the Talmud bears the same tradition. See I. Loeb, La Littérature des Pauvres dans le Bible (Paris, 1893).
Page 57. The Two Ways. This is the original kernel of the Testament of the XII. Apostles, according to the reconstruction of Harnack, who, following Dr. Taylor, has recognized that this early catechism of the Christian Church was modelled upon a previous Jewish catechism. Traces of this latter are left in a Latin fragment in which the Christian interpolations do not appear. I have endeavored to bring out the significance of this fact from a Jewish point of view in the interviews with the Rich Young Man (page 71) and with the Scribe (page 81.) If Jesus adopted as the summing up of his own faith the ordinary statements of the common Jewish catechism of the time, it would be hard to contend that he regarded himself as in any way advancing beyond the Jewish standpoint. Harnack has given this reconstruction of the Jewish catechism in his pamphlet, Die jüdischen beiden Wege.
Page 67. The passage relating to the woman taken in adultery is now recognized to be an interpolation in the Gospel of St. John (in some of the earliest MSS. of which it does not occur) from a more primitive Gospel. As will be seen from the text, the contrast usually drawn between Jesus' attitude and the harshness of contemporary Jewish Law is unjustified, since Rabbinic Law had already modified the sternness of the Levitical Decree. Nothing can be more humane or tender than the address of the President of the Court on page 68, taken from the Talmudic treatise Sota.
Page 71. This version of the interview with the Rich Young Man is taken from the Gospel according to the Hebrews, edit. Nicholson, page 50. It seems to me to be more primitive than the ordinary Gospel account. The touch of the Young Man scratching his head in doubt, coarse as it is, brings the whole scene vividly before one's eyes.
