Page:As others saw Him.djvu/232

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NOTES.

Page 73. Easier for an elephant. This is the form in which the proverb was current among the Jews of the time, as we can see from the quotations of it in the Talmud.

Page 81. For the interview with the Scribe (whom I identify with the writer of the reminiscences) I have combined the two accounts in Luke x. and Mark xii., which obviously refer to the same incident. It is clear from the question How readest thou? that Jesus was referring to some written exposition of the current religion of the time. Yet the collocation of the Shema (Deut. vi. 4) with the injunction to neighborly love (Levit. xix. 18) does not of course occur in the Old Testament, but is found in the Jewish Two Ways, with some form of which Jesus is thus shown to have been acquainted.

Page 83. There is little doubt that M. Halévi is right in contending that the Parable of the Good Samaritan was originally a Parable of the Good Israelite. Jewish society was divided into three castes, Priests, Levites, and the ordinary Israelites, and the distinction is kept up even to the present day in the "calling up to the Law" (see page 40). There would be no point in referring to two of the castes if they were not to be contrasted with the third, the ordinary Israelite of the time. The point of the parable is against the sacerdotal classes, who were indeed Jesus' chief opponents and ultimately brought about his execution. As a confirmation of M. Halévi's views it may be pointed out that no Samaritan would have been found at that period on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho.

Page 92. This second sermon is put together from Resch, sections 23, 68; A. 57; A. 27, 53, 18, 21, 25, 7, 41; A. 11; 17, 16, 10, 5, 64, 36 b, 52, 60, 59, 39. The two passages, Is it not enough for the disciples to be as the Master? and I will choose me the good whom my