FOOTNOTES:
[7] The words of the Vulgate in this place, are, flagellati sunt, which signify, were lashed with rods or whips: and in v. 16, flagellis cædimur, which has the same meaning.
[8] The Hebrew words in the text are: בקרת תהיה the Greek words for these, in the LXX. are, ἐπισκοπὴ ἔσται αὐτοῖς.—As I do not understand Hebrew, I shall not try to make any remark on the above Hebrew words, but trust for that to the sagaciousness of the reader; however, with respect to the Greek words that follow them, I think I should be greatly wanting in my duty to the Public, in my capacity of Commentator, if I did not communicate to them an observation with which those words supply me, which is, that there is a material error in the passage above recited, in our common translation of the Bible; for the Reader may see that the punishment of scourging, in case of fornication, is confined, in that passage, to the Woman solely; whereas the word αὐτοῖς, which is a plural word, shews that both the Man and Woman were to be punished alike; and instead of she shall, as our Bible is worded in that passage, it ought to be, they shall be scourged. This remark on the above singular alteration of the true sense of the Bible, to the prejudice of Women (supposing it is not an error of the press) naturally leads me to take notice here of the unjust disposition of Men towards Women in general, in all that relates to the mutual intercourse of the Sexes: a disposition that has induced them in modern times to impose humiliating penalties on such Women as are guilty of sins which the Men themselves commit with the utmost freedom, and thus to establish a mortifying difference, in that respect, between the two sexes, instead of that amiable equality which obtained between them under the Jewish law, according to which the Man and Woman who had committed together the sin of Fornication, were lashed with equal numbers of stripes.
[9] The Miserere is the 51st Psalm; and the De Profundis is the 130th, which is none of the shortest.
The singing of the Miserere seems to be particularly appropriated, among Catholics, to regulate both the duration of religious flagellations, and the time to which they are to be performed, as we may conclude from the above passage of our Author; and also from a passage of M. de Voltaire in his Candide, in which he says, that, when Candide was flagellated at Lisbon, by order of the Inquisition, he was all the while entertained with a Miserere en faux bourdon; which is a kind of Church Music.
[10] The expressions of the Vulgate are, fui flagellatus, I have been whipped. The Vulgate of the Old Testament is a very ancient Latin version of it from the Hebrew, corrected afterwards by St. Jerom, which is followed in all Catholic Countries.
[11] The Talmud is the Tradition, or unwritten law of the Jews, the Law of Moses being their written Law. This Tradition has, in process of time, been set down in writing; and two different Collections have been made of it: the one, in the Jerusalem School, about three hundred years after Jesus Christ, which is called the Jerusalem Talmud; the other, in the Babylonian School, five hundred years after Jesus Christ, and is called, the Babylon Talmud. The latter is that which is usually read among the Jews; and when they simply say, the Talmud, they mean the Babylon Talmud.
[12] Buxtorf, the Author from whom the above facts are drawn, is mentioned with great praise in the Scaligerana, which is a Collection, or mixture, of Notes, partly French, partly Latin, found in the papers of J. Scaliger, and printed after his death. Buxtorf is called, in one of these Notes, the only Man learned in the Hebrew language; and Scaliger adds, that it is surprising how the Jews can love him, though he has handled them so severely; which shews that he has been impartial in his accounts. Mirum quomodo Buxtorsius à Judæis ametur, in illâ tamen Synagogâ Judaicâ illos valdè perstringit.
[13] It is to be supposed, that the Jew Priests had been well freed for the above benign interpretations they gave of the law of Moses.