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 VIII

(B) ON THE "HALACHAH" AND "HAGGADAH"

We would add a few words further explanatory of the Halachah. The Halachic Midrash (or exegesis and development of the passages of the Law) dealt with the exact purport of the various Divine commands contained in the Torah, or Law of Moses. It explained in detail how these precepts were to be carried out in common life. It professed to be nothing more than an exposition of the original Law; but in reality it contained vast additions to what was written in the Books of Moses, and claimed to possess an equal authority with the original charges contained in the Pentateuch.

Roughly, these so-called Halachic developments were divided into three classes or categories—

1. Halachah or commands traced back to Moses.

2. A great mass of Halachah—containing traditional ordinances professedly based on the original Mosaic commands, but in reality connected with the Mosaic ordinances by the very slightest of ties.

3. A number of enactments really only emanating from the schools of the Scribes, but which were taught to be equally binding with the original Pentateuch ordinances. These Halachah largely dated from the years which preceded the Christian era; they were, in the last half of the first century and during the second century, codified and arranged in the Mishnah.

The general purport of the Halachic Midrash, which contains the rule of Israelitic life and which so long occupied the Scribes and their schools, was very largely connected in the first place with the elaborate network of sacrifice, and the usages which followed and preceded the many and complicated