brie heise: Lost ges te aut ae Cin i~ bey h ails Shae 3ti< ast is - ie yo os oe ‘ : ; ere : i ; < 2% ists . 321 : She sad oo tht ; ; € : : ‘ : a oe peer bo oh ir EAS ae ; % vy otis ite + Sits Breas) n : : sei ities at : % + r xf ‘aj ree bbrerss NyeS spt sth nye aye 3 2 ALF) rae f | : seoeae . . ; ie = a z abs i fais - 4 atiat - v S2351 +44) 3 . set a es ale 2 ‘ 5 : >} i ~ Foy : Seoe ese i grteere ate oT reat j : abe seep : hey ae a pfs ; : ; ent ; . pees i ee. : 55 eer , arti ey rs : : b t peas ress ah 3c ate Taist f . ate + > <9 1% Tivt woes earners ores : a% titre Eoevriee woe ba roe) net i - tee ret os Se ion ae petase $ asi oto eer ; : win Stat . peated eee aS . ae ‘ ror och hit) + z % mrs? At P tb rf rt sree ‘ eS oh yeas i ; : : is} a : i . ssihsreh: aah; ; ' ; reat 2, ¥ : eae stet et ete . 2 BIG, a ; oaks panne aratt eee otra eye fn ? poe pee eo £ xt oe tres i Saath ape t £ Sects S757 rast - canoe nS att t ats : reat 4 sad vt < : z Sse saith ae rear ; i ; ti ieeaad Hist Micsisineeeisie i t : : Eee i area at : . . be etre ; Pe . a4 P set 2 IT jer as : : j ‘3 vasa 4 1 Ex dees t ay F PRI ~ APR e = N26 “" : “OLogigay se BRe4 ome B oO 2eveD ’ Maynard, Sohn Albert, 1884- A survey of Hebrew education Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https ://archive.org/details/surveyofhebrewedOOmayn Biblical and Oriental Series SAMUEL A. B. MERCER, General Editor A SURVEY OF HEBREW EDUCATION | f f f Af “Biblical and Oriental Series SAMUEL A. B. MERCER, General Editor The object of this Series on the Bible and Oriental Civilization is to make the results of expert investi- gation accessible to laymen. Sometimes these results will be presented in the form of daily readings, and sometimes in that of continuous discussion. Specialists in every case will be employed, who will endeavor to present their subjects in the most effective and _profit- able way. THE Book oF GENEsIS FOR BiBLE CLASSES AND PRI- VATE STUDY By Samuel A. B. Mercer (now ready). THE GrowtH oF RE Licious AND Mora. IpDEas_ IN Ecypt By Samuel A. B. Mercer (nom ready). RELIGIOUS AND Mora. IpDEAs IN BABYLONIA AND As- SYRIA By Samuel A. B. Mercer (now ready). LIFE AND GROWTH OF ISRAEL By Samuel A. B, Mercer (now ready). TUTANKHAMEN AND EcYPTOLOGY By Samuel A. B. Mercer (now ready). A Survey or HesBREw EDUCATION By John A. Maynard (now ready). THE BirtH OF JUDAISM By John A. Maynard (in preparation). MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING COMPANY A SURVEY OF HEBREW EDUCATION / BY JOHN A“ MAYNARD, Ph.D., D.D., Pd.D. Associate Professor of Semitic Languages and the History of Religion in Bryn Mawr College ; Fellow of the Society of Oriental Research and Assistant Editor of its Journal; Associate Editor of the Anglican Theological Review ; Member of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING CO. MILWAUKEE, WIS. A. R. MOWBRAY & CO. LONDON COPYRIGHT BY ; MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING CO. 1924 TO PROFESSOR H. H. HORNE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY A TEACHER OF ETHICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS CONTENTS TS OREW OR UWE errs Ai eho Ee Neem erate ane Gieg ERROR ACE tare uiimcenn,) crete te hace run Mortal aber g any THE SociAL BACKGROUND IN Its ReLA- TION DOs LUD U CATION ain euayaielaioie ve ware DUCA TIONAL MAIMS tistiisla aa tala eters THp SuBIECTS STUDIED... F260 ee). MANS OF “EDUCATION. sie he Woe alee oe UW Cd SEAT PSU as TERY arte SANS AP ADAIR atae Uudhy VNR TPIT TAS “DRA GUE IVDO! BARS ORR EE Ee UD tae NING OE FOREWORD This work was offered to the Faculty of Peda- gogy of New York University as partial require- ment for the degree of Doctor of Pedagogy. With the consent of the Dean it is now printed, with some alterations made necessary by the progress of knowledge. A large number of footnotes have been left out, and also a large portion of the bib- liography. The author wishes to express his thanks to Dean Samuel A. B. Mercer for reading his manu- script in proof, and for making valuable sug- gestions. I take great pleasure in dedicating this book to Dr. H. H. Horne, professor of the History of Education and of the History of Philosophy in York University, as a small token of thanks for what he has done for me, not only as a teacher, but as a fearless champion of Truth. J. A.M. PREFACE The highest purpose of education is the forma- tion of character, since conduct is, as Matthew Arnold said, three fourths of life. Great is, there- fore, our debt to the Herbartians for their em- phasis on the importance of ethical values. Through them it has come to be accepted that no educational system is valid which fails to build up character. The idea itself is not new. For many centuries most civilized peoples have accepted it, and they also have agreed that this aim was best attained through instruction based on ancient Hebrew ideals, as interpreted by Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. Even Socialism, in spite of its common hostility towards the Churches, owes an immense debt to Israel. Its roots are found in the teaching of the prophets, as can be seen by even a casual study of such books as the Sociological Study of the Bible, by Wallis, The Social Institutions and Ideals of the Bible, by Soares, The Social Teachings of the Prophets and Jesus, by Kent. One may or may not like the materialistic aspect of what may be called the various dogmatic forms of socialism; nevertheless this element is also found in Hebrew x A Rees of Hebrew Education culture and it is not mere accident that it has been very attractive to modern Jews. Our educational ways owe much to the East,’ either by way of direct imitation, or through Greek culture, which was greatly influenced by Persian civilization and later, in the days of Alexander’s successors, by the culture of the con- quered East. This debt is, however, small com- pared with what has been borrowed by us from the little nation of Israel.’ The importance of a study of Hebrew educa- tional ideals has been acknowledged by every historian of education.* They have frequently ex- pressed the opinion that if ever a people has demonstrated the power of Education, it is the people of Israel. The historico-philosophical im- portance of the subject from this point of view is well illustrated by K. A. Schmid, who looked upon Hebrew education as the climax of ancient education. And yet, in spite of many enthusiastic claims or much polite interest, the subject has been so imperfectly threshed out in special monographs, 1See the admirable synopsis of O. Willmann in Orientali- sches Brziehungs und Bildungswesen in Rein’s Encyklopaedisches Handbuch der Paedagogik, 2nd. ed. 408-414. 2J. A. Maynard. The Problem of the Formation of Character in the Light of the History of Hebrew Education, Anglican Theol. Rev. III, 228ff. 3 Monroe had omitted it in his Text book on the History of Education, 1906, but made up for it to some extent in his Brief Course in the History of Education, 1907. 4K. A. Schmid, Geschichte der Erziehung, pp. 11-14. Preface x1 that the main issues have remained obscure to most historians; indeed, some of the current text books of History of Education betray in places an imperfect state of knowledge of the subject, and even gross errors, both in details’ and per- spective. Too often their authors look at every question from a dogmatic point of view, whether philosophical, like Davidson, or religious, like McCormick. Sometimes they blindly and uncrit- ically accept data offered by badly chosen second- hand authorities. Others, like Laurie, entertain a pious reverence for the results of the crude Bible criticism of fifteen centuries ago. We should not be too hard on writers of text books. In the nature of the case, they have to use the works of investigators who are supposed to have a first-hand knowledge of the subject but are not always very thorough. About this latter, Kennedy wrote nineteen years ago, “A critical history of Hebrew Education is still a desideratum.’” Two years later, in an excellent but brief article on the Origin and Development of Jewish Educa- tion, G. Harold Ellis made the following state- 5 Graves, for instance, tells us (History of Education, 130) that there was a mnemotechnic method called the athbash; what he describes under that name is the alphabetical order of lines or strophes in a poem. We do not know where Graves found this piece of garbled information. The athbash itself was a method of transposition of letters, a kind of code used later for exegetical purposes by the kabbalists; it consisted in substituting the last letter of the alphabet (th) for the first (a), the next to the last (sh) for the sencond (b), etc. The earliest instances of it is the writing Sheshak for Babel, found in Jer. 25:26 and 51: 41. ® Hastings, Dict. of the Bible, 1900:1, 651. xil A Survey of Hebrew Education ment, “Many works on Jewish Education have failed to give a correct view of the matter, be- cause the relation of history to the mental de- velopment of the people was not recognized, or because the arrangement of historical material was made from an a priori dogmatic point of view. An enormous literature on Jewish education has grown up, but the lack of scientific accuracy has made it almost worthless.’” Since then two mon- ographs have given us a more thorough treatment of the subject, namely Klostermann’s and F. H. Swift’s. But Klostermann is not aware of the requirements of educational history, and, more- over, is not interested in the whole field. As for Swift, he seems to have accepted a number of data at their face-value and to have treated the critical position uncritically. There is also a monograph by Kretzmann but it is of little value. The fact that the history of Jewish Education has attracted many Jewish investigators has caused great misunderstanding of its general character. It is very difficult for a talmudist to read the Old Testament as if it were not a Jewish book, unless he has had a thorough training in literary criticism. For this reason there has been a general impression that Hebrew and Jewish are practically identical terms. We, on the con- trary, wish to lay stress on the point that Jewish education is not Hebrew education, but only its later phase. Indeed, the history of Israel tells us 7 Pedag. Seminary 9, 1902, 52. Preface Xili of tremendous changes caused by political and social cataclysms. Palestine was like a corridor between two continents, and between the two old- est civilizations of the Near East; the Hebrews were trampled upon by many conquerors; their race made rich through tragic national expe- riences. We may transpose into their history, Jacotot’s famous axiom, “7J'out est dans tout,” in so far that the whole history of mankind can be interwoven with that of Israel. Even the portion covered by our study, namely 2500 to 300 B. C., includes several stages in human civilization, The clear distinction that we must make between Hebrew and Jewish history is, of course, more pedagogical than real. One cannot say that, on such and such a date, the Jewish race, the Jew- ish nation, the Jewish religion began. And yet Josephus tells us that the Hebrews “have been called Jews from the day that they came up from Babylon, after the tribe of Judah, which came first to those places, and so both they and the country gained that appelation.’” This statement is substantially true. In preéxilic times, the term Jew designated only a subject of the kingdom of Judah. In post-exilic times, the name was applied primarily to the Hebrews of the little Persian province of Judah, then to citizens of the Macca- bean state, and, in a broader sense, to the mem- bers of the Jewish race, at home or in the Diaspora. Until the days of Ezra there was no § Josephus, Antig. 9, 5, 7, Cf. Contra Ap. 1, 22. X1V A Survey of Hebrew Education Judaism proper. The papyri of Elephantine show us that, in the Fifth Century, the popular re- ligion which was polytheistic, was still followed by the generality of the people.’ If this distine- tion, commonly made by scholars, between the old Hebrew religion and Judaism is essential for the student of religion, it is no less important for the historian of education. The triumph of the new religion over the old took place at a time when Hebrew ceased to be a commonly spoken language, Aramaic having taken its place among the people. It is true that formal education be- came more prevalent at the same time, but it was education in a dead language, with methods strangely similar to those of our own medieval schools, petrified, bookish, and conservative. It would not be quite proper to think of the Heder so well described by Cohen” as symbolical of the darkness of the new education; there was no Ghetto and no Heder in Palestine, but there came into Hebrew life and education a rigidity and stiffness that killed it. We may admire the industry of the pupils who sat at the feet of the rabbis, but the methods through which their in- telligence was sharpened have only an historical, not a vital, value for us. Like the old Hebrew re- ligion ancient Hebrew education is part of our universal inheritance, for, whether we be fol- lowers of Christ, of Mohammed, or of the great %J. M. Powis Smith, A. Journ. of Sem. Lang. 1917, 30, 322-323, 10 Cohen, Jewish Life in Modern Times, p. 233. Preface XV Talmudic teachers, Jerusalem is the mother of us all. The new religion, as well as Jewish educa- tion which was so closely connected with it, is dear to a few only; it inspires them, and we re- spect it for their sake; but it does not belong to the world.” One may perhaps claim that, while Hebrew education belongs to antiquity, Jewish education should be studied in connection with the Middle Ages. No doubt the distinction we make here between Hebrew and Jewish education was known to historians of education; but, as they do not make it clear to their readers, we have a right to suppose that it was not altogether plain to them, and to take it as our duty to in- sist upon it. It is rather striking that historians of educa- tion who have dealt with our subject at any length, have done so because they have uncriti- cally accepted, at its face value, a very doubtful Talmudic statement. We are told in the Jeru- salem Talmud that the famous scribe Simon-ben- Shetah, brother of Queen Alexandra, the Brutus of the Jews, enacted a law making general edu- cation compulsory. The text runs thus: “that the children shall attend the (elementary) school.” This, however, may be interpreted as meaning that attendance on schools already ex- isting was henceforth to be compulsory.” More- J. A. Maynard, Three Daughters of Israel, Angl. Theol. Rev. 1919, 227-230. 