CHAPTER III. THE JEWS ON THE MOSAIC CODE. THE Jews, I need not say, being those to whom the Law was originally given, ought to be regarded as among the best of its interpreters; at the same time we are bound to recollect, on the authority of Christ and His Apostles, that they were a stiff-necked and rebellious people, and that too frequently they made void the law of God by their tradi tions, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Well, what say the Jews, through their most eminent Rabbis, those who have made the history of their country and its literature the subject of their special study? Here is what Maimonidas says, in his "More Nevochim," pars. iii. cap. xcix.: : "It was prohibited to marry a woman and her daughter, also the wife of a father, and the wife of a son; because these are the uncovering of the nakedness of one body to the nakedness of the root and branch. Brothers are to one another as the root and branch; hence, because the sister has been prohibited, so also has been prohibited the sister of the wife, and the wife of the brother; since this is the case of two individuals who are as root and branch in the conjunction of a third body." I might quote other authorities. Dr James Gibson, Professor of Systematic Theology and Church History in the Free Church College, Glasgow, has devoted a valuable chapter to the subject in his very able work,"The Marriage Affinity Question; or Marriage with the Sister of a Deceased Wife, fully discussed, in the light of History, Ecclesiastical and Civil Law, Scripture, Reason, and Expediency"-and from it I quote all that seems necessary to the purpose I have in view. He says:— "In so far as the opinions of the Jews are made available in this controversy for what they are worth, they are to be found embodied in those of the Karaites and Talmudists. They are fully expounded in the learned Selden's works, and especially in his "Uxor Ebraica," lib. i. Both sects held the general principle that certain marriages were forbidden, as well by affinity as by consanguinity. The Talmudists professed to find eighteen forbidden in express words, or by undoubted consequence, from the sacred law, partly in the name of consanguinity, and partly in the name of affinity or propinquity. Selden (lib. i., cap. i.) says:'As to what belongs to the first species of forbidden marriages, or those which are forbidden in name of consanguinity or affinity, the decisions of the Talmudists and Karaites differ. With the Talmudists, according to the express words of the Mosaic Law, and that which so follows from them by necessary consequence that it must in all reason be admitted (ut non admitti nulla cum ratione queat), there are held for forbidden, partly in name of blood, partly in name of affinity, only eighteen (in which also mother, stepmother, sister, are equally forbidden to them by natural law, or by the patriarchal law), as in the following scheme.' 'They were so forbidden,' he adds, after giving the scheme in which the sister of a wife is included, that only fifteen are forbidden in the express words of the sacred law, and three remaining ones, they say, by necessary consequence. Those fifteen are exhibited in the scheme in capital letters,' and the sister of the wife, SOROR UXORIS, is one of them. They quote the following passages in proof-Lev. xviii., from verse 6 to 18; and xx., verses 14, 17, 19, 20, 21; Duet. xxii. 30; xxvii. 20, 22, 23. Any one who will consult these passages, especially Lev. xx. 21, and remember that they held prohibitions in affinity equal to those in consanguinity, can have no doubt of their views. In addition to these, there was what they called secondary women, whom it was forbidden to marry by the decrees of the Scribes, and the institutions of their ancestors. Of these there were twenty, some forbidden under the head of blood, and some of affinity. The differences between the Talmudists and Karaites it were more tedious than profitable to determine; but on the point of the marriage of a man with the sister of a deceased wife, they seem not to have greatly differed. Certain it is, there were Talmudists who held the same view as the Karaites. An attempt has been made to throw contempt on the Karaites as a small despised sect, for what reason we know not, except that the advocates for license on the marriages in question think they are more express than the Talmudists against them; though this does not very clearly appear. They professed to decide, in contradistinction to the Talmudists, solely and simply 'according to the literal and simple sense, neither adding nor diminishing.' Hence they were called Scripturists. They carried the number so forbidden greatly beyond what the Talmudists admitted. The Talmudists slandered them as Sadducees. It was chiefly on this general question that the disputes between these two sects and their sub-sects existed. The more ancient sects of the Karaites and their followers held that the relations of the wife were equally forbidden to the husband as his own, on the ground that the unity of person was such between man and wife that they were called insiti, or engrafted; and that even when divorce took