for many centuries upon this fiction. But since no mention is made anywhere in the sacred writings of this oral law; since students of God's law are nowhere referred to it but everywhere to the written word; since whatever Moses heard from God he was commanded to write, and did write (Exodus 24:3, 4); and since this oral law serves no other end than to supply the deficiencies of the written law, which God everywhere pronounces to be most perfect and most complete — it is evident that present-day Judaism is something entirely different from the religion which the Old Testament established and requires.

Although this most monstrous fiction was produced by that doctrine of traditions which we have reviewed, and which was the beginning of the total apostasy of the Jewish church, yet no one has proved by any weight of argument or by credible testimony that it was devised before the destruction of the temple and city, and the consequent rejection of the whole church and people by God. Philo, Josephus, and Ben Sira make no mention of this oral law, though they make very extensive mention of traditions. Had it been devised at that time, much less proclaimed as the foundation of theology and the worship of God, they would beyond all doubt not have passed over it in silence. Furthermore, our Savior, who severely rebuked hypocrites for many crimes and superstitions, especially for the audacity of introducing traditions as the rule of God's worship and obedience, would never have passed over this most pernicious fiction in silence. That serpent, therefore, had not yet been hatched from the egg which now flies with wings like a prester. We therefore do not number this law among the degrees of that apostasy; for it was rather its end and culmination.

That the leaders and ringleaders of defection from God, the teachers of the sects, introduced countless most superstitious fictions and corrupt practices, distinguished by the name of traditions, into the church, and by these corrupted the whole of divine worship — this the evangelical history teaches clearly, and we have demonstrated it above. There are, however, learned men who hold that our most holy Lord adopted certain Jewish customs and practices concerning the worship of God and sacred religious observances in the institution of His church. Some do not hesitate to assert that the Lord's Prayer itself, which He prescribed as the norm and model of all our prayers, was drawn from the most commonly received formulas among the Jews. They do indeed acknowledge that Christ put an end to the Mosaic institutions. But they teach that He entrusted certain observances, which the doctors of the Jews had of their own accord introduced into use, confirmed by His own authority, to the evangelical church to be devoutly kept. Since this opinion seems to me sufficiently horrible and contumelious toward our most holy Lord Himself, before we proceed in the exposition of this final defection of the church, it is fitting to subject it to examination. Concerning the Jewish Rites Observed by Christ.

Whether our Lord Jesus Christ instituted any Jewish customs, prayers, or observances to be retained in the evangelical churches.

After the second temple was built, the ministry of the prophets and of other men divinely inspired — to whom the task of restoring the church to the standard of Mosaic Theology had been entrusted — was removed. That the teachers of the succeeding centuries, who wished to be regarded as the teachers of Israel (John 1:10), held the most diverse opinions concerning faith itself, and the observance and ceremonies of divine worship, I believe there is no one who does not know. But above all, turning deaf ears to that most holy commandment of God — to which they were strictly admonished at the very sealing of the Old Testament canon to give their minds exclusively, until He came who was to expound all truth, namely, to submit themselves to the discipline of the law of Moses — they were wholly occupied in devising new rites and interpolating traditions without authorization. Thus, with prophecy ceasing, philosophy entering, and the help of the Holy Spirit held in last regard, the whole church, corrupted by evil superstitions, gradually tended toward ruin. The evangelical history records some of what the corrupt teachers established in religious worship and in the interpretation of the Scriptures, and the pretext by which they used to impose these things upon the people. But after certain celebrated teachers, whose names were sacred and venerable among the common people who wholly deferred to the precepts of the masters, had indicated that some rite was to be observed in religion, or that this or that was the sense of some divine commandment or institution, their successors, who intended to enjoy the same authority with posterity, taught that those novel institutions were to be kept with the utmost reverence as if they were from heaven and not of human origin. Hence, as we noted above, the mass of traditions grew to immense proportions in a short time. Thus in the end almost nothing sound or uncorrupted was left in the whole of religion. This further evil was added in the course of time to crown the rest: it became utterly impossible for the people, wrapped in darkness, to know or distinguish what was of divine institution, what of ancient observance, and what of recent invention. When all sacred things among the Jews were in this state and condition, certain learned men consider that our Lord Jesus Christ, in establishing the evangelical church and in His infinite wisdom ordering the worship of God therein, transferred to His own use (as they put it) certain received traditional rites which those people at that time devoutly observed in the worship of God — indeed nearly all those which He instituted — and, having confirmed them by His own authority, delivered them to His disciples to be observed until the consummation of the age. They add furthermore that that most holy prayer, the most perfect norm and model of all our prayers (for Christ did not command the words to be recited, which we do not read the apostles as having done either, says Grotius, Annotations on Matthew 6:9), which He taught to His disciples, was composed by Him from the most commonly used formulas among the Jews. That this is indeed so, they argue from the fact that those rites which were once observed are mentioned among the teachers of the Jews, especially in both Talmuds — the very rites which we Christians still observe on the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that the petitions of the Lord's Prayer are there to be found, most of them at least, if not all. For these things are not pointed to as though they were then first born or first received among the Jews when the Talmudic work was compiled; rather, their antiquity and observance is established by the authority of masters and teachers who lived long before the destruction of the city; and — which is the chief point of the argument — they say these were part of that oral law which R. Judah Hakkadosh recorded in the Mishnayoth as received by tradition through successive hands. Since, however, I cannot deny that this opinion of learned men is by no means to my taste — indeed, that I dissent from it strongly — above all for this reason: that since it is at best uncertain, indeed false, the honor of our Lord Jesus Christ seems in it to be scarcely, or not even scarcely, sufficiently guarded; although my personal affairs and those of the public now compel me not merely to hasten but to rush to the conclusion of this work, I am not willing to pass it over in silence. I will therefore deal first with the opinion as a whole in general terms, and then subject separately to examination the proofs which some adduce in confirmation of that opinion.