12 Kethuboth 8, 11, 32 b. 43 Kennedy in Hastings’ D.B. 1, 649 b. XVI A Survey of Hebrew Education over, fact and fancy have a way of mixing in the Iuast; there is on the subject of education so much Talmudic material that has been dis- counted,” that one should take the story relating to Simon-ben-Shetah cum grano salis. As a mat- ter of fact, the triumph of legalism in Israel did not bring education to all; it created a learned class which despised those who did not know their letters, the am haarets, to which the epithet of sinners was lavishly applied at the beginning of our era. We thought it needless to give in our bib- liography a list of books bearing on Biblical science proper. The reader can consult the criti- cal bibliographies by Ackerman,” Mercer,” and Maynard.” The whole critical position is in a healthy state of fluidity; books written on the Near East age rapidly. There is, apparently, to- day a tendency to doubt the infallibility of a purely literary criticism of documents. The con- servative position, even as modified by most con- tributors to Orr’s International Standard Bible Encyclopedia cannot be defended on purely scien- 144 Schmid calls attention, in his Geschichte der Hrziehung, p. 332, to a statement made to the effect that in the little town of Bethar there were 400 schools, having each 400 teachers, who supervised 400 pupils each. If mathematical accuracy had not been hampered so much by the cumbrous nu- merical notation of the Jews, they would have discovered that the cube of 400 is 64,000,000, thus giving Bethar a scholastic population superior to that of Europe. % Angl. Theol. Rev. 1, 214-239, 314-333; 2. 43-70. 16 Journal of the Soc. of Or. Res. 3, 19-35; 6, 134-152. 7 Angl. Theol. Rev. 1924. Preface XVII tific lines. It does not follow that we must adopt in toto the “critical” position as crystallized for the English reading public in Hastings’ Diction- ary of the Bible, Kent’s books, and the Century Bible, and the newly reédited Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges. That, of course, would be an easy way; we doubt whether it would be the right way. In common with many others the writer has often expressed his doubt as to the basic value of the “documentary hypothesis” ; more especially the discovery of Deuteronomy in the time of Josiah. It would therefore be unwise from his point of view merely to pigeon-hole every text of the Bible bearing on education, according to the periods de- termined by orthodox academic criticism. There are in the Sacerdotal documents elements older than in the prophetic stories called J and E, and, of course, than D. The mistake made by Well- hausen was to schematize overmuch the evolution of Israel. Lammens shows us from time to time that Wellhausen did not know his ancient Arabia as well as he was supposed to know it. We are all aware of his lack of familiarity with Babylonian culture. Our own lack of faith in Wellhausen’s scheme, as commonly taught, is probably the reason why we publish this work on Hebrew Education only a few years after F. H. Swift wrote his Education in Ancient Israel to 70 A.D. Our own work had been finished before we learned of his. It was presented in 1919 to the XVill A Survey of Hebrew Education faculty of the School of Pedagogy of New York University, for the degree of Doctor of Pedagogy, before we were able to make of Swift’s work more than a cursory study. The years that have passed since that day have increased our con- viction that a more elastic method than Swift’s remained preferable. With the permission of the Dean of the faculty of the School of Pedagogy of New York University, we revised it to bring it into harmony with the results of Biblical re- search since 1919. Our source book has, of course, been the He- brew Masoretic Text, although we tried when it was necessary to scan the older text that under- lies it. The translations given in the following pages are usually our own. Whenever they are not, we give due credit to the translator we fol- lowed because it was evident that his work could not be improved. Our source material is not altogether limited to those parts of the Old Testament which took shape in a written form or orally before the birth of legalism in Israel. In our times the stones have spoken and, still more, the clay of Baby- lonia; they have told us little about education in Palestine proper, but they have given us a first- hand knowledge of the Assyro-Babylonian edu- cation. Moreover, the events here studied took place in what was called until yesterday, the Unchangeable East. Anyone working on our sub- ject should not only, as it were, use mentally Preface XIX pen and ink, but feel that he has at hand a brush and a palette furnished with pigments brought from the gorgeous East. We only wish we could have made better use of them. We have often read the second chapter of Lane’s Manners and Customs of the Modern Lgyptians, and his twenty-fourth note to the fourth chapter of his translation of the Arabian Nights. They were to us reminders of things seen in our younger days when we lived more closely in touch with Old Testament conditions and were less distant from Semitic folk-ways. A genius looks much like other men, eats and sleeps, lives and dies, like the common people. So Israel was undistinguishable among many nations of the Near East except by a collective genius for education of character and a hold upon real values. He will remain a genius for us even though we study his pedigree and his habits. ion A Survey of Hebrew Educat XX "19d004 -asnoq ‘pasyqdeys ‘1ada0y -asnoy ‘1aAvaM ‘pisydeys ‘IIMB ‘Oye ‘AVTAOT joydoid uPBsTj1e ‘19 Wi BJ ‘palsydsys ‘O}J9 ‘sJUZIBg “amo FT “MOIQdTT *MIIGd ‘MOT B IO ‘leadaayesnoy ‘I9AB9 M ‘plsydsys "UdIUIS ‘IOTIIVM ‘19} un Y ‘pasydsys ‘0]0 ‘s]UIIvg ‘JUIUMETIIOS (TVQIIL) ‘SJOeTVIP ONTOS ‘SJ9TVIP OT}TUIEY “Moy AIBA 99} JOT SB UBUOM JOT SB uvur JOJ : UOT}BONpe [BVUOTIBIOA [eo1joRIg SIOqOBVa, :Setouese [OOWOS ule :34SNe} ssensury > ueyods esensury : MOBO -npd [eul1oy jo jusIxq uol}Bonpa ‘I9MIBJ ‘IDABVIA “‘ysotid ‘a9qtaos ‘dorpfos ‘aestz 1B ‘sre[ped ‘pasydeys ‘IOUIIV ‘OJ9 ‘SJUVIBV ‘Seqtiog ‘sjooqos ‘owoPy *‘MIIGdy “OIVURIV ‘Auvm 107 "SoqldOS ‘S}SeTIg ‘sonsoseuds ‘atdurey “GOMGe ‘urstepur JO Gyr *SUOIS -lep ‘mons ‘ apoep *SIepla $ysotid Ysiq ‘ eyaseg ‘UMO} ‘TOINGD “ATTUIG *[B1I0.19 UL -Ur09 : edn} [NIL ¥ ‘aInI UsSI8I0g ‘sjsetad ‘syoydoud SOc L Aros] ‘S190 Ny ‘oyduie} ‘SdIVINJOUBS [BIOT ‘mIpTeBg ‘WaMyRyA ‘UOISITeyY MaIqey *(suotuido) SMOTSTOep {uo IsSND ‘SUIY {SIeple ‘ ospne “UM0} ‘37819 *ATIUIB *‘[BIN}[NIISV ‘mop -SUIy ‘ AOBIBPETMOD ‘SIOUIATP ‘SUYTOUS 2 UOISI[eI JO SAdSIUIT : d1ys1OM JO soovt[g > drqys10oM jo yoolqo : UOLSsI[aY : UOT? uouey) -BIJSIUIUIPB Jo : SIOpRaT :sqTun [Roto :}1un [BID0g > UOIIpuoy dIIuMIONODG > O19STI9} -OBIBYD [ROTITOd urley A ee eS as 00E-98¢ dorwid dulHy, 98¢-00G6T adolugg aNooug ‘s9uo0qs ‘se01} ‘ssulids ‘suleJuNnoy{ ‘spoy ‘OIyTMeS PIO “m04SsN;} “UATIUS “OQ D “UBID “OIPVUr -OU-IMI9Q «=! DIPBUION *‘[BYyo1vIIVeg OOZT-O0FZG doluag LSuly7 AAAYNS OLLVINAHOS NOILVZINVDUO CHAPTER I. THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND IN ITS RELATION TO EDUCATION The two greatest political events in the history of the Hebrews are, first, the Exodus, together with the Conquest of Caanan, and, second, the Exile, together with the return of part of the Judean community to the country surrounding Jerusalem. We can therefore roughly divide He- brew history into three periods: 1st, to 1200 B. C. (Conquest of Caanan) ; 2d, from 1200 B. C. to 586 (fall of Jerusalem) ; 3d, post exilic. The first period is known to us mostly through legends; the Hebrews were nomads or semi-no- mads. They lived under conditions similar to those of the Bedouin of today. We need not dwell on these features of Hebrew life. The lit- erature on the subject is immense and very cap- tivating. Among the nomads, the political and social unit is the clan, and that may be very small. The power of the chief of the tribe is lim- ited; he is a true patriarch. Property consists fs A Survey of Hebrew Education mostly of cattle. Most nomads cultivate patches of ground, when they have the chance to do so, and grow on it barley and other grains. They wear homespun, and their horses are unshod. There are among them a few workers in wood and metal; who often are members of a special tribe and follow a gypsy-like existence.’ Although the nomads care little for books, both men and women love poetry and compose it freely. Their religion is not very positive; the field for ethics is limited to the tribe; the stranger is the enemy unless he claims the rights of a guest, which, of course, are sacred. Some of the Hebrew nomads went to Egypt and came out of it under the guidance of Moses. They were not very numerous, a few thousand at the most. Their conquest of Canaan was like an infiltration; even more so than the conquests of North Africa and Spain by the Moslems in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries; the conquerors were a minority; they learned from the con- quered as much as they taught them for we must not suppose for one moment that the Hebrew in- vaders destroyed the remarkable culture of Ca- naan. The social life of the Hebrews became more complex. They learned to live in houses and to cultivate the olive tree and the vine. The clan 1For instance, the Solubba, or Sleyb, of Arabia, described by Doughty, Arabia Deserta, I, 280 ff.. and the nomadic Jews of North Africa called Bahuzim, who even today are the smiths and weavers of desert tribes. N. Sloutschz, Les hebreo-pheni- ciens, Archives Marocaines, XIV, 69. The Social Background 3 ceased to be the social unit; the family took its place. Codes became necessary as they do in con- flicts of cultures; individual ownership of land fostered sharper social differences. The informal vague, and non-sacerdotal religion of the desert grew more complex; the levitical priesthood as- sumed more importance. Slowly Israel was evolv- ing towards a monarchy, with a small standing army, taxation, class distinctions, foreign poli- tics, foreign trade. The writing ot letters, the drafting of contract, business agreements, bills, inventories, the census, made the scribes more and more indispensable. These had nothing to do, as yet, with sacerdotal traditions, which contin- ued to be transmitted by word of mouth; at times, songs of the past were written lest they should be forgotten. Men began also to write an- nals. The times of Solomon were the Siecle de Louis XIV, with limitations, of that period. Then came the great trials of Israel, when the heavy legions of Assyria spread over the Near Kast, slaughtering, looting, burning, veritable Huns of that time, sharp, ferocious with efficient frightfulness. In Israel, great leaders arose, zeal- ously preaching ideals of righteousness; later times misunderstood these prophets, but enough remains of their addresses to show us that greater men than Savonarola were in Israel, men of faith and of a clear mind, who have given to the civilized world the best of the social ideals existing this day and, through doubts created by 4 A Survey of Hebrew Education national despair, kept faith in the righteousness of the true God alive for the world. The Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, honest and pious, completely destroyed Jerusalem, leav- ing only, in devastated Judea, the poorest of the people. The most industrious were taken over to Babylonia. It was the beginning of the Exile of Israel, an exile that never ended altogether. The exiles did very well in the fertile and prosperous country of the Kuphrates. When Cyrus gave them permission to return to their home-land, many of the Jews of Babylonia chose to remain in the land of their birth. Zerubbabel, Nehemiah, Ezra, these leaders of the Zionism of the day, were fol- lowed by a part of their fellow countrymen, prob- ably the worst and the best, the shiftless and the devout, as happens in every movement of that sort. They found in the old land a struggling Hebrew community, which