Note 35 — Chapter IV · THE JEW AND THE TALMUD

This institution has even distinguished the Jew from the other civilized nations of antiquity, the Egyptians and Assyrians, the Hindus and Guebres, the Greeks and Romans, who ignored it. By this part of his cosmogony Moses evidently intended to inculcate the dignity of labour and the hygienic necessity of rest. But the Rabbis and Doctors exaggerate all things, and they have still, like the vulgar Hebrew, to learn that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The Targum of Onkelos (Dr. Etheridge’s Translation. London: Longmans, 1862) makes the Creator rest and be refreshed in all points like a wearied human being. Dr. McCaul and a host of writers have enlarged upon the vexatious, barbarous, and inhuman Sabbatical ordinances engrafted by the Talmudists upon the Mosaic Law.