Let us see, therefore, first, what may be conceded to learned men in this matter; and then what things I cannot admit, at least until they are confirmed by weightier rational arguments than those they have hitherto used in this argument, or by trustworthy testimonies. I concede, therefore, first, that certain sayings — indeed many — which are found in the evangelical writings can be found among the Talmudic rabbis, or at least things very similar to them. The same can be said in particular regarding certain petitions of the Lord's Prayer. But also that parallels to these are found in the writings of pagan sages, learned men have noted with respect to the Scriptures of both covenants.

Furthermore: it is conceded that the same rabbis teach that certain rites were in use among the Jews, not unlike those which the Lord Jesus prescribed for His disciples to observe in the worship of God. We will consider these later.

We also concede, in the third place, that the Mishna doctors and Gemarists do not produce those sayings, do not make mention of those rites, as though they had only then become known and published, nor do they affirm on the sole basis of their own authority that these were in use before the destruction of the city — but rather they bring forward the doctors themselves, who lived long before those times, each one expounding the sense of his own age, or even of the oral law.

It is further conceded that certain proverbial sayings which were in common use among the people at that time were employed by our Lord in the conversation He had with the common people, and were accordingly recorded in the evangelical writings. Of this kind were: "Physician, heal thyself"; "To him who has, it shall be given"; "The first shall be last, and the last first"; "He who has an ear to hear, let him hear"; and others of this kind. Moreover, just as every people is very tenacious of its proverbial sayings, so we acknowledge that the Jews retained these and similar ones in memory for many centuries and recorded them in writing.

VI. These things, I say, we readily concede; and so what remains to be considered is whether the proofs of the learned men accomplish anything beyond what we have conceded. But it is certain that this dispute cannot be decided from these things alone. For it has not yet been established that those rites about which the question is raised were truly in use in the Jewish church before the destruction of the city, or that they were known to that people in the days of Jesus Christ's sojourn on earth. So that the truth may be made plain, we will first set forth certain things which will make the explanation of the entire controversy easy.

VII. First, therefore, we say that this oral law — which the Talmudic doctors commonly establish as the source and origin, the storehouse of all traditions and rites — is a horrible fiction, a mere lie, wickedly devised for the total destruction of Mosaic Theology and the eternal ruin of the Jewish people. For no greater mention is made of this law in all of Holy Scripture than of the Mohammedan Alcoran. Moreover, those who have dared to sew onto the word of God additions of this kind, from which this law largely consists, are severely execrated and devoted to destruction. And that entire unbelieving and stubborn-natured people, surviving and dispersed throughout the whole world, owes its hardening and its horrible obstinacy in unbelief — by the judgment of a most just God — to this satanic fiction. For, led away from the word of God under its pretext and bewitched by the inveterate prejudices of carnal traditions, they neither know anything beyond the most senseless fables, nor wish to know anything beyond them. And this, I trust, will be openly acknowledged.

VIII. Second, there are two kinds of rites and ceremonies which are mentioned among the Talmudic doctors but are not expressly instituted in the law. For either they pertain only to the manner of celebrating the instituted worship, with certain additions applied, drawn in whatever way from arbitrary expositions of the words of Scripture; or else the rites themselves are new and entirely different from all divine institutions. No one has yet proved, nor will anyone hereafter prove, that any memory, any monument, any trace or vestige of either kind existed before the return of the people from the Babylonian captivity, or while that church was flourishing under the leadership and governance of the prophets and the earliest reformers. All things owe their origin to that interval of time in which that church rushed headlong into its final and fatal apostasy and ruin — or to that period in which it ceased to be a church.

IX. Third, we deny that our Lord confirmed any purely Mosaic institution by His authority. All agree that He abolished all of them.

The case is different for those things which are founded in the nature of things. For since all the Mosaic rites were instituted for a time of reformation (Hebrews 9).

10, and they had only a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things themselves (chap. 10:1); nor could they maintain their place, once that which they served to prefigure had been introduced; nor were they to be recovered again from that death to which they had once been appointed. X. Fourth, it is most plainly established from the whole of the gospel history that our Lord Jesus Christ, for as long as He lived subject to the Mosaic institutions as the minister of circumcision, most consistently rejected and condemned with the utmost detestation, without exception, all the unwritten traditions that the older or more recent teachers had introduced.

