No. XXI.
LEGENDS IN THE PRAYERS FOR PENTECOST.
If Moses or the prophets had any where recorded, that God
had, along with the written law also given an oral law, our
duty would then be to find out where it is: and to inquire
whether that oral law, which now forms the keystone of
modern Judaism, is the one which was given by God. But
neither Moses nor any other prophet has said one word on the
subject. The words (
Hebrew characters) "oral law" are no
where to be found in the Bible, nor is there any mention of
the thing itself. If the Bible had plainly alluded to the existence
of the thing, we should not quarrel about the name,
which might have been invented for the sake of brevity and
convenience. But it is remarkable that when Moses commanded
the law to be read publicly in the ears of all the
people, he says not a syllable about the oral explanation,
which if it existed must at least have been of equal importance;
and still more so that the succeeding prophets should have observed
such a profound silence about that, which now constitutes
the main substance of Israel's religion, and is the key to
the observances and prayers of the synagogue. This silence is
in itself suspicious, and compels us to examine the evidence of
its transmission. The first step here is to ascertain the character
of the witnesses, who say that they received the oral law from
their fathers and transmitted it to their posterity. If it appear
that, in their general testimony, they were disinterested and
truth-loving persons, who have never been convicted of distorting
truth for their private advantage, nor of receiving and
circulating fables as authentic history, their testimony in this
particular matter will be of considerable value. But if it can
be proved that either from a deliberate desire to deceive, or
from an incapacity to weigh evidence and to distinguish between
fact and fiction, they have transmitted a huge mass of
foolish fables as authentic history, then their testimony is
worth nothing, and the story of an oral law having no other
evidence must be classed amongst the other fables which have
come down to us on their authority. That the account of the
giving and transmission of the oral law rests solely and exclusively
on the testimony of the rabbies is clear from the
account itself, as it is found in the Jad Hachasaka.
(Hebrew characters)
