The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1915-07-24

Every Village in Judaea had it's
synagogue. In the large towns there
were more than one. In Jerusalem
they were numerous; according to one
legend there were three hundred and
lninety-four, according to another four
hundred and eighty synagogues. The
simple service of the synagogue Of
itself tended to be substitute for the
more costly worship of the distant
Temple. This tendency was confirmed
by certain Pharisaic interpretations
of the Law. The efficacy of the Day
of Atonement was wrested by their
| Interpretation from the sacrifice Of
fered by the high-priest (Lev. XVI. 30)
to the day itself. Atonement was
effected without sacrifice and without
priest, provided there wac genuine re-
pentence. On the eve Of the Passover
the lessons of Exodus were made more
prominent than the Paschal lamb. The
biblical command of making a pill
grimage to the Temple on the Festival
Days was fulfilled by going to greet
teacher and listening to his instruc-
tions. Such interpretations naturally
won the men. The Pharisees, by re-
moving some disabilities imposed by
the Mosaic Law on womankind, had
all the women in their favor. How
| far by means of their synagogues,
schools and interpretations they had
made the people Pharisaic, is shown
| by the fact that the Jews after the
| dact rIotion Of tho Tomnlo hoooooo oil
Pharisaic and have remained so to
this day But while they undermined
somewhat the ascendency of the
priesthood, they knew that the priest
hood was an essential part of the Law.
They did not wish to destroy it, but
they held a rod of iron over it. The
superintendent of the sacrifices was
in their hands, and there was no
regulation too minute to be thought
out, no compliance with it too rigid
to be exacted of the priests. Riot and
sometimes bloodshed resulted from
time to time. AS long, however, as
they adhered to the letter of the law,
the Sadducees were as formal as the
Pharisees. They differed in their be-
lief regarding angels, and the Resur-
rection, but especially with regard to
holding the Traditions as binding.
| Pharisaic Traditions.
| Tt was held by the Pharisees, that
Moses gave, besides the written Law,
oral instructions of equal or even
greater weight Besides these Sinaitic
Commandments, l. e. Commandments
equal to the ten, there were decisions
by Josue, Booz, David, Solomon, the
Prophets, Esdras, Simeon, Hillel,
Gamaliel and others, which decisions
made Law. Likewise the decisions of
| the Scribes made Law and such Law
| that it was death to contravene it.
The reason later assigned for not
writing them was that any nation
might copy the written Law, but, were
the Law copied, the Jew could still
remain aloof from other nations by
| his unwritten traditions. 1t is the
tendency of commentaries, to usurp
the place of the work explained. So
it was with the Halacha, or traditional
| law in regard to the Law of Moses.
To impress this law upon the people,
cred Books other than the Law
and the Prophets to be read on the
Sabbath When we say that the
Halacha was an oral law, we do
not mean that it was not written
eventually somewhere. There was no
prohibition against writing it. When
Rabbi Jehuda, the Prince, in A. ID.
| 1913, completed his selection of the
Halachoth plural of Halacha), which
was the beginning of the Talmud, he
set out to destroy all others. There
| fore these decisions were written be-
fore his time. He largely succeeded
| in his campaign of destruction in
Jerusalem. But from 81 B. C. there
were four other Sanhedrins in Pales-
| tine besides that of Jerusalem. After
the fall of the city some shadow of
these courts remained among the
Jews themselves When, there
fore, he went outside his jurisdic-
ton, he met with great opposition.
Those decisions, which were secreted
from him at home or simply refused to.
him abroad, with the innumerable say
| ings of the Rabbits, form the other
parts of the Talmud. The point that
we wish to make is, that long before
the beginning of the Talmud the de-
cisions were already noted down. 1t is
said that we have no literature on this
subject earlier than the Talmud ex-
cept the meager accounts of Josephus.
But we have. We have the Gospels,
in which certain decisions of the
Pharisees are noted; and we have the
letters of one, who, apart from revela-
ton, knew nothing else but Pharisa-
ism, namely, st. Paul. On the Hala-
choth quoted by st. Paul the following
| two Pharisaic decisions throw some
light. The law that no person, who
was in the state of legal uncleanliness,
might enter the Temple, was extended
so that no such person could enter any
one of the hundreds of apartments,
which in course of time were added to
the Temple The ordinance of God
referring to certain canticle of forty
three verses: Nov write you this
canticle and teach it to the children
of Israel" (Deut. XXI, 49, was in
terpreted to refer to the whole Penta-
touch. Hence every Israelite had to
write or to have written for his own
personal use the whole book under
countless regulations. These deci-
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