Whether they consisted in corrupt interpretations of Scripture, or in curious observances and rites, He rejected all of them without distinction, not without severe rebukes of those who were the authors of the people's observing them. It therefore seems far too incredible that He should have "appropriated for His own use" rites from those very same observances, as some are fond of saying. XI. Fifth, all acknowledge that there are certain dictates of right reason, proceeding from the most good and wise Author of nature Himself, which are by their very nature suited to serve the worship of God in every state of the church. These hold some place among all men who submit themselves in any degree to the governance of reason. Our Lord, therefore, did not "appropriate these for His own use," but, lest their observance should thereafter depend on the fading and obscure light of nature, He confirmed them by His own authority and numbered them among His most holy institutions. But if any of these were in use among the Jews, it does not therefore follow that Christ received them from the Jews, since they belong no more to the Jews than to the whole human race.

XII. Sixth, it is certain that most of the Jews, if not nearly all, who believed in Christ before the destruction of the temple and the final ruin of the city — in which event the ultimate end was imposed upon the Mosaic institutions — observed them religiously; most of them at least, and worshipped according to the ordinances of the law. For the apostles themselves, knowing from Christ's forewarning that the temple itself, along with that whole system of worship with which it was furnished, was shortly to be abolished forever, while awaiting that day of the Lord's patience, did not turn away from Mosaic worship. Thus, so long as the Jewish church endured in God's forbearance, up until the destruction of the city and the temple, those who believed in Christ, unless they were driven away or forced to flee, nowhere on earth withdrew from the synagogues of the Jews or from synagogue worship. For in those places where the unbelieving Jews openly

began to rage against the believers on account of their profession of faith and the religious worship shown to Christ, they proclaimed to them that dreadful judgment of God which He was about to execute most swiftly upon the enemies of the gospel (see 2 Peter 3:3–11), and established separate assemblies. But that the Jewish church endured while the temple was still standing, and had not yet been wholly rejected by God —

394 CONCERNING THE JEWISH RITES OBSERVED BY CHRIST. [Book 5. — this the apostle Paul teaches in his entire epistle to the Hebrews. For he presents the high priesthood, and accordingly all Mosaic worship, as something indeed to be abolished immediately, but not yet abolished. Hence the state the church would be in, once all typological worship was completely removed, is called a new world for it. He also affirms that there was yet a little while remaining before those Mosaic rudiments, shaken by the death of Christ, would be removed, so that the things that cannot be shaken in Christ's kingdom might be established. Nor does it stand in the way that the apostles and elders and the whole church of Jerusalem had long before decreed, by the mind of the Holy Spirit, that the disciples from the nations were not bound by the law of Moses (Acts 16); for they themselves show, a long time afterward, that all the believing Jews had adhered to its observance (Acts 21:21, 22). In many places also the believing Jews and those who had not yet given their names to Christ conducted themselves indiscriminately together. Hence James the Just, who had lived in Jerusalem for very many years and was most well known to all the people for his outstanding and utterly genuine holiness, was not at all suspected by the leading men of the city of being a Christian, because he had diligently frequented the worship of God in the temple, as Eusebius reports, Hist. Eccles. Book 2, chap. 23. Indeed, Grotius writes that this commingling lasted somewhere until the time of Hadrian.

XIII. Seventh, When that church had now arrived at the final period of divine patience, and the Jews everywhere, having at last become stubborn and hardheaded enemies of the gospel, were stirring up persecutions against the disciples of Christ and greeting with mockery His coming — solemnly predicted and proclaimed — which was about to execute vengeance upon their unbelief and malice, very many from that nation who had previously given their names to Christ contemplated defection to Judaism; as is apparent from Paul's epistle to the Hebrews. But after the temple was destroyed and the nation was cut off, a large part of those who up to that point had observed Mosaic rites and ceremonies while professing the name of Christ, stumbling wretchedly between the two religions, which no one could any longer practice at the same time, partly retreated again into the camp of the Jews, and partly devised a new religion blended from both, which in truth did not merely corrupt but utterly overturned each of them. To these belonged the Ebionites, and, if Jerome is to be believed, the Chiliasts; all of whom, as time passed, having cast off the title they had borne in vain for a while, passed over into the Jewish reckoning. Just as it is well known that they attempted to introduce Jewish rites into that Christianity which they had embraced, so it is more than credible that some who defected from Christianity into Judaism carried certain things back with them. But the darkness in which the affairs of the Jews were then enveloped prevents us from having a clear view of what was carried on in their retreats and hiding places.

