The JEWS have their TALMUD; the CATHOLICS their LEGENDS of Saints; and
the TURKS their SONNAH. The PROTESTANT has nothing but his BIBLE. The
former are three kindred works. Men have imagined that the more there is
to be believed, the more are the merits of the believer. Hence all
_traditionists_ formed the orthodox and the strongest party. The word
of God is lost amidst those heaps of human inventions, sanctioned by an
order of men connected with religious duties; they ought now, however,
to be regarded rather as CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE. I give a
sufficiently ample account of the TALMUD and the LEGENDS; but of the
SONNAH I only know that it is a collection of the traditional opinions
of the Turkish prophets, directing the observance of petty superstitions
not mentioned in the Koran.
The TALMUD is a collection of Jewish traditions which have been _orally_
preserved. It comprises the MISHNA, which is the text; and the GEMARA,
its commentary. The whole forms a complete system of the learning,
ceremonies, civil and canon laws of the Jews; treating indeed on all
subjects; even gardening, manual arts, &c. The rigid Jews persuaded
themselves that these traditional explications are of divine origin. The
Pentateuch, say they, was written out by their legislator before his
death in thirteen copies, distributed among the twelve tribes, and the
remaining one deposited in the ark. The oral law Moses continually
taught in the Sanhedrim, to the elders and the rest of the people. The
law was repeated four times; but the interpretation was delivered only
by _word of mouth_ from generation to generation. In the fortieth year
of the flight from Egypt, the memory of the people became treacherous,
and Moses was constrained to repeat this oral law, which had been
conveyed by successive traditionists. Such is the account of honest
David Levi; it is the creed of every rabbin.--David believed in
everything but in Jesus.
This history of the Talmud some inclined to suppose apocryphal, even
among a few of the Jews themselves. When these traditions first
appeared, the keenest controversy has never been able to determine. It
cannot be denied that there existed traditions among the Jews in the
time of Jesus Christ. About the second century, they were industriously
collected by Rabbi Juda the Holy, the prince of the rabbins, who enjoyed
the favour of Antoninus Pius. He has the merit of giving some order to
this multifarious collection.
It appears that the Talmud was compiled by certain Jewish doctors, who
were solicited for this purpose by their nation, that they might have
something to oppose to their Christian adversaries.
The learned W. Wotton, in his curious "Discourses" on the traditions of
the Scribes and Pharisees, supplies an analysis of this vast collection;
he has translated entire two divisions of this code of traditional laws,
with the original text and the notes.
There are two Talmuds: the Jerusalem and the Babylonian. The last is the
most esteemed, because it is the most bulky.
R. Juda, the prince of the rabbins, committed to writing all these
traditions, and arranged them under six general heads, called orders or
classes. The subjects are indeed curious for philosophical inquirers,
and multifarious as the events of civil life. Every _order_ is formed of
_treatises_; every _treatise_ is divided into chapters, every _chapter_
into _mishnas_, which word means mixtures or miscellanies, in the form
of _aphorisms_. In the first part is discussed what relates to _seeds_,
_fruits_, and _trees_; in the second, _feasts_; in the third, _women_,
their duties, their _disorders_, _marriages_, _divorces_, _contracts_,
and _nuptials_; in the fourth, are treated the damages or losses
sustained by beasts or men; of _things found_; _deposits_; _usuries_;
_rents_; _farms_; _partnerships_ in commerce; _inheritance_; _sales_ and
_purchases_; _oaths_; _witnesses_; _arrests_; _idolatry_; and here are
named those by whom the oral law was received and preserved. In the
fifth part are noticed _sacrifices_ and _holy things_; and the sixth
treats of _purifications_; _vessels_; _furniture_; _clothes_; _houses_;
_leprosy_; _baths_; and numerous other articles. All this forms the
MISHNA.
The GEMARA, that is, the _complement_ or _perfection_, contains the
DISPUTES and the OPINIONS of the RABBINS on the oral traditions. Their
last decisions. It must be confessed that absurdities are sometimes
elucidated by other absurdities; but there are many admirable things in
this vast repository. The Jews have such veneration for this
compilation, that they compare the holy writings to _water_, and the
Talmud to _wine_; the text of Moses to _pepper_, but the Talmud to
_aromatics_. Of the twelve hours of which the day is composed, they tell
us that _God_ employs nine to study the Talmud, and only three to read
the written law!
St. Jerome appears evidently to allude to this work, and notices its
"Old Wives' Tales," and the filthiness of some of its matters. The truth
is, that the rabbins resembled the Jesuits and Casuists; and Sanchez's
work on "_Matrimonio_" is well known to agitate matters with such
_scrupulous niceties_ as to become the most offensive thing possible.
But as among the schoolmen and casuists there have been great men, the
same happened to these Gemaraists. Maimonides was a pillar of light
among their darkness. The antiquity of this work is of itself sufficient
to make it very curious.
