3 8 stration, because representing the most common case', in the same manner as, in other passages, the ox2 or the ass is used; especially as goats are distinguished by abundance of milk', which does not fail even in climes of excessive heat and drought fatal to nearly every other animal. It was contended, that the word kid (3) includes throughout the calf and the lamb also, or at least the latter', nay that it signifies "any young animal of tender age" (an unfounded assertion), and that, therefore, the law applies to clean animals in general 10. Indeed, one doctor of the Mishnah, R. Jose of Galilee, wished to restrict the prohibition to mammals, and not to extend it to birds, because these "have no mother's milk” 11; another, Rabbi Akiva, desired to exclude the clean animals of the forest (1), as stags and roes, because the threefold and distinct exemplification of the kid appeared to him to confine the law to clean domestic quadrupeds 12; but the arguments both of the one and the other were overruled; and the principle prevailed, "If one teacher and many differ, the law is in conformity with the opinion of the many" 13. It was certainly admitted, that milk, boiled and eaten with the flesh of birds and clean beasts of the forest, was not forbidden by the law of the Pentateuch; but it was מנהג התורה לדבר על .Ebn Ezra 1. c 1 ; Kimchi Rad. Lib. s. ; etc. 2 Exod. XXI. 35. 3 Exod. XIII. 13; XXIII. 5. 4 Kimchi 1. c. N לפי שהחלב עזים .and on Exod גדי אלא לשון ילד רד .comp ;המרובה בו דבר הכתוב על ההוה כל ולד רך במשמע ואף עגל, 26 .XXXIV כל .Bab. Mets ;(עז לחלבה ורחל לגיזתה וכ') ,מנקת תקרא אם וכל יונק יקרא גדי Prov. XXVII. 27; Talm. Shabb. 196 a; Nachman. on Deut. XIV. 21, 9 Comp. Ebn Ezra 1. c., is only used of goats as in Arabic () and of no other species; see also Bochart, Hieroz. I. p. 632. 10 It was supposed that the author specified a young animal (--), because an older one cannot well be seethed together with milk, which boils raoppidly; comp. Ebn Ezra 1. c., .גדי סתם אפילו פרה ויחל במשמע הקטן יקרא גדי בין מן ,.Kimchi 1. c ; העזים בין מן הכבשים שהרי סמך גדי לעזים the Septuagint renders in all three passages under consideration ǎpva, and not as usual pipov, and so con Kimchi ; יתבשל רק בזמן רב וההלב אינו כן 1. c. expresses this more explicitly. 11 Mishn. Chull. VIII. 4 (782 * תבשל גדי שלש פעמים פרט להיה ולעיף sequently is the word taken by Philo .ובהמה טמאה ,יחיד ורבים הלכה כרבים 13 (De Humanit. c. 18; comp. ibid. wote ἀφθονίας ὑπαρχούσης τῶν ἀρνῶν ἢ prohibited by the "command of the scribes" or the Rabbins11, ever watchful to "make a fence to the Law" 15, till the Law was impenetrably hedged in and made all but inaccessible 16. "Our sages", observes Abarbanel 17, "have prohibited every and any kind of meat mixed with milk, in order to prevent sinners from saying, 'What is the difference between the one and the other?"" Again, it was gravely urged that most people do not keep their own cattle, but buy their milk in the market; thus a person might purchase the milk of the very animal whose young he intends to cook and to dress 19; therefore, in order to exclude any chance and possibility of such a contingency, the Jews were strictly enjoined not to boil together any milk and meat whatsoever 19. Yet this view was but very gradually adopted. It is remarkable that it was not known or entertained by Philo, who wrote at Alexandria about the beginning of the Christian era: for after denouncing the unnatural barbarity of using the mother's milk for the preparation of her own young, he observes, "But if any one should desire to dress flesh with milk 20, let him do so without inhumanity and without impiety; there are everywhere innumerable herds of cattle, that are each day milked by the shepherds, . . . so that the man who seethes the flesh of any beast in its own mother's milk, exhibits a heinous perversity of disposition, and an utter want of that feeling which of all others. is most indispensable to a rational soul as it is most nearly akin to it compassion" 21. Philo, therefore, objecting to meat boiled. with the milk of the animal's mother, but not with milk in general, still adhered to the plain sense of the precept as probably conveyed in Deuteronomy 22. But already the Targum which bears the name of Onkelos, and which was commenced only a few generations later, though completed centuries afterwards in the schools of Babylonia 23, explained rather than translated that command, "You shall not eat meat with milk" 24: it is uncertain whether this meaning had been 20 Εἰ δὲ τὰ ἐν γάλακτι κρέα συνέψειν ἀξιοῖ. 