As the Mishnah is composed with the greatest precision, and cannot be understood without a commentary, it was natural, that in course of time doubts and disputes should arise, regarding the exposition of the Mishnah itself, as well as the mode of its application to cases which it does not sufficiently determine. All these doubts and their manifold solutions, controversies and decisions, were finally collected in the Talmud by the above-mentioned Rabina and Rabassi; and this forms the fourth epoch of Jewish legislation.
The fifth epoch begins with the conclusion of the Talmud, and extends down to our time, and so on for ever (si diis placet) till the advent of the Messiah. Since the conclusion of the Talmud the rabbis have been by no means idle. 'Tis true, they dare not alter anything in the Mishnah or the Talmud; but they still have plenty of work to do. Their business is to explain those two works, so that they shall harmonise; and this is no small matter, for one rabbi, with a superfine dialectic, is always finding contradictions in the explanations of another. They must also disentangle, from the labyrinth of various opinions, expositions, controversies and decisions, the laws which are applicable to every case; and finally for new cases, by inferences from those already known, they must bring out new laws, hitherto left indeterminate in spite of all previous labours, and thus prepare a complete code of laws.
It is thus that a religion, in its origin natural and conformable to reason, has been abused. A Jew dare not eat or drink, lie with his wife or attend to the wants of nature, without observing an enormous number of laws. With the books on the slaughter of animals alone (the condition of the knife and the examination of the entrails) a whole library could be filled, which certainly would come near to the Alexandrian in extent. And what shall I say of the enormous number of books treating of those laws which are no longer in use, such as the laws of sacrifice, of purification, etc.? The pen falls from my hand, when I remember that I and others like me were obliged to spend in this soul-killing business the best days of our lives when the powers are in their full vigour, and to sit up many a night, to try and bring out some sense where there was none, to exercise our wits in the discovery of contradictions where none were to be found, to display acuteness in removing them where they were obviously to be met, to hunt after a shadow through a long series of arguments, and to build castles in the air.
The abuse of Rabbinism has, as will be seen, a twofold source.
1. The first is an artificial method of expounding the Holy Scriptures, which distinguishes itself from the natural method by the fact, that, while the latter rests on a thorough knowledge of the language and the true spirit of the legislator in view of the circumstances of the time, as these are known from history, the former has been devised rather for the sake of the laws passed to meet existing emergencies. The rabbis look upon the Holy Scriptures, not only as the source of the fundamental laws of Moses, and of those which are deducible from these by a rational method, but also as a vehicle of the laws to be drawn up by themselves according to the wants of the time. The artificial method here, like every other of the same kind, is merely a means of bringing the new laws at least into an external connection with the old, in order that they may thereby find a better introduction among the people, be reduced to principles, divided into classes, and therefore more easily impressed on the memory. No reasonable rabbi will hold, that the laws, which are referred in this way to passages of the Holy Scriptures, render the true sense of these passages; but if questioned on this point, he will reply, "These laws are necessities of the time, and are referred to those passages merely for this reason."
2. The second source of the abuse of Rabbinism is to be found in the manners and customs of other nations, in whose neighbourhood the Jews have lived, or among whom they have been gradually scattered since the fall of the Jewish state. These manners and customs they were obliged to adopt in order to avoid becoming objects of abhorrence. Of this sort are the laws, not to uncover the head (at least in holy places and at holy ceremonies), to wash the hands (before meals and prayers), to fast the whole day till sunset, to say a number of daily prayers, to make pilgrimages, to walk round the altar, etc.,—all manifestly of Arabian origin.
From hatred also towards those nations that destroyed the Jewish state, and afterwards made the Jews undergo manifold oppressions, they have adopted various customs, and among others many religious usages which are opposite to those of the Greeks and Romans.
In all this the rabbis had the Mosaic laws themselves for a model, these being sometimes in agreement, sometimes in hostility, with the Egyptian laws which lie at their root, as has been shown in the most thorough manner by the celebrated Maimonides in his work, Moreh Nebhochim.
It is remarkable, that, with all rabbinical extravagancies in the practical department, namely the laws and customs, the theoretical department of the Jewish theology has still always preserved itself in its purity. Eisenmenger may say what he will, it may be shown by unanswerable arguments, that all the limited figurative representations of God and His attributes have their source merely in an endeavour to adapt the ideas of theology to the common understanding. The rabbis followed in this the principle which they had established in reference to the Holy Scriptures themselves, namely, that the Holy Scriptures use the language of the common people, inasmuch as religious and moral sentiments and actions, which form the immediate aim of theology may in this manner be most easily extended. They therefore represent God to the common understanding as an earthly King, who with His ministers and the advisers of His cabinet, the angels, takes counsel concerning the government of the world. But for the educated mind they seek to take away all anthropomorphic representations of God, when they say, "It was an act of high daring on the part of the prophets, to represent the Creator as like His creature, as when, for example, it is said in Ezekiel (i., 26), 'And upon the throne was an appearance like man.'"