JESUS AND THE LAW The Oral and Written law took cognizance of every phase of life. The distinction between sacred and secular spheres is a development in society of relatively modern growth. Judaism legislated for hygiene, inheritance, property, agriculture, dress, diet and business, and for many other matters. It was not only a creed but a course of life. It was on the question of the law that the first clash with Christianity came about. Jesus came "to fulfil the law." It is true that he sometimes seemed to annul it but he was merely an advanced Pharisee, who went further than the rest in deciding that obsolete practices needed revising. "The Sabbath is made for Man" was a Pharisaic adage as well as his. Like the Pharisees he insisted that conformity to the law must not be taken as a substitute for moral conduct, but he went further than the He was prepared to jettison cere monial. His followers went to still greater lengths: they were ready to give up the entire law. Missionary enterprise was ham pered by the law. Rabbis had won countless converts in the Diaspora, but the Apostles found that they could not win ad herents if, in addition to the observance of the law, they required "See p. 9 of A. H. Hillel's Hist. of Messianic Speculation in Israel (1927).
the acceptance of Jesus as Messiah. The law had to go and Christianity parted from Judaism.
The Jewish belief that the parting of the ways came not at Stephen's martyrdom but after Bar Kochba's war against Hadrian is now gaining ground. Previously there had been no event suf ficiently striking to sever the ties. Christians frequented the synagogues : they were still a Jewish sect. But Bar Kochba was
hailed by Aqiba as the Messiah. This the Christians could not condone and they stood aside. Jerusalem fell amid torrents of blood : the Temple-site was desecrated and Jews were debarred from visiting it, while Christians could come and go as they wished. To the Jews they seemed traitors who had profited by their treachery. If we would envisage the situation we need only imagine that a victorious enemy had sacked Westminster Abbey and forbidden access to all Englishmen save conscientious objectors who had refused to bear arms. Here we have the cause of the cleft. The Jews regarded the Christians as renegades : the Christians would not fight for Aqiba's Messiah. The die had fallen and there was no recalling the past.
But the law was not originally the obstacle. A simple example will show this. The Shema ("Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord our God is One": Deut., vi., 4-9) has from time immemorial been the credo and daily prayer of Judaism. Jesus, as a faithful Jew, repeated this as well as other Jewish prayers.m Why was the Shema dropped from the Christian liturgy by his followers? Intrin sically the declaration is as Christian as it is Jewish. The reason is to be found in the antinomian movement. The recital of the Shema has the following technical names. To say the first part is "to take upon oneself the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven"" and to say the latter is "to take upon oneself the yoke of the Com mandments (the For this reason the Shema, which Jesus recited, was abandoned by his followers. To them, but not to him, the yoke of the law was