perhaps did not wel- come these brothers very warmly. We know very little about that period. What seems certain, and is very important for our particular point of view, is that there arose a tendency to revere the written word, “the roll of the book.” The sacer- dotal Code was compiled and incorporated into a new history of Israel. The sayings of the proph- ets were edited and collected. The Hebrew lan- guage was rarely spoken at home. Children learned it now at school from the newly pub- 2J. A. Maynard, The Home of the Second Isaiah, Journal of Biblical Literature, 36 (1917), 214 ff.; Buttenweiser, Where did Deutero-Isaiah live?, Journal of Biblical Lit., 88 (1919), 94 ff. The Social Background 5 lished ancient laws and records. Hence the growth of a school system. The Jews became more and more a race of traders, imitating their former masters, the Babylonians. They saw little good in the sister tribes of the desert, the rustic Edom and Moab, which still represented the former stage of Hebrew culture exalted by the prophets of the Eighth and Seventh Centuries. The new religion, that is, the reformed faith, had the vig- our, the conviction, the narrowness, the feeling of superiority, the missionary zeal of a typical sect. Israel which was polytheistic in the Fifth Century, became now so thoroughly monotheistic that it seemed to forget that it had ever been anything else. The leaders of the people were the teachers, the rabbis, the learned men, scribes, or lawyers. It was a most interesting period in the history of human thought. From our point of view, it was a time of transition, the real begin- ning of formal education among the remnant of Israel, the Jews. 3J. M. P. Smith, Am. Jour. of Sem. Lang., 338, 322-333. CHAPTER II. EDUCATIONAL AIMS Modern educators have analyzed educational aims more than the Hebrews ever dreamt of do- ing. The aims of education are, according to Thorndike, happiness, utility, service, morality, complete living or the perfection of all of each man’s powers, natural development, knowledge, discipline, culture, skill.” One could find in He- brew writings statements showing these aims were known to Israel; but it would be difficult to find words that could adequately render most of them. There was not even a word for con- science. Morality was only true holiness as the prophets understood it. The summum bonum— which is, after all, the aim of education—con- sisted of happiness, goodness of character, and fellowship with God. But these were not separate aims, they overlapped, or rather they were part of a comprehensive aim, that of righteousness. The ideal of happiness was a state of rectitude, justice, and integrity. The opening words of Ps. 1 Thorndike, Hducation 1, p. 18. . Educational Aims 7 119 tell us of “the happiness of those whose way is perfect.” They have found the way of life, not a vague, evanescent, mystical conception of it, but a concrete, well defined, visible blessing. We read in the Proverbs > “Happy the man who finds Wisdom, The man who gains Understanding ; It is better to acquire her than to acquire silver ; She gives a better profit than gold. She is more precious than red coral, No treasures can compare with her. Length of days is in her right hand, Riches and honor in her left. “Her ways are ways of pleasantness. All her paths are peace; She is a tree of life to those who grasp her, Happy are they who hold her fast.” We find the same ideal of a long and peaceful life in the opening lines of the same chapter; “My sons, forget not my instruction. Keep my commandments in thy heart; For length of days and years of life And peace will they heap on thee.” and again (Prov. 3: 21-22 “My son, keep sagacity and discretion. Let them not depart from thine eyes. They shall be life to thy soul And beauty to thy neck.” 2Proy. 3:13-18. This translation, and many of the follow- ing, is based on Toy’s Commentary on the Book of Proverbs. 8 A Survey of Hebrew Education The comparison is obvious. Again (Prov. 4: LOLS) 12 “Listen my son, take up my words And the years of thy life shall be many. Hold fast the instruction, let it not slip. Keep it: it is thy life.” Again (Prov. 4: 20-23) : ee My son, attend to my sayings; To my words lend thine ear: Let them not depart from thine eyes; Keep them in thy heart.” Here, aS in many other places, heart means mind, and should probably be so translated. The text continues: “Hor they are life to those that find them, And health to their whole body. With all diligence guard they heart (or mind), For from it is the realm of life.” The last line is literally, “from it are the issues of life’; we base our translation on the meaning “border, boundary” of the word “issue” in Ez. 48:30. Wisdom says to men (Prov. 8: 385-86): “Who finds me finds life And obtains pleasant favour from the Lord; Who misses wrongs his soul (or self): All who hate me love death.” The same idea occurs several times more in the Proverbs ;* it was no new idea in Israel, and had Provo SL GeO sue ee onl aoe Educational Aims 9 very early been added as a corollary to one of the commandments in the Decalogue: “Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long.” It was commonly thought that a long life was the greatest blessing because there was no belief in a hereafter, or rather because life after death was then supposed to be a_ shadowy, scarcely real existence in the dark world of the departed. A man’s life was perpetuated by his children ; this happiness could not be understood without a large family. The short psalm, 127, vv. 3-5, the nucleus of our present Psalm 127, says: “Yea! an inheritance of Yahweh is the reward of the fruit of the womb, As arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the sons born in one’s youth; Happy he who has filled his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame, when he speaks with enemies in the gate.” We find the same idea in Psalm 128, of which we quote a portion: “Thy wife shall be as fruitful as a vine in the inner court of thy house! Thy sons as young olive plants round about thy table. Yea! Verily thus shall the man that feareth Yahweh be blessed.” This intimate connection between God, right- eousness, and the joyful acceptance of family re- sponsibilities, gave to Hebrew education its pe- culiar character. We hear much today from some 10 A Survey of Hebrew Education advocates of education and moral reform of “the holiness of generation,’* and it is perhaps well we should, but the Hebrews, and the whole East knew all that. The Hebrew idea of marriage may not be above criticism. It was a Semitic ideal, of course, and as such, scarcely did justice to wo- men’s abilities and to some of their potential- ities. The Hebrew was no feminist, far less so than peoples who gave him most of his civiliza- tion, namely the Sumerians and the Egyptians. Therefore he set many limitations on women, but he honoured them to the utmost as mothers. In deed, all Semites have done the same. That truest Semite of all, Mohammed, the prophet of Arabia, said that Paradise is at the foot of mothers. The whole East thinks so today, except where civi- lization has done its deadly work of destruction. The women of the East were not conscious of the beauty of this ideal; they married because they must. Rabindranath Tagore says, in the Crescent Moon, ““*Where have I come from, where did you pick me up’—the baby asked its mother.—She an- swered, ‘You were hidden in my heart as its desire, my darling.’ ”’ Such was the Hebrew mother, and we may well envy her today. The Hebrew view of mar- riage, and of its primary aim, made moral and social education easier, loftier, and simpler. The 4K. Key, Century of the Child, p. 3, 8. Love and Marriage, passim, Educational Aims 11 Hebrews were not perhaps as modest in their lan- guage as the Anglo-Saxons of today; although they were not worse than the latter a century or two ago; their boys ripened early and needed sound advice on sexual life, such as was given later in Proverbs 5: 3-21; we may call their mar- riage songs risqué, as they have been partly pre- served in the Song of Solomon; it remains true that they succeeded, where we have often failed, in the teaching and practice of social purity. There, owing to the Hebrew idea of marriage and of family life so closely connected with the building up of character, Jerusalem of old stands far above Athens and Rome. The Hebrew proph- ets had nothing to do with deliquescent ethics, and the Hebrew sages were impatient of moral rottenness. No wonder the nation was able to abide through tribulations which would have de- stroyed any other racial group. Moral germ plasm makes for power of resistance against destruc- tion. Late in the third period, a high form of hap- ‘piness is described which consists in meditating on the Thorah, the character of the righteous be- ing compared to the straight palm tree, which was also the symbol of life. Blessed is the right- eous man for “In the Law of Yahweh is his delight And in his law he studies day and night.’ DiPaeeis 2) Cte sosephus, \Antig., LV, 8, 12: 12 A Survey of Hebrew Education The motto of the Book of Proverbs is quite similar: “The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and knowledge.” This great aim of education is explained at length in the same collection, at the time when the book itself was written: “That men may acquire wisdom and training, May understand rational discourse, May receive training in wise conduct— In justice and probity and rectitude That discretion may be given to the inexperienced, To the youth knowledge and insight.’’’ Although the name of God, and the idea of piety recurs often in these texts, we must bear in mind that theirs was not a speculative relig- ion but rather a healthy, practical, and matter of fact view: of God and the world. It is not alto- gether true, as some have said, that Hebrew psy- chology was primitive dualism; it was rather a vague materialism that we may compare to that of Tertullian who thought that the soul is the breath of God, flatus Det. Crude as it was, this 6'The Greek text has: “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God. And a good understanding have all they that practise it; Piety toward God is the beginning of knowledge, But wisdom and instruction the impious will set at nought.” The second line of this quatrain is found again in Ps. 111: 10. It is not easy to decide whether the longer (Greek) form is preferable to the shorter (Masoretic). Toy, Proverbs, p. 11. Cf Prov, 9:710)5 Job. 28 3/28 5) Deut. 43 Gee Wcclesa i 2iceiasmeree Sirach 1: 11-27. TProyo ts 2-42 Vet Toy! ‘pe: Educational Aims 15 point of view prevented the Hebrew from looking down upon the body, and saved him from a dan- gerous dualism leading inevitably either to as- cetism or to impurity. The concrete mind of the Hebrew did not really need to express itself in a word like our “ideal.” His was a very real, not a philosophical God. He desired a very concrete life. Life sanctioned by God was preserved in the family; the home was the visible ideal of hap- piness and duty; it was the first school of respect, the first church, the first state, the first system of preparation for life. A true interpreter of an- cient ideals took the commandment to which we referred above and welded it, into its ethical and religious content, social and national implica- tions. “Honour thy father and thy mother, as the Lord thy God commanded thee; that thy days may be long, and that it may go well with thee, upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.’’® The primary end of education was, therefore, to make of the child a good son. From that every- thing else would follow. This aim of education was older than the settlement in Palestine: it was common to all the Semites, but the Hebrews beautified it. This reverence for parents contin- ued after death; mourning ceremonies were of such a severe nature that many scholars think that they are evidences of ancestor worship. PSG toy tt Wout 2 LG tHe. 2012 3 Dey. .h9 2 ass BLOValaa oie ON t Oh cU-2oie LOLS Oo ta LOs ZO sh eons seh eos 14 A Survey of Hebrew Education Early legends of Israel tell us also of a myste- rious power attending parental curses or bless- ings. Hence, we find in Israel a respect for old age, unparalleled except at Sparta, and in China. The Sacerdotal Legislator says: “Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head and honour the face of the old man.’ It is a healthy state of affairs When both the old and the young are satisfied that “The beauty of the old is their hoary head.” This respect for the old was such that the rulers of a tribe were called the elders, or, as the Arabs say today, the sheikhs, for the construc- tion of the EKastern government is but the en- Jargement of the paternal roof. These sheikhs naturally ruled the city when Israel became se- dentary. Ruling in political and social matters meant, of course, wielding authority in religious matters as well as offering sacrifices, a right which was claimed by the kings of Israel and Judah. God Himself was to His people an invisible and exalted Father; near, indeed, for they heard at times His footsteps, felt His breath, and quaked at His voice, yet, very super-human, be- cause even the mighty spirits who roam in the world were only His slaves. All children had to be taught the fear of the’ Lord, whether they were to serve Him by right. ® Lev. 19: 32. 