the Mount? Moreover, si duo idem dicunt, non est idem. As to the rabbinical parallels, we must
remember that they were not committed to writing before the second century, and that, Delitzsch
says (Ein Tag in Capernaum, p. 137), "not a few sayings of Christ, circulated by Jewish Christians,
reappeared anonymously or under false names in the Talmuds and Midrashim."- No amount of detached words of wisdom constitute an organic system of ethics any,
more than a heap of marble blocks constitute a palace or temple; and the best system of ethics is
unable to produce a holy life, and is worthless without it.
We may admit without hesitation that Hillel was "the greatest and best of all Pharisees"
(Ewald), but he was far inferior to John the Baptist; and to compare him with Christ is sheer blindness
or folly. Ewald calls such comparison "utterly perverse" (grundverkehrt, v. 48). Farrar remarks that
the distance between Hillel and Jesus is "a distance absolutely immeasurable, and the resemblance
of his teaching to that of Jesus is the resemblance of a glow-worm to the sun" (II. 455). "The
fundamental tendencies of both," says Delitzsch (p. 23), "are as widely apart as he and earth. That
of Hillel is legalistic, casuistic, and nationally contracted; that of Jesus is universally religious,
moral and human. Hillel lives and moves in the externals, Jesus in the spirit of the law." He was
not even a reformer, as Geiger and Friedlander would make him, for what they adduce as proofs
are mere trifles of interpretation, and involve no new principle or idea.
Viewed as a mere human teacher, the absolute originality of Jesus consists in this, "that his
words have touched the hearts of all men in all ages, and have regenerated the moral life of the
world" (Farrar, II. 454). But Jesus is far more than a Rabbi, more than a sage and saint more than
a reformer, more than a benefactor; he is the author of the true religion, the prophet, priest and king,
the renovator, the Saviour of men, the founder of a spiritual kingdom as vast as the race and as long
as eternity.
§ 18. Apocryphal Traditions.
We add some notes of minor interest connected with the history of Christ outside of the only
authentic record in the Gospel.
I. The Apocryphal Sayings of our Lord.—The canonical Gospels contain all that is necessary
for us to know about the words and deeds of our Lord, although many more might have been
recorded (John 20:30; 21:25). Their early composition and reception in the church precluded the
possibility of a successful rivalry of oral tradition. The extra-biblical sayings of our Lord are mere
fragments, few in number, and with one exception rather unimportant, or simply variations of
genuine words.
They have been collected by Fabricius, in Codex Apocr. N. T., I pp. 321–335; Grabe:
Spicilegium SS. Patrum, ed. alt. I. 12 sqq., 326 sq.; Koerner: De sermonibus Christiἀγράφοις
(Lips. 1776); Routh, in Reliq. Sacrae, vol. I. 9–12, etc.; Rud. Hofmann, in Das Leben Jesu nach
den Apokryphen (Leipz. 1851, § 75, pp. 317–334); Bunsen, in Anal. ante-Nic. I. 29 sqq.; Anger, in
Synops. Evang. (1852); Westcott: Introd. to the Study of the Gospels, Append. C. (pp. 446 sqq. of
the Boston ed. by Hackett); Plumptre, in Ellicott’s Com. for English Readers, I. p. xxxiii.; J. T.
Dodd: Sayings ascribed to our Lord by the Fathers (1874); E. B. Nicholson:The Gospel according
to the Hebrews (Lond. 1879, pp. 143–162). Comp. an essay of Ewald in his "Jahrbücher der Bibl.A.D. 1-100.