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Paul's mind was not only early imbued with general science, but he was particularly instructed in the Jews' religion, and became a zealous member of the pharisaic sect verily believed the truth to be with them thought it to be his duty to inculcate their sentiments, both scriptural and traditionary, and oppose all who did not fall in with their views, and help to increase their influence, and spread their principles.
These men agree in all other things with the Pharisaic notions; but they have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and say that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord. They also do not value dying any kinds of death, nor indeed do they heed the deaths of their relations and friends, nor can any such fear make them call any man lord.
Although they were allied with the Pharisees in doctrine, they show in some particulars the influence of Hellenistic Judaism. This is suggested not only by the attention which Philo and Josephus give to them, but also by certain of their views, which were very like the doctrines of the Pythagoreans. They carried the pharisaic demand for separateness to the extreme of asceticism.
Why was it that they who had been like timid deer, before He died, became as lions against the storm of Pharisaic hate, and stronger as the weeks passed? There is only one answer to these questions.
But it would be a sad change if the birds, declining from their present beautiful custom, were to sleep and work, work and sleep, with no holy hour between, as is too much the case with the being who, according to his own pharisaic notion, is the only religious animal. In the season, however, the woods are by no means silent, even at noonday.
First came the Mishnah, a Code compiled at about the year 200 A.D., but the result of a Pharisaic activity extending over more than two centuries. While Christianity was producing the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament the work in large part of Jews, or of men born in the circle of Judaism Judaism in its other manifestation was working at the Code known as the Mishnah.
But it exists that is the astonishing fact about it; and it found its almost perfect expression and embodiment in the normal and average Pharisee of our Lord's time. There are three characteristic features about a dead religion, and all of them receive a perfect illustration in the well-known picture in the gospels of Pharisaic religion.
His friends, good men, religious men, but of the pharisaic type that is, men who would pay their court to God, instead of coming into his presence as children; men with traditional theories which have served their poor turn, satisfied their feeble intellectual demands, they think others therefore must accept or perish; men anxious to appease God rather than trust in him; men who would rather receive salvation from God, than God their salvation these his friends would persuade Job to the confession that he was a hypocrite, insisting that such things could not have come upon him but because of wickedness, and as they knew of none open, it must be for some secret vileness.
The notable thing in connection with the last days of Jesus' life is the joint opposition of Sadducean priests and Pharisaic scribes. That the populace easily changed their cry from "hosanna" to "crucify him" is not surprising.
It was utterly different with Paul; he spoke the language of his time, and never tried to do anything else. When, therefore, we want to get at what he meant about the death of Jesus, we have first of all to get behind the symbolism by which he illustrates it, and even when we have done this we have to make allowance for some limiting Pharisaic conceptions about justice and the punishment of sin.
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