10 Proy. 20:29b. Islam is true to its Semitic origins in for- bidding to dye the hair black. a Educational Aims 15 (the males of Israel), or by grace (the females), or because of a bountiful favour extended to them (the strangers within the gates of Israel). One of the Psalms says: “Come my sons, listen to me Let me teach you the fear of the Lord.’’" This education never began too early. Such a thought underlies Psalm 28:9: “Whom shall he teach knowledge? Whom shall he cause to understand instruction? Those weaned from the milk, Those plucked from the breasts.” One can trace this idea throughout the whole history of the Hebrew nation, nay, of the Jewish race; civic ideals evolved because social condi- tions changed but the religious ideal of Israel remained faithful to itself. The prophetic tradi- tion held that Israel was to be a kingdom of priests, a nation of prophets, and a holy people. The ideal of the race was “holiness to the Lord”; it was from the very first a very concrete idea; it took firm hold of Israel during the exile when it became more intimately connected with the distinction between the pure and the profane. The sacerdotal writers often repeat: “Ye shall be holy for I am holy.” This concrete ethical mono- theism of the Hebrews was the unifying factor of their religious, moral, social, and political life. The Hebrews learned to be loyal at the same time 11Ps,. 34:11. 16 A Survey of Hebrew Education to their God and their tribe, then, to their God and their king, later, to their God and the church- state, then to God and the Law. God was always first. It is absurd to imagine any other place. They learned to find the springs of life in the Thorah. No one can tell how they made this great discovery. The evolution of the religion of Israel transcends the canons and dogmas both of the- ologians and specialists in history of religion. Other nations went through the crucible, none came out as Israel did, with a treasure that was to be a blessing to the world. Was it not because of the concreteness of ethical values in Israel? The Hebrews faced sorrows, trials, and times of gloom, but they were intensely loyal, sometimes savagely faithful to God, and thus they were al- lowed to see beyond the Via Dolorosa of their na- tion, a vision of the kingdom of lght. Home, Righteousness, God; these three greatest educa- — tional motives in Israel made him what he was. | When we come to specific aims in education, we are dealing with transient conditions and less im- portant values. The Hebrew boy’s ideal was to be an efficient member of a community which was first made up of shepherds, later of small farm- ers, and only after the exile of traders. There were many ideals for boys, the strong man like Samson, the man of craft and shrewdness like Jacob, the man who, like Joseph, found that one can climb up by the straight way as well as, if not better than, by any other. The stories of these _—_ Educational Aims 17 men were of value even in their failures. The ideal of the Hebrew girl was to be a good wife, and the mother of a large family of boys. For her, there was no school but the home.” Even for boys, school education was not felt to be a universal need; it belonged rather to the realm of voca- tional education. Culture was not of books, neither was refinement a sign of it. When school education became more common, there remained a prejudice against books” and the schools were particularly strong in religion and morals, while the curriculum compared to ours was very meager in the field of knowledge and art. Davidson says’ that the civic consciousness of the Jews centered in three conceptions: 1, an omnipotent Creator, God who has chosen the Jews as his vice-gerents on earth; 2, a Messiah to restore them to this exceptional position; 3, holi- ness on their part as a condition to this restora- tion. This is, no doubt, a more or less true statement, but we feel that it does not tell the true secrets or aims of Hebrew culture; it is not always wise to transpose the thoughts of Israel to dogmas; in the East, truth is surrounded by a sheen of fic- 1? The earliest passage on the education of girls is Sir. 7: 24-25. There had been educated women in the past as, for in- stance, Huldah, 2 Kn. 22:14-26. On the whole subject of the status of women, the standard work is M. Loehr, Die Stellung des Weibes zu Jahwe Religion und Kultur, 1908, especially pp. 32-37. 2 Accles, 12:12. 4 Davidson, History of Ed., p. 86. 18 A Survey of Hebrew Education tion, often more real than our cold history. Some- thing of that still clings to Judaism, though it has unhappily disappeared from Western Chris- tianity. We shall, therefore, on purpose avoid classification and definition when dealing with he thoughts of Israel. CHAPTER III. THE SUBIECTS STUDIED While the Hebrews were nomads—and indeed until the return from the Exile—their education was entirely vocational. The boys learned from their father and from older boys, to tend the cat- tle, to hunt wild game, to become adepts in the use of bow and arrow, and of the sling. The girls learned to draw and carry water, to grind barley and other grains, to knead and bake flat cakes, to milk the ewes and cows, and churn the butter, to cook, to spin, weave, sew, embroider, and dye, to take care of the scanty belongings of the house- hold and to prepare simple remedies. The unmar- ried girls also tended the flocks and took them to pasture and helped the boys in the harvesting of the fields. Men were not helpless, however, and could cook. There was no formal religious instruc- tion. The young children’s imagination was fed on the tales repeated to them by their mother and, later, by their father, by the old men of the clan, by travellers, or by professional story tellers. They also watched the slaughtering of the domes- tic animals for food, which took place occasion- 20 A Survey of Hebrew Education ally, and which always had a festal and sacrificial character. At spring time there was also the great festival of the yeaning of lambs, when the boys were circumcised, and the girls, adorned with the family jewels, danced in the open, while the young men, standing around, made jests upon them, laughing loud, and calling them their wives to be. The feast ended with the slaughtering of sheep, a barbecue, and more dancing in which the adults joined. This festival is interesting as the prototype of the Hebrew passover, the educa- tional significance of which we shall notice later. Nature study was from life’ with, of course, many superstitions. The Semite observed the sky, and his poetic imagination saw in it much that our city children will never dream of. It would seem that, since education was about the same for all, there was little need of vocational guidance apart from the most important determinant of sex. However, the first word a child uttered, the first gesture he made, his physiognomy, often de- termined his name and gave an omen of his fu- ture. Blessings, incantations, dedications, and curses influenced also his career. These beliefs and customs, connected with primitive magic, 1Prov. 30:18, 19 Cf. Toy, Prov. 530, 531. 2 Doughty writes (Arabia Deserta I, 278): “Zeyd said, with a sober countenance, ‘Your townfolk know better than me, but ye be also uncunning in many things, which the Arab ken. Khalil now, I durst say, could not tell the names of the stars yonder’ and pointing here and there, Zeyd said over a few names of greater stars and constellations, in what sort the author of Job in his old nomad wise, the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades.” The Subjects Studied Zi were the crude beginnings of vocational psy- chology.” When Israel became sedentary, the boys and girls had, of course, to learn more. For most of them, if not for all, there was ploughing, sowing, harvesting, gleaning, the care of the vineyards, the making of wine. Most villagers knew the elements of several trades, but the larger the town was, the more specializing there was among its inhabitants. There were carpenters who made idols, ploughs, coffers, carts, and yokes; shep- herds, who took care of the sheep and the goats belonging to the town-dwellers; potters, tanners, cobblers, weavers, tailors, masons, goldsmiths, coppersmiths, blacksmiths, and barbers who were also surgeons. On the market could be found the fortune-teller and the snake charmer and the merchants who brought smoked fish, salt, honey, incense, perfumes, pearls, rugs, goblets, combs, richly mounted weapons, bronze dishes, furniture inlaid with ivory by the craftsmen of Egypt, pot- tery of the Aegean Islands, red earthenware of the Hittites, and the many-colored woolens of Babylon. There was found also the village scribe squat- ting on his mat, on which he had spread tablets of clay, papyri, styli, reed-pens, and inkhorn. He was much respected; he was the man who could seal the past, or make it speak. he kept accounts, 3 Cf. Hollingworth, Vocational Psychology, 1916, 4-10, Z2 A Survey of Hebrew Education wrote letters, and contracts; he was very con- spicuous among the elders when they met at the gate to administer public justice. He owned a few books written in small columns on leather rolls, fixed on sitcks, written usually on one side only of the roll. It was not below his dignity to write short messages on potsherds (ostraka). Every village had one or more levites; they were men without a tribe, or rather they belonged to a tribe which had long ago lost its identity. They practised divination and offered sacrifices ; they also taught what was customary and proper, Among them, sacred knowledge was transmitted orally from father to son; it was as unnecessary to commit it to writing as the secrets of any other trade. There were also roving or settled guilds of young men, disciples of a nabi or prophet. The prophet would take out his small lute, finger it until he found the note that appealed to him, and then play the same weird note over and over, until ecstasy came; then the head thrown back, the eyes staring vacantly or shut, the nabi deliv- ered his message, often in poetical form. As for the rank and file among the disciples they had not attained this power, and they found inspiration in dancing and the repetition of sacred formulas until the spirit of God “leaped” upon them, filling them with religious frenzy. In the Eighth Century a new order of prophets arose. They were men who, sometimes, at first, The Subjects Studied 25 resented being called by the name of nabi. They never were very numerous, and they had to fight constantly against the prophetic guilds, as well as against the levitical priesthood. Their work has been unique in the history of mankind. Because of them, the name of prophet, losing its former meaning of diviner and religious enthusiast, has come to mean the highest form of moral and spi- ritual leadership. The prophets preached in the temple courts at times, because there people com- monly congregated; they were not teachers of the young but, through their activity, the faith of Israel emerging purified and enriched from the great conflict with Baalism, and thus the home, made narrower by sedentary life, became more of a religious educative agency. According to most scholars, Ezekiel was not a preacher, but primarily a writer. If such is the case, the Hebrew community of which he was a member, was a reading community. It is not un- likely, for it was made up of the best elements of the population of Judah carried away to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. In Babylon, Israel learned to respect “what is written.” Perhaps from the very beginning, writ- ing had been regarded with some awe. We know that in Babylonia even grammatical, lexicograph- ical, and astronomical treatises, or fragments thereof, could be offered as a kind of votive-offer- ing. This high reverence for the written word showed itself in a special attempt at literal ac- 24 A Survey of Hebrew Education curacy when ancient annals and prophetic ad- dresses were cast together. The Hebrew exiles were members of a commu- nity as civilized as was Italy, in the time of Dante, and they learned much from their conquer- ors. When thousands of them went back to the home-land, they were no longer the same people. Solomon was forced to depend on Phoenician artists when he built the first temple, but Zerub- babel used Jewish talent for the second. The establishing of schools, on a rather large scale, took place at that time. There were several reasons; one was that the children of the Jews were not learning the Hebrew language at home, because Aramaic was now commonly spoken. The other was that religion was now based on in- struction in the Thorah, ascribed to Moses. It has been said that the whole Law was, at an early stage, utilized for public instruction’. This is a rather misleading statement. There was no whole Thorah before its promulgation by Ezra, namely 444 B.C., according to most critics, or 397, ac- cording to the latest studies on the books of Ezra- Nehemiah. The error in this statement is largely due to an indiscriminate use of the word Thorah. Kohler, for instance, in the passage quoted above, follow- ing traditionalist exegetes tells us that “Thorah” denoted originally “Law” and gives as proof the use in Ex. 24:12; Lev. 6:12; 7:1; 26: 46; he then * Kohler, Jew. Encycl, V, 42. The Subjects Studied 25 says that in the course of time it, assumed the meaning of “religious teaching” as shown in Dt. faerie Mal ol. PS hoses? LOS Cty Les Prov. 3:1; 4:2; 6: 28; 7, 2. As a matter of fact it is just the reverse, as can be seen when the texts, in which thorah occurs, are arranged in chron- ological order. The primary meaning of thorah, preserved in the Akkadian word tertu, is “oracle.” A thorah was a decision rendered by the divinity through the mouth of the priest or other religious leader; it covered any doubtful point of custom on which the divinity was consulted; since, in the early history of Israel, religion was interwoven with every social practice, a thorah may be said to be an oracle bearing on religious custom; the meaning “law” is comparatively recent. In preéxilic times there was no formal re- ligious instruction in our sense of the term, still less any ethical teaching. It has been stated that “the words Wisdom, Intelligence, Knowledge, Doctrine, Counsel, Understanding, Guidance, Tho- rah, Teaching, Sagacity, Discretion, the Way, often finely drawn in the Bible, may represent crude divisions of general culture’.”’ Whatever this may mean, there is no evidence for this state- ment. We may say that religious instruction was not poured into children’s minds, but religious influ- ences permeated them continually. Religious in- struction was given concretely, through the sym- 5A. Simon, Principles of Jewish Education in the Past, p. 11. 26 A Survey of Hebrew Education bolism of religious rites and ceremonies, the sab- bath, the new moon, the annual festivals. The spring festival of the yeaning of the lambs had evolved into the Passover, a rite recalling hal- lowed memories to all Israel; other festivals were borrowed from the Canaanites and were, of course, of an agricultural character. Music, dan- cing, and singing were connected with these fes- tivals, as well as with other celebrations held on special occasions (circumcision, marriage-feast, shearing of lambs, harvesting, wine-making, re- turn from war, etc.). When the services in the Temple became more stately, imitating the ritual of the Babylonian sanctuaries, schools for temple Singers and musicians were established. When schools were established the reading mat- ter was, of course, religious, being part of our | Old Testament. Arithmetic was of a type that we may call mental. The present letters of the Hebrew alpha- bet have numerical values, but they are rather cumbrous and do not lend themselves easily to written arithmetical operations. The number 15 is not written yh (5+10) but tw (9-+-6) ; this was done in order to show proper respect to the let- ters Yh which stood for Yah, the name of the Deity. If, in this manner of writing, the number 15 was as old as the numerical use of the let- ters, we may argue from it that the latter was comparatively recent on the ground that this ex- treme respect for the name of the Deity is of post- The Subjects Studied 27 exilic growth. Moreover, the order of the letters of the alphabet, in alphabetical Psalms and in Lamentations, differs in places from the order on which the numerical values are now _ based. Finally we know that the Babylonians, the Kgyptians, and the Phoenicians wrote figures with special signs; so did the Arameans at first. We have in the Aramaic papyri of Elephantine an important document which shows that He- brews of the Fifth Century were acquainted with figures.’ We do not know why they gave them up later for the far less practical system of letters. The value of z was known empirically as equal to 3, which is not very accurate,’ but, as it was not found faulty by the Babylonians who had very good surveyors, we must not belittle the at- tainments of the Hebrews in geometry. Literary instruction of a high order continued to be given orally in poems and stories, riddles and proverbs, fables and apologues. These were written only when the language was in danger of perishing. Thus the time came when the telling of religious folklore and legends at great festivals gave place to the more formal reading of the law in a language no longer familiar. Physical training of a high order is given by the nomadic life. To this day the sons of the no- bility of Mecca are sent to the desert in order to have their bodies hardened and strengthened. Af- ®Sachau, Aram Pap., 1911, pp. 19, 71-89, 198. 7] Kings 7:28. The same value is given in the Mishnah., 28 A Survey of Hebrew Education ter the conquest of Canaan, the Hebrews re- mained a people who lived much in the open air; they made good soldiers. The young men were fond of physical exercises even before the period of Hellenistic influence. There was some kind of military training for all the free men, and it was perhaps attended with song, war dances, and calisthenic movements. Hebrew boys, like other boys, played games, and thus were in many ways prepared for life. Manual labour remained greatly honoured. Dr. Montessori has called attention to the high and symbolic significance given to the hand by the Deuteronomist®. It remained a tradition in Israel that scholars should be able to handle tools as well as the reed-pen, and every rabbi was able to earn his own living by manual labour. Some of us would like to see the same customs among us now-a-days. All men became acquainted with the common law at the open court at the gate, thus qualify- ing to become good citizens, and judges and jury- men. The development of written law brought to an end these informal schools of good citizenship. Astrology was forbidden; it was, no doubt, a wise provision in a way, but it nipped in the bud the science of astronomy. There was no meteor- ology, but a practical knowledge of the weather, an easier matter in Palestine than with us. The study of medicine was never very advanced. ®’ Deut. 11:18. Cf. Montessori, Pedag. Anthrop., 314. The Subjects Studied 29 Modern languages were learned by the so-called New Method of today. Many Hebrews were bi- lingual in preéxilic times, speaking Aramaic as well as their own Canaanite (or Hebrew dialect). After the exile we find education in a dead lan- guage (Hebrew), but it was probably as easy to learn as Latin for a European student of the Middle Ages. There was no plastic art among the Hebrews, owing to the “prophetic” teaching of the Deca- logue. If there was also what Delitzsch’ terms a defective sense of colour, painting must have been very crude. There was therefore little, if any, art education in Palestine, unless it be the teaching of the master workman to the apprentice or the mother to a daughter learning weaving or em- broidery. ® Quoted by Abrahams, Art, Jewish, in Hastings’ Hneycl. of Rel. and Ethics, I. 871. CHAPTER IV. MEANS OF EDUCATION We have already emphasized the importance of | the home in Hebrew education. It remained to | the very last, in spite of the evolution of the fam- ily, the main agency for moral and religious edu- — cation. Comenius, who learned so much from Old Testament educational ideals, pointed out long ago that Gen. 18, 19 and Deut. 6:7 allude to this home education which, according to him is the basis, of all further progress. Of Abraham, the Lord says, in the oldest prophetic history of Israel (J), “I have approved of him, to the end that he may order his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment” (Gen. 18-19). We find the same idea in the Deuteronomist, “And these words which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart (or mind) and thou shalt impress them upon thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.” (Deut. 6:6-7). And again (Deut. 11:19), “Ye shall teach them your children, talking of them, when thou sittest in Means of Education 31 thine house, when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.” And again in a deuteronomistic portion of Exodus, “That thou mayest tell it in the ears of thy son, and of thy son’s son.” (Exod. 10:2). About that supreme duty of life, the Psalmist declares: (Is. ASL i-LS).s “O God thou hast taught me from youth even until now And I have not ceased to publish thy marvels; Even to old age and hoary age, O God forsake me not, Until I declare Thy wondrous deeds To all the coming generations.” We find the same idea in Ps. 78: 3-6) : “What we have heard and learned, What our fathers have told us, We shall not hide from our sons; We shall tell the coming generation: The glory of the Lord and His might, The wonders that He performed. He instituted a charter in Jacob, He established a law in Israel, Which He ordered our fathers to teach their sons, In order that the coming generation may learn, And the sons to be born May stand up and tell their sons.” Such was the “succession” of learning in Israel to be preserved and true learning to be trans- mitted. That was to be the work of both parents. “Hear, my son, thy father’s instruction And forsake not thy mother’s tuition, They will be to thy head a wreath of beauty, And chains about thy neck” (Proy. 1:8). Shu A Survey of Hebrew Education “Keep my son thy father’s precepts, And reject not thy mother’s tuition, Bind them constantly to thy heart, Hang them around thy neck” (Prov. 6:20). We have in Proverbs 31: 1-9 the maxims of con- duct given to king Lemuel by his mother. There we are told also (Prov. 10:1): “A wise son makes a glad father, But a foolish son is a grief to his mother.” And again, Prov. 28: 22, 24, 25, as emended by Toy: “Hearken to thy father, who begat thee, And despise not the words of thy mother; The father of a righteous man will be glad, The mother of a wise son will rejoice, Let thy mother rejoice, Let thy father be glad.” And again (Prov. 17, 25): “A foolish son is a grief to his father, And bitterness to her that bare him.’ Not only was not the home a mere preparation for the school, but it was a school both for ex- perience and for more formal learning. The di- rect share of the boy in the works of men gave to his character unity and strength. The mothers taught their children to find, in helping them, the way of playing and learning at the same time. The rich and the mighty, as in other countries, often performed their parental duties through M Bane of Education 2; deputies. They had attendants or nurses who looked after their child and often remained with him when he had grown up to be an adult. Thus Abraham entrusted his son Isaac to a servant in whom he had great confidence and who travelled to Mesopotamia to fetch a wife for Isaac. We hear of nursing fathers (lit. nourishers) (Numb. 11:12; Is. 49: 23) and of nursing mothers (Is. 49, 23), who perhaps are the wives of the former. The kings, of course, entrusted their offspring, often very numerous, to preceptors who often were prophets. Isaiah taught much to his pupil Hezekiah; he did expect great things from him, laid up a wonderful program of reformation and happiness for all, which is one of the first forms of Messianic hope. Cornill’ thinks that even reading and writing were taught at home; it is certain that we have no clear evidence of the existence of schools be- fore the Third Century unless we find some evi- dence of school methods in Is. 28: 9-13, or unless we see a school in the little group of disciples that sat at Isaiah’s feet and to whom he trusted to complete his work (Is. 8:16). Several writers on education mention indeed the so-called schools of the prophets; the term it- self is not biblical; it has been said, by G. F. Moore, that they were schools in exactly the same sense that schools of fish are schools. They were gatherings of young men who, under leadership, 1Cornill, Culture of Ancient Israel, p. 91. 34 A Survey of Hebrew Education held religious meetings characterized by enthusi- asm and prophetic frenzy, similar to the assem- blies of dervishes and khouan in Modern Islam’. We have already shown in Chapter II what the early prophet or nabi was. The references to teachers, in our sense of the term, are all late’; the first teachers of reading and writing were probably scribes who, in addi- tion to their usual work as letter-writers and no- taries public, taught informally a few children who bawled over their lessons in the yard or on the house-top. Sometimes the master was a mer- chant, who taught in his shop between lengthy conversations held with his customers. No doubt his pupils enjoyed the school hours, for there was much to relieve the dullness of their task. This system, or rather the lack of it, was very much like the conditions praised by Tolstoy in his Pedagogical Articles. Independently of these instructors in the rudi- ments, we find other masters who taught orally. They are the levites and the priests, whose duty it became more and more to instruct the people in ritual, and in religious and ethical duties; the new order of prophets, who were preachers of so- cial righteousness, and the wise men who, perhaps, *The best description of these is by Masqueray, Souvenirs et Visions WAfrique, p. 123-167 and Doutté, Les Aissaoua a Tiemcem, p. 10-19. For their seamy side see Mouliéras, Le Maroc Inconnu. * Prov. (3/12) 13 3°13.