- fore the oral law cannot be from God. Secondly, a religion
which makes the murder of an unlearned man lawful, cannot be from God. The oral law does make it lawful, for, as we showed in No. 1, Rabbi Eleazer says, That it is lawful even on the most solemn day of the Jewish year, to kill an unlearned man without observing any of the technicalities of the rabbinic art of slaughtering; or, as another says, to rend him asunder like a fish. Therefore the oral law cannot be from God. We now proceed to show why we still think that that line of argument is valid.
The first step is, to establish the meaning of the expression
(
Hebrew characters) Amhaaretz, which we translated "an unlearned
man." The literal English of this expression is, "People of
the land," it might therefore signify the inhabitants of Canaan,
but in the Bible it is more commonly used of the mass of the
Israelitish people, as for instance:—
(Hebrew characters)
"And all the people of the land rejoiced, and blew with trumpets." (2 Kings xi. 14. See also verses 18-20.) Here the expression is opposed to king and princes, and evidently means the mass of the population, or, as some would say, "The common people." And, again, to give an example from the Prophets:—
(Hebrew characters)
"Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith the Lord; and be strong, O Joshua, son of Josedech, the high priest; and be strong, all ye people of the land." (Hag. ii. 4.) Here, also, the expression is opposed to the governor of Judah and the high priest, and plainly signifies the mass of the population. In the oral law, it has much the same signification; it stands for those who are not counted amongst the learned, nor the great men of the time, nor the almoners, nor the schoolmasters, as appears in the extract given in page 7, with this difference, that in the oral law the want of learning is a prominent idea, and the expression may therefore be applied to a high priest if he be unlearned. In further proof we might appeal to the common parlance of the Jews, even at this day, for they commonly call an unlearned man an Amhaaretz. We prefer, however, giving one or two extracts more from the laws, where the expression Amhaaretz is put in opposition to "The disciple of a wise man," that is, to a learned man. We read, for instance, that in a court of justice,
(Hebrew characters)
"The cause of the disciple of a wise man takes precedence of
