CHAPTER IX. ON THE ILLUSTRATION OF THE POLITICS OF THE OLD As an interesting item in the history of political literature in the middle ages, we shall here hazard a few brief observations and statements on the commentaries of the celebrated Maimonides on the Laws of Moses, in the middle of the twelfth century. A few introductory remarks will be required to bring the historical sketch of the Jewish law before the reader's attention in a connected form, from the days of our Saviour, where we left it, at the termination of our first chapter, to the time when this learned Jewish writer and commentator undertook his great work of a revision of the entire code of Jewish jurisprudence. In the first century of the Christian era, considerable additions were made to the Oral-Law. The historian, Abendana, gives a copious account of the heads of colleges, who ingrafted on this system of law, a multitude of mystical, allegorical, and cabalistical fictions and comments. Rabbi Nathan, the Babylonian, wrote a work, entitled "Pirke avoth," which combined a large body of the moral apophthegms, and pious sayings of the Fathers of the Jewish Church, and which was so highly esteemed, that it was deemed worthy of insertion in the body of the Talmud itself. In the reign of the Roman Emperor, Antoninus Pius, and in the year 153, Rabbi Juda was elevated to the two-fold dignity of Ruler of the Synagogue, and President of the Synedrim. The Jewish people being afterwards exposed to the cruelties of Vespasian, and to the heartless edicts of Adrian, the study of the law fell into desuetude; so much so, that this learned Doctor was apprehensive, that the force of persecution would entirely efface the remembrance of Oral Tradition from the minds of his brethren. He, therefore, determined to digest and reduce the whole to writing. He commenced his labours from the period in which the great synagogue was established by Ezra, and with incredible labour and patience, collected and methodised all the "Constitutions," "Interpretations," and "Decisions," that had hitherto been recognised by the bulk of the nation, and carefully amalgamated them into one code, which he termed the Misna, or Mischna. This important compilation was completed in the year 218.* It is distributed into six general heads called Sedarim, or Orders or Classes. On its publication, this interesting code was received with enthusiastic admiration by a select body of the learned; and was universally recognised both in the land of Judea, and in Babylonia, as a full and authentic body of the whole Jewish law. Being, however, chiefly composed of Aphorisms, and brief sententious statements, it began to be considered as improvable by giving explanations of them. This opened the door to great abuse, and soon led to the * Lardner and Prideaux say it was finished in the year 150. almost entire obscuration of the original work. A class of commentators and expositors, called the Gemarical Doctors, reared such a body of illustrations, opinions, and doctrines on the Mischna, that all common sense was outraged, and the digest fell into general contempt and neglect. These doctors, were, as the poet describes : "For mystic learning wondrous able, In magic, talisman, and cabal, Many public academies or schools were founded in cities of the East, to teach this system of mysticism; the office of the teachers, as Abendana tells us, being "to cull out such, or such propositions, and to debate them among themselves, in order to fix a true, and certain sense upon them." The chief of these institutions of education were those of Babylon, Nahardea, Sippara, Sarana, and Pombeditha, in Babylonia; Jerusalem, Nars, Tiberias, and Jamnia, in Judea. Some of these schools existed for nearly eight hundred years. In the year 230, Rabbi Johannus became President of the Synedrim, and Rector of the School of Jerusalem, and made another digest of comments from the several Israelitish Schools, which was added to the Mischna, and called the Jerusalem Talmud; the word Talmud signifying learning or wisdom. similar compilation was made from the Babylonian Academies. But upon the dissolution of Palestine, the study of the law was almost entirely transferred to Babylon; a circumstance which contributed to increase the seminaries of education there to a great A extent. In the year 369, Rabbi Ase was appointed to the Rectorship of the School of Sarana; and he undertook the herculean task of collecting and methodising all the Disputations, Interpretations, Elucidations, Commentaries, and Conceits of the Gemarical Doctors; but after labouring sixty years, he succeeded only in arranging thirty-five books, and died in 427, leaving the residue of his unwieldy task to his successors. The labour of arranging and digesting proceeded however, from one race of learned doctors to another; till at last, in the year 500, the Rabbi Abina, the sixth in succession from Rabbi Ase, brought to a close the second Talmud. The Judaic law became from these numerous digests or compilations, altogether unintelligible. It remained in this state for six centuries, when Maimonides undertook to throw light and consistency upon it. This distinguished man was born at Cordova, in Spain, in 1139. He laboured nearly twenty years on the Laws of Moses, and died in the seventieth year of his age. Maimonides was led to consider utility, or ultimate goodness, to be the foundation of all law and government, even of the divine law itself. He was induced to enter into this question from the circumstance, that up to his own day, it had been an universal and absolute rule among the learned Jewish doctors, never to institute any inquiries into the reasons of the Jewish code. Their maxim was, "It is a decree of the king, and it is not for us to search for its reason." They, therefore, contented themselves with the mere facts connected with the declarations and provisions of the law. Maimonides thought there was no necessity for the rigid adherence to this rule; so he ventured at once to lay open the whole question, and to maintain from the general scope and tenor of the legal and national institutions of the Jews, that utility or goodness was the final cause of its adoption. On this point he observes: "There are people who object to the assigning of a reason for any law whatever, and according to them it is best not to institute any inquiry into the cause of any law or warning. This objection proceeds from unsound minds which possess no clear consciousness of the motives for this objection. They imagine that if these laws have a useful discernible object which induced God to command them, then they resemble such as are given by human beings, and might have been given by them. But if no objection can be discovered and no advantage assigned, then are they doubtless from God, for a human mind would not have fallen upon such things. These weak-minded reasoners imagine man more perfect than their Creator, inasmuch as they think that man would command nothing without purpose, while God would command that which is useless, and caution against things the practice of which is harmless. Away with such an idea. Precisely the reverse is the case, and the object of all laws was to procure some advantage, as we have explained the text, 'to do us good all the days, to keep us alive to this day.' Scripture further says, 'that they (the nations of the earth) may hear all these statutes and say, a wise and understanding nation is this great people.' Scripture thus says, that even the statutes will teach the nations that they are founded |