The Wisdom of Alfred Edersheim. David Mishkin

for those initiated in its mysteries a higher spirituality and a loftier elevation.11

      There can be no doubt that, in the providence of God, the location of so many Jews in Alexandria, and the mental influence which they acquired, were designed to have an important bearing on the later spread of the Gospel of Christ among the Greek-speaking and Grecian-thinking educated world.12

      Angels

      The ministry of His angels will only be fully understood when our eyes shall have been opened, and when we shall hold personal converse with them in another state of existence.13

      The angels whom God sends are all good, though their commission may be judgment to bring evil upon us. As one has rightly remarked, “God sends good angels to punish evil men, while to chastise good men, evil angels claim the power.”14

      Anthropology

      As in the soul of man we see the ruins of what he had been before the fall, so in the legends and traditions of the various religions of antiquity we recognize the echoes of what men had originally heard from the mouth of God.15

      Has the great maker of the machinery, to us incomprehensible in its magnitude and complication, left it to the operation of those laws which has put within its every part to regulate and check its working? If so, what of the intellectual and moral aspirations within us, of that which constitutes equally the real being of man and his dignity? What of those thoughts and hopes which we instinctively feel to be heaven-born, since we know them not to have been earth-sprung? What of high moral motives, the noble inward struggles and victories, the self-devotion and self sacrifice, the patient bearing, the trustful waiting, and holy living? Truly, we cannot believe in man without believing in God.16

      Anti-Semitism

      To me, indeed, it is difficult to associate the so-called Anti-Semitic movement with any but the lowest causes; envy, jealousy, and cupidity on the one hand; or, on the other, ignorance, prejudice, bigotry and hatred of race.17

      As they had been oppressed by Caligula, by Nero, by Domitian, and by the whole line of pagan monarchs; so were they persecuted by a Eugenius, by a Paul, by a Caraffa, and more or less by the whole line of Popes, - by the very men who owed all their idolatrous glory to the fact that they assume to be the spiritual descendants of a Hebrew fisherman! Nay, the Christian Bishops of Rome even exceeded the heathen Caesars in their cruelty and inhumanity towards this people.18

      I feel convinced that the real root of anti-Semitism is depreciation of the Old Testament. If we have low opinions of the Old Testament we shall come to despise and to hate the Jews, and perhaps not unreasonably so. Love for the Old Testament leads to love for Israel.19

      Anxiety

      There is no anxious, nor nervous seeking of deliverance when faith has made its confessions to God. All that is left is to anticipate victory.20

      An anxious mind is an unbelieving mind. Full of cares is full of self.21

      Apocrypha

      The silence of the Apocrypha about the person of the Messiah is so strange, as to be scarcely explained by the consideration, that those books were composed when the need of a Messiah for the deliverance of Israel was not painfully felt.22

      The hope of the Old Testament centered in the person of the Messiah; that of the Apocrypha, in the nation of the Jews.23

      It is true that the Apocrypha preserve silence about the person of the Messiah. But this, not because the Messiah was ignored, but because it was apprehended and presented in another form. It was no longer the person of the Messiah, but the Messianic times, which engaged the expectancy of the people.24

      Apologetics

      The chief use of apologetics is to answer a fool according to his folly; that is, to silence him.25

      Apostles

      Too often we commit in our estimate the error of thinking of them exclusively as Apostles, not as disciples; as our teachers, not as His learners, with all the failings of men, the prejudice of Jews, and the unbelief natural to us, but assuming in each individual special forms, and appearing as characteristic weaknesses.26

      Art

      For, art is God-given, and what is God-given must be capable of being in turn devoted to God. But how can this be done? The consecration of art, which is the highest expression of mind, is itself an act of homage.27

      Not to produce religious feelings, but to express it, is the province of true art. Again, art calms and elevates the mind, and, if it takes us to its own high altitude, that there we may pray and worship, another of its objects is fulfilled.

      Poetry and music have always been favorite engagements with Israel, and originality peculiarly their own, and peculiarly expressive of their national mental characteristics.28

      Speaking as one who has no claim to knowledge of art, only one picture of Christ ever really impressed me. It was that of an ‘Ecce Homo,’ by Carlo Dolei, in the Pitti Gallery at Florence.29

      Art, like Scripture, has this for its object: to make us see, through the actual and outward, the spiritual and therefore the truly real. It presents reality, but as that through which we look far away into the ideal, which underlies all, surrounds all, and gives meaning to all.30

      Atheism

      Self indulgence and covetousness are practical atheism.31

      At the root of all evil, deep in our hearts, is atheism.32

      It deserves more than passing notice, that the modern denial of God may be reduced to the same ultimate principle as the worship of Baal. For, if the great First Cause – God – God as the Creator – be denied, then the only mode of accounting for the origin of all things is to trace it to the operation of forces in matter. And what really is this but a deification of nature.33

      For, we confidently assert and challenge experiment of it, that disbelief in a God, or materialism, involves infinitely more difficulties, and that at every step and in regard to all things, than the faith of the Christian.34

      For myself, I cannot understand the rascaldom which underlies writings and lectures intended to make men atheists. If everything is only mud – including, of course, such writings and arguments – what can be the purpose of them? Only that of self-display, and, for myself, I do not admire even the largest accumulation of mud standing out from circumnatant [sic] mud.35

      Atonement

      On the shedding of blood, which was of the greatest importance – since, according to the Talmud, ‘whenever the blood touches the altar the offerer is atoned for’ – followed the ‘flaying’ of the sacrifice and the ‘cutting up into his pieces.’ All this had to be done in an orderly manner, and according to certain rules, the apostle adopting the sacrificial term when he speaks of ‘rightly dividing the word of truth’ (2 Timothy 2:15).36

      But even the need of such a Day of Atonement, after the daily offerings, the various festive offerings, and the private and public sin-offerings all the year round, showed the insufficiency of all such sacrifices, while the very offerings of the Day of Atonement proclaimed themselves to be only temporary and provisional, ‘imposed until the time of reformation.’37

      The sin-offering – This is the most important of all sacrifices. It made atonement for the person of the offender, whereas the trespass-offering only atoned for one special offence . . . However, in reference to [both of them], the Rabbinical principle must be kept in view – that they only atoned in case of real repentance.38

      Babylonian Exile

      It were a one sided view to regard the Babylonish exile as only punishment for Israel’s sin. There is, in truth, nothing in all God’s dealings in history exclusively punitive. That were a merely negative element. But there is always a positive element also of actual progress; a step forward, even though in the taking of it something should have to be crushed. And this step forward was the development of the Kingdom of God in its relation to the world.39

      Bar Kochba

      His