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"Si mortua fuerit uxor ejus, licitus est sorori ejus; si repudiaverit eam et mortua fuerit, licitus est sorori ejus; si fratria illius mortua fuerit, licitus sorori ejus; si calceum illi dederit exeundum, et mortua fuerit, licitus est sorori ejus; si nupserit alii, et mortua fuerit, licitus est sorori ejus."
This passage is decisive on the point. The translation is as follows:
"If his wife die, he is allowed to marry her sister. If he divorce her, and she die, he is allowed to marry her sister. If she be married to another man and die, he is allowed to marry her sister. If he have performed to her the ceremony of taking off the shoe, and she die, he is allowed to marry her sister; if she marry another man, and die, he is allowed to marry her sister."
The Mishna is a collection of legends and expositions said to have been learned by Moses in the mount, and handed down by tradition. It was compiled in the second century, and testifies what was the common and received sense of the law among the Hebraizing Jews. The Magazine writer says, "it is the most exact representation of the ancient Jewish opinion;" and the above passage from the the Mishna declares that opinion to be precisely what we have alleged to be the law of Moses understood by the ancient Jews. As Dr. McCaul says, "The Mishna, whatever its defects, gives no uncertain sound in this matter. It uniformly adheres to the ancient interpretation of Leviticus xviii. 18."
THE MAGAZINE WRITER'S MISREPRESENTATIONS OF MAIMONIDES.
Next the Magazine writer professes to quote Maimonides as an authority in support of his views, but omits the very passage which bears on the point in discussion, and professes to infer certain things from other words which relate not to the subject. The words of Maimonides, in the English translation, are as follows:
"When a man has betrothed a wife, there are six women of near relations prohibited to him, and each one of them is prohibited for ever: and those are they, her mother, and her mother's mother, and her father's mother, and her daughter, and her daughter's daughter, and her son's daughter, and if he approach any one of these in tho life-time of his wife, they are burnt, . . . . . . and so his wife's sister is prohibited to him until his wife die." (Hilchcloth issure biah,
