rabbis

175:1.9“Fur­ther­more, these self-cen­tered rulers de­light in do­ing their good works so that they will be seen by men. They make broad their phy­lac­ter­ies and en­large the bor­ders of their of­fi­cial robes. They crave the chief places at the feasts and de­mand the chief seats in the syn­a­gogues. They covet lauda­tory salu­ta­tions in the mar­ket places and de­sire to be called rabbi by all men. And even while they seek all this honor from men, they se­cretly lay hold of wid­ows’ houses and take profit from the ser­vices of the sa­cred tem­ple. For a pre­tense these hyp­ocrites make long prayers in pub­lic and give alms to at­tract the no­tice of their fel­lows.

137:7.2Through­out these four months these seven be­liev­ers, one his own brother in the flesh, were get­ting ac­quainted with Je­sus; they were get­ting used to the idea of liv­ing with this God-man. Though they called him Rabbi, they were learn­ing not to be afraid of him. Je­sus pos­sessed that match­less grace of per­son­al­ity which en­abled him so to live among them that they were not dis­mayed by his di­vin­ity. They found it re­ally easy to be “friends with God,” God in­car­nate in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh. This time of wait­ing severely tested the en­tire group of be­liev­ers. Noth­ing, ab­so­lutely noth­ing, mirac­u­lous hap­pened. Day by day they went about their or­di­nary work, while night af­ter night they sat at Je­sus’ feet. And they were held to­gether by his match­less per­son­al­ity and by the gra­cious words which he spoke to them evening upon evening.

142:2.1There was in Je­ru­sa­lem in at­ten­dance upon the Pass­over fes­tiv­i­ties one Ja­cob, a wealthy Jew­ish trader from Crete, and he came to An­drew mak­ing re­quest to see Je­sus pri­vately. An­drew ar­ranged this se­cret meet­ing with Je­sus at Flav­ius’s home the evening of the next day. This man could not com­pre­hend the Mas­ter’s teach­ings, and he came be­cause he de­sired to in­quire more fully about the king­dom of God. Said Ja­cob to Je­sus: “But, Rabbi, Moses and the olden proph­ets tell us that Yah­weh is a jeal­ous God, a God of great wrath and fierce anger. The proph­ets say he hates evil­do­ers and takes vengeance on those who obey not his law. You and your dis­ci­ples teach us that God is a kind and com­pas­sion­ate Fa­ther who so loves all men that he would wel­come them into this new king­dom of heaven, which you pro­claim is so near at hand.”

142:2.5And Ja­cob an­swered: “Rabbi, I be­lieve; I de­sire that you lead me into the Fa­ther’s king­dom.”

142:6.3Upon be­ing pre­sented by Flav­ius, Nicode­mus said: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher sent by God, for no mere man could so teach un­less God were with him. And I am de­sirous of know­ing more about your teach­ings re­gard­ing the com­ing king­dom.”

173:2.3It was al­to­gether proper that the tem­ple rulers and the of­fi­cers of the Jew­ish San­hedrin should ask this ques­tion of any­one who pre­sumed to teach and per­form in the ex­traor­di­nary man­ner which had been char­ac­ter­is­tic of Je­sus, es­pe­cially as con­cerned his re­cent con­duct in clear­ing the tem­ple of all com­merce. These traders and money-chang­ers all op­er­ated by di­rect li­cense from the high­est rulers, and a per­cent­age of their gains was sup­posed to go di­rectly into the tem­ple trea­sury. Do not for­get that au­thor­ity was the watch­word of all Jewry. The proph­ets were al­ways stir­ring up trou­ble be­cause they so boldly pre­sumed to teach with­out au­thor­ity, with­out hav­ing been duly in­structed in the rab­binic academies and sub­se­quently reg­u­larly or­dained by the San­hedrin. Lack of this au­thor­ity in pre­ten­tious pub­lic teach­ing was looked upon as in­di­cat­ing ei­ther ig­no­rant pre­sump­tion or open re­bel­lion. At this time only the San­hedrin could or­dain an el­der or teacher, and such a cer­e­mony had to take place in the pres­ence of at least three per­sons who had pre­vi­ously been so or­dained. Such an or­di­na­tion con­ferred the ti­tle of “rabbi” upon the teacher and also qual­i­fied him to act as a judge, “bind­ing and loos­ing such mat­ters as might be brought to him for ad­ju­di­ca­tion.”

137:7.6The scribes and rab­bis, taken to­gether, were called Phar­isees. They re­ferred to them­selves as the “as­so­ciates.” In many ways they were the pro­gres­sive group among the Jews, hav­ing adopted many teach­ings not clearly found in the He­brew scrip­tures, such as be­lief in the res­ur­rec­tion of the dead, a doc­trine only men­tioned by a later prophet, Daniel.