the vulgar era, the Paschal Sabbath fell on the 16th of Nisan. The three first Gospels speak distinctly of the eating of the Passover by Christ and His disciples on the night before the Crucifixion, that is to say, the 14th Nisan. So far all is accordant. But the fourth Gospel states that the Crucifixion took place on the eve of the Passover,* πаρаçкεvỲ TOυ Túoxa, that "great was the day of that Sabbath," that they (avroi) "went not into the Prætorium" (on the morning of the sixth day), "lest they should be defiled," so as to be unable to eat the Passover, and that the last supper took place "before the feast of the Passover," πрò τйs éорτns To uoxa. It is argued that all these expressions may be so explained as to allow of an identification of meaning with the other Gospels. This is where the conflict now halts. over might have been kept on the third day of the astronomical lunation, in consequence of a supposed obscuration of the new moon by clouds on the first and second days, he takes a position which a little wider study of Hebrew literature would have shown him to be utterly untenable. In the Holy Land no artificial calendar was kept, but the feasts of trumpets which celebrated the new moons were regulated by actual observation of the crescent. From the time of the preceding full moon it was easy to tell when the new moon was due. On that evening it was watched for throughout Palestine, and those who first observed it hastened to give evidence of the fact before the Sanhedrin; the law of the Sabbath day being relaxed to allow of their journey for that purpose. It is recorded that as many as forty pairs of witnesses once The light which the Talmud sheds upon passed through Lydda on the Sabbath. the subject is such as to render doubt it was necessary that the witnesses impossible. Throughout Palestine, after should be persons of good character. sunset on the 14th of Nisan, and in Jeru- They were questioned by the Bethdin as salem after noon on that day, it was crim- to the form and position of the new inal either to buy or to sell; and not only moon; and if they had seen it only so, but it was forbidden to carry a scrip through clouds, through glass, or reflector loose purse, to remove an object from ed in water, the evidence was not acceptone domicile to another, or to carry even ed. Evidence was receivable during the the smallest coin in a purse, if one were thirtieth day of the expiring month, up permanently attached to the girdle. The to the time of the evening prayer. If it full rigidity of the law of Sabbath applied was accepted, a beacon was lighted on to the Passover. When we find it stated, Mount Olivet, and the light sped from therefore, that "some thought, because mountain to mountain, "until the whole Judas had the bag, that Jesus had said country appeared like a blazing fire." If unto him, Buy that we have need of the moon was not seen on the proper against the feast,'" we are certain that day, the next day was taken to be the the writer (if aware of the customs of first of the month. A delay of two days, Palestine, which differed in many re- assumed by Ebrard to have occurred, spects from those of the Jews residing was impossible. out of Syria) could not have intended to No phenomenon within the range of identify the Last Supper with the Pass-written history is of higher interest, as over. The nearest occasion on which the shedding light on the great problem of 15th of Nisan fell on the Sabbath was the secular education of mankind, than three years after the true date of the Cru- the mutual relation between the Jewish cifixion. § Ebrard, in commenting on Law and the character of the Jewish peothis question in his "Gospel History" ple. The length of time over which our (pp. 399-401), has cited several of the more or less minute knowledge of the most important passages in the Talmud case extends is, in itself, a feature of sigthat throw light on the observance of the nal importance. The line by which the Passover. With a candour as honourable duration of the Chinese monarchy, from as it is rare he has retracted the opinion its first assuming the hereditary form that he formerly maintained as to the de- under Yu, to its present existence untermination of date derivable from the der the 22nd dynasty, is. to be measured, fourth gospel. But when he goes on to is indeed longer by one-fifth than that argue that in the year A.D. 33 the Pass- which limits the history of any Semitic people; and yet the language of the Golden Empire has not passed, during * John xix. 14. ↑ John xix. 31. John xviii. 28. $ Pesachim iv. r., vi. 1. Sabboth, x. 8., xxiv. 1. Meguilah, i. 4. Moed Katton, ii. 4. Beracoth, ix. 5. that long era, beyond its original mono- | families of the priests were lost in the syllabic form. But the laws and litera- great catastrophe of the capture and ture of China have exerted no sensible burning of the city; and the verification, influence on those of Europe, which trace by oracle, of the purity of their descent, their affiliation on the one side to Moses which was awaited in the time of Zerubaand the Hebrew prophets, and on the bel, has never since occurred. The study other to the philosophers of Greece, and of the Talmud shows how trenchant a to the laws of Rome. The duration of line has been drawn across the course the thirty-three dynasties of Egypt, down of Jewish history by the conquest of to the termination of the independent ex- Nebuchadnezzar. One remarkable and istence of the monarchy at the battle of unfortunate characteristic of the labours Actium, is again nearly eight centuries of the doctors of the Law, the Tanaites longer than that of the Chinese Empire; and Amoraim, for these eight centuries and the influence of Egyptian art and of discussion, is, that they have never ocscience, indirectly transmitted to us, has cupied themselves for a single moment been very considerable. But our nearest with any research of an historic