¢20. Ps, 843:7 > 119% OO sO ene eee Ciii2s7 Kings 1021-5); 2 ‘Chroni) 24 326525 201.7 27-9. Means of Education 35 were on a small scale like the sophists of Greece, although they taught a different kind of wisdom. The Book of Proverbs and the Book of Akikar are the results of their teaching. The old idea that the father was the natural teacher lingers in the title “father” given to the household levite; the levitical singers of the Temple of Solomon are called sons of the Master- singer. Possibly Isaiah describes his disciples as the “children” whom the Lord has given him (Is. 8:18). Late texts (Deut. 12:3; 11:3) tell of the glory of faithful teachers, but their greatest praise was in the commonly accepted notion that God Him- self was their great prototype, the great teacher of Israel (Job 86:22; Ex. 4, 12). These are the things that help to turn a trade into a vocation. Thorndike has said excellently’, “Teachers are, of course, only a small fraction of the human means of education. Parents and friends are per- haps surer means; public speakers and writers are perhaps weightier; and the vague sum of be- haviour, which is called public opinion, custom, or the mores, is more widespread.”’ Such was emi- nently the case in Israel. We may not be able to measure accurately the influence of that vague public opinion, we only know that among Eastern- ers it has at least as great an influence as among us, and that is not a little. The great authorities on manners, customs, and faith were the Mass Thorndike, Hducation, p. 119. 36 A Survey of Hebrew Education and the Past; the Hebrews clung to it as a gen- eral fund of a national experience which it was safe to follow; they remained thoroughly at- tached to the “conventions, forms, and institu- tions, that, after all, represent the corporate wis- dom, the accumulated experience of men through- out the ages.” The “ancient paths” were the safe way. We have no information as to salaries of teach- ers. Supervision was that of public opinion. There was no organized school administration, no preparation of teachers. It is quite evident that the large share taken by the father in the educa- tion of his children was possible only in a so- ciety where there was more leisure than we have today, and where, moreover, there was more true democracy than in the supposedly more enlight- ened Greco-Roman antiquity. In early Israel, boys were circumcised at the age of puberty; we do not know whether this rite was preceded by initiatory training, as it is among most nature peoples; in historical times the age for circumcision was so early that the rite had no longer any educational significance for the child thus initiated. Older children watch- ing the festival might probably be led to enquire about its meaning. CHAPTER V. METHODS Before we take up the question of methods, we must decide whether it is worth while or not. Abram Simon says, “Well defined and scientific principles do not exist in the Bible. It is stupid to attempt to translate psychological words like spirit, soul, mind, flesh, and heart from our Bible into modern technical terminology. It is foolish to inject William James into Jeremiah.” All this may be very true. And yet scientific work of the best quality has been done on the meaning of spirit, soul, mind, and heart in the Old Testa- ment; and as for injecting William James into Jeremiah it would be an absurd thing to do; it would probably be better to do the opposite. As a matter of fact, there is a pedagogy in the Bible, and it is very much of the kind that underlies Tolstoy’s Pedagogical Articles, which some of us think is a book with a message. We shall consider first, the question of dis- cipline; secondly, that of general method; thirdly, 1A. Simon, The Principle of Jewish Education in the Past, tas: be 38 A Survey of Hebrew Education what we can find in ancient Hebrew education on special methods. Much has been written about the severity of Hebrew education. Until a few decades ago, our own educational methods claimed to be inspired by it. The subject has then an actual interest, Hebrew sages advised us to “Train the child in the way he is to go When he is old, he will not depart therefrom” (Ps. vise Md 0 Yo The same idea occurs in two other passages of Proverbs where the text is corrupt and is emended by Toy; in the first, Yahweh’s dealings with His own are compared to that of the best father (Prov. 3:11, 12): ‘ “Reject not, my son, the instruction of Yahweh, And spurn not His reproof, For whom He loves He reproves, And afflicts him in whom He delights.” And elsewhere, Prov. 29, 21, Greek text: “He who from a child lives luxuriously will be a servant, and in the end will come to grief.” “The classical passage, well known to our fore- fathers, is Prov. 13: 24: “He who spares his rod hates his son, But he who loves him chastises him.” We find the same idea in Proverbs 22:15: “Folly is bound to the mind of a child; But the rod of correction will remove it.” Methods 39 And again, in Proverbs 23:13, 14: “Withold not chastisement from the child; If thou beat him with the rod, he will not die, Thou must beat him with the rod, And rescue him thus from Sheol.’ Elsewhere, in Prov. 19:17: “Chastise thy son while there is still hope, Set not thy heart on his destruction.” And finally, Prov. 29:15, 17: “The rod of correction gives wisdom, But a child left to himself brings disgrace on his mother. Correct thy son, and he will yield thee comfort, And give delight to thy soul.” From Is. 2:10 we gather that to chastise and to teach were synonymous terms. In order to be fair to the Hebrews, we must re- member that the whole educational system of antiquity was built on the same conception of severity, and so was ours, even until after the days of Pestalozzi. Moreover, we must note among the Hebrews a growing tendency to be more lenient ; while the Deuteronomist allowed a father to condemn to death a son who proved unman- ageable (Deut. 21:18-22), in later times, social ostracism took the place of this stern right of the father in ancient Hebrew society (Prov. 27:8). The Hebrews were, in theory, as impatient of moral crookedness as the Spartans of rachitism, They had the hardness of pioneers, being, of 40 A Survey of Hebron Education course, the pioneers of the world in moral educa- tion. The Hebrew parent expected respect. The old customs enacted the death penalty for the son who cursed him.’ Ancient lore connected the sub- jection of the Canaanites with disrespect shown to Noah by one of his sons. There again we notice later an evolution towards a greater leniency, “He who curses father or mother, His lamp will go out in deepest darkness.” (Prov. 20: 20). Another proverb is more severe (Prov. 30, 17, text emended by Toy) : “The eye that mocks a father, And scorns the old age of a mother, The ravens of the valley will pick it out, And vultures will eat it.” Obedience to the father was like that of a slave to his master; at least such was the ideal as can be seen by the parallelism in Mal. 1:6, 16: “A son honoureth his father And a slave his master.” One of the laws of the Sacerdotal code (Lev. 19:3) puts the mother first when it enjoins, “Ye shall fear every man his mother and his father.” That, of course, was an ideal. From the fact that the great majority of the Hebrews followed Absalom in his rising against David, and espe- 2 Bixod., 21.517; Lev. 20:9. (Cf Deut. 27:16 senses LO 3) exe 211 5.1175 Lev. 206) 9 2) Devt faa aes Methods 4 cially from the fact that the practical psychol- ogist Ahitophel gave him very wicked, though very political, advice (2 Sam. 16: 21-23), we may infer that the ideal was not always realized, not even in Israel. ; The teacher, being the father’s deputy, used the rod generously. In Is. 32:4 the parallelism shows that a stammerer was looked upon as synonymous with an evil person. Let us hope that the Hebrew teacher was illogical and did not take the stutter- ing of his little pupils over their rude letters scratched on rough boards as a sign that they badly needed the Hebrew panacea for foolishness. Indeed there were those in Israel who had dis- covered that corporal punishment is not a cure-all for everybody (Prov. 17, 10): “A reproof enters deeper into a man of sense Than a hundred stripes with a fool.” Two Hebrew verbs express our idea of learn- ing, the first ’alaph means literally to cleave to, to become familiar with; the second, lamadh, more frequently used, means to exercise in, to accustom to. We shall note that the latter is used also (Hab. 10:11) with the meaning of training a bullock to the yoke, and that the ox-goad was called malmed (Judg. 3, 31), namely the thing that teaches. There was indeed no “soft pedagogy” in Israel. A pupil was called melwmmad or tal- mid, namely ‘one who is being trained,” we were going to say, “one who is being broken in.” He 42 A Survey of Hebrew Education was also called a “son,” and the teacher (moreh) was his “father,” but that was no warrant for leniency, in the light of what precedes. Teaching was chiefly oral; we already saw that the wise mother of Lemuel taught him proverbs and maxims, but that was done usually by the father, older friends, and sometimes teachers. Recent excavations have brought to light the story of Ahiqar in its earliest Aramaic form as it was known to the Jewish community of Ele- phantine.* Thus had the instructions of former fa- thers become stereotyped in the form of precepts, proverbs, and apologues, the stock of which was enriched by each generation. The method was good, for, in the words of Boutroux, “Maxims are that form of theory which comes nearest to prac- tice.” * Wisdom Literature was sometimes com- posed with an alphabetical structure, a mnemonic device, which was not necessarily artistic or in- spiring, and can be seen in Prov. 30: 10-31, called by some “The Golden ABC of the perfect wife.” In many ways teaching was less artificial than with us. Country life was familiar to all. Even Jerusalem was a very small city. Every child knew the world of nature by personal observa- tion, and not by hearsay; he could observe the ants, the grasshoppers, and the birds, and learn from them; the market plate was a living dio- rama. Thus the vocabulary of a Hebrew child was ’ Sachau, Aram. Papyrus, 147-182; Charles, Apoc. and Pseud., Il 715-84. *Boutroux, Hducation and Ethics, p. xxix. Methods 5 43 not far ahead of his knowledge of objects. No child of Jerusalem would have had to learn Mother Goose Rhymes (or their equivalent) with- out ever having seen a goose. The teacher often taught in the open air; then there was more liberty than with us; more seri- ousness mixed with merriment; there was joy in the noise made by each scholar shouting his sing- song lesson at the top of his voice. The means of education were not of the best, but there is, after all, some virtue in methods that do not take “every little stone out of the student’s road.” ”* At least, they allow a child to protect himself by a certain amount of indifference against too strict a curriculum. There was no compulsory home work, no regular tests or examinations, no diplo- mas. Blessed were the Hebrew children, for there was, in their time, no artificial system of peda- gogy, no fanciful conception of an abstract, un- real child to take in the teacher’s mind the place of loving interest in individual, concrete samples of young humanity. There was no contrast be- tween a high ethical ideal taught by the educator and the pitilessness of struggle for life; the de- moralizing dualism of our civilization came only with Hellenism, and the book of Ecclesiastes gives us some unholy echoes of it. There was no conflict between Moses and Darwinism; men went to church (or rather to synagogue and temple) ; to be a man did not mean to be the cartoon of a 5K. Key, Century of the Child, 250. 44 A Survey of Hebrew Education man. There was no child labour and no child idle- ness; children were kept busy in the home, but were given plenty of chances to play. The Hebrew child was happier than our New York children, for the same reason that the Arabian child or the African child of today is happier. He had more imagination; his clay dolls, his mud and straw houses, his simple toys and his many games opened to him a brighter world. There was no anxious watching over his health, no timid out- look upon life, no stilted supervised games, no continual system of vigilance; the Hebrew child was not as ours protected from every drop of un- boiled water, and that was perhaps partly wrong; but his mind was better preserved from polluting influence than the minds of children are today in ultra-civilized communities. No doubt the society in which he lived had no educational system as well thought out as ours, but society had a better, if less methodical, way of dealing with children. The Hebrews formulated no general method of education in the strictest sense of the term, but they had the foundations of an excellent one. Of special methods in education we have only hints. The truths of the social faith of Israel were taught concretely by festivals, ceremonies, words, and symbols. We know the endless questionings of children; such home and community cere- monies were the best means of both arousing them and fixing the right answer into their minds. Some thought that it would be to the fame of the Methods 45 Hebrews to have discovered the catechetical method before Socrates.” We are not sure that they deserve such credit. The texts quoted (Exod. 12-16; Deut. 6: 7, 20) do not justify the assertion. It may be that in questioning the learner repeated the words of the teacher, so that the first member of a proverb or a psalm should be propounded as a riddle: “Why is the way of the slothful man as a hedge of thorns? Why is envy the rottenness of the bones? Who hath said in his heart, There is no God?” This method of questioning remained in Jew- ish education, but we know of no Hebrew cate- chism older than the Hinuch of A. Halevi written in 1302 A.D. To read was to give loud advice from a book;’ writing was only a help to memory, the contents of the written page were, to a great extent, fa- miliar to the reader; if he was a beginner he first had to learn the contents by heart to become fa- miliar with them. There was no phonic-teaching because there were no written vowels.” The He- brew method was really the imitative method of Huey; it is probably the best, and in a modified form is used by us today. “Many an American child,” says Huey, “cannot remember when read- °T. B. Scannell, in Catholic Encycl. V, 76. “The root ga@ra means to call, proclaim, read. The same idea is in the Anglo-Saxon raedan. 