A specimen of the topics may be shown from the table and contents of
"Mishnic Titles." In the order of seeds, we find the following heads,
which present no uninteresting picture of the pastoral and pious
ceremonies of the ancient Jews.
The Mishna, entitled the _Corner_, i.e. of the field. The laws of
gleaning are commanded according to Leviticus; xix. 9, 10. Of the corner
to be left in a corn-field. When the corner is due and when not. Of the
forgotten sheaf. Of the ears of corn left in gathering. Of grapes left
upon the vine. Of olives left upon the trees. When and where the poor
may lawfully glean. What sheaf, or olives, or grapes, may be looked upon
to be forgotten, and what not. Who are the proper witnesses concerning
the poor's due, to exempt it from tithing, &c. They distinguished
uncircumcised fruit:--it is unlawful to eat of the fruit of any tree
till the fifth year of its growth: the first three years of its bearing,
it is called uncircumcised; the fourth is offered to God; and the fifth
may be eaten.
The Mishna, entitled _Heterogeneous Mixtures_, contains several curious
horticultural particulars. Of divisions between garden-beds and fields,
that the produce of the several sorts of grains or seeds may appear
distinct. Of the distance between every species. Distances between vines
planted in corn-fields from one another and from the corn; between vines
planted against hedges, walls, or espaliers, and anything sowed near
them. Various cases relating to vineyards planted near any forbidden
seeds.
In their seventh, or sabbatical year, in which the produce of all
estates was given up to the poor, one of these regulations is on the
different work which must not be omitted in the sixth year, lest
(because the seventh being devoted to the poor) the produce should be
unfairly diminished, and the public benefit arising from this law be
frustrated. Of whatever is not perennial, and produced that year by the
earth, no money may be made; but what is perennial may be sold.
On priests' tithes, we have a regulation concerning eating the fruits
carried to the place where they are to be separated.
The order _women_ is very copious. A husband is obliged to forbid his
wife to keep a particular man's company before two witnesses. Of the
waters of jealousy by which a suspected woman is to be tried by
drinking, we find ample particulars. The ceremonies of clothing the
accused woman at her trial. Pregnant women, or who suckle, are not
obliged to drink for the rabbins seem to be well convinced of the
effects of the imagination. Of their divorces many are the laws; and
care is taken to particularise bills of divorces written by men in
delirium or dangerously ill. One party of the rabbins will not allow of
any divorce, unless something light was found in the woman's character,
while another (the Pharisees) allow divorces even when a woman has only
been so unfortunate as to suffer her husband's soup to be burnt!
In the order of _damages_, containing rules how to tax the damages done
by man or beast, or other casualties, their distinctions are as nice as
their cases are numerous. What beasts are innocent and what convict. By
the one they mean creatures not naturally used to do mischief in any
particular way; and by the other, those that naturally, or by a vicious
habit, are mischievous that way. The tooth of a beast is convict, when
it is proved to eat its usual food, the property of another man, and
full restitution must be made; but if a beast that is used to eat fruits
and herbs gnaws clothes or damages tools, which are not its usual food,
the owner of the beast shall pay but half the damage when committed on
the property of the injured person; but if the injury is committed on
the property of the person who does the damage, he is free, because the
beast gnawed what was not its usual food. As thus; if the beast of A.
gnaws or tears the clothes of B. in B.'s house or grounds, A. shall pay
half the damages; but if B.'s clothes are injured in A.'s grounds by
A.'s beast, A. is free, for what had B. to do to put his clothes in A.'s
grounds? They made such subtile distinctions, as when an ox gores a man
or beast, the law inquired into the habits of the beast; whether it was
an ox that used to gore, or an ox that was not used to gore. However
acute these niceties sometimes were, they were often ridiculous. No
beast could be _convicted_ of being vicious till evidence was given that
he had done mischief three successive days; but if he leaves off those
vicious tricks for three days more, he is innocent again. An ox may be
convict of goring an ox and not a man, or of goring a man and not an ox:
nay; of goring on the sabbath, and not on a working day. Their aim was
to make the punishment depend on the proofs of the _design_ of the
beast that did the injury; but this attempt evidently led them to
distinctions much too subtile and obscure. Thus some rabbins say that
the morning prayer of the _Shemáh_ must be read at the time they can
distinguish _blue_ from _white_; but another, more indulgent, insists it
may be when we can distinguish _blue_ from _green_! which latter colours
are so near akin as to require a stronger light. With the same
remarkable acuteness in distinguishing things, is their law respecting
not touching fire on the Sabbath. Among those which are specified in
this constitution, the rabbins allow the minister to look over young
children by lamp-light, but he shall not read himself. The minister is
forbidden to _read_ by lamp-light, lest he should trim his lamp; but he
may direct the children where they should read, because that is quickly
done, and there would be no danger of his trimming his lamp in their
presence, or suffering any of them to do it in his. All these
regulations, which some may conceive as minute and frivolous, show a
great intimacy with the human heart, and a spirit of profound
observation which had been capable of achieving great purposes.
