death of Ezra. If we call, with the doctors of the Talmud, this great restorer a prophet, this third period was illustrated by ten prophetic writers, including the author of the second part of the book now placed under the title of Isaiah. From Nehemiah to Simon the Just, the contemporary of the first doctors of the Talmud, or Tanaites, the period that elapsed was less than a century and a half.

We do not deny that a perfectly competent criticism may trace some change, not only in literary style, but even in dogmatic belief, by carefully investigating the works of this long series of writers. But when we remark the very close adherence of the latest great Jewish doctors to the precise language of Moses and of the early prophets, it seems impossible to doubt that the signs of the unity of faith, opinion, and practice that has prevailed for the long period of 3,400 years are far more discernible than those of change, of innovation, or of what we call development. And yet, when we regard the active life of the Jewish people during the first century of our era, as the pages of the Evangelists and those of the Talmud, mutually illuminating one another, present it to our view, we must admit that the ancient Law was not absolutely independent of the change which attends on time. That change must, indeed, have been as gradual and imperceptible as in the case of a slow-growing tree. Or, rather, it may be compared to the gradual crystallisation of stalactites over the surface of a rock. In speaking of these secular transformations, we must lay aside the language, not only of theology, but of ordinary ethical writing. For we find good and evil to change places, as regarded on the one hand by the legislators of the Jewish and of the Arabian faiths, and on the other by the teachers of modern Europe. What we call progress, Moses, or those who sat in the seat of Moses, called crime; what we call toleration, they called idolatry. Where we speak of the comity of nations, of mutual forbearance, of philanthropy as distinguished from patriotism, and of the increasing civilisation of the human race, the doctors of the Law could only see the breach of the Divine ordinances, the denial of the special privileges of the chosen people, and the provocation of God's wrath.

It is probable that any effectual opposition to the idolatry into which symbolism had degenerated by the date of the 18th Egyptian dynasty, would have been hopeless under a less Draconic law than that of Moses. Even as it was, with every transgression plainly and distinctly defined, and incurring, if voluntary, the punishment of death; with the permanent

machinery of a priesthood, dependent for their livelihood upon the religious faith of the people, and of the central, provincial, and local councils, bound to take cognisance of the smallest breach of the law; idolatry was never kept at arm's length until the brand of the Captivity of Babylon had sunk deep into the flesh. The state of mind that led to this idolatry was by no means so harshly opposed to the early form of the Jewish religion as we are wont to imagine. To the kings of Moab and of Babylon there was as much vital energy in their national worship as most of the Jewish rulers acknowledged in their own. To all these nations many of the externals of religion were in common. Each had a holy place, a local temple, a hereditary priesthood, a liturgic service, constant sacrificial offering, and the answer of an invoked oracle. The absence of any fictile symbol of the Divinity, which characterised alike the temple of Jerusalem and the groves of our Teutonic ancestors, was not such a convincing sign of a more spiritual worship as to lead other. nations to admit the great superiority of the Divinity of the Jews. The reality of that Presence was recognised, beyond doubt, by neighbouring tribes. Pharaoh and Abimelech, the priests of Egypt, the lords of the Canaanites, the king of Syria, and the king of Babylon, all admitted the power of the God of the Jews, though they held it to be limited. by, and coexistent with, that of their own tutelary divinities. The temptation to the Jew, when in trouble, to seek the aid of a neighbouring and visibly-symbolised Divinity, which others told him had been efficacious in their own experience, was great and constant. If properly named infidelity, it was the very reverse of Atheism. It was what we call the spirit of toleration and of free inquiry. The extinction of this spirit was a primary aim of the Jewish legislation. The fierce, proud, intolerant temper of the people was methodically developed for this very purpose. It was not until they had passed through the penance of the Captivity that their readiness to blend with other Semitic tribes was destroyed. But with this establishment of the purity of their own exclusive faith, a hatred of all who were not Jews was ineffaceably implanted.

If we regard the true religious progress of mankind to be that from a reign of terror to a reign of love; from the fear and dread of an invisible Avenger to the faith claimed by the AllFather, we must attribute but a small advance in this direction to the influence of the Jewish polity. We are hardly in a condition to judge at what cost it might be desirable to make a permanent protest against that idolatry into which the use of symbols seems unavoidably to degenerate; or against the

grosser practices of a Polytheism, of which the spirit yet dictates the invocation of celestial mediators, and spreads the dread of evil spirits. But the protest, as offered by Judaism, involved the intimate belief of the Jew in the especial dignity of his own nation. For the Jew, among all nations, and, among the Jews themselves, for the Rabbi, was created not only this world, but the world to come-not only earth but the attendant planetary fires. This portion of the Jewish doctrine, mutato nomine, finds a daily echo in places not altogether remote from our own Northern metropolis.

Here, then, lay the crucial point of the difficulty raised by the teaching of Christ. If the Jew was not to hate the Gentile, where were his long-cherished privileges? If he was to commune with the uncircumcised, where was the fence of the Law? where the long traditions of the Elders? where the unchangeable character of the Divine Law? We doubt whether the real nature of this enormous difficulty has been ever candidly placed before the world. We half doubt whether any modern writers have presented to the Jews of our day any case which the latter would have been justified not only in admitting, but even in taking into serious consideration. There is enough in the Jewish doctrine of the double advent of the King Messiah to render it easy for the rabbins to reconsider the question of the claim of Christ to be regarded as the subject of the prophecies of Zechariah and earlier prophets. But the attempt of Paul to convince his fellow-countrymen that he was saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come' has not been repeated by the doctors of Roman Christendom.

