6. This oral law they affirm to be an wnwritten tradition and ex- position of the written law of Moses, given unto him in Mount Sinai, and committed by him to Joshua and the sanhedrim, to be by them delivered over by oral tradition unto those who should succeed them in the government of that church. It doth not appear that, in the days of Christ or his apostles, whilst the temple was standing, there was any stated opinion amongst them about this oral law; though it is evident that, not long after, it began to be received by the body of the people. Nay, it is evident that there was no such law then acknowledged; for the Sadducees, who utterly reject all the main principles of it, were then not only tolerated, but also in chief rule, one of them being high priest.
That they had multiplied many superstitious observances amongst them, under the name of “traditions,” is most clear in the Gospel; and it doth not appear that’then they knew whom to assign their original unto, and therefore indefinitely called them “The traditions of the elders,” or those that lived of old before them. After the destruction of their temple, when they had lost the life and spirit of that wor- ship which the Scripture revealed, betaking themselves wholly unto their traditional figments, they began to bethink themselves how they might give countenance to their apostasy from the perfection and doctrine of the written law. For this end they began to fancy that these traditions were no less from God than the written law itself For when Moses was forty days and forty nights in the moun- tain, they say that, in the day time, he wrote the law from the mouth of God; and in the night, God instructed him in the oral law, or un- written exposition of it, which they have received by tradition from him. For when he came down from the mount, after he had read unto them the written law, as they say, he repeated to Aaron, and Eleazar, and the sanhedrim, all that secret instruction which he had received in the night from God, which it was not lawful for him to
4’ write: but in especial he committed the whole to Joshua; Joshua did the same to Eleazar, as he did to his son Phinehas; after whom they give usa catalogue of several prophets that lived in the ensuing gene-
VOL, XVIII.
130 ORIGIN AND NATURE [ EXERC. VII.
rations, all whom they employ in this service of conveying down the oral law to their successors. Unto the high priests also they give a place in this work; of whom there were eighty-three from the first in- stitution of that office to the destruction of the temple, Joseph. lib. xx. cap. x. From Aaron to the building of Solomon’s temple thirteen ; from thence to the captivity eighteen; all the rest take up the trouble- some time of the apostasy of their church, unto the final ruin of it, their “ rulers being many because of their wickedness,” as themselves observe.
The last person whom they would have to preserve the oral law absolutely pure was that Simeon whom they call yn, “The just,” mentioned by Jesus the son of Sirach, chap. 1. And it is very ob- servable that the later Jews have left out Simeon the son of Hillel, whom their ancient masters placed upon the roll of the preservers of this treasure, supposing he might be that Simeon who in his old age received our Saviour in his arms when he was presented in the temple, Luke 11,25,—a crime sufficient, among the Jews, to brand him with a perpetual ignominy; neither are they alone in turning men’s glory into reproach and shame.
7. After the destruction of the temple and city, when the evil husbandmen were slain, and the vineyard of the Lord let out to others, the kingdom given to another nation, and therewith the covenant-sanctified use of the Scripture, the remaining Jews, having lost wholly the mind of God therein, betook themselves to their tra- ditions, and, as I said before, began to fancy and contend that they came from God himself; whereas their predecessors durst not plead any thing for them but that they came unto them from “them of old,”—that is, some of the masters of preceding generations. Here- upon a while after, [A.D. 190,] (as I have elsewhere showed at large,) one of them, whom they call Rabbi Judah Hannasi, and Hakkadosh, the “prince,” and the “holy,” took upon him to gather their scattered traditions, and to cast them into form, order, and method in writing, that they might be unto the Jews a rule of life and worship for ever. The story of his work and undertaking is given us by Maimonides in Jad Chazachah, the authors of Seder Olam, Halicoth Olam, Tzem- ach David, and many others; and they all agree that this their great master-lived about the times of Marcus Antoninus, two hundred years or thereabouts after the destruction of city and temple.
8. This collection of his they call 72¥%2 or nv2W), “Mishnah” or “ Mishnaioth,” being, as is pretended, a repetition of the law in an exposition of it; indeed, a farrago of all sorts of traditions, true and false, with a monstrous mixture of lies, useless, foolish, and wicked. The things contained in it are, by themselves, referred to five heads: —(1.) The oral law, received by Moses.on Mount Sinai, and pre- served by the means before declared; (2.) Oral constitutions of Moses