על החוקים לפרטיהם, ספר א ט״זOn the Special Laws, Book I 16
א׳
1[80] With regard to the priests there are the following laws. It is ordained that the priest should be perfectly sound throughout, without any bodily deformity. No part, that is, must be lacking or have been mutilated, nor on the other hand redundant, whether the excrescence be congenital or an after-growth due to disease. Nor must the skin have been changed into a leprous state or into malignant tetters or warts or any other eruptive growth. All these seem to me to symbolize perfection of soul.
ב׳
2[81] For if the priest’s body, which is mortal by nature, must be scrutinized to see that it is not afflicted by any serious misfortune, much more is that scrutiny needed for the immortal soul, which we are told was fashioned after the image of the Self-existent. And the image of God is the Word through whom the whole universe was framed.
ג׳
3[82] After providing for his pure descent from a noble stock and his perfection both of body and soul, the legislation deals with the dress which the priest must assume when he is about to carry out the sacred rites. It consists of a linen tunic and short breeches,
ד׳
4[83] the latter to cover the loins, which must not be exposed at the altar, while the tunic is to make them nimble in their ministry. For in this undress, with nothing more than the short tunics, they are attired so as to move with unhampered rapidity when they bring the victims and the votive offerings and the libations and all other things needed for the sacrifices.
ה׳
5[84] The high priest is bidden to put on a similar dress when he enters the inner shrine to offer incense, because its fine linen is not, like wool, the product of creatures subject to death, and also to wear another, the formation of which is very complicated. In this it would seem to be a likeness and copy of the universe. This is clearly shewn by the design.
ו׳
6[85] In the first place, it is a circular garment of a dark blue colour throughout, a tunic with a full-length skirt, thus symbolizing the air, because the air is both naturally black and in a sense a full-length robe stretching from the sublunar region above to the lowest recesses of the earth.
ז׳
7[86] Secondly, on this is set a piece of woven work in the shape of a breastplate, which symbolizes heaven. For on the shoulder-points there are two emerald stones, a kind of substance which is exceedingly valuable. There is one of these on each side and both are circular, representing the hemispheres, one of which is above and one under the earth.
ח׳
8[87] Then on the breast there are twelve precious stones of different colours, arranged in four rows of three each, set in this form on the model of the zodiac, for the zodiac consisting of twelve signs makes the four seasons of the year by giving three signs to each.
ט׳
9[88] This part of the dress as a whole is significantly called the reason-seat, because heaven and its contents are all framed and ordered on rational principles and proportions, for nothing there is irrational. On the reason-seat he embroidered two pieces of woven work, one of which he called Clear Shewing and the other Truth.
י׳
10[89] By Truth he suggests the thought that no falsehood is allowed to set foot in heaven but has been banished entirely to the earthly regions and has its lodging in the souls of accursed men: by Clear Shewing that the heavenly beings make clear all things that we are or do, which in themselves would be altogether unknown. Here is a self-evident proof.
י״א
11[90] If the light of the sun had never shone, how could the numberless qualities of bodily things have been perceived? Or the multiform varieties of colours and shapes? Who else could have shewn us nights and days and months and years and time in general except the revolutions, harmonious and grand beyond all description, of the sun and the moon and the other stars?
י״ב
12[91] How but through the same heavenly bodies teaching us to compute the divisions of time could we have learnt the nature of number? Who could have opened and shewn to the voyager his path through the seas and all the expanses of the deep had not the stars as they wheel and revolve in their courses done the work?
י״ג
13[92] Numberless other phenomena have been observed and recorded by wise men who by study of the heavenly bodies have marked the signs of calm weather and stormy winds, of plentifulness and scarcity of crops, of mild and scorching summers, of sinister and spring-like winters, of droughts and rainy seasons, of fecundity in animals and plants and on the other hand of sterility in both and all other matters of the same kind. For of all the things that happen upon earth, the signs are graven in the face of heaven.