The owner of an innocent beast only pays half the costs for the mischief
incurred. Man is always convict, and for all mischief he does he must
pay full costs. However there are casual damages,--as when a man pours
water accidentally on another man; or makes a thorn-hedge which annoys
his neighbour; or falling down, and another by stumbling on him incurs
harm: how such compensations are to be made. He that has a vessel of
another's in keeping, and removes it, but in the removal breaks it, must
swear to his own integrity; i.e., that he had no design to break it. All
offensive or noisy trades were to be carried on at a certain distance
from a town. Where there is an estate, the sons inherit, and the
daughters are maintained; but if there is not enough for all, the
daughters are maintained, and the sons must get their living as they
can, or even beg. The contrary to this excellent ordination has been
observed in Europe.
These few titles may enable the reader to form a general notion of the
several subjects on which the Mishna treats. The Gemara or Commentary is
often overloaded with ineptitudes and ridiculous subtilties. For
instance, in the article of "Negative Oaths." If a man swears he will
eat no bread, and does eat all sorts of bread, in that case the perjury
is but one; but if he swears that he will eat neither barley, nor
wheaten, nor rye-bread, the perjury is multiplied as he multiplies his
eating of the several sorts.--Again, the Pharisees and the Sadducees had
strong differences about touching the holy writings with their hands.
The doctors ordained that whoever touched the book of the law must not
eat of the truma (first fruits of the wrought produce of the ground),
till they had washed their hands. The reason they gave was this. In
times of persecution, they used to hide those sacred books in secret
places, and good men would lay them out of the way when they had done
reading them. It was possible, then, that these rolls of the law might
be gnawed by _mice_. The hands then that touched these books when they
took them out of the places where they had laid them up, were supposed
to be unclean, so far as to disable them from eating the truma till they
were washed. On that account they made this a general rule, that if any
part of the _Bible_ (except _Ecclesiastes_, because that excellent book
their sagacity accounted less holy than the rest) or their phylacteries,
or the strings of their phylacteries, were touched by one who had a
right to eat the truma, he might not eat it till he had washed his
hands. An evidence of that superstitious trifling, for which the
Pharisees and the later Rabbins have been so justly reprobated.
They were absurdly minute in the literal observance of their vows, and
as shamefully subtile in their artful evasion of them. The Pharisees
could be easy enough to themselves when convenient, and always as hard
and unrelenting as possible to all others. They quibbled, and dissolved
their vows, with experienced casuistry. Jesus reproaches the Pharisees
in Matthew xv. and Mark vii. for flagrantly violating the fifth
commandment, by allowing the vow of a son, perhaps made in hasty anger,
its full force, when he had sworn that his father should never be the
better for him, or anything he had, and by which an indigent father
might be suffered to starve. There is an express case to this purpose in
the Mishna, in the title of _Vows_. The reader may be amused by the
story:--A man made a vow that his _father should not profit by him_.
This man afterwards made a wedding-feast for his son, and wishes his
father should be present; but he cannot invite him, because he is tied
up by his vow. He invented this expedient:--He makes a gift of the court
in which the feast was to be kept, and of the feast itself, to a third
person in trust, that his father should be invited by that third person,
with the other company whom he at first designed. This third person then
says--If these things you thus have given me are mine, I will dedicate
them to God, and then none of you can be the better for them. The son
replied--I did not give them to you that you should consecrate them.
Then the third man said--Yours was no donation, only you were willing to
eat and drink with your father. Thus, says R. Juda, they dissolved each
other's intentions; and when the case came before the rabbins, they
decreed that a gift which may not be consecrated by the person to whom
it is given is not a gift.
The following extract from the Talmud exhibits a subtile mode of
reasoning, which the Jews adopted when the learned of Rome sought to
persuade them to conform to their idolatry. It forms an entire Mishna,
entitled _Sedir Nezikin_, Avoda Zara, iv. 7. on idolatrous worship,
translated by Wotton.
"Some Roman senators examined the Jews in this manner:--If God hath no
delight in the worship of idols, why did he not destroy them? The Jews
made answer--If men had worshipped only things of which the world had
had no need, he would have destroyed the object of their worship; but
they also worship the sun and moon, stars and planets; and then he must
have destroyed his world for the sake of these deluded men. But still,
said the Romans, why does not God destroy the things which the world
does not want, and leave those things which the world cannot be without?
Because, replied the Jews, this would strengthen the hands of such as
worship these necessary things, who would then say--Ye allow now that
these are gods, since they are not destroyed."