Was sich nie und nirgends hat begeben, das allein veraltet nie.
The term Rabbinic was applied to the Jewish Literature of post-Biblical
times by those who conceived the Judaism of the later epoch to be
something different from the Judaism of the Bible, something actually
opposed to it. Such observers held that the Jewish nation ceased to
exist with the moment when its political independence was destroyed.
For them the Judaism of the later epoch has been a Judaism of the
Synagogue, the spokesmen of which have been the scholars, the Rabbis.
And what this phase of Judaism brought forth has been considered by
them to be the product of the schools rather than the product of
practical, pulsating life. Poetic phantasmagoria, frequently the
vaporings of morbid visionaries, is the material out of which these
scholars construct the theologic system of the Rabbis, and fairy tales,
the spontaneous creations of the people, which take the form of sacred
legend in Jewish literature, are denominated the Scriptural exegesis of
the Rabbis, and condemned incontinently as nugae rabbinorum.
As the name of a man clings to him, so men cling to names. For the
primitive savage the name is part of the essence of a person or thing,
and even in the more advanced stages of culture, judgments are not
always formed in agreement with facts as they are, but rather according
to the names by which they are called. The current estimate of Rabbinic
Literature is a case in point. With the label Rabbinic later ages
inherited from former ages a certain distorted view of the literature
so designated. To this day, and even among scholars that approach its
investigation with unprejudiced minds, the opinion prevails that it is
purely a learned product. And yet the truth is that the most prominent
feature of Rabbinic Literature is its popular character.
The school and the home are not mutually opposed to each other in the
conception of the Jews. They study in their homes, and they live in
their schools. Likewise there is no distinct class of scholars among
them, a class that withdraws itself from participation in the affairs
of practical life. Even in the domain of the Halakah, the Rabbis were
not so much occupied with theoretic principles of law as with the
concrete phenomena of daily existence. These they sought to grasp and
shape. And what is true of the Halakah is true with greater emphasis of
the Haggadah, which is popular in the double sense of appealing to the
people and being produced in the main by the people. To speak of the
Haggadah of the Tannaim and Amoraim is as far from fact as to speak of
the legends of Shakespeare and Scott. The ancient authors and their
modern brethren of the guild alike elaborate legendary material which
they found at hand.
It has been held by some that the Haggadah contains no popular legends,
that it is wholly a factitious, academic product. A cursory glance at
the pseudepigraphic literature of the Jews, which is older than the
Haggadah literature by several centuries, shows how untenable this view
is. That the one literature should have drawn from the other is
precluded by historical facts. At a very early time the Synagogue
disavowed the pseudepigraphic literature, which was the favorite
reading matter of the sectaries and the Christians. Nevertheless the
inner relation between them is of the closest kind. The only essential
difference is that the Midrashic form prevails in the Haggadah, and the
parenetic or apocalyptic form in the pseudepigrapha. The common element
must therefore depart from the Midrash on the one hand and from
parenesis on the other.
Folklore, fairy tales, legends, and all forms of story telling akin to
these are comprehended, in the terminology of the post-Biblical
literature of the Jews, under the inclusive description Haggadah, a
name that can be explained by a circumlocution, but cannot be
translated. Whatever it is applied to is thereby characterized first as
being derived from the Holy Scriptures, and then as being of the nature
of a story. And, in point of fact, this dualism sums up the
distinguishing features of Jewish Legend. More than eighteen centuries
ago the Jewish historian Josephus observed that "though we be deprived
of our wealth, of our cities, or of the other advantages we have, our
law continues immortal." The word he meant to use was not law, but
Torah, only he could not find an equivalent for it in Greek. A singer
of the Synagogue a thousand years after Josephus, who expressed his
sentiments in Hebrew, uttered the same thought: "The Holy City and all
her daughter cities are violated, they lie in ruins, despoiled of their
ornaments, their splendor darkened from sight. Naught is left to us
save one eternal treasure alone—the Holy Torah." The sadder the life of
the Jewish people, the more it felt the need of taking refuge in its
past. The Scripture, or, to use the Jewish term, the Torah, was the
only remnant of its former national independence, and the Torah was the
magic means of making a sordid actuality recede before a glorious
memory. To the Scripture was assigned the task of supplying nourishment
to the mind as well as the soul, to the intellect as well as the
imagination, and the result is the Halakah and the Haggadah.
The fancy of the people did not die out in the post-Biblical time, but
the bent of its activity was determined by the past.