8 Klostermann, Schulwesen, 20-21, claims that the emended text of Is. 50:4 shows that clear articulation was taught. 46 A Survey of Hebrew Education ing began, having by a similar method pored over the books and pictures of nursery jingles and fairy tales that were told to him, until he could read them for himself.” Miss Everett, writing in the New York Teachers’ Monographs (June 1902), thinks that “some day the debris and obstructive technique of reading methods may melt away into the simplicity of some such practice as this.” The Hebrew child was most fortunate in that there were no vowel points in the texts set before him, and even that there was no separation be- tween words. Thus even if the teacher was not very able, he could not make him spell out the words. The pupil read, as he should, in getting the mening of whole sentences, a method proved the best by experimental pedagogy. When the He- brew language ceased to be a living tongue, a pointer was used. That was a bad innovation. If a child is allowed to point, he reads word by word, i.e., unintelligently. However the pointer was an improvement on grimy fingers. Later still, vowels were added to the text in accordance to the law that the more unfamiliar a sequence may be, the more the perception of it proceeds by letters. Reading was accompanied by a kind of singing, which was helpful, because children like to make noise, and because it fixed into the mind the mem- ory of the sounds and their sequence. Especially when reading poetry, reading was also facilitated by rocking the body, a custom followed by all orientals today. Methods 47 There was no cursive writing distinct from print; there were no minuscules; the shape of the letters was good because their characteristic differences are found in their upper part; here again, experimental pedagogy has shown that we habitually find most meanings in the upper parts of objects; the shape of some letters leads to confusion in the square Hebrew characters used today as well as in the rabbinnical characters, but it was not so in the older Hebrew script where such confusion was less likely to take place. The letters of the alphabet were taught by a method similar to the modern device of saying “A is an archer” or of associating A with apple, A was a bull (Aleph), B a house (Beth) and in ancient Hebrew the very shape of the letter re- called these names.’ It was probably easier for a child to understand that consonants are really vowelless, when no consonants were written. Another point is worthy of notice. There were none of the books now called “readers,” but children began to read the best their race had produced, and it was in a language they under- stood well. While there are in many countries two forms of language, one literary, one vernac- ular, the Hebrews knew only the language of the people. Even an Isaiah wrote in it. Modern Ara- ®*Klostermann, Schulwesen, 22-26, has an interesting argu- ment on Is. 28:9 ff, where he maintains that at the time of Isaiah the names of the letters were different, Sade being called Saw, Qoph being called gaw (cf. our use of Waw). 48 A Survey of Hebrew Education bie by its resemblance to the Biblical Hebrew confirms the evidences of evolution that are ex- hibited by the latter, and are found only in a language of the people. There was no grammar, no text book of his- tory, nor of natural science. There is something to be said for a method which depends on the personality of the teacher. We may envy the He- brew child who, because he lived at a time when chronological accuracy was undreamt of, had no dates to learn and learned and remembered his- tory as a living subject, as true to life as some of our historical novels. For it is true in many ways that fiction is truer than history; most cer- tainly when that fiction is of the type of Schef- fe’s Hkkehard or the history of David and Go- liath by an unknown rhapsodist of Israel. Of the teaching of arithmetic we know noth- ing. [t was never very advanced, but remained largely mental because there was no easy nota- tion; from that point of view, it was good. Geography was essentially home geography. The frequent pilgrimages to sanctuaries in the early period, to Jerusalem in the later, must have increased very much the stock of ideas in the children and boys who took part in them. The sitting posture of the pupils in Hebrew schools was rational, much more than that com- pelled by our school forms. Godin has proved that there are only two resting positions for man, namely lying down and squatting. CHAPTER VI. RESULTS OF HEBREW EDUCATION Hebrew education—in the larger sense of the term—was a success. Its quality was at least equal to that of the ancient Greeks; it was also more democratic, and was available to the largest number. There was little slavery in Israel. He- brew education was a training for life. It had the advantages of household education in this country one or two generations ago, an educa- tion that progressive and wealthy schools try now to reorganize under new conditions. Indeed it had more advantages, for the Hebrew home was not closed like ours. Eastern education has had better results than ours in the training of chil- dren. Lane says that an undutiful child is very seldom heard of among the Egyptians or the Ar- abs in general. That was true of the whole East. Jewish education had the same results until lately, when new conditions have impaired or de- stroyed its Eastern character. It is quite evident that, both as to extent and content, Hebrew formal education cannot be compared with ours. It would be quite unfair to compare it with our reformed educational sys- 50 A Survey of Hebrew Education tems of the Twentieth Century; if, however, we made our comparison with our [ighteenth Cen- tury, the contrast is less striking. Even after the French Revolution, at the beginning of the last century, social conditions and educational at- tainments were worse in certain parts of Europe than in Judea, at the time of Nehemiah. Rous- seau, who is hailed by everybody as an educa- tional light, had not the slightest desire to bring education to the masses. Thorndike says excel- lently: “Everybody” was agreed two hundred years ago that the aims of education were to teach boys who inherited wealth and power to live up to the traditional notion of a gentleman, and to teach boys who were born in poverty and serfdom to live down to the traditional notion of a workingman. The Hebrews had at least a dif- ferent ideal; that of national education. As the Deuteronomist said: “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people” (Deut. 4, 6). Whether Joshua ben Gamala was the Horace Mann of Judea or not, it remains true that there was in Israel a strong tendency to give educa- tion to all long before his days; perhaps his de- | cree was merely a reformation of an ancient ideal. It was also an education adapted to the needs of the people. There is, of course, a paradox as well as truth in Tolstoy’s statement that, “There are no good books for the people, not only in our country, 1Thorndike, Hducation, p. 49. Results of Hebrew Education 51 but even in Europe.” Tolstoy could not have said that of ancient Israel, for most of the Old Testament was written by so many anony- mous hands that we may call it a book of the people, written by the people, and for the people. An education that blossoms into and through such a masterpiece has certainly been a success. The Hebrews learned no formal grammar; this is probably why they produced such literature, for, as Ellis said, the greatest literature of any people is produced in the transition stage from the oral to the written transmission of tradi- tion, when written language has all the expres- siveness of oral speech and is as yet untrammeled by the artificialities of grammarians. Only a few of the Hebrews actually read these books, because they were expensive, but, after all, it does not matter whether we learn litera- ture through the eye or through the ear. To this day the amount of literature read by the average school child is very small. Eliot has shown that it takes a high school graduate forty-six hours to read aloud what is read by our school children in six years, and a good deal of it is of indifferent literary value. We are not so very well advanced after all in our enlightened times. As to the proportion of the Hebrew popula- tion that was able to read, it is difficult to as- certain; we are told of almost every leading per- son in the history of Israel that he read and 2 Pedag. Articles, p. 32. ay A Survey of Hebrew Education wrote; but whether they did this alone or through secretaries is not certain. Hearing is more fre- quently mentioned than reading. The name of the city of Kiriat Sepher, Book Town, may point to the rarity of school learning as well as to its abundance. It might in later times be argued from Sir. 38: 38-89 that even so.simple an accom- plishment as reading was unusual then. But it has also been remarked that from that passage as well as from Sir. 39:38 ff. one may argue with equal plausibility that the book of Ecclesiasticus was to be read by the general public. The spies sent by Joshua could write; Gideon expected any young man to be able to do so as it seems from Judg. 8:14. Some, at least, of the workingmen who dug the conduit of Siloam circa 700 B. C. could write, for they left us an inscription in the rock. To read fast was a commonly desired ac- complishment (Hab. 2, 2). The Deuteronomist commands the Hebrews to engrave sentences upon the posts of their houses and their gates (Deut. 6:9; 11:20), thus supposing a commu- nity where reading is not uncommon. The numer- ous Aramaic ostraka found in Egypt show that writing was not uncommon among the Jewish refugees who lived there. All these data can be interpreted differently; we are still unable to de- cide with any degree of certainty as to the ex- tent of school education among the Hebrews. All we can say is that it was the privilege of very few during their nomadic stage, and of a rather Results of Hebrew Education 53 large section of the community in post-exilic times. Again let us repeat that Hebrew education was not essentially book education. Its results are to be measured accordingly. Davidson gives four valuable results of Jew- ish education. 1, Taste for close, critical study ; 2, sharpening of the wits; 3, reverence for the law and desirable social conduct; 4, and a power- ful bond of union.’ Only the third and, to some extent, the fourth were products of Hebrew, as distinguished from later Jewish education. 3’ Hist. of Ed., p. 80. CHAPTER VII. AN ESTIMATE OF HEBREW EDUCATION. WHAT CAN IT TEACH US? The best, perhaps the truest, science is ap- plied science. The most important part of the bistory of education is its application to our present and our future. ‘Knowledge,’ says Thorndike, “is of value in proportion to the im- portance to human welfare of the situation to which it applies . . . Knowledge of steam engines would be preferred to knowledge of millinery, in spite of the fact that hats figure more frequently in life. Knowledge pertaining to moral conduct is thus above knowledge pertaining to manners .. . knowledge pertaining to the family and the state is above knowledge pertaining to such con- ventions of language as spelling and punctua- tion.” The history of education is one of the best guides in this classification and department of knowledge; it is a necessary introduction to what Claparéde has called teleologic pedagogy which borrows ideals for educative action from morals, philosophy, ewsthetics, religion, sociology, 1 Thorndike, Hducation, pp. 129-130. An Estimate of Hebrew Education oF) and politics. Science is ideal-blind, but science is only the foundation of the temple of knowledge. I’rom that point of view, the educational experi- ment made by the Hebrew nation is of paramount importance. In a way we are today going back to old conditions at least in our dreams of an im- proved world. Dewey says ‘“a_ distinctively learned class is now out of the question. It is an anachronism. Knowledge is no longer an im- mobile solid; it has been liquefied. Educational reformers, some perhaps would call them vision- aries, often give us, unconsciously, echoes of the Hebrew message. We have already shown how some of the ideas of Tolstoy and E. Key were well known in Israel. We must not forget that these prophets of a new education did not de- spise the past as such. “The old education,” said E. Key, “was relatively most excellent... (consisting) solely in keeping oneself whole, pure, and honourable. For it did not depreciate per- sonality.’” The idea of equality emphasized so much by Tolstoy as a basic principle of education was ex- emplified in Israel as it was in the glorious days of Islam. The shepherd and the peasant spoke as well if not better, than the son of the courtier. We must remember that the Hebrew religion was not only an ethical system or a ritualistic code. It told of a God who was very near to men, 2 Dewey, School and Society, p. 40. 