making such application, or that Phineas must have had some special reason for not granting it, presuming that it was made. All this is obviously mere theory, and due to the fact that the case of Jephthah's daughter was not considered by these Talmuclic lawyers in its true historical perspective. One of them went so far in his theorizing as to imagine soliloquies of Phineas and of Jephthah con cerning this case. Phineas, being high priest, said: "If Jephthah wants his vow annulled, let him come to me." And Jeph thah, being commander-in-chief of the army, was too proud to go to Phineas, and demanded that Phineas should come to him; and thus, between the pride of these two dignitaries, the girl was sacrificed. Then another lawyer who had listened to the dis cussion thus far, took a part in it, saying: "If it is true that Phineas and Jephthah in their pride permitted the girl to go to her death, then they were her murderers, and should have been held responsible, and ought to have been punished." Assuming the premises, the conclusion was perhaps not quite improperly drawn. Now this a priori reasoning having re sulted in a conclusion that the high priest and the commander-in-chief were guilty of a crime, it was necessary to find this fact recog nized somewhere in the Bible. "Seek and ye shall find." The inquiring Talmudist found
in the Book of Chronicles, chapter nine, verse twenty, the following: "And Phineas, son of Eleazar, was ruler crcer them in time past, and the Lord was with him." This he interprets to mean that up to the time of this event the Lord was with him and on account of his act of refusing to annul Jephthah's vow, the spirit of God departed from him, and he ceased to be ruler. And the inquir ing Talmudist furthermore found in the twelfth chapter of the Book of Judges, verse seven: "And Jephthah judged Israel six years. Then died Jephthah, the Gileadite, and was buried in the cities of Gilead." There in is indicated his punishment for the crime in not having his vow annulled by Phineas. He died of a rotting away of his limbs; one of them falling away in each of the cities of Gilead that he visited; therefore, the Biblical text says that he was buried in the cities of Gilead, and not in any one of them. The conclusion thus reached was the result of too much theorizing, and too little knowl edge of ancient customs and law. Whenever the Talmudists argued a practical question of law upon a given state of facts, conclu sions were invariably reached based upon justice and morality, and supported by the soundest logic: but when their fancy led them out of the realm of the practical, their lack of historical knowledge often brought them to conclusions absurdly incongruous.
