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Updated: May 28, 2025
It gives us a reassurance of spiritual continuity to think that the teachings of Hillel may have "helped to inspire the humane and tender counsels of the founder of Christianity."
"The answer!" said the king, with imperious simplicity, addressing Hillel, and planting his staff before him with both hands. "The answer!" The eyes of the patriarch glowed mildly, and, raising his head, and looking the inquisitor full in the face, he answered, his associates giving him closest attention, "With thee, O king, be the peace of God, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!"
Others were the thoughts of more modern sages, especially those of Antigonus of Soco, Jesus, son of Sirach, and Hillel, which had reached him, not from learned study, but as oft-repeated proverbs. The synagogue was rich in very happily expressed sentences, which formed a kind of current proverbial literature. Jesus adopted almost all this oral teaching, but imbued it with a superior spirit.
According to the School of Shammai it is unlawful on the Sabbath eve to deliver skins to a heathen tanner, or clothes to be washed to a non-Jewish laundress, unless there be time enough for them to be got quite ready before the Sabbath begins. But the School of Hillel allowed perfect freedom in the matter.
Hillel was neither ashamed of his race nor his religion: on the contrary, he was perfectly satisfied with this life, with the family of Besso in general, and with himself particularly. Hillel was a little philosophical, had read Voltaire, and, free from prejudices, conceived himself capable of forming correct opinions.
A young man, tall and well-looking, dressed as an Oriental, but with an affected, jerking air, more French than Syrian, moved jauntily about the room, speaking to several persons for a short time, shrugging his shoulders and uttering commonplaces as if they were poignant originalities. This was Hillel Besso, the eldest son of the Besso of Aleppo, and the intended husband of Eva.
Jesus maintained that each one ought to await the kingdom of God with fear and trembling. The bad religious tendency represented by Pharisaism did not reign without opposition. But these good seeds had been choked. The beautiful maxims of Hillel, summing up the whole law as equity, those of Jesus, son of Sirach, making worship consist in doing good, were forgotten or anathematized.
I have heard Hillel say Abraham caused the record to be first opened with his own name, and the names of his sons, moved by the promises of the Lord which separated him and them from all other races, and made them the highest and noblest, the very chosen of the earth. The covenant with Jacob was of like effect.
But I do not understand what he says about the times and a half-time and the days and the seasons before the coming of Messiah." With this there rose a dispute among the doctors about the meaning of those sayings, and some explained them one way and some another, but Hillel sat silent. At last he said: "It is better to hope and to wait patiently for Him than to reckon the day of His coming.
Henceforth, my Fakredeen, you have only to wish: we are the same. And Besso sank down almost insensible; then he made a vain effort to rise again, murmuring 'Eva! 'She will soon be here, said Fakredeen; 'she only rests awhile after many hardships. 'Will the noble Emir refresh himself after his long journey? said Hillel. 'My heart is too elate for the body to need relief, said the Emir.
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