Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/481

 was proved in the first number by an appeal to the highest possible authority, the Prayer-book of the synagogue, which is not only formed in obedience to the directions of the oral law, but declares expressly that the Talmud is of Divine authority. So long, therefore, as that Prayer-book is the ritual of the synagogue, the worshippers there must be considered as Talmudists, believers in all the absurdities, and advocates of all the intolerance of that mass of tradition. That this is no misrepresentation and no unfounded conclusion of our own, appears from the latest book published in this country by a member of the Jewish persuasion. Joshua Van Oven, Esq., has, in his "Introduction to the Principles of the Jewish Faith," a chapter, headed JUDAISM, which begins thus,—"The Jewish religion, or Judaism, is founded solely on the law of Moses, so called from its having been brought down by him from Mount Sinai. With the particulars of these laws he had been inspired by the Almighty during the forty days he remained on the mount, after receiving the Ten Commandments; these he afterwards embodied in the sacred volume, known and accepted as the written law, and called the Pentateuch, or the Five Books of Moses, contained in the volume we term the Bible. We also, from the same source, receive, as sacred and authentic, a large number of traditions not committed to writing, but transmitted by word of mouth down to later times; without which many enactments in the Holy Bible could not have been understood and acted upon; these, termed traditional or oral laws, were collected and formed into a volume called the 'Mishna,' by Rabbi Jehudah Hakodesh, 4150. In addition to this, we are guided by the explications of the later schools of pious and learned rabbies, constituting what is now known by the name of the Talmud, or Gemara."

Nothing can be more explicit than this avowal. A learned and pious Jew of the nineteenth century honestly avows that Judaism is the religion of the Talmud; and upon this principle we have examined Judaism, and compared it with Moses and the Prophets, and the result of this comparison is—

I.

The premises, from which we draw this conclusion, are—

1. That the oral law is altogether destitute of external evidence. To establish the authority of the oral law, it is absolutely necessary to prove a succession of Sanhedrins from the time of Moses to that of Rabbi Jehudah, or at the least an unbroken chain of tradition. But it has been proved, in Nos. xliii. and xliv., that there was no such thing as a