place, that unity of person and relationship still subsisted to the third instance of marriage, and regulated all the relationships accordingly, and only ceased with the fourth. The more recent Karaites rejected this latter notion as extravagant. Nevertheless, the first of the sect who rejected this notion, taught that the whole prohibition of incest, according to the sacred law, in its fundamental principles and rules, consisted of five classes; in the third of which is that of a man marrying the sister of his wife; so that,' adds Selden (plainly intending to say, notwithstanding the strictness of their rule of interpretation), 'the Karaites do not doubt but that the sister of a wife, whether dead or remaining, is to be held as in the forbidden degrees.' He adds, which the Talmudists do not admit.' *See Selden's" Uxor Ebraica," lib. i., cap. iii. That is if we do not altogether misapprehend Selden's meaning in the passage already quoted-they did not admit that they were forbidden in express words; while nevertheless the Talmudists did not deny that such marriages were forbidden, but maintained that they were forbidden by necessary consequence. I can discover no other way of reconciling the apparently contradictory statements of Selden on the point. Any one reading his whole discussion, and not catching at an isolated sentence, will see there is no contradiction.* He refers in the margin to his work, 'De Jure Naturali et Gentium Juxta Disciplinam Ebræorum,' lib. v., cap. 10. On referring to that work, it will be seen that the same question is discussed, viz., whether these degrees held by them as forbidden, among which the sister of a wife was one, could be determined by the law of nature and nations, according to the discipline of the Hebrews, and whether affinity was constituted by adultery and fornication. They held that they were; and that, though the wife were divorced, it was prohibited to marry the full or the half-sister; for they never doubted (viz., as to the point of adultery or fornication in the case of a wife divorced constituting this prohibition by affinity) concerning the sister of the deceased wife, because the words. of the law concerning the WIFE are, while she is alive,' and therefore divorce does not alter the matter. This is the point raised where the preceding words are used. If any one will adduce plain passages from the Talmudists to the contrary, we shall be content to plead ignorance as our apology; but, meantime, this has not been done by any of the writers on the opposite side; and though it were done, it might prove what the opinions of the Talmudists were, but would no more than other vain traditions alter the sense of Scripture." "Since writing the above, I have seen the observations of Dr Janeway of America on the point as stated by Selden. He is justly dissatisfied with the Puritan,' another * Bohemer says of Selden, that he obscured everything by the multitude of his parentheses. : American writer, who supposed he had full proof in the words of Selden already quoted-viz., ‘Quod Talmudici non admittunt'—for saying, in opposition to the Karaites, ‘the Talmudists teach otherwise.' Dr Janeway does not seem. fully to have apprehended Selden's meaning in the passages we have referred to; but, in referring to it, he tries to find some authority for Selden for what in reality he does not state, and he incidentally quotes a passage from Philo Judæus, who flourished about the commencement of the Christian era, and which has an important bearing on the historical question before us. It is as follows :—' Again, Moses does not permit a man to marry two sisters, either at the same time or at different times, even though he may have put away the one whom he took first in marriage; for, during the lifetime of her that remains with her husband, or of her that has been sent away, whether she remains a widow or be married to another man, he accounted it UNHOLY for her sister to take the place of her that has been unfortunate, teaching them not to violate the right of consanguinity, nor to rise by the fall of one so united by descent, nor to delight and exult in being served by her sister's enemies, and inserving them in him; for from these things arise violent jealousies and fierce contentions, producing an unspeakable multitude of evils.' Dr Janeway argues justly that Philo does not hint at the lawfulness in this passage of marrying the sister of a deceased wife. He evidently held this connection in some circumstances unholy,' and a violation in some form or other of the right of consanguinity. I may notice here that, in another part of his work, and for a different purpose, Dr Janeway quotes, from the Targum of Jonathan Ben Uzziel, a passage, of which the following is a translation, on Lev. xviii. 16:-Turpitudinem uxoris fratris tui non revelabis vivente fratre tuo, aut post mortem ejus si habeat filios: nuditas fratris tui est.'--The shame of thy brother's wife thou shalt not reveal during his life, or after his death if he have children: it is the nakedness of thy brother. It is clear from this passage that he held it unlawful, on account of the incestuous sin involved, to marry |