3H. Key, Century of the Child, p. 115. Cf. Tolstoy, Pedag. Articles, p. 20. 56 A Survey of Hebrew Education although there was around Him a mystical halo and a nearly concrete holiness. We, of the West, are not well gifted in religious genius and so we have had to borrow our religions from the East, where people are known to be holy and practical and matter-of-fact in their attitude towards the Unknown. It is treachery to ‘call that type of education theocratic, as most histories of educa- tion do. Indeed the Semite in general, more es- pecially the Arab of history, is ‘“‘an essentially in- dependent and skeptical being.” And yet he is an artist in religion. So was the Hebrew. This is why Hebrew educational ideals are the glory of Israel. There was an ideal education of a high grade in ancient Persia, in China, in India, but it never could become the heritage of the world. Babylon and Egypt, more civilized than Israel, did not probably rise even as high as Persia in their conception of moral education. They gave to the world the beginning of its science but not the foundation of its ethics. The Spartans and the old Athenians wanted to be brave men, the old Romans knew how to obey, but the old Greek education was unable to maintain its hold upon men when Hellas became more civilized and the eld Roman education gave way also before the less virile ways of the new Hellas. Hebrew edu- | cation trained servants of God who knew how to | be brave and obedient; except among a minority of wealthy Sadducees, their educational ideals remained untarnished by Hellenism. This is why An Estimate of Hebrew Education 57 mankind is their debtor. The Health of the World came indeed from the Jews. No decadence af- fected their educational ideals. The influence of Greco-Roman education in its later form, decadent, if more gentle, has not been an unmixed blessing. It made our education formal, intellectual, aristocratic; it disgraced manual labor; it retarded vocational education ; it wove into our mental fabric the mischievous distinction between physical and mental, due to the disciples of Socrates. We see now that knowl- edge is not the aim of education, and there was a danger in the Socratic motto, “Know thyself,” if it was divorced from Socratic common sense. The deadening influence of Ciceronianism, as also the weakness of Erasmus, came from their not being in touch with the Hebrew ideals known to the early Renaissance educators, forgotten later in uncritical admiration of “classical” cul- ture. Josephus, who knew Hellenism well, claimed that Hebrew education was better than the Greco-Roman, because it was both theoretical and practical. History has justified him. The Greek with his art and his philosophy, the Ro- man with his law and his statesmanship, the Neo- Greek of the Renaissance with his erudition and his classicism, are of less real value today than the Old Hebrew, because they did not understand as well as he, that the most important element of education is moral discipline, that the Home is a place of Happiness and Duty, that true Great- 58 A Survey of Hebrew Education ness is the Righteousness which can be found only by faith in God. It would have been better for the Christian Church and for medieval education if Church Fathers had known their Old Testament better. Augustine, for instance, would scarcely have evolved his doctrine of original sin, in the name of which the joy of living was, until recently, frowned away from the lives of many children. The Church, as a whole more faithful to the teaching of her Master, would not have been so ready to condemn the sinner, but would have tried “to redeem him through a sense of fellow- ship in the common fault, which is the scientific form of pardon.’” There would have been less, if any, of the inhuman and false sesceticism of the Middle Ages. Islam would not, perhaps, have con- quered the East and North Africa in the name of the ancient Semitic spirit so unhappily dead- ened by the Church. There would not have been so many of these misunderstandings and hatreds which have aroused against the Church the hos- tility of so many great souls and given birth to “VPesprit laique” in education. Locke would not, perhaps, have thought out his doctrine of the tabula rasa, if he had been familiar with the old Semitic mind and the value it sets on heredity. Our psychology would thereby have been spared much waste of time and would not perhaps have been led astray into verbal disquisitions. 4 Montessori, Pedag. Anthrop, p. 360. An Estimate of Hebrew Education 59 If Rousseau had had more than a vague knowl- edge of the Old Testament, remembered hazily through the roseate hues of the memory of a charming dilettante, he would have given us a better Emile, with more backbone. He would not have advocated the idea that children are good by nature, for indeed they are neither good nor bad, but have possibilities for both. He would not have advocated an education for aristocrats only, and a rather poor one at that. As for us, we can learn from Hebrew methods at times, from Hebrew ideals very often. In these days of machinery and complexity of crowded tenements, highly strained modes of living, noisy, standardized pleasures, we need an education that will provide an escape for the heart and mind. The Hebrew knew where to find it, even by the waters of Babylon. Perchance if we are in- spired by him we shall know how to deal more effectively with the problem of education in the- ory and practice. From the point of view of his- tory of education per se, we may learn from our study to be less dogmatic, to have little or no faith in labels given to people or great men. We have seen that Hebrew education was not theo- cratic. We should not say .with Davidson that the Hebrews before the exile must be classed as barbarians, along with the Pheenicians. Such classifications are meaningless. There barbarians are our masters and our teachers; we use their alphabet; we read their literature; we try to fol- 60 A Survey of Hebrew Education low their social ethics. If the history of educa- tion paid more attention, as it should, to a care- ful study of racial intelligence, it would rate He- brew education high. Our study shows us that histories of education have wrongly emphasized the importance of for- mal knowledge as a sign of social growth as if the value of education could be gauged by the extent of school curriculum. Since Hebrew education should not be called theocratic what is its place in the development of educational history. We would like to classify education from a social point of view in four main types: 1, Aristocratic (Greco-Roman). 2, Social-theocratic (Medieval). 3, Individualistic, humanistic, philosophic, ra- tionalist, realistic, scientific. 4, Social-democratie. To the fourth type belong the present, in pro- eressive educational agencies, and, as we like to think, the future for all. Hebrew education was an early attempt of humanity to accomplish it; thus it belongs to history, prophecy, and art—to the past, the future, and our present. BIBLIOGRAPHY There is a very good selected bibliography in F. H. Swift, Education in Ancient Israel to 70 A. D. We shall give here only a supplement. C. LETOURNEAU, L’évolution de Véducation dans les diverses races humaines, Paris, 1898, 350-9. Anthropological point of view; not very well informed. A. R. S. KENNEDY, Education, in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, 1900, I, 646-652. Excellent, entirely reliable. T. DAVIDSON, A History of Education, New York, 1890, 45- 47; 77-86. The wrok of a great, but sometimes misinformed mind ; dabbles into erratic philology. G. H. BOX, Hducation, in Cheyne and Black’s Encyclopedia Biblica, 1901, II, 1189-1202. Excellent scholarly. O. WILLMANN, Didaktik als Bildungslehre, Braunschweig, 3rd ed. 1903, 138-140. Short but excellent survey giving the point of view of social pedagogy. E. P. CUBBERLY, Syllabus of Lectures on the History of Edu- cation, 2nd ed., New York, 1904, 19-23. An excellent text book but only a text book, P. MAGNUS, The Early School Teaching of the Jews, Nine- teenth Century, Sept., 1906; also in Hebrew Standard, Oct. 5 and 20. Talmudic material, no originality. O. WILLMANN, Israelitische Erziehung in REIN, HEncyklopae- disches Handbuch dere Paedagogik, 2nd ed. 1906, IV, 592- 595. Excellent; limited scope, y 62 A Survey of Hebrew Education P. MONROE, A Brief Course in the History of Education, New York, 1907, 21-28. Crumbs from the master’s table. A. KLOSTERMANN, Schulwesen im alten Israel, Leipzig, 1908. The most original treatment of the subject. Very sugges- tive in places. No attempt to cover the whole field. A. SIMON, The Principle of Jewish Education in the Past, Washington, 1909, 5-32. Superficial; contributes nothing. E. P. GRAVES, A History of Education before the Middle Ages, New York, 1909, 110-137. E. DAY, The Social Life of the Hebrews, New York, 1910, 161- 168. Popular. Right point of view. P. BARTH, Die Geschichte der Erziehung, Leipzig, 1911, 28- 29. Only a few remarks. Social pedagogical point of view. L. KANDEL and L. GROSSMANN, Jewish Education in Mon- roe’s Cyclopedia of Education, 1912, III, 542. MORRIS JOSEPH, Education (Jewish) in Hastings’ Hncyclo- pedia of Religion and Ethics, 1912, V, 194-195. Inferior to most articles in that remarkable work. W. ROSENAU and A. SIMON, Jewish Hducation, Historical Survey, 1912. C. H. CORNHILL, The Culture of ancient Israel, English transl. Chicago, 1914, Chapter III (pp. 68-100). A lecture by a master in Old Testament criticism ; but not a pedagogical work. P. McCORMICK, History of Education, Washington, 1915, 24-28. Very poor treatment. C. H. LEHMAN, Religious Education among the Jews, Encyclo- pedia of Sunday Schools and Religious Education, 1915, p. 587. Weak. Does not show even the Importance of the subject, H. H. MAYER, Hducation, International Standard Bible Ency- clopedia, 1915, 900-905. Conservative, inferior to Kennedy and Box. J. K. HART, Democracy in Education, New York, 1918, 37-41. Sociological point of view. Written to defend a thesis. Maintains that Hebrew education failed to provide an es- cape from “folk ways,” Bibliography 63 J. A. MAYNARD, The Problem of the Formation of Character in the Light of the History of Hebrew Education. Angl. Theol. Rev., 1920, pp. 228-235. A. P. DUGGAN, A Student’s Textbook in the History of Edu- cation, New York, 1916, 7-14. Short. Apparently based on secondary authorities. P. E. KRETZMANN, Education among the Jews from the Earli- est Times to the End of the Talmudic Period, Boston, 1916. A curious work. In a scurrilous preface, the author at- tacks ‘“‘the vain mutterings of foolish criticism’? and the “inane theory of a so-called evolution.’? The author's ig- norance is equal to his fanaticism. A glance at his bibli- ography (p. 98) shows his scanty preparation. INDEX A H Arithmetic, 26. Happiness, 6, 11. Art educ., 29, 17. Herbartians, ix, Astronomy, 20. Home educ., 32. Ath-bash, xi. House work, 19. C 1 Canaanite influence, 2, 26. JTmportance of Heb. Ed., x. Catechetical methods, 45. Character formation, ix. L D Legal educ., 28. Dancing, 20. Levites, 22. Derwishes, 34. Literary criticism, xvii. Discipline, 38-42. Locke, 58. E M Exile, 4, 24. . Ezra, 24, Manual labor, 28. Marriage, 10-11. RF Merchants, 21,34. Method, general, 42-44. Methods, special, 44. Monotheism, 5, 15. Family life, 30-33. Festivals, 20, 44. Filial duties, 13. Mother, 10. 13. 31, 32. G Games, 28. N Geography, 48. National educ., xv, 50. Geometry, 27. Nature study, 42-43. Girls, eduec. of, 17 Nomadic life, 1, 5, 19. Index 65 O Obedience, 40. 1 Phonics, 45. Priests, 34. Prophets, 3, 4, 6, 11, 15, 22, 23, 33. Proverbs, 42. Psychology, 12-13. R Reading, 38 41, 45-48, 51- as Renaissance, 57. Respect to parents, 13. Results, 49. Righteousness, 3, 6. Rousseau, 59. NS) Salaries, 36. Schematic Survey, xx. Schools, 4, 33. Seribes, 3, 5, 21. Sheikh, 14. Slavery, 49. Socialism, ix. Soul, 49. Squatting posture, 48. Stories, 19. it Teachers, 34-35. Types of educ., 60. V Vocational psychology, 20, pial ha W Writing, 33. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING CO. MILWAUKEE, WIS, al ] il | > 96 | | | ~ 4 1012 01145 35 Date Due Ap 21 38 | | My 3’ FACULTY a Snblmtsen {>e> of Dabere nossa ee gee ifs . of ttre ple par pads. Pe. Po BE art plates thie Fed MER Gates eye ae. 2. Phi poe) 2 - aaeene aerhatenieayer deeb oe dd ie Gah ae Ste ; * 3 > Me ag: pote Sey ors BoD pda ae o rei bponent Bad wie paoad Rea as ipepatety ay dre rajre—, + et i qa at banal ee we tets 5 ess ane ~ eee titety hore ert F525 oe. rad ins Senate say es <>4