"If any one wishes to be rich, let him go north; if he wants to be wise, let him come

south." Such was the saying, by which Rabbinical pride distinguished between the

material wealth of Galilee and the supremacy in traditional lore claimed for the academies

of Judaea proper. Alas, it was not long before Judaea lost even this doubtful distinction,

and its colleges wandered northwards, ending at last by the Lake of Gennesaret, and in

that very city of Tiberias which at one time had been reputed unclean! Assuredly, the

history of nations chronicles their judgment; and it is strangely significant, that the

authoritative collection of Jewish traditional law, known as the Mishnah, and the so-

called Jerusalem Talmud, which is its Palestinian commentary,11 should finally have

issued from what was originally a heathen city, built upon the site of old forsaken

But so long as Jerusalem and Judaea were the centre of Jewish learning, no terms of

contempt were too strong to express the supercilious hauteur, with which a regular

Rabbinist regarded his northern co-religionists. The slighting speech of Nathanael (John

1:46), "Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?" reads quite like a common

saying of the period; and the rebuke of the Pharisees to Nicodemus (John 7:52), "Search,

and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet," was pointed by the mocking question,

"Art thou also of Galilee?" It was not merely self-conscious superiority, such as the

"towns-people," as the inhabitants of Jerusalem used to be called throughout Palestine,

were said to have commonly displayed towards their "country cousins" and every one

else, but offensive contempt, outspoken sometimes with almost incredible rudeness,

want of delicacy and charity, but always with much pious self-assertion. The "God, I

thank Thee that I am not as other men" (Luke 18:11) seems like the natural breath of

Rabbinism in the company of the unlettered, and of all who were deemed intellectual or

religious inferiors; and the parabolic history of the Pharisee and the publican in the

gospel is not told for the special condemnation of that one prayer, but as characteristic

of the whole spirit of Pharisaism, even in its approaches to God. "This people who

knoweth not the law (that is, the traditional law) are cursed," was the curt summary of

the Rabbinical estimate of popular opinion. To so terrible a length did it go that the

Pharisees would fain have excluded them, not only from common intercourse, but from

witness-bearing, and that they even applied to marriages with them such a passage as

Deuteronomy 27:21.

But if these be regarded as extremes, two instances, chosen almost at random--one from

religious, the other from ordinary life --will serve to illustrate their reality. A more

complete parallel to the Pharisee's prayer could scarcely be imagined than the following.

We read in the Talmud (Jer. Ber, iv. 2) that a celebrated Rabbi was wont every day, on

leaving the academy, to pray in these terms: "I thank Thee, O Lord my God and God of

my fathers, that Thou hast cast my lot among those who frequent the schools and

synagogues, and not among those who attend the theatre and the circus. For, both I

and they work and watch--I to inherit eternal life, they for their destruction." The other

illustration, also taken from a Rabbinical work, is, if possible, even more offensive. It

appears that Rabbi Jannai, while travelling by the way, formed acquaintance with a man,

whom he thought his equal. Presently his new friend invited him to dinner, and libera lly

set before him meat and drink. But the suspicions of the Rabbi had been excited. He

began to try his host successively by questions upon the text of Scripture, upon the

Mishnah, allegorical interpretations, and lastly on Talmudical lore. Alas! on neither of

these points could he satisfy the Rabbi. Dinner was over; and Rabbi Jannai, who by that

time no doubt had displayed all the hauteur and contempt of a regular Rabbinist towards

the unlettered, called upon his host, as customary, to take the cup of thanksgiving, and

return thanks. But the latter was sufficiently humiliated to reply, with a mixture of