character. point of contact with this lengthened They have grossly confused the dates; chain, under the corrupt decadence of they have not even taken the pains to the Ptolemies, is so distant from our own draw out those comparative tables of days, and we possess, as yet, so little of genealogy for which materials actually the real history of Egypt, that the inter- exist, and the value of which, in checking est which it excites is not in any way the chronological reckoning, is so great. comparable to that which attaches to the Instead of consulting history for the investigation of the influence of Semitic known dates of events intimately contraditions upon European thought. nected with the fortunes of Judea, they have fixed their periods by cabalistic inference from individual verses of the Prophets or the Hagiographa, and are thus in error by more than 180 years as to the well-known era of Alexander the Great. Maimonides, the greatest author since the completion of the Talmud, is perfectly contemptuous of any learning but his own. He makes a leap of at least 200 years in his account of the tradition of the Oral Law directly from Phineas to Eli; and he not unfrequently opposes his own ipse dixit, both to the Bible and to the Talmud, as in his comment on the passage, "An altar of earth shalt thou make unto Me." Synchronisms between the history of Persia, of Assyria, and of Egypt, and a carefully restored sacred chronology, checked by the regular revolution of the Sabbatic years and years of Jubilee, enable us to speak with something approaching to absolute certitude as to the date of the origin of the Law of the Jewish people. The Pentateuch, Prophets, and Hagiographa can only be identified, as existing in their present form, as far back as the time of Ezra; the close of the Book of Nehemiah being contemporaneous with the reading, by Herodotus, of his history at the Olympic Games. The Latin version of Jerome takes us back, at a single stride, to the fourth century, before which date the Talmud was committed to writing. The Greek Septuagint version carries back the verification of the text, at least of the Law, for 640 years further; although in some parts, especially in the Book of Daniel, the variations of reading (or rather of editions) are remarkable, and by no means understood. (We have another example of the existence of parallel editions in the case of the Books of Ezra, as contained in the Vulgate, and of Esdras, as given in the Apocrypha.) But there are marks, in our present text, of that recension, at the time of the return from Babylon, which the Talmud states to have been made by Ezra. The very smell of fire lingers on the scraps and fragments of genealogies which are preserved in the Books of Chronicles. The pedigrees of certain But while we thus are far from being able to verify a full history of Jewish law and Jewish morals up to its very source, the portion as to which no doubt can arise is both venerable for its antiquity and prodigious in its extent. The Talmud, however some portions of the Ghemara may have been modified by hatred to Christianity, represents the contemporary intellectual and moral life of the Jewish people for a period of 800 years. Its connection with the Written Law is so close and so minute that, whatever modifications may have been gradually introduced during 2,000 years of oral tradition, it is impossible to question the originally contemporary character of the Mikra and the Mishna - that is to say, of the Pentateuch and its traditional complement. And there is a consideration of primary importance with reference to the limits captivity of the people, and the return of the captives from Babylon, to close about the time of the death of Ezra. If we call, with the doctors of the Talmud, this great restorer a prophet, this third period was illustrated by ten prophetic writers, including the author of the second part of the book now placed under the title of Isaiah. From Nehemiah to Simon the Just, the contemporary of the first doctors of the Talmud, or Tanaites, the period that elapsed was less than a century and a half. within which modifications, either of the warning, commenced with the reign of Law or of the Comment, must have been Josiah. This continued, at intervals, confined. Not to speak of the painful through the fall of the monarchy, the care with which every letter of the former is enumerated (as in the case of the Koran), and the strict precautions which hedge the transcription of every legal copy, the very central spirit of the entire Semitic life is abhorrence of change. The present formula of the Jewish creed (in the 9th article), that the Divine Law was given to Moses, and was never to be changed, finds an echo in every broken scene of Jewish history that stands out from the mist of the past. Obedience to precedent, respect for the age, whether of contemporary elders or of the ancient rulers of the nation, and belief that innovation is a crime bringing with it its own punishment, are characteristics of Oriental thought; and justify the opinion that a care of the sacred books, similar to that which has marked the last 2,000 years, must have watched over them from their very first dictation. Only one great break in their literary tradition is known to have occurred; and even that was bridged over by the memory of the members of the Sanhedrin, who wept over the foundation of the second Temple, in fresh remembrance of the glory of the first. We do not deny that a perfectly competent criticism may trace some change, not only in literary style, but even in dogmatic belief, by carefully investigating the works of this long series of writers. But when we remark the very close adherence of the latest great Jewish doctors to the precise language of Moses and of the early prophets, it seems impossible to doubt that the signs of the unity of faith, opinion, and practice that has prevailed for the long period of 3,400 years