Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/67

accustomed to the reading of it. Even priests in their service are to neglect their service, and to come to hear the reading of the Megillah. In like manner the study of the law is to be omitted, in order to hear the reading of the Megillah, and a fortiori all the remaining commandments of the law, all of which give way to the reading of the Megillah: but there is nothing to which the reading of the Megillah gives way, except that particular class of dead person called the dead of the commandment, who has none to bury him. He that happens upon him is first to bury him, and afterwards to read." (Hilchoth Megillah, c. i. 1.) On this extract we have several remarks to make, but at present we request the attention of our readers to the reason given why the reading of the Megillah is more important than any of the commandments. It is this. According to the oral law, "the study of the law is equivalent to all the commandments, and the other commandments are to give way to this study." But according to the passage before us, the study of the law is to give way to the reading of the Megillah. The reading of the Megillah, therefore, being greater than the greatest of the commandments, is of course greater than all the inferior ones. Now apply this reasoning to the above command to get drunk, and you will prove that getting drunk at Purim feast is the greatest of all the commandments. In order to get drunk, it is plain that the study of the law must give way. The man who cannot distinguish between "Cursed be Haman and blessed be Mordecai," certainly cannot study, neither can he bury the dead. The commandment, therefore, to which the study of the law and the burying of the dead give way, must be the greatest of all the commandments; i.e., the getting drunk on Purim is the greatest of all the commandments. This conclusion, which inevitably follows upon Talmudic principles, necessarily shows that those principles are false. But that is not the object for which I have exhibited this conclusion; it is with reference to the case of Rabba above-mentioned. Having got drunk according as the oral law commanded, and having thereby obeyed the greatest of the commandments, and one to which all others are necessarily in abeyance, was he guilty or innocent in having murdered R. Zira? It certainly seems a very hard case to condemn him to death for an act, which resulted from his obedience to the greatest of all the commandments. He might urge that he had a great dislike to drunkenness—that he had overcome his natural aversion simply to satisfy the Rabbinical requirements—that by the time that he had arrived at the prescribed incompetency to distinguish between Haman and Mordecai, he had lost all power of distinguishing between right and wrong—that, therefore, he had not done it with malice propense; what sentence,