# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S21
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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me that these grounds could not move the great expositor of Scripture, Dr. A. Calov, to agree with that opinion without any doubt, especially since Grotius does not deny that this is the constant opinion of the Karaites on this passage, who, although today they are a small band of the Jews, were nevertheless always a distinct sect of the Jews, into which the whole of Judaism is divided besides the Rabbanites, who namely cling solely and strictly to the letter of Scripture. Nor should the usual objection confuse anyone, that everything else in this chapter is to be taken literally. For those forms of speech which in proverbial speech have once lost all literal meaning, as when for example the Latins say: 'Ab ovo ad mala,' that is, from the egg to the fruit, the Hebrews: 'to know his wife,' and the like, do not thereby become literal expressions again, even when they are combined with ever so many other literally taken forms of speech. Still less does it stand in the way that in Clericus and other defenders of the opposite opinion one commonly appeals to the constant practice of the Jews and to the sense of this passage agreeing (with it). For if the whole Jewish people could err in the sense of the first institution of marriage regarding the indissolubility of the marriage bond, as Christ shows, what wonder that all the Jews err in the sense of the same institution, as in that of the passage of Leviticus, regarding the restriction of marriage to two persons only? And since this opinion, resting on such strong grounds, has been that of the most eminent theologians from Hafenreffer on, he must lay aside not so much modesty as reason who would ascribe the same to the Orthodox (the word, as usual, used in scorn) and to the sectarians, who held the thesis fast only so as not to appear as fallible popes." (Philocalia sacra. 1717. p. 49 sqq.) Dannbauer also defends this interpretation in his Theologia casualis p. 266.

The Leipzig Faculty speaks similarly in an opinion of the year 1695; it says there: "That it has been claimed that, to marry the sister of a deceased wife, Lev. 18:14, ex paritate gradus [from equality of degree], is not absolutely forbidden, because in v. 18 an expressa limitatio [express limitation] stands with it: 'While she is yet alive'; whence it is to be concluded that such is permitted after her death: this arises ex ignorantia idiotismi linguae sanctae [from ignorance of the idiom of the holy language] and the resulting mala interpretatione textus [wrong interpretation of the text], by virtue of which idiotismi the prohibition of v. 14 that went forth ex paritate gradus is not limited by v. 18, but a quite new prohibition of bigamiae and polygamiae simultaneae [bigamy and simultaneous polygamy] is prescribed. For the main text indeed reads word for word thus: 'And a wife to her sister thou shalt not take, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, beside her, while she is alive'; but by virtue of the idiotismi hebraeae linguae [idiom of the Hebrew language] it can have no other sense than this: 'Thou shalt not take one wife to another, to vex her,' etc.