Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/541

Rh people, notwithstanding the strong prohibition in the law of Moses (Isaiah lxv, 4"). But, in the first place, Isaiah's writings form no part of the "law of Moses"; and, in the second place, the people denounced by the prophet in this passage are neither the possessors of pigs, nor swineherds, but those "which eat swine's flesh and broth of abominable things is in their vessels." And when, in despair, I turned to the provisions of the law itself, my difficulty was not cleared up. Leviticus xi, 8 (Revised Version) says, in reference to the pig and other unclean animals: "Of their flesh ye shall not eat, and their carcasses ye shall not touch." In the revised version of Deuteronomy xiv, 8, the words of the prohibition are identical, and a skillful refiner might possibly satisfy himself, even if he satisfied nobody else, that "carcass" means the body of a live animal as well as of a dead one; and that, since swineherds could hardly avoid contact with their charges, their calling was implicitly forbidden. Unfortunately, the authorized version expressly says "dead carcass"; and thus the most rabbinically minded of reconcilers might find his casuistry foiled by that great source of surprises, the "original Hebrew." That such check is at any rate possible, is clear from the fact that the legal uncleanness of some animals, as food, did not interfere with their being lawfully possessed, cared for, and sold by Jews. The provisions for the ransoming of unclean beasts (Leviticus xxvii, 27) and for the redemption of their sucklings (Numbers xviii, 15) sufficiently prove this. As the late Dr. Kalisch has observed in his Commentary on Leviticus, Part II, p. 129, note:

Though asses and horses, camels and dogs, were kept by the Israelites, they were, to a certain extent, associated with the notion of impurity; they might be turned to profitable account by their labor or otherwise, but in respect to food they were an abomination.

The same learned commentator (loc. cit, p. 88) proves that the Talmudists forbade the rearing of pigs by Jews, unconditionally and everywhere; and even included it under the same ban as the study of Greek philosophy, "since both alike were considered to lead to the desertion of the Jewish faith." It is very possible, indeed probable, that the Pharisees of the fourth decade of our first century took as strong a view of pig-keeping as did their spiritual descendants. But, for all that, it does not follow that the practice was illegal. The stricter Jews could not have despised and hated swineherds more than they did publicans; but,