s to show that the
question thus raised is of no importance in relation to the main
issue.[108] If Gadara was, as I maintain it was, a city of the
Decapolis, Hellenistic in constitution and containing a predominantly
Gentile population, my case is superabundantly fortified. On the other
hand, if the hypothesis that Gadara was under Jewish government, which
Mr. Gladstone seems sometimes to defend and sometimes to give up,
were accepted, my case would be nowise weakened. At any rate, Gadara
was not included within the jurisdiction of the tetrach of Galilee; if
it had been, the Galileans who crossed over the lake to Gadara had no
official status; and they had no more civil right to punish
law-breakers than any other strangers.

In my turn, however, I may remark that there is a "point" which
appears to have escaped Mr. Gladstone's notice. And that is somewhat
unfortunate, because his whole argument turns upon it. Mr. Gladstone
assumes, as a matter of course, that pig-keeping was an offence
against the "Law of Moses"; and, therefore, that Jews who kept pigs
were as much liable to legal pains and penalties as Englishmen who
smuggle brandy ("Impregnable Rock," p. 274).

There can be no doubt that, according to the Law, as it is defined in
the Pentateuch, the pig was an "unclean" animal, and that pork was a
forbidden article of diet. Moreover, since pigs are hardly likely to
be kept for the mere love of those unsavoury animals, pig-owning, or
swine-herding, must have been, and evidently was, regarded as a
suspicious and degrading occupation by strict Jews, in the first
century A.D. But I should like to know on what provision of the Mosaic
Law, as it is laid down in the Pentateuch, Mr. Gladstone bases the
assumption, which is essential to his case, that the possession of
pigs and the calling of a swineherd were actually illegal. The
inquiry was put to me the other day; and, as I could not answer it, I
turned up the article "Schwein" in Riehm's standard "Handwoerterbuch,"
for help out of my difficulty; but unfortunately without success.
After speaking of the martyrdom which the Jews, under Antiochus
Epiphanes, preferred to eating pork, the writer proceeds:--

It may be, nevertheless, that the practice of keeping pigs
may have found its way into Palestine in the Graeco-Roman
time, in consequence of the great increase of the non-Jewish
population; yet there is no evidence of it in the New
Testament; the