The tractate on the Sabbath begins with regulations extending its provisions to the close of the Friday afternoon, so as to prevent the possiblity of infringing the Sabbath itself, which commenced on the Friday evening. As the most common kind of labour would be that of carrying, this is the first point discussed. The Biblical Law forbade such labour in simple terms (Ex. xxxvi. 6; comp. Jer. xvii.22). But Rabbinism developed the prohibition into eight special ordinances, by first dividing the bearing of a burden' into two separate acts - lifting it up and putting it down - and than arguing, that it might be lifted up or put down from two different places, from a public into a private, or from a private into a public place. Here, of course, there are discussions as to what constituted a private place' ({hebrew}); a public place' ({hebrew}); a wide space,' which belongs neither to a special individual or to a community, such as the sea, a deep wide valley, or else the corner of a property leading out on the road or fields, and, lastly, a legally free place.' [6481] Again, a burden' meant, as the lowest standard of it, the weight of a dried fig.' But if half a fig' were carried at two different times - lifted or deposited from a private into a public place, or vice versâ - were these two actions to be combined into one so as to constitute the sin of Sabbath desecration? And if so, under what conditions as to state of mind, locality, &c. ? And, lastly, how many different sins might one such act involve? To give an instance of the kind of questions that were generally discussed. the standard measure for forbidden food was the size of an olive, just as that for carrying burdens was the weight of a fig. If a man swallowed forbidden food of the size of half an olive, rejected it, and again eaten of the size of half an olive, he would be guilty, because the palate had altogether tasted food to the size of a whole olive; but if one had deposited in another locality a burden of the weight of a half a fig, and removed it again, it involved no guilt, because the burden was altogether only of half a fig, nor even if the first half fig's burden had been burnt and then a second half fig introduced. Similarly, if an object that was intended to be worn or carried in front had slipped behind it involved no guilt, but if it had been intended to be worn or carried behind, and it slipped forward, this involved guilt, as involving labor.
Similar difficulties were discussed as to the reverse. Whether, if an object were thrown from a private into a public place, or the reverse. Whether, if an object was thrown into the air with the left, and caught again in the right hand, this involved sin, was a nice question, though there could be no doubt a man incurred guilt if he caught it with the same hand which it had been thrown, but he was not guilty if he caught it in his mouth, since, after being eaten, the object no longer existed, and hence catching with the mouth was as if it had been done by a second person. Again, if it rained, and the water which fell from the sky were carried, there was no sin in it; but if the rain had run down from a wall it would involve sin. If a person were in one place, and his hand filled with fruit stretched into another, and the Sabbath overtook him in this attitude, he would have to drop the fruit, since if he withdrew his full hand from one locality into another, he would be carrying a burden on the Sabbath.
It is needless to continue to analysis of this casuistry. All discussions to which we have referred turn only on the first of the legal canons in the tractate Sabbath.' They will show what a complicated machinery of merely external ordinances traditionalism set in motion; how utterly unspiritual the whole system was, and how it required no small amount of learning and ingenuity to avoid commiting grevious sin. In what follows we shall only attempt to indicate the leading points in the Sabbath-legislation of the Rabbis.