Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/416

 memory says, the meat is lawful, even if it be found on the dunghill in the house, and has not pronounced it unlawful, except when found on the dunghill in the street; and Rashba is of the same opinion." (Joreh Deah., 1.) Here, then, we have the most learned of the rabbies, disputing as to what is the law; the one party pronouncing that to be unlawful which the other party declares lawful. What, then, are the unlearned to do in this case? Or how can it be said that there is an oral law which gives the true meaning of the written law? Or, if there be an oral law, what use is it, when it is itself a subject of dispute? Every one who has looked into the oral law knows that this difference of opinion is by no means a rare case; and that it cannot be said that the difference of opinion is in matters of minor importance. Let us, for example, consider the case of an Israelite who is accustomed to eat unlawful meat, and does so to vex Israel—is it lawful to eat the meat which he has killed?

"Rashba has written that it is not lawful to give him a beast intentionally to slaughter, even if an Israelite should stand by. But if he has slaughtered the beast, it may be declared lawful by means of examining the knife, either at the beginning or at the end; and my lord my father of blessed memory has written that in the case of such a person the law is the same as in that of a Gentile." (Ibid. 2.) Now the difference here is very great and very important. The one opinion says, that, under certain circumstances, such meat is lawful. The other, that it is unlawful as that killed by a Gentile—that is, what the one allows, the other pronounces to be so unlawful as to deserve the flogging of rebellion, as we saw in No. 49. Here, then, is a case involving severe corporal punishment, and yet the rabbies are not agreed as to which is the law. How, then, can men of sense and reflection give themselves up to a system, the doctors of which cannot agree upon a question so simple as this, What sort of food is lawful, and what is unlawful? and who, nevertheless, require unlimited obedience under the heaviest penalties temporal and eternal? The oral law does not suffer a wise man to be contradicted, and declares that all their sayings are "the words of the living God;" and yet here they contradict one another so widely, that if a man follow the one, he will be sentenced to a flogging by the other—and if from fear of the flogging he should agree with the latter, he will then be contradicting the former, and thereby incur the sentence of excommunication, and even run a risk of losing his soul. But