away, or if she be living as a widow, or if she be married to another man, still he did not consider it holy for her sister to enter upon the portion of her who had been unfortunate, by this injunction teaching sisters not to violate the requirements of justice towards their relations, nor to make a stepping stone of the disasters of one so united to themselves by blood, nor to quiesce in or to pride themselves in receiving attention from those who have shewn themselves enemies to their relations, or to reciprocate any kind offices received from them." Then he goes on to say: "For from such things as these arise bitter jealousies and quarrels, and enmities which scarcely permit of reconciliation."[1] Thus it will be seen that Philo, himself a Jew, and living at a time when those laws must have been well understood, interprets this prohibition as applying only to the sister's life time, since it would endanger the love and harmony that ought ever to exist between sisters, and as it would surely tend to give rise to bitter jealousies and the most implacable enmities.
Before we proceed to give quotations from the Mishna, it will be necessary to offer a few brief explanatory remarks upon that work, since the ordinary reader can hardly be supposed to be familiar either with the scope of the work or with the high position it occupies in the Jewish Church.
The term משנא (Mishna) denotes second law, and was so named in distinction to the first or written law in the Pentateuch. The Mishna, according to the popular belief of the Hebrews, contains the oral instructions which Moses Is said to have received on Mount Sinai, and which he commanded to be taught to the people by their religious teachers. They are thus said to have been handed down orally from
- ↑ Philo Judæus, vol. iii. pp. 9, 10.
