Is this credible—can all Israel, or all the world, furnish one such person at present, handsome or ugly, tall or short? or can there be found amongst that intelligent people the Jews, one man, woman, or child, so silly as to believe so manifest a falsehood? We can tell them that their great rabbi, Rambam, did not believe it, and therefore in his Compendium took the liberty of altering this Talmudic statement. Instead of seventy languages, he says simply—
(
Hebrew characters)
"And that they should be acquainted with most languages." It was too much for him. Being a learned man himself, he knew the impossibility of such universal knowledge; and he therefore softened down the Talmudic hyperbole to the limits of what he considered possibility. This is not merely our conclusion from Rambam's alteration, the commentator has expressly said the same:—
(Hebrew characters)
"Our rabbi has written, 'Acquainted with most languages,' because it is a rarity to find a person acquainted with all the seventy languages." (Hilchoth Sanhedrin, c. 2.) Rambam himself, then, is here a witness against the fabulous exaggerations of the Talmud.
But perhaps some one will say, that seventy is only a round number to signify many, that we must not, therefore, be too strict in its exposition. This subterfuge, however, will not serve here. The authors of the Talmud said seventy, because they believed that, by giving this number, they included all the languages in the world. They believed that there were seventy nations, and therefore they said seventy languages. This article of Jewish faith is found everywherein the Talmud, and in the commentaries, as for instance—
(Hebrew characters)
R. Johannan says, What is the meaning of that Scripture, 'The Lord gave the Word: great was the company of those that published it?' It teaches, that as each commandment proceeded from the mouth of God, it was divided into seventy languages." (Shabbath, fol. 88, col. 2.) The foundation of this opinion is an arbitrary interpretation or a verse in the song of Moses. "When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the
