THE LEGISLATION OF THE PENTATEUCH.t WE gladly allow that the
Pentateuch legislation was humane, benevolent, and charitable; that it compares favourably with all the codes of antiquity, notably so with that which is associated with the name of Hammurabi. Still, there are various considerations which make us hesitate before we can allow all that Mr. Fluegel claims for it. To begin with, he treats it as homogeneous. But there are very grave reasons for thinking that at least three stages of development may
• Elementary Military Training. By Lieut.-Colonel A. W. A. Pollock. With en Introduction by Lieut.-General Sir Richard Ilarrilon, G.C.B., &c. London , W. Clones. [4e. net.] f The Humanity, Benevolence, and Charily Legislation of the Pentateuch. By 21.surioe Fluegel, Baltimore, U.S.A. : H. Fluegel and Co. be found in it,—that which may be called primitive, the Deuteronomic, and the Exilian. Then there are doubts whether some of the provisions ever got beyond the stage of the ideal. The working of the Sabbatical year and the Jubilee is difficult to imagine. It may have been possible in a very simple state of society, not in such as we find described in the story of Solomon. The agricultural and pastoral life had by that time been developed into something much more complex. There must have been a considerable mass of exports to balance the vast imports which the splendour of the time implied. Those exports must have been largely agricultural,—we know that they wereso in the case of the Tyrian Hiram. Could they have been suspended in the seventh year P There was no "race prejudice," says Mr. Fluegel. But there was a very strong race preference; such was of the essence of the whole arrangement ; it was the vocation of Israel. Then there is something like prejudice in the ban pronounced on the Ammonite and the Moabite, curiously illustrated by the hideous legend of the origin of these two nations. And there must have been some justifica- tion for Tacitus's statement :—" Among themselves they [the Jews] are inflexibly honest and ever ready to show compassion, but they regard the rest of mankind with the hatred of enemies (adversus °macs alios hostile odium)." Their code of debt and slavery was far more considerate and humane; but it is scarcely as exalted as it is hero described. The Hebrew bond,, slave goes free in the seventh year; but if his planter has given him a wife, she and her children remain, though we may presume that she too was a Hebrew, If he cannot bear to leave them, lie binds himself to serve for ever. There le a certain harshness here. Had the woman no rights P Or was she non-Hebrew ? If so, are we to suppose that masters married Hebrew slaves to foreign women whom they had bought P In the matter of divorce, Mr. Fluegel insists that the school of Shammai, which limited the cause to unchastity, was right, and that of Hillel, which admitted any cause, wrong. It may be so. But which actually prevailed F " Decisio iuxta scholam Hillelis," says Maimonides. We have taken a few points in which our author's statements seem doubtful, but we wish to give the heartiest welcome to his book.
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