Mr. Deutsch gives the following account of the six sections of the Mishna:
Section I. Seeds : of Agrarian laws, commencing with a chapter on Prayers. In this section the various tithes and donations due to the Priests, the Levites, and the poor, from the products of the lands, and further the Sabbatical year, and the prohibited mixtures in plants, animals, and garments, are treated of.
Section
II. Feasts : of Sabbaths, Feast and Fast days, the work prohibited, the ceremonies ordained, the sacrifices to be offered, on them. Special chapters are devoted to the Feast of the Exodus from Egypt, to the New Years Day, to the Day of Atonement (one of the most impressive portions of the whole book,) to the Feast of Tabernacles, and to that of Haman.
Section III. Women : of betrothal, marriage, divorce, &c.; also of vows.
Section IV. Damages : including a great part of the civil and criminal law. It treats of a law of trades, of buying and selling, and the ordinary monetary transactions. Further, of the greatest crime known to the law, viz., idolatry. Next of witnesses, of oaths, of legal punishments, and of the Sanhedrim itself. This section concludes with the so-called Sentences of the Fathers, containing some of the sublimest ethical dicta known in the history of religious philosophy.
Section V. Sacred Things : of sacrifices, the first-born, &c.; also of the measurements of the Temple (Middoth).
Section VI. Purifications : of the various Levitical and other Hygienic laws, of impure things and persons, their purification, &c.
In defence of the Haggadah, with all its incongruities, puerilities, and absurdities, it is only just to hear what Deutsch, its enthusiastic apostle, has to say. And first he applies to it the rhyming apology which Bunyan put forward on behalf of his great allegory, which, by the way, Mr. Deutsch surely misrepresents and misunderstands when he speaks of it as Haggadistic:
Let us glance briefly at the cosmogony of the Talmud. It assumes that the universe has been developed by means of a series of cataclysms; that world was destroyed after world, until God made this world, and saw that it was very good. It assumes also that the kosmos was wrought out of some original substance, itself created by God. One or three things were before this world, Water, Fire, and Wind; Water begat the darkness, Fire begat light, and Wind begat the spirit of Wisdom.
The how of the creation was not mere matter of speculation. The co-operation of angels, whose existence was warranted by Scripture, and a whole hierarchy of whom had been built up under Persian influences, was distinctly denied. In a discussion about the day of their creation, it is agreed on all hands that there were no angels at first, lest men might say, Michael spanned out the firmament on the south, and Gabriel to the north. There is a distinct foreshadowing of the Gnostic Demiurgos that antique link between the Divine Spirit and the world of matter to be found in the Talmud. What with Plato were the Ideas, with Philo the Logos, with the Kabbalists the World of Aziluth, what the Gnostics called more emphatically the wisdom (σοφία), or power (δύναμις), and Plotinus the νος, that the Talmudical authors call Metation. There is a good deal, in the post-captivity Talmud, about the Angels, borrowed from the Persian. The Archangels or Angelic princes are seven in number, and their Hebrew names and functions correspond almost exactly to those of their Persian prototypes. There are also hosts of ministering angels, the Persian Yazatas , whose functions, besides that of being messengers, were twofold, to praise God, and to be guardians of man. In their first capacity they are daily created by Gods breath out of a stream of fire that rolls its waves under the supernal throne. In their second, two of them accompany every man, and for every new good deed man acquires a new guardian angel, who always watches over his steps. When a righteous man dies, three hosts of angels descend from the celestial battlements to meet him. One says, (in the words of Scripture,) He shall go in peace; the second takes up the strain and says, Who has walked in righteousness; and the third concludes, Let him come in peace and rest upon his bed. In like manner, when the wicked man passes away, three hosts of wicked angels are ready to escort him, but their address is not couched in any spirit of consolation or encouragement.