13 Mishn. Avoth I. 1, - and пD3; .מדרבנן or מדברי סופרים 14 מסורת סייג לתורה,13 .comp. III 16 Comp. Talm. Chull. 113 sqq. 17 L. c. fol. 82a. 15 Comp. Ebn Ezra 1. c. 21 Philo De Humanit. c. 18. 22 So also Symmach. où cxevάgels ἔριφον διὰ γάλακτος μητρὸς αὐτοῦ; Ar. Erp., a. o. 23 Comp. Geiger, Urschrift, pp. 162 166. 19 Would not consistency have required the prohibition of eating or preparing fowls with eggs, since the eggs might be those of the birds which they are employed to make, fol. 24, 25); so many later ספר להם .comp) לא תיכלון בשר בחלב 24 more palatable? Jewish writers. developed in the interval between Philo and Onkelos, or whether it had, in Philo's time, not yet reached the Egyptian Jews from the chief seats of Hebrew learning in Palestine and Babylonia. Now we cannot be surprised at the explicit paraphrase of Pseudo-Jonathan, "You are not permitted either to cook or to eat meat and milk mixed together", and at the fearful punishments which that Targum attaches to any transgression of the law. And then the doctors of Mishnah and Talmud discovered, by marvellous feats of interpretation, that the prohibition applies both to the flesh of clean domestic and untamed quadrupeds and of birds 2; and laying down the rules "the words of the scribes are weightier than the words of the Law"3, and "God concluded a covenant with Israel, not on the conditions of the written but of the oral Law", they decreed that the threefold repetition of the command forbids, for all ages and for all countries, the cooking, eating, and the profiting by, any mixture of both substances in what form soever; they delighted in accumulating "pre לא כרת הקב"ה ברית,Talm. Gitt. 6o 4 .comp ;עם ישראל אלא בשביל דברים שבעל פה Bab. Mets. 33a,"those who study the Law do something that is meritorious and not meritorious; those who study the Mishnah, perform a meritorious act, for which they are rewarded; but those who study the Gemara do something that is the greatest ; אין לך מידה גדולה מזו) "of all merits also in Derech. Er. Sut. 25). The Law was compared to water, the Mishnah to wine, and the Talmud to spiced wine (p, conditum); or the one to salt, the other to pepper, and the third to spices (; Talm. Sopher. c. 15, fol. 16); till at last it was declared, that a person who neglects the 115, and compare in general Mishn. Chull. VIII; Talm. Chull. 104-117; Kiddush. 57; Pesach. 24, 25; and the very numerous midrashic interpretations in Mechilta on Exod. XXIII. 19 (fol. 108, 109a ed. Weiss), also Siphre on Deut. XIV. 21 (fol. 95 ed. Friedmann); Talm. Sanhedr. 4'; Nazir 37; Comm. on Exod. pp. 460462. But it was conceded that those kinds of "meat with milk" not forbidden in the Pentateuch but only by the Rabbins (see supra p.36) were not withdrawn from profitable dis כל בשר וחלב שאינו אסור מן התורה) posal Talmud and studies the Law only), deriving the latter, like Ebn ought to be shunned (Bechai Kad Hakkem. fol. 77), nay that "he is Ezra, from Deut. XIV. 21, in accord (מפי השמועה למדי) ance with tradition cept upon precept, rule upon rule," though not "here a little and there a little", but everywhere and with full hands, till they encompassed the whole life of the Jews with bonds and fetters, burdened it with oppressive restrictions, and rendered hospitable intercourse with non-Jews all but impossible; and in doing this they supposed that they secured to their people the means of salvation and of God's special favour. Any one may