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these interpretations of the Law to be of equal age and repute with the Covenant itself, what evil there lay in them began to work. The Jewish lawyers made this declaration in no uncertain terms; for the policy, the greatness, and the safety of their new empire depended on the public acceptance of this Oral Law. They said their explanation of the Written Law had been given to Moses, who had left it, not to Aaron's line, but to Joshua the lay soldier, from whom it had come down through the judges and prophets unto the latest times. This explanation of the origin and descent of the Oral Law could have been given only to a people who had lost their language, and with it the habit of consulting their sacred books. The upper classes, having leisure for study, and continuing to speak and write Hebrew, had never adopted this theory of a double law, one written, the other traditional. The nobles knew nothing of these traditions. Yet not the less had the Oral Law become the Separatist's gospel, regulating every movement of Jewish life.

Mystery surrounded the Oral Law. The pupils of the Great College were taught to regard it as a secret no less than a sacred institute. It was a holy, incommunicable thing, never to be mentioned in a stranger's presence, never to be written in human speech. When, in progress of time, it had been reduced to writing for the use of rabbins and doctors, a curse was pronounced upon any one who should translate it into either Greek or any heathen tongue. Even among those who could read Hebrew it was

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not to be made a topic of common discourse. slave was allowed to read it; no woman, no child, was ever to learn it. A Gentile must not be told its rules and principles. Even in the household it was to be held in extremest reverence. A Jew who spent his days and nights in studying it must not discuss its doctrines with his wife. It was not to be mentioned at table; and although it professed to be the rule of every man's life, it was never to be communicated to a servant or a girl. To teach any part of the Oral Law to a woman was a sin.

But while the study of this law was fenced around with anathemas and prohibitions, it was declared to every Jew, above all to a canonist, that this study was a bounden duty; for by the rules and precepts of this law he would have to regulate every action of his life, from cleaning his teeth and rinsing his hands up to the true way of keeping the yearly Passover and reciting his daily prayers.

In later times, a Jew was taught to divide his hours of study into three parts, one part of which he was to give to the Pentateuch, one to the Mishna, and one to the Gemara; that is to say, one hour to the Pentateuch and two hours to the Talmud. In manhood he was recommended to give most of his leisure to the Talmud; leaving the Law of Moses to the young men and priests: who were supposed to be less familiar with its tenets. Of course, the Separatist law supported the new institutions in Church and State; ruled in the Sanhedrin; prescribed prayers and alms; regulated the breadth of a phylactery, and the thickness of a veil; fixed the ceremonies of

the new year; directed the reading of the law; legislated for the sabbath and the great feasts; ascertained the conduct of Jews to Gentiles; inculcated due reverence from the people towards the Rabbi or Master of the Law.

In the word and in the spirit this Separatist law (as we possess it in a later form), was not unfrequently opposed to the ordinances and institutions bequeathed to Israel in the sacred books.

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By the Mosaic plan, the children of Israel had been a people set apart for good; that they might grow into a great nation and learn to serve one God; that they might teach the true faith through facts, and prepare the Gentiles for salvation. der the Maccabean system, the Jews appeared to the outer world of Pagan nations to be a people set apart for evil, to quarrel amongst themselves, to fall away into sects, to disgust strangers by their pretence, and provoke chastisement by their pride. Instead of being a light to the Gentiles, they were become a rock of offence.

Nothing in the covenants made by God with his people had sanctioned the idea that Hebrew and Greek were men of different orders. Everything in those covenants had implied that Hebrew and Gentile were common children of the same God, though Israel had been chosen as the son by whom the whole family should be glorified and saved. The God of the Hebrews had been called the God of the Gentiles, and the sins of one people had been punished by Him no less sternly than those of the other. The most eminent men among the Hebrews had

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been friends of strangers; marrying into their houses and bringing blessings into Israel through their wives. Rachel, Zipporah, Ruth, had been aliens in blood. Joseph had married the daughter of an Egyptian priest, Solomon the daughter of an Egyptian king. But under the Separatist law such friendly feelings had for a moment been put away. No new Rachel could be wooed into Israel, no second Ruth could be engrafted into the royal line; for a law of sharp estrangement, a law hostile to strangers as strangers, had now come into force.

Many of the rules now found in the Talmud with much of the practice based upon those rules, were the unnatural growth of persecution, misery, and war: sudden measures adopted in the face of sudden calamities; and, in truth, the classical writers show that on the whole a dark, unsocial spirit distinguished the Palestinian Jew in the latter ages of

his national life.

Of course, when the legions were camping in Judea, and the Greeks peopling Galilee, it would not have been easy for the Jews to carry out any of the hostile provisions of their code. An alien who busied himself about their law, who observed one of their sabbaths, who appointed for himself a holy feast, was held to be worthy of death; but while the Romans were masters in Syria, no man could be crucified until his sentence of death had received the sanction of judges more merciful than the fanatics of the Separation. Except in popular riots, when a preacher might be stoned, or a soldier stabbed, no man, whatever his offence, could be put

to death by the Jews; yet the spirit of the Maccabean law was partial and unjust towards every one living under a foreign flag. If a Syrian lost a camel, and a Jew found it, the Syrian could not follow and claim his own; but when a Jew lost a camel, and a Syrian found it, the Jew could follow and recover it by force. A Jew who stole a hundred shekels from another Jew, had to pay back a hundred and twenty shekels, a fifth part of the sum stolen being paid as penalty for the wrong done; but if a Jew stole the same amount of money from a Greek, he had to repay the hundred shekels only; a good Gentile having, in the eyes of this law, no equal rights against a rogue of the chosen race. Again, a Jew who had slain a Greek by accident or a sudden blow, had to fly into one of the cities of refuge: Kedesh in Galilee, Shechem in Samaria, Hebron in Judea; but a Greek who by accident or a sudden blow had killed a Jew, was considered worthy of death.

Not a word in the covenants made by God with his people sanctioned the new idea that a priest ought to exercise earthly power, either in the Sanhedrin or on the throne. In the olden time there had been no distinction between the priesthood and the people, save that of office. Israel being a kingdom of priests, all equals, all in a state of grace, none was accounted holier, none worthier, than his brethren. The sons of Aaron had been servants of God and the people; standing at the tabernacle door; heaping wood on the fire; pouring oil into the golden lamp; slaughtering the ram, the bullock, and

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