The Wisdom of Alfred Edersheim

Mishkin

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781498274937
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Alfred Edersheim (1825-1889) was born and reared in a Jewish home in Vienna. He was given a New Testament while studying medicine at the University of Pest (Budapest) and soon afterwards came to believe in Jesus as his Messiah. He held several teaching positions in the United Kingdom before settling at the University of Oxford. From 1882 until his death, he was Grinfeld Lecturer on the Septuagint. He is still considered a leading authority on Jewish life and customs in the time of Jesus. He wrote many books on a variety of topics, most famously The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. The Wisdom of Alfred Edersheim includes hundreds of quotations from his various works, many of which are rare and out of print. Edersheim is remembered and loved for his devotional commentary as much as for his scholarship.

His Quotes

Abraham

With Abraham an entirely new period may be said to begin. He was to be the ancestor of a new race in whom the Divine promises were to be preserved, and through whom they would finally be realized.1

Abrahamic Covenant

For the terms of this promise were not made void by the seventy years which Judah spent in the captivity of Babylon, nor yet are they annulled by the eighteen centuries of Israel’s present unbelief and dispersion. The promise of the land is Abram’s “seed for ever.” 2

There is nothing narrow or particularistic, but a grand universalism, even about this presentation of the promise in concrete form.3

The great promise connected first with the patriarchs as God’s anointed, and then with Israel as a royal nation, now attached itself to Israel’s king, and became, so to speak, individualized in David and his seed.4

For when God bound up the future of all nations in the history of Abraham and his seed (Gen. 12:3), He made that history prophetic; and each event and every rite became, as it were, a bud, destined to open in blossom and ripen into fruit on that tree under the shadow of which all nations were to be gathered.5

Affliction

And when troubles are around, and we see no way of escape, when our consciences condemn us for backsliding from the Lord, what comfort to discover that the precious Word of God is still near us, with its message of pity and forgiveness, ever meeting our wants.6

God’s people are not preserved from the common evils of this world. They are sustained and helped in them.7

Even a heathen poet speaks of the pleasure of looking back upon past trials. Yet, would we rather look upon a present Saviour than a past affliction.8

Little do they know, who wonder at the afflictions of God’s people, what precious lessons have been learned, what mighty sermons have been preached in sick rooms and on death-beds. The letting down through the roof of the bed which bore the poor paralytic, laying him at the feet of Jesus, was itself a testimony more powerful than many a long life.9

Agnostics

I believe in a personal God; I also believe in a personal Satan. Agnosticism on the latter point seems to me to lay us open to the most serious practical dangers.10

Alexandrian Judaism

Separated from their brethren of Palestine, they constituted an almost independent sect, having their rival high-priest and temple. Left to themselves, and set free from those elements which led to the development of Rabbinism in the mother country, the Alexandrian Jews pursued a different direction. They had to defend their faith from the attacks of a philosophical system apparently related to it, but claiming for those initiated in its mysteries a higher spirituality and a loftier elevation.11

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

Angels

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

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

Anthropology

As in the soul of man we see the ruins of what he had been before the...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• His Life
• His Bibliography
• His Legacy
• His Magnum Opus
• His Quotes
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• Appendix D