Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/168

 No. XX.

LEGENDS IN THE PRAYERS FOR PENTECOST.

Nearly eighteen centuries have now elapsed since a large portion of the Jewish nation deliberately chose Rabbinism in preference to Christianity. The great question between Jews and Christians is, whether those persons made a right choice. The means of answering the question are within our reach. The oral law exists, diffused through the volumes of the Talmud, and compressed in the prayers of the synagogue. There we can look for it, and judge of its spirit and its intrinsic excellence and evidence. The Rabbinists say, that the oral law was given to Moses on Mount Sinai, and that the oral law which they now possess, is identically the same as that then received; and they appeal in proof of this assertion to the continuity of its transmission from father to son down to the present day. The Christian objects that this oral law is full of fables. The Talmudist replies by making a distinction between the the laws and the Agadah, or legendary part: and the Christian is satisfied or silenced until he opens the Jewish Prayer-book, and finds that the most absurd and improbable of all the Talmudic legends are there recognised as undoubted verities, and integral parts of modern Judaism. Many of these, and sufficient to annihilate all claims which the oral law can make to truth, have been examined, but as this part of the subject is important, two more must be considered before we can at present take leave of them. In the sentence immediately following our last extract from the Jewish prayers we read as follows:—

Which D. Levi thus translates, "And every generation, and its governors that existed before them, and those that rose after them, were all placed at Mount Sinai with them, to let them know, that the intelligent generation was more acceptable than them; to make them understand good judgment and knowledge: there was no blemish in them, for they were entirely perfect." (Pentecost Prayers, p. 87.) The assembling of the living nation of Israel, to hear the voice of the Creator, was not grand enough for the rabbies, they