XIV. Eighth, The remaining Jews (that is, whatever of the nation had survived the Flavian disaster), driven and put to flight from every solemn Mosaic assembly, wandered about here and there, utterly uncertain what they should do, by what rite they should worship God, or where they should plant their feet. Others have shown that they established a Sanhedrin — or rather a school, or a den of the most inept wranglings — here and there. But the whole of that history rests on conjectures and rabbinical testimonies, more uncertain than any conjectures. During the reign of Hadrian over the Roman empire, deceived by the cleverness and cunning of a notorious scoundrel whom they call Bar Kokhba, and driven by the goads of their crimes — or rather by the divine curse — they swarmed from everywhere into Judea and Galilee and stirred up a war against the Romans that was ruinous enough to both sides. But at last defeated, and afflicted with a calamity only slightly less than that which had mowed them down at the destruction of the city and the temple, still not understanding the most just indignation with which God was pursuing the entire nation in every land, yet broken in strength and spirit, partly driven off, partly threatened with death unless they fled, they were all to a man ordered to go into exile from the whole of Judea. What they accomplished in their hiding places from that time through the next century is shrouded in deep darkness. At last the most famous Rabbi Jehuda — Hakkadosh, that is — burst forth, the originator and chief of that superstition by whose wickedness they are to this day burdened and odious everywhere on earth before God and men. He set his hand to the forging of that new Jewish religion which, swollen with innumerable superstitions, prevails throughout the whole nation. For when he was set over the school and observed how greatly all things pertaining to religious worship and observance were fluctuating in uncertainty, he gathered from ancient traditions, new fictions, and observances that were then in use among many, scraping and tearing them together from everywhere, a certain body or system of religious and civil or forensic constitutions, which they call the Mishnaioth. Into that book the two Talmuds gather the expositions, disputations, quarrels, and fables of the rabbis. For as soon as Rabbi Jehuda had raised the standard, people flocked to it from everywhere at once. Whatever impure and ignorant little men were anywhere able to scrape together from old wives' traditions, from the sayings of holy Scripture wretchedly and blasphemously distorted, from the rites and customs of the Gentiles and of Christians that were not expressly contrary to the Mosaic law — whatever they could be compelled in any way to make serve their purpose — all this they poured in here as into a swamp of fables, lies, and every kind of superstition. For just as Muhammad stitched together his Quran from Jewish traditions, from the gospel history most corruptly interpolated, from pagan rites, and from his own fictions, so also did those rabbis compose their Talmudic work. Having premised these things — which will all be found to be capable of clear demonstration, since they have been drawn from histories and most trustworthy monuments of past events — I will set forth in a few words what my opinion is in the case before us. Our opinion, therefore, is this: that those evangelical institutions of which any mention is made either in the Mishnah, or in the Talmuds, or in other Jewish teachers, and accordingly all purely evangelical pericopes that exist in any of their writings, the Jews derived partly from the gospel itself, partly from the practice and traditions of Jewish apostates which flowed out from Judeo-Christian assemblies, partly from the mouth of the common people among whom they lived, and from nowhere else. 396 CONCERNING THE JEWISH RITES OBSERVED BY CHRIST. [Book 5. This opinion, I say, seems more probable than that other opinion which dangerously asserts that our Lord Jesus Christ borrowed His most holy institutions from the refuse-pits of Judaism; indeed I consider it to be most true and exposed to no objections that carry any weight or force. For since those blind and stubborn apostates had lost their ancestral religion, the worship of God, and their homeland (for whoever supposes that the Talmudic religion, or present-day Judaism, is the same as what is set forth in the law and the prophets, is a stranger to these matters), most utterly destitute of the Spirit of God, and applying all their effort to devising and erecting, from the most uncertain traditions and rumors, a new manner of worshipping God and new rites of worship — there is surely no reason why it should seem strange to anyone that they seized upon certain things that had been in use among Judaizing Christians, or at least things most similar to those, for their own purposes. Wonder will be even further removed if we consider that some of the stitchers-together of the new superstition were Christian apostates, which is certainly neither incredible nor improbable. For that is why so many traces of the gospel history survive in the Quran, since a certain Sergius, a Nestorian monk who had defected from Christianity, accompanied its author and was received as a partner in the work.