judge for himself by reading, in the original or in a literal translation, a few chapters of that book, which has been universally adopted by orthodox Judaism as the unalterable and eternal rule of practice, the Schulchan Aruch (by T), a digest of the laws and decisions of Mishnah, Talmud, and Geonim, and of their early commentators, compiled by R. Joseph ben Ephraim Karos, augmented not long afterwards by glosses, mostly recommending greater severity, by R. Mose ben Israel', and superseding all previous attempts at codifying the vast and ever accumulating materials—those of Simon of Kahira 1o and R. Hai Gaon 11, of R. Isaac ben Jacob Alfasi 12, and even of Maimonides, whose stupendous work, Yad Chazakah, though surpassing all others in lucidity, order, and compactness, authoritatively states the laws without proofs and reference to sources, and of R. Jacob ben Asher 13, whose arrangement in four divisions (28) in many respects remained the foundation of Karo's work. A few pages of this Shulchan Aruch on the subject under discussion will show the reader at a glance the fruits of Talmudical exegesis 14; he will probably find that a Biblical ordinance, which originally bore no reference whatever to the laws of food, and later but a very slight one, was made to yield a mass of hairsplitting minutiae, which it is difficult to survey without mingled amazement, pity, and regret, and in which religion, if its mission be truth and love, has certainly no share. VIII. CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. If we follow the oldest Hebrew sources, man, like the rest of the animal creation, lived originally upon vegetable food only 1. To what extent and during what periods this was really the case, we have no means of ascertaining even approximately. As far as historical accounts enable us to judge, the statements in Genesis would seem to have simply resulted from a religious or philosophical theory of a primitive state of human innocence in a Golden Age, or a Paradise, free from the pangs of death and the sin of bloodshed, and embracing the entire animate creation in a bond of common concord2; a theory which found its counterpart in the hope of an ultimate Messianic time expected to realise a similar condition of universal harmony. It is indeed a mythos in the strictest sense; it recalls the analogous belief of the Parsees, that men, in their original state of moral perfection, did not eat at all, and that at the end of all things they will return to the same absolute freedom from physical wants '. It is true, the idea of a higher purity attaching to vegetable nourishment is discoverable in various well-founded facts: it is manifest in the preference given, in some instances, to bloodless over animal sacrifices, and in the reluctance evinced by several ancient sects to animal food. But the practice was in both respects so unsettled or rather so inconsistent, that a positive conclusion, even within a very limited sphere, would be entirely unwarranted. With regard to the first point-the bloodless and animal sacrifices -the fluctuations, almost amounting to confusion, have been pointed out in another place. The Parsees alone seem, as a rule, to have presented none but bloodless oblations, and when they exceptionally 1 Gen. I. 29, 30; comp. II. 5, 6, 15, 16; III. 17, 18. 2 Comp. Hesiod, Op. et D. 108-119; Theocr. XXIV. 85, 86; Virg. Georg. I. 125-159; Ecl. IV; V. 60, 61; Hor. Epod. XVI. 41-62; Ovid. Metam. I. 89-112; XV. 96-103; Tibull. I. 111. 35-50; Plut. Sympos. VIII. v. 3; Lactant. Instit. VII. 24, où dè λúxot σὺν ἄρνεσ ̓ ἐν οὔρεσιν ἁμιλλοῦνται κτλ. etc. 3 Comp. Isai. XI. 6–8; LXV. 25; see Comm. on Genes. pp. 78, 79. 4 Comp. Bundehesh c. XXXI init.; Spiegel, Avesta, I. 34, 234. 5 See Comm. on Lev. I. pp. 11, 12. 6 L. c. pp. 11-13. 7 See Spiegel, Avesta, II. p. LXXI ; comp., however, Rhode, Heilige Sage der Baktrer etc. pp. 506-508; Herodotus (I. 140) observes, "The Magi kill animals of all kinds with their own hands, excepting dogs and men." |