palastinensischen Theologie, [1] which does not confine itself to single sayings and thoughts, but aims at exhibiting the Rabbinic system of thought as a whole, throws, in the main, but little light on the thoughts of Jesus. The Rabbinic parables supply, according to Julicher, but little of value for the explanation of the parables of Jesus. [2] In this method of discourse, Jesus is so pre-eminently original, that any other productions of the Jewish parabolic literature are like stunted undergrowth beside a great tree; though that has not prevented His originality from being challenged in this very department, both in earlier times and at the present. As early as 1648, Robert Sheringham, of Cambridge, [3] suggested that the parables in Matt. xx. 1 ff., xxv. 1 ft., and Luke xvi., were derived from Talmudic sources, an opinion against which J. B. Carpzov, the younger, raised a protest; in 1839, F. Nork asserted, in his work on "Rabbinic Sources and Parallels for the New Testament Writings," that the best thoughts in the discourses of Jesus are to be attributed to His Jewish teachers; in 1880 the Dutch Rabbi, T. Tal, maintained the thesis that the parables of the New Testament are all borrowed from the Talmud. [4] Theories of this kind cannot be refuted, because they lack the foundation necessary to any theory which is to be capable of being rationally discussed-that of plain common sense. [5]
We possess, however, really scientific attempts to define more closely the thoughts of Jesus by the aid of the Rabbinic language and Rabbinic ideas in the works of Arnold Meyer and Dalman. It cannot indeed be said that the obscure sayings which form the problem of present-day exegesis are in all cases made clearer by them, much as we may admire the comprehensive knowledge of
- ↑ Leipzig, 1880; 2nd ed., 1897.
- ↑ Cf. for what follows' Julicher, Die Gleichnisreden Jesu, i., 1888, p. 164 ff.
- ↑ Robert Sheringham of Cains College, Cambridge, a royalist divine, published an edition of the Talmudic tractate Yoma. London, 1648.-F. C. B.
- ↑ T. Tal, Professor Oort und der Talmud, 1880. See upon this Van Manen, Jahrb. f. prot. Theol., 1884, p. 569. The best collection of Talmudic parables is, according to Julicher, that of Prof. Guis. Levi, translated by L. Seligman as Parabeln, Legenden und Gedanken aus Talmud und Midrasch. Leipzig, 2nd ed., 1877.
- ↑ The question may be said to have been provisionally settled by Paul Fiebig's work, Altjudische Gleichnisse und die Gleichnisse Jesu (Ancient Jewish Parables and the Parables of Jesus), Tubingen, 1904, in which he gives some fifty Late-Jewish parables, and compares them with those of Jesus, the final result being show more clearly than ever the uniqueness and absoluteness of His creations.