XV. But let us weigh the force of the opposing opinion. By what authority, I ask, can we know for certain that those prayer formularies which now exist among the Jews, and those rites which are not expressly prescribed in the law, were in use before the destruction of the city? The Jews, they say, consistently affirm that they received these things from Moses himself by means of the oral law. But we have already proved that this oral law is the most shameless of fictions, of which, before the final apostasy of the people and the destruction of the nation, not a trace or any memory exists. And things that owe their origin to this oral law could not be more ancient than that law. But they say the Jews had set times for prayer; I grant it. Luke in Acts 3:1 mentions the hour of prayer, the ninth, and teaches that there were three daily times of prayer. Maimonides in the Mishnah, Book 2, Tract. on Prayer and the Benedictions of Priests, chap. 1, teaches this, but denies that it was established by the law. "Moreover," he says, "neither the number of prayers, nor the obligation toward this or that prayer, nor any certain or fixed time for prayer is from the law." So they had three daily prayers, of which the first was called the morning prayer, the second the mincha, and the third the evening prayer. That some ancient Christians observed those three times — "with the plainly indifferent freedom always, everywhere, and at all times to pray," as he himself says — Tertullian teaches us in his work On Fasting. But what follows from this? That they also had prescribed prayer formularies? But how will that be established? Maimonides indeed reports that Gamaliel, whose age and time of life are known from sacred history, composed a prayer for the extirpation of the heretics — that is, of the Christians; how well this accords with the counsel that Luke ascribes to him in Acts 5:38 is not easy to understand. Therefore that the Jews had humanly devised prescribed prayers before the destruction of the city — there is not even the appearance or shadow of proof. But, they say, the Samaritans affirm that a book of prayers written by Moses himself, transmitted to them, has been preserved in the hands of the chief priests of Gerizim down to the pontificate of a certain Hadrian. Let Apella believe it; no one else will; for all the Jews with one voice detest this most shameless lie. These are the people who fabricated an eleventh commandment — most worthy indeed of fabricating Mosaic prayer formularies. If any such book had ever existed, to believe that its memory had survived only among the Samaritans — an Assyrian colony, impious, and hateful to God and the church — would be, as the saying goes, "the act of a madman, not of a sane Orestes." I grant that most Jews think that after the time of Ezra — when, with prophecy ceasing, that church declined through contempt of the Spirit and the divine word into final apostasy — the people used certain prayer formularies in synagogue worship, and also in the worship of the temple; but it cannot be proved that the Mishnaic or Talmudic teachers, or any teachers of subsequent centuries, knew for certain what those formularies were, or retained any memory of them. For it is foolish and wicked to suppose that this church had made use of those liturgies which are now in use among the Jews in the worship of God. The same must be said concerning rites. Before that impostor Rabbi Jehuda, there is no Jewish writer in the Hebrew language, nor in Greek, except Philo, Josephus, and Jesus Sirach. Concerning these matters among them there is the deepest silence. But who will convince me that Rabbi Jehuda or his followers did not lie when they hint that this or that rite was in use before the destruction of the city, when I know that they lie most shamelessly in matters of far greater importance and in their historical accounts? Their ancestors also — if descendants of Adam ever existed who could have been better than they — we are taught, as truth itself bears witness, to have fabricated many things foolishly and superstitiously. And among these latter there is no end, aim, or limit to lying; so that everywhere they seem by deliberate effort to contend with one another to snatch the prize in devising horrible lies. Examples are unnecessary; those who are not yet washed with brass know. But learned men say that in their own affairs they are to be believed — why, I ask? When nowhere more than in their own affairs are they found to be triflers and liars? But let us hear a most learned man making the case for the rabbis in his own words, in his work On the Law of Nations among the Hebrews, Book 2, chap. 2: "If perhaps a doubt arises for anyone here," he says, "whether credit is to be given to the Talmudic body and its writers in matters of this kind, insofar as they are historical — that is, insofar as they record in them what was recognized and practiced as law of whatever kind among the ancient Hebrews — on the ground that that body, as it now stands composed, and those other writers, belong to centuries more recent than the destruction of the temple and the city, such a person will perhaps also doubt the trustworthiness of Justinian"

398 CONCERNING THE JEWISH RITES OBSERVED BY CHRIST. [Book 5. or of Tribonian, while he records or mentions in the Digest or elsewhere the opinions and legal rulings of Modestinus, Papinian, Florentinus, Alphenus, Proculus, Celsus, and others of that kind, who are about three hundred years older than Justinian, opinions and rulings not found elsewhere — still less when he records the laws of the twelve tables, which antedate even these centuries by many more." After adding things similar to these he at last concludes: "To admit a reason for doubt, whether in law, in theology, in history, or anywhere else, from this cause alone — when all the other circumstances that attend the matter in no way militate against its credibility — is nothing other than to resist all antiquity almost universally, and the historical truth of events themselves, too perversely and obstinately." XVI. There is no one, as far as I know, who has brought forward more or more plausible arguments for winning credence for those Talmudic rumors of which we are treating. The most distinguished Joseph Scaliger also holds similar views. Let us see, therefore, in brief, whether the most distinguished scholar achieved what he intended. If indeed the reasoning he proposes concerning the rabbis and the ancient jurists were to proceed on equal footing, this argument would be legitimate. But the matter is altogether different. It is most certain that the books of those authors, whose opinions, decisions, and legal responses are cited by later writers in civil law, once existed — indeed at the very time when those celebrated maxims were transcribed from them; or they were also drawn from authentic memoranda, court records, public commentaries and accounts. But the Mishnaic and Talmudic teachers do not even pretend that their predecessors ever wrote anything of the kind that they everywhere ascribe to them. After several centuries had elapsed from the death of those men, relying on uncertain and obscure rumors and on vain traditions, they bring various teachers onto the stage at will, and do not so much report as openly fabricate what such teachers said or are said to have said. If there were any pre-Mishnaic books, or if perhaps any had ever existed; if they rested upon any monuments of events that had ever occupied a place in the real world; if anything beyond their own credibility and authority could be adduced which would be adequate or suitable for founding a conjecture that the things they record actually stood as they say; if the state and condition of Jewish affairs over several centuries left any room for suspicion that they faithfully preserved in memory the sayings and deeds of their predecessors before the destruction of the city — then the comparison that has been instituted would seem to have some force of valid reasoning. But as we have said, all things here are very different. Furthermore, how immeasurably does the credibility of the witnesses differ! Puppies smell quite differently from pigs. From those whose truthfulness I have found to be established in many matters I am unwilling, on account of suspicions or mere conjectures, to withhold credence. But to bind oneself to believing those whom one knows in many — indeed in nearly all — matters to be openly the most brazen impostors, is scarcely the act of a man, let alone of one who loves truth. Those ancient jurists whom Selden mentions were men of gravity, learned, upright, and most celebrated throughout the whole world; they said, wrote, and assigned to others nothing except openly, publicly, and in the light of men, where if they had written anything otherwise than strict observers of justice and truth ought to have done, they would have been accused of falsehood by almost the whole world. Our Talmudic teachers were blind, wicked, and ignorant, given over by God to a reprobate mind, who — as Joseph Scaliger rightly observes in his work On the Emendation of Time, Book 7 — appear deliberately to "profess ignorance of all good things;" impostors and tale-tellers, babbling mere nonsense in the darkness and in their hiding places, to whom no reason can be given why we should believe anything great or small that they say. But let what has been said on this matter in general suffice; what will be of any importance will come to be weighed in the consideration of particulars.