are far more discernible than those of change, of innovation, or of what we call development. And yet, when we regard the active life of the Jewish people durBefore the advent of Christ three great ing the first century of our era, as the periods of intellectual activity occurred pages of the Evangelists and those of in the history of the Jews in Palestine. the Talmud, mutually illuminating one The unexampled impulse given by Moses, another, present it to our view, we must and sustained by Joshua, appears to have admit that the ancient Law was not abdied out with Phineas, the grandson of solutely independent of the change which Aaron. With the possession of ample attends on time. That change must, room, and all the requisites of Eastern indeed, have been as gradual and imperlife, the political condition of the Jews ceptible as in the case of a slow-growing seems to have sunk towards the limit of tree. Or, rather, it may be compared to national extinction, when the next great the gradual crystallization of stalactites impulse was given by Samuel, and sus-over the surface of a rock. In speaking tained by David and by Solomon. While of these secular transformations, we must some of the descendants of that great monarch made their rule and their arms respected, the religious utterances, which mark the central life of the people, seem then to have slumbered, until they burst out, for a period of little more than half a century, about the time when the attempt of Ahaz to assimilate the habits of his people to those of surrounding nations was followed by the vigourous reaction under Hezekiah. Eight of the prophets whose writings are extant belong to this epoch. Sixty years after the death of Hezekiah, a fresh period of royal enthusiasm, and prophetic encouragement and * See the entire contents of tract Sopherim. lay aside the language, not only of theology, but of ordinary ethical writing. For we find good and evil to change places, as regarded on the one hand by the legislators of the Jewish and of the Arabian faiths, and on the other by the teachers of modern Europe. What we call progress, Moses, or those who sat in the seat of Moses, called crime; what we call toleration, they called idolatry. Where we speak of the comity of nations, of mutual forbearance, of philanthropy as distinguished from patriotism, and of the increasing civilization of the human race, the doctors of the Law could only see the breach of the Divine ordinances, the denial of the special privileges of the chosen people, and the provocation of God's wrath. was destroyed. But with this establishment of the purity of their own exclusive faith, a hatred of all who were not Jews was ineffaceably implanted. If we regard the true religious progress of mankind to be that from a reign of terror to a reign of love; from the fear and dread of an invisible Avenger to the faith claimed by the All-Father, we must attribute but a small advance in this direction to the influence of the Jewish polity. We are hardly in a condition to judge at what cost it might be desirable to make a permanent protest against that idolatry into which the use of symbols seems unavoidably to degenerate; or against the grosser practices of a Polytheism, of which the spirit yet dictates the invocation of celestial mediators, and spreads the dread of evil spirits. But the protest, as offered by Judaism, involved the intimate belief of the Jew in the especial dignity of his own nation. For the Jew, among all nations, and, among the Jews themselves, for the Rabbi, was created not only this world, but the world to come- not only earth but the attendant planetary fires. This portion of the Jewish doctrine, mutato nomine, finds a daily echo in places not altogether remote from our own Northern metropolis. It is probable that any effectual opposition to the idolatry into which symbolism had degenerated by the date of the 18th Egyptian dynasty, would have been hopeless under a less Draconic law than that of Moses. Even as it was, with every transgression plainly and distinctly defined, and incurring, if voluntary, the punishment of death; with the permanent machinery of a priesthood, dependent for their livelihood upon the religious faith of the people, and of the central, provincial, and local councils, bound to take cognizance of the smallest breach of the law; idolatry was never kept at arm's length until the brand of the Captivity of Babylon had sunk deep into the flesh. The state of mind that led to this idolatry was by no means so harshly opposed to the early form of the Jewish religion as we are wont to imagine. To the kings of Moab and of Babylon there was as much vital energy in their national worship as most of the Jewish rulers acknowledged in their own. To all these nations many of the externals of religion were in common. Each had a holy place, a local temple, a hereditary priesthood, a liturgic service, constant sacrificial offering, and the answer of an invoked oracle. The absence of any fictile symbol of the Divinity, which characterized alike the temple of Jerusalem and the groves of our Teutonic ancestors, was not such a convincing sign of a more spiritual worship as to lead other nations to admit the great superiority of the Divinity of the Jews. The reality of that Presence was recognized, beyond doubt, by neighbouring tribes. Pharaoh and Abimelech, the priests of Egypt, the lords of the Canaanites, the king of Syria, and the king of Babylon, all admitted the power of the God of the Jews, though they held it to be limited by, and coexistent with, that of their own tutelary divinities. The temptation to the Jew, when in trouble, to seek the aid of a neighbouring and visibly-symbolized Divinity, which others told him had been efficacious in their own experience, was great and constant. If properly named infidelity, it was the very reverse of Atheism. It was what we call the spirit of toleration and of free inquiry. The