No. XX.
LEGENDS IN THE PRAYERS FOR PENTECOST.
Nearly eighteen centuries have now elapsed since a large
portion of the Jewish nation deliberately chose Rabbinism in
preference to Christianity. The great question between Jews
and Christians is, whether those persons made a right choice.
The means of answering the question are within our reach.
The oral law exists, diffused through the volumes of the
Talmud, and compressed in the prayers of the synagogue.
There we can look for it, and judge of its spirit and its intrinsic
excellence and evidence. The Rabbinists say, that
the oral law was given to Moses on Mount Sinai, and that
the oral law which they now possess, is identically the same
as that then received; and they appeal in proof of this assertion
to the continuity of its transmission from father to
son down to the present day. The Christian objects that
this oral law is full of fables. The Talmudist replies by
making a distinction between the (
Hebrew characters) the laws and the
Agadah, or legendary part: and the Christian is satisfied or
silenced until he opens the Jewish Prayer-book, and finds
that the most absurd and improbable of all the Talmudic
legends are there recognised as undoubted verities, and integral
parts of modern Judaism. Many of these, and sufficient
to annihilate all claims which the oral law can make
to truth, have been examined, but as this part of the subject
is important, two more must be considered before we can at
present take leave of them. In the sentence immediately
following our last extract from the Jewish prayers we read
as follows:—
(Hebrew characters)
Which D. Levi thus translates, "And every generation, and its governors that existed before them, and those that rose after them, were all placed at Mount Sinai with them, to let them know, that the intelligent generation was more acceptable than them; to make them understand good judgment and knowledge: there was no blemish in them, for they were entirely perfect." (Pentecost Prayers, p. 87.) The assembling of the living nation of Israel, to hear the voice of the Creator, was not grand enough for the rabbies, they