XVII. Let us examine the particular instances by which learned men endeavor to maintain their position. There are some — whom out of respect I do not name — who assert not only that our Lord Jesus Christ prescribed a prayer formula to His disciples in the manner most customary among Jewish teachers, but also that He drew the very words and petitions of which He composed His most holy prayer from the formulas most commonly used among them. Let us see, then, by what weight of arguments or by what credible testimonies they strive to prove this; for the claim seems to me scarcely sufficiently honest. The disciples, they say, asked Christ to teach them to pray, just as John had taught his disciples. And John, they add, followed the custom common among the Jews, by which teachers handed down to their disciples prayer formulas to be learned. But that all these things are altogether uncertain and supported not merely by a slender but by absolutely no prop at all, even a near-blind man could perceive. I grant that God prescribed certain solemn forms of blessing to the Aaronic priests; and that the Talmudic rabbis, after their pattern, devised others — whether originally eighteen in number, corresponding to the bones of a man's back, as they trifle, I do not know; if the first inventors of those formulas had that in view, I know only that they acted in their usual foolish manner. They eventually grew to a hundred and eighteen, for frivolous reasons which it is tedious to recount. That every celebrated teacher taught his disciples prayer formulas is both incredible and unsupported by testimony. That John followed the example of those teachers whom he openly and persistently rebuked for ignorance, hypocrisy, and superstition is asserted far too boldly. To place John, and far more so the Son of God Himself, in the same rank as the blind teachers of the Jews is to me a matter of scruple. That the name of God should be reverently invoked is the voice of nature and an eminent part of natural worship. Whoever undertakes to instruct others in the knowledge and worship of God must necessarily teach them to pray, that is, to pour out prayers to Him. This John performed among his disciples; by what aids and means he did so is uncertain; that he taught them to pray is most certain; and likewise for what things they ought especially to pray at that time. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who at the appointed time, according to the promise of the new covenant, was about to pour out the Holy Spirit upon His disciples

— was about to pour out upon His disciples lavishly, and was to relieve their weaknesses in pouring out prayers; He set forth, as it were in advance, the most holy sum of all things they would ever ask through His aid. For just as the Spirit of grace does nothing in us except according to the rule of the word, so that none who rely on the Spirit may deceive themselves, they must attend to that same word in all the duties for the discharge of which they are made fit by His aid and assistance. It is worth appending Grotius's annotation on Luke 11:1, "Teach us" — meaning, "Teach us a summary of the things to be prayed for. For they were not at that time bound to specific syllables. So also from John it is credible that a summary of prayers pertaining to repentance was set forth: just as this prayer of Christ contains the heavenly kingdom. Hence it is called by Tertullian a breviary of the whole gospel, and by Cyprian a compendium of heavenly doctrine." Thus far Grotius. Cornelius a Lapide is of the same opinion on Matthew 6:9: "Here Christ," he says, "hands down to Christians the manner of praying, yet does not command that we pray in these exact words, but only teaches what things are to be asked of God, and in what order, and with what brevity of words they are to be asked." And on Luke 11:2, he notes from Jansen that Christ in this prayer set forth a synopsis of the whole of Christian doctrine; and therefore Matthew appended it, by way of prolepsis or anticipation, to the Sermon on the Mount, which the Lord delivered at the beginning of His ministry. For whoever thinks Christ taught His disciples the same prayer formula twice is greatly mistaken. And the assertion, as some are fond of saying, that our Lord adapted the prayer formulas common among the Jews to His own purpose by making slight alterations, is far too bold. The ravings and dreams of the Talmudic rabbis, which some employ to lend credibility to this fiction, are empty and worthless. Some Longus of ours commends in this matter Josephus Albo Ikkar, as if Ikkar were the name of the man who wrote the book to which he gave the title. But great errors are made in examples of this kind. Baronius himself, at year 34, num. 134, by a similar error but with the opposite outcome, supposed the name of a certain rabbinic book to be Alphes, whereas that name was the name of the author himself — called, that is, by the name given. He then adds Jacob Turim, since that Rabbi Jacob wrote a book called Arba Turim — that is, of four orders; which is the same, says Casaubon, as if someone were to cite among authors Tullius on Nature, because Marcus Tullius wrote books on the nature of the gods.

That most perfect model of all prayers, and most exact compendium for cultivating our communion with God, undoubtedly spread into the knowledge of those Jews who were apostasizing — who, having at length wholly defected from the profession of the faith, nonetheless retained the use of certain things they had learned among Christians that did not conflict with Mosaic rites. From them, and from nowhere else, arose that very faint rumor about the petitions of the Lord's Prayer which the Talmudic rabbis appear to have possessed.