extinction of this spirit was a primary aim of the Jewish legislation. The fierce, proud, intolerant temper of the people was methodically developed for this very purpose. It was not until they had passed through the penance of the Captivity that their readi-ism. ness to blend with other Semitic tribes Here, then, lay the crucial point of the difficulty raised by the teaching of Christ. If the Jew was not to hate the Gentile, where were his long-cherished privileges? If he was to commune with the uncircumcised, where was the fence of the Law? where the long traditions of the Elders? where the unchangeable character of the Divine Law? We doubt whether the real nature of this enormous difficulty has been ever candidly placed before the world. We half doubt whether any modern writers have presented to the Jews of our day any case which the latter would have been justified not only in admitting, but even in taking into serious consideration. There is enough in the Jewish doctrine of the double advent of the King Messiah to render it easy for the rabbins to reconsider the question of the claim of Christ to be regarded as the subject of the prophecies of Zechariah and earlier prophets. But the attempt of Paul to convince his fellow-countrymen that he was "saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come" has not been repeated by the doctors of Roman Christendom. It is not our intention to attempt any thing like an aperçu of the ethics of JudaIn fact, the main subject of our complaint is the fact that the scholarship of the West has been content to remain | was submitted to the decision of Christ in ignorance of the authorities from which by the Pharisees,* and replied to by Him such an aperçu might be drawn up. But almost in the exact words used by the we must give some example of what we doctors of the Beth Shamai. The Beth mean by saying that the Law, which the Hillel, on the contrary, held that a man Jews hold to be unalterable, has, in point was at liberty to divorce his wife for the of fact, followed the invariable fate of all most trifling cause, such as spoiling a human institutions or let us rather say dish. Rabbi Akhiba, a contemporary of of all institutions that deal with the wants Christ, allowed it in the case of a man and habits of humanity. finding a woman fairer in his eyes than On no subject are the doctors of the his wife! The modern Jews urge that Talmud so prone to dilate as on that of no society could exist in which such an the relation between the sexes. The law excuse for divorce was allowable, and inof betrothal, the rights and rites of mar- sist that the Halaca, or doctrinal deciriage, the law of divorce, and the peculiar sion of the Talmud, rejects the interpreJewish institution of Yeboom, or the mar- tation of R. Akhiba, and discourages diriage of the childless widow of a brother, vorces except for a legal object. But a are the subjects of distinct and volumi- special form of bill of divorce, called a nous treatises. The third of the six orders bald Get, is mentioned in the treatise of the Talmud, consisting of seven tracts, Gittin, for an explanation of which the is entirely occupied with the subject of treatise Baba Kama is cited. This was the rights and duties of women, and of a folded and stitched document, on evmen in relation to women. But in addi-ery fold of which it was necessary that tion to this, questions of the same nature are continually springing forth from ambush in the Ghemara. the name of a witness should be signed. It was instituted for the express purpose of complicating, and thus delaying, in It is very difficult, however, to convey the case of a priest, the summary proto the English reader in appropriate lan- ceeding which constituted a divorce, guage the mode in which that subject is namely, the mere delivery to the wife of approached by the Jewish doctors of the a written and witnessed permission to Law. Delicacy, according to our ideas, marry anyone she chose. And the reais to them a thing utterly unknown. For son assigned is, that the priests were ofmodesty they have neither name nor ten in the habit of divorcing their wives place. Chastity, as exalted into a virtue in a sudden fit of passion, of which they by the Roman Church, is esteemed by repented soon after, when, as priests, it the Halaca to be a violation of a distinct was unlawful for them to take them back, command of the written Law. Virginity, after having gone through the brief forafter mature years, is a stigma, if not a mality of delivering the Get. When a With the exception of the prohibi- special provision against the hasty pastion of marriage within certain close lim- sion of the priests assumed so determiits of consanguinity, which do not for- nate a form, we may judge what was bid a man to take to wife the daughter of likely to be the practice among the bulk his brother or sister, almost the sole of the people. In fact the limitation duty as to marital relations enforced by proposed by the school of Shamai apthe Talmud is the fidelity of a wife to pears to involve a self-contradiction, not her husband during the existence of the as far as morality is concerned, but as technical marriage-tie. The number of regards the actual import of the law. wives legal seems to have been limited | For the provisions as regarded a wife only by the wealth of the husband; the suspected of infidelity were sharp and rights of contemporary wives up to the number of four (the Mohammedan legal number) being severally discussed in the tract Kedushin. Some question has been raised by modern Jewish writers as to that unlimited freedom of divorce which seems to be contemplated by the tract Gittin. On this point a dispute existed at the time of Christ between the Beth Hillel and the Beth Shamai; the two great schools which seem to have been principally based on the principle of mutual contradiction. The question stern. The treatise Sootah prescribes * Mark x. 2. The |