6

It is not our intention to attempt anything like an aperçu of the ethics of Judaism. In fact, the main subject of our complaint is the fact that the scholarship of the West has been content to remain in ignorance of the authorities from which such an aperçu might be drawn up. But we must give some example of what we mean by saying that the Law, which the Jews hold to be unalterable, has, in point of fact, followed the invariable fate of all human institutions-or let us rather say of all institutions that deal with the wants and habits of humanity.

On no subject are the doctors of the Talmud so prone to dilate as on that of the relation between the sexes. The law of betrothal, the rights and rites of marriage, the law of divorce, and the peculiar Jewish institution of Yeboom, or the marriage of the childless widow of a brother, are the subjects of distinct and voluminous treatises. The third of the six orders of the

Talmud, consisting of seven tracts, is entirely occupied with the subject of the rights and duties of women, and of men in relation to women. But in addition to this, questions of the same nature are continually springing forth from ambush in the Ghemara.

For

It is very difficult, however, to convey to the English reader in appropriate language the mode in which that subject is approached by the Jewish doctors of the Law. Delicacy, according to our ideas, is to them a thing utterly unknown. modesty they have neither name nor place. Chastity, as exalted into a virtue by the Roman Church, is esteemed by the Halaca to be a violation of a distinct command of the written Law. Virginity, after mature years, is a stigma, if not a sin. With the exception of the prohibition of marriage within certain close limits of consanguinity, which do not forbid a man to take to wife the daughter of his brother or sister, almost the sole duty as to marital relations enforced by the Talmud is the fidelity of a wife to her husband during the existence of the technical marriage-tie. The number of wives legal seems to have been limited only by the wealth of the husband; the rights of contemporary wives up to the number of four (the Mohammedan legal number) being severally discussed in the tract Kedushin. Some question has been raised by modern Jewish writers as to that unlimited freedom of divorce which seems to be contemplated by the tract Gittin. On this point a dispute existed at the time of Christ between the Beth Hillel and the Beth Shamai; the two great schools which seem to have been principally based on the principle of mutual contradiction. The question was submitted to the decision of Christ by the Pharisees, and replied to by Him almost in the exact words used by the doctors of the Beth Shamai. The Beth Hillel, on the contrary, held that a man was at liberty to divorce his wife for the most trifling cause, such as spoiling a dish. Rabbi Akhiba, a contemporary of Christ, allowed it in the case of a man finding a woman fairer in his eyes than his wife! The modern Jews urge that no society could exist in which such an excuse for divorce was allowable, and insist that the Halaca, or doctrinal decision of the Talmud, rejects the interpretation of R. Akhiba, and discourages divorces except for a legal object. But a special form of bill of divorce, called a bald Get, is mentioned in the treatise Gittin, for an explanation of which the treatise Baba Kama is cited. This was a folded and stitched document, on every fold of which

*

* Mark x. 2.

it was necessary that the name of a witness should be signed. It was instituted for the express purpose of complicating, and thus delaying, in the case of a priest, the summary proceeding which constituted a divorce, namely, the mere delivery to the wife of a written and witnessed permission to marry anyone she chose. And the reason assigned is, that the priests were often in the habit of divorcing their wives in a sudden fit of passion, of which they repented soon after, when, as priests, it was unlawful for them to take them back, after having gone through the brief formality of delivering the Get. When a special provision against the hasty passion of the priests assumed so determinate a form, we may judge what was likely to be the practice among the bulk of the people. In fact the limitation proposed by the school of Shamai appears to involve a self-contradiction, not as far as morality is concerned, but as regards the actual import of the law. For the provisions as regarded a wife suspected of infidelity were sharp and stern. The treatise Sootah prescribes the administration of the ordeal of the water of separation in any case of suspicion. And the Ghemara shows that the mere fact of being alone with a man constituted a case of legal suspicion, in which it was incumbent on the husband to demand the ordeal. The punishment, in case of conviction, was death. The fact that no room was left for the application of the law of divorce in the sole case to which Beth Shamai would restrict its application, is enough to prove that, however opposed the opposite view might be to sound morality, it was quite consistent with the legislation on the subject.

Another point in which the Oral Law of the Jews appears to have passed, by the time of the completion of the Talmud, through phases similar to those familiar to English lawyers under the name of legal fictions, regards the law of the Sabbath. The precept to rest from work on that day obtained such a comprehensive application, that the question arose whether the wearing of a false tooth on leaving the house on the Sabbath (as being something borne as a burden by the wearer) was not a breach of the law. After sunset on the eve of the Sabbath it was forbidden to go forth with a weapon, with a needle, with a chain, a finger-ring, a girdle, or a purse. Thirty-nine principal occupations are named as forbidden on the Sabbath. Among these are: to tie, to untie, to sew two or more stitches, to kindle or to extinguish fire, to write two letters of the alphabet, or to carry anything from one domicile to another. The excessive severity into which the original command of reposing from work on the Sabbath had thus become exagge