Acts 15:5

Acts 15:5. But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees. Some of these Pharisees must have been the companions of Paul years ago, when he studied the law under Gamaliel, and their animosity now was doubtless strengthened against the great Gentile missionary, when they remembered what he was then, when they called to mind how, in those old days, he promised to be their future leader in the restoration of Judaism; and after all that had happened since, when both they and he had found in Jesus the long-promised Messiah, while they were only longing to raise and spiritualize the ancient religion and rites of Israel, he, on the other hand, was giving his lifework to show that the work and office of the chosen people was a thing of the past, was labouring to merge the Church of Israel in the Church of the world, was using all his vast learning and powers to prove that the found and cherished Messiah belonged to the Isles of the Gentiles as much as He did to the Holy Land of Promise, that henceforth there must be no distinction between Jew and Gentile, but that both were equally sharers in the eternal promise, whether or no they kept the sacred law of Moses.

It was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses. Even Jewish opinion was divided on the question, ‘how far the law was binding upon Gentile proselytes to Judaism.' One school, and that a very influential one, maintained that circumcision was a rite that under no circumstances might be dispensed with. These rigid and uncompromising Jews were opposed to any overtures being made to Gentiles, and generally discouraged any proselytism. The famous teacher Schammai, it is said, drove any Gentile converts who might present themselves from his house. Another and more liberal school of thought endeavoured to make the way easy for proselytes to Judaism. These striking differences in the great Jewish schools at this period are well shown in Josephus (Ant. xx. 2), when, in the story of the conversion to Judaism of Izates King of Adiabene, the king's teacher Ananias instructed him ‘that he might become a Jew without submitting to circumcision, and that if he worshipped God he performed the really important duty of the law;' but another strict and zealous doctor, Eleazar, the same history tells us, said to King Izates, ‘How long wilt thou continue uncircumcised? hast thou not read what the law says concerning circumcision? art thou not aware of how great impiety thou art guilty by neglecting it?' Another well-known saying of that stern and exclusive school was, ‘that all the uncircumcised went to hell;' and another saying asserted ‘that no uncircumcised would rise at the last day.'

Rabbi Hillel, on the other hand, threw the weight of his great influence into the counsels of the more moderate Jews. ‘Love all men,' once said this famous rabbi, ‘and bring all men into fellowship with the law; do not do to another what thou wouldst be unwilling should be done to thee. This is the whole law; everything else is only a comment on it.' The teaching of Philo, in another celebrated centre of Jewish thought (Alexandria), was distinctly in favour of winning the stranger Gentile to Judaism, and of relaxing in his favour the more oppressive and burthensome requirements of the law.