Furthermore, the most learned Selden, in his work on the Ancient Hebrew Sanhedrin, Book 1, endeavors with many arguments to prove that Christ borrowed the rite of baptism from that which was then in use among the Jews. Others do the same. Among the Jews there were two kinds of proselytes: the first, called in Hebrew "proselytes of sojourning," and the second, "proselytes of righteousness." The proselytes of righteousness were partakers of all ecclesiastical privileges and were fully counted among the people of God. Such was Ebed-Melech (Jeremiah 39:16-18). Learned men teach that all these, upon their admission into that state, were not only circumcised but also baptized; and they confidently affirm that no proselyte of righteousness was ever made, however circumcised, unless he was also immersed in baptism. But in truth, that one might become a partaker of all the privileges of that church, circumcision alone was required — so the express testimonies of Holy Scripture teach. For the law reads as follows (Exodus 12:48): "If a stranger sojourns with you and wishes to keep the Passover, let every male of his household be circumcised; then let him draw near to keep it, and he shall be as a native of the land; and no uncircumcised person shall eat of it." Concerning rabbinic baptism, this much may be said. They suppose that this baptism of proselytes had its origin from another legal institution. For the same law applied to proselytes and to natives (Leviticus 11:49; Numbers 15:15) — that is, they were equally bound by the same law to the performance of the same duties. But all the Jews, they say, were baptized. From where, I ask, does that appear? From Exodus 19:10. Before the giving of the law, Jehovah declared to Moses and said: "Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments." But since the whole people was solemnly baptized at this divine command, there was no need for this rite to be repeated among them. The proselytes, however, in order to be conformed to the people, had to undergo this rite. But that was a washing of garments. By "garments," they say, the whole body is meant. How is that established? The teachers so teach. But there is no reason why we should believe this against the express testimonies of Scripture. Let us hear Selden himself, in his work on the Ancient Hebrew Sanhedrin, Book 1, chap. 7, p. 66: "It is well known to anyone at all familiar with the Talmudists," he says, "that it is very common among them to seek the grounds of their introduced customs and of those humanly received as a hedge or fortification of the sacred law, as they call it, from some passage and words of the sacred text — not as though established by precept, but by example or some analogy. And this is often done so boldly, far beyond what is proper, that the very words are wrested into confirmation of such customs in a sense far different from the genuine meaning of the sacred passage." Now I am unwilling to suspect that they have done this in the distortion of this passage, since the matter itself is evident. Furthermore, the washing of garments served solely that one occasion — namely, to show reverence at the peculiar divine presence in the giving of the law — and had nothing to do with the regular worship of God. That the necessity of bodily baptism, as a fixed and solemn rite for all ages, should be derived solely from a single washing of garments, and from a cause [illegible].

402. ON THE JEWISH RITES OBSERVED BY CHRIST. [BOOK V. — that would never recur through all eternity — it seems altogether improbable; for no memory or trace of such an observance exists in the whole Old Testament, and it is supported by no divine command, institution, or direction. XX. I grant also that washings were customary among the nations for those being initiated into sacred rites. From this arose the ceremony among the papists of sprinkling those entering temples with holy water. So Virgil, Aeneid II, 717: "You, father, take the sacred objects in your hand, and the ancestral household gods. For me, having departed from so great a battle and recent slaughter, to touch them would be impious; until I shall have washed myself in a living stream." And Aeneid VI, 229:

"The same man three times carried the pure water around his companions, sprinkling them with light dew and with a branch of the fruitful olive." Now "carried around" is the same as "purified," for purificatory offerings were carried around. Macrobius teaches the distinction between sprinkling and ablution in his Saturnalia, Book 3, chap. 1. Lucian mentions this rite in his Menippus, or the Necromancy, 7. "Leading me at midnight to the river Tigris," he says, "he purified and cleansed me, and with a torch lustrated me, and with a sea-onion, and with many other things besides." See also what Pliny records, Book 36, chap. 4, regarding Timarchides and Asterius, who touched the altar of Jupiter with impure hands and was for that reason struck by lightning: "Pouring libation with washed hands he touched the altar of Jupiter; for which reason the father burned him with the fire of the blazing thunderbolt. It is right that only the scrupulously pure should touch sacred things." There was also customarily a threefold purification: namely, with water, sulphur, and fire. Hence Ovid: "Purify the old man three times with flame, three times with water, three times with sulphur." XXI. Now Justin Martyr, in his Apology II, affirms that all the washings employed by pagans in their sacred rites originated from our Scriptures through the evil imitation of demons — as also the custom of removing sandals when entering shrines or temples, from the word of God to Moses when he drew near the burning bush; which indeed does not seem far from the truth. XXII. But all this is far from the sacred rite of baptism. A female proselyte could not be circumcised. For her admission, therefore, if anywhere, account would have to be taken of baptism; but where the ceremonies of that admission and grafting into the people of God are enumerated, there is no mention of baptism (Deuteronomy 21:10-13). But Paul expressly affirms that the whole "people was baptized to Moses in the cloud and in the sea." I grant this; in the crossing of the sea God solemnly dedicated the people to Mosaic instruction. But it is false that the Jews ever imitated or were required to replicate that miraculous baptism. The institution of the rite of baptism is therefore nowhere recorded in the Old Testament; no example of it exists; nor was it ever employed during the Jewish church in the admission of proselytes; no mention of it occurs in Philo, Josephus, or Jesus Sirach; nor in the evangelical history. The rabbinic opinion, therefore, concerning the baptizing of proselytes, owes its origin to the Tannaim, or pre-Mishnaic teachers, after the destruction of the city. That they wished by this to distinguish themselves from the Samaritans is the judgment of the most learned Schickard in his work on the Royal Law among the Hebrews, chap. 5, p. 127. "For distinction from the Samaritans," he says, "they added a certain baptism" — which is proved from Rabbi Alphes and from the Talmud itself. I rather think that the Tannaean teachers borrowed this rite, previously unknown before that time, from the baptism of John, which was celebrated throughout the whole nation and by which a great part of the people had been initiated. Justin mentions indeed a heresy among the Jews in his Dialogue with Trypho, which he calls Baptists; but he denies that those who used that rite were properly called Jews. The author of the Questions and Answers to the Orthodox proposes this question to himself — or repeats it as proposed by others — namely: "If the baptism of John was not according to the law, as indeed it was not, how was it not contrary to the law, and how was it according to the law? And why did those who were under the law not oppose it, and why did they accept the baptism that was against the law?" To this he replied that the baptism of John was a forerunner of the gospel of grace, and therefore it was beyond the law. That opinion of certain learned men, therefore, concerning the transfer of the Jewish baptismal rite — which was truly not in use at that time — into the practice of His disciples by the Lord Jesus, is wholly devoid of probability.

