18. And if we come also to the Mosaic code, many of the laws, so far as regards their bare observance, seem unreasonable, and others impossible. The prohibition of kites, for instance, as food is unreasonable, for no one in the direst famines would be driven to this creature. Children eight days old if not circumcised are ordered to be cut off from their people. If an express enactment respecting those children was indispensable, it is their fathers who should be ordered to be put to death; whereas the Scripture says, "Every uncircumcised male, who shall not be circumcised on the eighth day, shall be cut off from his people." If you wish to see some impossible enactments, let us consider that the goat-stag is a fabulous creature. And yet Moses commands us to offer it as a clean animal; on the other hand, there is no instance of the griffin having been tamed by man, but the lawgiver, nevertheless, forbids it to be eaten. If we closely examine the famous ordinance of the Sabbath, "Ye shall sit every man in his house: let no man go out of his place on the seventh day," we shall see that it cannot be literally kept; for no living creature can sit the whole day without stirring from his seat. And therefore in some cases they of the Circumcision, and as many as desire no more light than that of the mere letter, do not go to the root of things, and, for example, search for the meaning of what is said about the goat-stag, the griffin, and the kite; while |20 in other cases they sophistically trifle with the words, and confront you with frigid traditions; as regards the Sabbath, for instance, they maintain that every man's "place" is 2000 cubits. Others, among them Dositheus the Samaritan, condemning such an interpretation, think the person is to remain until the evening in the posture in which he was found on the Sabbath day. Nor can the command to carry no burden on the Sabbath be observed; and the Jewish teachers have accordingly gone very great lengths, pretending that a sandal of one kind is a "burden," but not a sandal of another kind, the one being nailed, the other without nails; and, the same way, what is carried upon one shoulder is a "burden," but by no means what is carried upon both.