THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF HILLEL AND JOHN THE BAPTIST The Century of Social Inertia. The Maccabean period, which began about 165 and extended to the conquest of Palestine by Pompey in 63 B.C., was singularly lacking in social idealism. It was a century of great political upheaval. At first under the organised and relentless persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes the very existence of Judaism hung in the balance. When at last, after a long, heroic struggle, the Jews won first religious and then political independence, their attention was almost wholly engrossed in national questions. The slumbering political aspirations of the race were aroused. Their patriots began to dream again of a world-wide empire. The noble missionary ideals of their earlier prophets were also to a great extent forgotten, for the hatreds engendered by the bitter strife with their heathen neighbours embittered the hearts even of their religious leaders. Internecine civil struggles soon absorbed the attention of all. Moreover, during the Maccabean period their inherited laws and ceremonial institutions, for which their martyrs had given their life-blood, were appreciated as never before in their history. The result was that the old ceremonial conception of religion largely took the place of the ethical and social ideals of their pre-exilic prophets. As in time the political situation became more hopeless and the iron hand of Rome closed upon them, the Jewish idealists fixed their attention more and more upon the popular apocalyptic hopes whose realisation was conditioned not upon human endeavour but upon a divine, miraculous interposition. The Maccabean period witnessed the rise of the three great parties in Judaism, but none of them strongly emphasised social righteousness. The Sadducees, the rich and ruling highpriestly party, were conservative in theory and belief and selfish opportunists in practice. The Pharisees constituted the popular democratic party, but the majority of them looked for a miraculous transformation of society and regarded the punctilious keeping of the ceremonial law as the chief end of religion. Their primary interests, therefore, were not in social questions. While the Essenes practised charity and recognised as supreme the law of brotherhood, they were ascetics who avoided rather than faced squarely the social problems of their age. Only a few members of the Jewish race, belonging for the most part to the humble middle class, continued to cherish the social ideals of the earlier prophets and sages, and to long not for a catastrophic upheaval but for a moral and social awakening which would banish from the heart of Jew and Gentile the prevailing enmity and injustice and oppression and bind together all members of the human race into one great brotherhood. At the beginning of the first Christian era what the Jews supremely needed was a new school of social prophets to break the bonds of ceremonialism and false theology, to give them more spiritual ideals and aspirations, to turn their eyes to the social problems of their race and age, and thus to deliver them from the deadly lethargy which was threatening their very life. The Social Reawakening Led by Hillel. It is significant that the moving spirit in the ethical and social reawakening which marked the closing years of the first pre-christian century was not a prophet but a rabbi. Hillel, like the great rabbis of his race, inherited the ideals and methods of the earlier Jewish wise men. Unlike his contemporaries, his chief emphasis was not on the ceremonial but on character and life. Born among the Jews of Babylon, he came, about 40 B.C., to Jerusalem to study in this great university centre of Judaism. He died about 10 A.D., so that it is more than possible that he exerted a direct and personal influence upon both John the Baptist and Jesus. Certainly if the young boy of Nazareth, who so eagerly improved his earliest opportunity (about 8 THE SOCIAL REAWAKENING 167 A.D.) to question the rabbis at Jerusalem, did not come into personal contact with Hillel, he did with his disciples, who for over a century continued to be the leading interpreters of the Jewish religion. Unfortunately we know Hillel only through the chance references and the quotations from his teachings which have come down through later Jewish writings. They indicate that he was born in poverty and was personally acquainted with the painful problems of life. He was famous for his meekness, his tolerance, his breadth, and his democracy. He genuinely loved all men, and the needy were never turned away from his door without some tangible evidence of his interest and sympathy. Like Socrates, he held that ignorance was the chief cause of sin: The ignorant man cannot, from the nature of things, have an aversion to evil. He also taught that those who will not learn deserve to die. Hillel's Social Teachings. The basis of Hillel's social teachings was evidently a simple but profound consciousness of God. Alluding to the throngs assembled on the great feast day for worship in the temple, he declared in the name of God: If I am here, every one is here. If I am not here, no one is here. Commenting on a passage in the book of Ezra, Hillel also put in the mouth of God these significant words: If thou come into my house, I come into thy house; Hillel struck a noble note in his great teaching: If you are where no man is, show yourself a man. Like the earlier sages, he pointed out the ultimate unity of a man's individual and social obligations. His language is epigrammatic, but the meaning is clear; If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am for myself alone, where am I? He also taught that he who seeks to aggrandise himself destroys himself. Like Jesus, Hillel evidently saw clearly that no man could ever fully express himself except in devoted service to society. Hillel's Standards for the Socially Minded Citizen. Hil lel's aim was clearly to develop socially minded neighbours and citizens who would constitute a perfect society. He was no ascetic, either in life or teaching. He exhorted his disciples: Separate not yourself from the congregation. He urged each to make a harmonious unit in society: Appear neither naked nor clothed, Neither laughing nor weeping. The selfish man he likened to one at sea in a boat with others who insists upon boring a hole under his seat. Hillel anticipated Jesus' teaching: Judge not that ye be not judged, for he laid down the noble precept: Judge not another until you have come into his place. Hillel was also a strong advocate of peace. He believed thoroughly in the might of right. He taught that obedience to the moral and civil law was the essential basis of peace: Be among the disciples of Aaron, who loved peace and received peace and loved all creatures and guided them to the law. His supreme utterance, which may well have been in the mind of Jesus when he laid down the same great principle in positive form, was: THE SOCIALLY MINDED CITIZEN 169 Do not to your neighbour what is unpleasant to yourself; this is the whole law; all else is but exposition. The Antecedents of John the Baptist. In the minds of most modern students John the Baptist is rarely associated with Hillel; and yet these two great teachers had much in common. Hillel represented the noblest teachings of later Judaism; John the first-fruits of a new and supremely vital world movement to which Hillel appears to have given the first impetus. It is only the perspective of history that has made these two great leaders the representatives of two distinct religions. In its origin there was no sharp distinction between Christianity and Judaism. In the eyes of his contemporaries John was in every respect a loyal Jew. Both lived in the same epochmaking half-century. One was a rabbi, the other a prophet, yet each drew his inspiration from the earlier moral and spiritual teachers of their race. Both declared that the essentials in religion and life were not creeds and ceremonials but character and acts. The fundamental teachings of both were ethical and social. John is the younger and probably owed much to Hillel. According to Christian tradition he was by birth and training a priest and was reared at Jerusalem under the shadow of the temple. During John's childhood and youth Hillel was still uttering his great social message. Against the formalism, the hypocrisy, and the corrupt life of the city he early reacted. It was probable that it was this reaction which carried him out into the wilderness of Judea, far from all the injustice and hypocritical formalism of Jerusalem. Here he doubtless came into personal contact with the Essenes, the members of the Jewish monastic order which was strongly intrenched in this region. Their zeal for social service must have made a deep impression upon him; but the chief influence in John's life was the social message of the earlier prophets such as Amos and Isaiah. The conditions with which they dealt were very similar to those which confronted John. In their ethical and social interpretation of religion his awakened soul found satisfaction. His task henceforth was to impress |