XXIII. The same things must plainly be said concerning the Eucharist. That most holy institution of our Lord, together with all the circumstances pertaining to its solemn celebration, is supposed by some to have been derived from Jewish rites, of which no mention occurs anywhere in Holy Scripture. We have not yet seen it proved by any competent testimony that those rites were in use before the final destruction of the nation. Since, however, others have discharged this task with sufficient success, it is not our intention to do it again here, given the great haste under which we are continually pressed.

We showed previously that certain of the evangelical ordinances have their foundations in the very nature of things, or in the principles of right reason. They pertain first to human beings as such, before they pertain to Christians. The use among the nations of those things that are consonant with the dictates of reason was always varied, according as men gave themselves more or less to the discipline of natural light. Among these is excommunication. For right reason dictates that one who acts against the duties, laws, and rules of a community of which he is a part should be excluded from the privileges of that community. Nothing is more frequently encountered in the practice of this right among the ancients in good authors. That the Jews observed this custom, they themselves teach. Whether they did so by virtue of some divine institution or by common right, we do not now dispute. That this kind of custom existed among the pagans

404 ON THE JEWISH RITES OBSERVED BY CHRIST. [Book 5 Among many other witnesses to its prevalence, Gaius Caesar testifies in book vi of De Bello Gallico, chapter xiii: "If anyone," he says, "whether private citizen or public official, has not abided by their" (that is, the Druids') "decree, they forbid him from the sacrifices. This penalty is regarded among them as the most severe. Those upon whom this interdict has been placed are reckoned in the number of the impious and wicked; all men withdraw from them, shun their company and their conversation, lest they receive some harm from their contagion; neither is justice rendered to them when they seek it, nor is any honor communicated to them." Some do not scruple to assert that this custom passed from the pagans to the Christians. I strongly doubt that anything more disgraceful could be invented against the ancient Christians. The opinion of the majority is that it passed from the Jews to the Christians. But whether ecclesiastical excommunication was divinely instituted in the Jewish church, and whether any examples of it exist while the city and temple were still standing, I am unwilling to make my own cause. The Mishnaic Rabbis and the Gemarists make frequent mention of it. It is false that our Lord received the practice of this rite from the Jews or from the pagans. Reason dictates that men living in harmony, establishing some rule common to all, should dwell together in communities. Whatever end or object they may have set before themselves — sacred or civil — the same law applies. That all those who would wish to enjoy, use, and benefit from the rights and privileges of any society should hold to the bond upon which the society rests, and submit to its rules, is likewise equitable. Otherwise a community cannot be kept intact, nor can it endure. For one who refuses to comply, exclusion from the society's privileges and fellowship is at hand — and right reason also dictates this. All these things pertain to nature, as we are human beings. To suppose that the human race learned these dictates of reason — which it had cultivated several thousands of years before the name of rabbi was ever born — from the rabbis themselves, is madness. However much these axioms may be founded in the very nature of things, yet since our Lord Jesus Christ willed nothing at all to be reverently observed in His church except on His own authority — since He alone is its head, king, and lawgiver — He has secured by His own institution the appropriation and application of these principles to the use of evangelical assemblies; and therefore, although these principles or common notions are still natural in themselves, since what is once congruent with rational nature is utterly impossible to be permanently incongruent with it, yet their application to those sacred matters which depend on the pure institution of Christ is purely evangelical. After the apostle had therefore proved from the very law of nature, and from the equity of the nations as well as of the Mosaic institutions, that wages are owed to the dispensers of the gospel for their work, he adds immediately, "So also our Lord has instituted," (1 Corinthians 9:14).

Chapter 16. The Final Defection of the Jewish Church. 405