Alluding to the laws inimical to the heathen, Rabbi Mosha says: “What wise men have said in this respect was directed against the ancient idolators, who believed neither in a creation nor in a deliverance from Egypt; but the nations among whom we live, whose protection we enjoy, must not be considered in this light, since they believe in a creation, the divine origin of the law, and many other fundamental doctrines of our religion. It is, therefore, not only our duty to shelter them against actual danger, but to pray for their welfare and the prosperity of their respective governments.”[56]
Let the impartial reader compare these teachings of the Rabbis with the intolerant doctrines and practices of Christian pastors, even in modern times as well as during the Middle Ages: when they taught that out of the pale of the Church there could be no salvation; that no faith should be kept with heretics, or infidels: when Catholics persecuted Protestants, and Protestants retaliated upon Catholics:
Christians have burned each other, quite persuaded
That all the Apostles would have done as they did!
It will probably occur to most readers, in connection with the rabbinical doctrine, that it is unlawful to over-reach any one, that the Jews appear to have long ignored such maxims of morality. But it should be remembered that if they have earned for themselves, by their chicanery in mercantile transactions, an evil reputation, their ancestors in the bad old times were goaded into the practice of over-reaching by cunning those Christian sovereigns and nobles who robbed them of their property by force and cruel tortures. Moreover, where are the people to be found whose daily actions are in accordance with the religion they profess? At least, the Rabbis, unlike the spiritual teachers of mediæval Europe, did not openly inculcate immoral doctrines.
II
LEGENDS OF SOME BIBLICAL CHARACTERS.
There is, no doubt, very much in the Talmud that possesses a recondite, spiritual meaning; but it would likely puzzle the most ingenious and learned modern Rabbis to construe into mystical allegories such absurd legends regarding Biblical personages as the following: