truth. God gave Moses the law and the commandment which
he had written; but as Saadiah admits, God wrote only the
ten words, therefore the ten words are the same as "the
law and the commandments." Some will say there is tautology
here, that when God says, "I will give thee tables of stone," he
means the ten commandments, and that therefore the additional
promise "of the law and the commandment" is only an
unnecessary repetition. But this is not true. By "tables of
stone," God meant tables of stone. He might have given to
Moses the ten commandments without giving him stone tables,
or he might have given him the tables of stone without giving
him the ten words; but as he intended to give him both,
He says, "I will give thee tables of stone, and the law,
and the commandment." Neither is there any difficulty in the
circumstance that these ten words are called both "law
and commandment." Inasmuch as they were a revelation of
God's will, they are justly denominated "law," (
Hebrew characters); and
as they were proposed as a rule of life, obedience to which
was required, they are entitled, (Hebrew characters) "The commandment."
The simple meaning, therefore, is, that God promises to
give the ten commandments which he had written. Every
thing else, and therefore the oral law, is excluded. This
passage, therefore, gives no support to the doctrine that
Moses received an oral as well as a written law on Mount
Sinai. Indeed, the desperate perversion to which this text
has been subjected, throws discredit upon the whole; and
the necessity for such perversion shows that there was no
plain text in the writings of Moses, to which the inventors
of the oral law could appeal.
The authority, then of the oral law must rest altogether upon the character of those witnesses who handed it down. But this is a very sandy foundation, for we have already seen that these men were guilty of inventing or propagating the most absurd fables; their testimony, therefore, is of no value. This has been proved abundantly already; but there is one story for which we had not room in our last number, and which, as being immediately connected with the giving of the law, must now be considered. Like the others, it comes before us authenticated by its introduction into the prayers of the synagogue, in which the following plain allusion is made:—
(Hebrew characters)
