The whole creation in these rabbinical fancies is strangely gigantic and vast. The works of eastern nations are full of these descriptions; and Hesiod's Theogony, and Milton's battles of angels, are puny in comparison with these rabbinical heroes, or rabbinical things. Mountains are hurled, with all their woods, with great ease, and creatures start into existence too terrible for our conceptions. The winged monster in the "Arabian Nights," called the Roc, is evidently one of the creatures of rabbinical fancy; it would sometimes, when very hungry, seize and fly away with an elephant. Captain Cook found a bird's nest in an island near New Holland, built with sticks on the ground, six-and-twenty feet in circumference, and near three feet in height. But of the rabbinical birds, fish, and animals, it is not probable any circumnavigator will ever trace even the slightest vestige or resemblance.
One of their birds, when it spreads its wings, blots out the sun. An egg from another fell out of its nest, and the white thereof broke and glued about three hundred cedar-trees, and overflowed a village. One of them stands up to the lower joint of the leg in a river, and some mariners, imagining the water was not deep, were hastening to bathe, when a voice from heaven said—"Step not in there, for seven years ago there a carpenter dropped his axe, and it hath not yet reached the bottom."
The following passage, concerning fat geese, is perfectly in the style of these rabbins:—"A rabbin once saw in a desert a flock of geese so fat that their feathers fell off, and the rivers flowed in fat. Then said I to them, shall we have part of you in the other world when the Messiah shall come? And one of them lifted up a wing, and another a leg, to signify these parts we should have. We should otherwise have had all parts of these geese; but we Israelites shall be called to an account touching these fat geese, because their sufferings are owing to us. It is our iniquities that have delayed the coming of the Messiah; and these geese suffer greatly by reason of their excessive fat, which daily and daily increases, and will increase till the Messiah comes!"
What the manna was which fell in the wilderness, has often been disputed, and still is disputable; it was sufficient for the rabbins to have found in the Bible that the taste of it was "as a wafer made with honey," to have raised their fancy to its pitch. They declare it was "like oil to children, honey to old men, and cakes to middle age." It had every kind of taste except that of cucumbers, melons, garlic, and onions, and leeks, for these were those Egyptian roots which the Israelites so much regretted to have lost. This manna had, however, the quality to accommodate itself to the palate of those who did not murmur in the wilderness; and to these it became fish, flesh, or fowl.
The rabbins never advance an absurdity without quoting a text in Scripture; and to substantiate this fact they quote Deut. ii. 7, where it is said, "Through this great wilderness these forty years the Lord thy God hath been with thee, and thou hast lacked nothing!" St. Austin repeats this explanation of the Rabbins, that the faithful found in this manna the taste of their favourite food! However, the Israelites could not have found all these benefits, as the rabbins tell us; for in Numbers xi. 6, they exclaim, "There is nothing at all besides this manna before our eyes!" They had just said that they remembered the melons, cucumbers, &c., which they had eaten of so freely in Egypt. One of the hyperboles of the rabbins is, that the manna fell in such mountains, that the kings of the east and the west beheld them; which they found on a passage in the 23rd Psalm; "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies!" These may serve as specimens of the forced interpretations on which their grotesque fables are founded.
Their detestation of Titus, their great conqueror, appears by the following wild invention. After having narrated certain things too shameful to read, of a prince whom Josephus describes in far different colours, they tell us that on sea Titus tauntingly observed, in a great storm, that the God of the Jews was only powerful on the water, and that, therefore, he had succeeded in drowning Pharaoh and Sisera. "Had he been strong, he would have waged war with me in Jerusalem." On uttering this blasphemy, a voice from heaven said, "Wicked man! I have a little creature in the world which shall wage war with thee!" When Titus landed, a gnat entered his nostrils, and for seven years together made holes in his brains. When his skull was opened, the gnat was found to be as large as a pigeon: the mouth of the gnat was of copper, and the claws of iron. A collection which has recently appeared of these Talmudical stories has not been executed with any felicity of selection. That there are, however, some beautiful inventions in the Talmud, I refer to the story of Solomon and Sheba, in the present volume.
ON THE CUSTOM OF SALUTING AFTER SNEEZING.
It is probable that this custom, so universally prevalent, originated in some ancient superstition; it seems to have excited inquiry among all nations.
"Some Catholics," says Father Feyjoo, "have attributed the origin of this custom to the ordinance of a pope, Saint Gregory, who is said to have instituted a short benediction to be used on such occasions, at a time when, during a pestilence, the crisis was attended by sneezing, and in most cases followed by death."
But the rabbins, who have a story for everything, say, that before Jacob men never sneezed but once, and then immediately died: they assure us that that patriarch was the first who died by natural disease; before him all men died by sneezing; the memory of which was ordered to be preserved in all nations, by a command of every prince to his subjects to employ some salutary exclamation after the act of sneezing. But these are Talmudical dreams, and only serve to prove that so familiar a custom has always excited inquiry.
Even Aristotle has delivered some considerable nonsense on this custom; he says it is an honourable acknowledgment of the seat of good sense and genius—the head—to distinguish it from two other offensive eruptions of air, which are never accompanied by any benediction from the by-standers. The custom, at all events, existed long prior to Pope Gregory. The lover in Apuleius, Gyton in Petronius, and allusions to it in Pliny, prove its antiquity; and a memoir of the French Academy notices the practice in the New World, on the first discovery of America. Everywhere man is saluted for sneezing.
An amusing account of the ceremonies which attend the sneezing of a king of Monomotapa, shows what a national concern may be the sneeze of despotism.—Those who are near his person, when this happens, salute him in so loud a tone, that persons in the ante-chamber hear it, and join in the acclamation; in the adjoining apartments they do the same, till the noise reaches the street, and becomes propagated throughout the city; so that, at each sneeze of his majesty, results a most horrid cry from the salutations of many thousands of his vassals.
When the king of Sennaar sneezes, his courtiers immediately turn their backs on him, and give a loud slap on their right thigh.
With the ancients sneezing was ominous;42 from the right it was considered auspicious; and Plutarch, in his Life of Themistocles, says, that before a naval battle it was a sign of conquest! Catullus, in his pleasing poem of Acmè and Septimus, makes this action from the deity of Love, from the left, the source of his fiction. The passage has been elegantly versified by a poetical friend, who finds authority that the gods sneezing on the right in heaven, is supposed to come to us on earth on the left.
Cupid sneezing in his flight, Once was heard upon the right, Boding woe to lovers true; But now upon the left he flew, And with sporting sneeze divine, Gave to joy the sacred sign. Acmè bent her lovely face, Flush'd with rapture's rosy grace, And those eyes that swam in bliss, Prest with many a breathing kiss; Breathing, murmuring, soft, and low, Thus might life for ever flow! "Love of my life, and life of love! Cupid rules our fates above, Ever let us vow to join In homage at his happy shrine." Cupid heard the lovers true, Again upon the left he flew, And with sporting sneeze divine, Renew'd of joy the sacred sign!