Men craved entertainment in later times as well as in the earlier, only
instead of resorting for its subject-matter to what happened under
their eyes, they drew from the fountain-head of the past. The events in
the ancient history of Israel, which was not only studied, but lived
over again daily, stimulated the desire to criticize it. The religious
reflections upon nature laid down in the myths of the people, the fairy
tales, which have the sole object of pleasing, and the legends, which
are the people's verdict upon history—all these were welded into one
product. The fancy of the Jewish people was engaged by the past
reflected in the Bible, and all its creations wear a Biblical hue for
this reason. This explains the peculiar form of the Haggadah.
But what is spontaneously brought forth by the people is often
preserved only in the form impressed upon it by the feeling and the
thought of the poet, or by the speculations of the learned. Also Jewish
legends have rarely been transmitted in their original shape. They have
been perpetuated in the form of Midrash, that is, Scriptural exegesis.
The teachers of the Haggadah, called Rabbanan d'Aggadta in the Talmud,
were no folklorists, from whom a faithful reproduction of legendary
material may be expected. Primarily they were homilists, who used
legends for didactic purposes, and their main object was to establish a
close connection between the Scripture and the creations of the popular
fancy, to give the latter a firm basis and secure a long term of life
for them.
One of the most important tasks of the modern investigation of the
Haggadah is to make a clean separation between the original elements
and the later learned additions. Hardly a beginning has been made in
this direction. But as long as the task of distinguishing them has not
been accomplished, it is impossible to write out the Biblical legends
of the Jews without including the supplemental work of scholars in the
products of the popular fancy.
In the present work, "The Legends of the Jews," I have made the first
attempt to gather from the original sources all Jewish legends, in so
far as they refer to Biblical personages and events, and reproduce them
with the greatest attainable completeness and accuracy. I use the
expression Jewish, rather than Rabbinic, because the sources from which
I have levied contributions are not limited to the Rabbinic literature.
As I expect to take occasion elsewhere to enter into a description of
the sources in detail, the following data must suffice for the present.
The works of the Talmudic Midrashic literature are of the first
importance. Covering the period from the second to the fourteenth
century, they contain the major part of the Jewish legendary material.
Akin to this in content if not always in form is that derived from the
Targumim, of which the oldest versions were produced not earlier than
the fourth century, and the most recent not later than the tenth. The
Midrashic literature has been preserved only in fragmentary form. Many
Haggadot not found in our existing collections are quoted by the
authors of the Middle Ages. Accordingly, a not inconsiderable number of
the legends here printed are taken from medieval Bible commentators and
homilists. I was fortunate in being able to avail myself also of
fragments of Midrashim of which only manuscript copies are extant.
The works of the older Kabbalah are likewise treasuries of quotations
from lost Midrashim, and it was among the Kabbalists, and later among
the Hasidim, that new legends arose. The literatures produced in these
two circles are therefore of great importance for the present purpose.
Furthermore, Jewish legends can be culled not from the writings of the
Synagogue alone; they appear also in those of the Church. Certain
Jewish works repudiated by the Synagogue were accepted and mothered by
the Church. This is the literature usually denominated
apocryphal-pseudepigraphic. From the point of view of legends, the
apocryphal books are of subordinate importance, while the
pseudepigrapha are of fundamental value. Even quantitatively the latter
are an imposing mass. Besides the Greek writings of the Hellenist Jews,
they contain Latin, Syrian, Ethiopic, Aramean, Arabic, Persian, and Old
Slavic products translated directly or indirectly from Jewish works of
Palestinian or Hellenistic origin. The use of these pseudepigrapha
requires great caution. Nearly all of them are embellished with
Christian interpolations, and in some cases the inserted portions have
choked the original form so completely that it is impossible to
determine at first sight whether a Jewish or a Christian legend is
under examination. I believe, however, that the pseudepigraphic
material made use of by me is Jewish beyond the cavil of a doubt, and
therefore it could not have been left out of account in a work like the
present.
However, in the appreciation of Jewish Legends, it is the Rabbinic
writers that should form the point of departure, and not the
pseudepigrapha. The former represent the main stream of Jewish thought
and feeling, the latter only an undercurrent. If the Synagogue cast out
the pseudepigrapha, and the Church adopted them with a great show of
favor, these respective attitudes were not determined arbitrarily or by
chance. The pseudepigrapha originated in circles that harbored the
germs from which Christianity developed later on. The Church could thus
appropriate them as her own with just reason.
In the use of some of the apocryphal and pseudepigraphic writings, I
found it expedient to quote the English translations of them made by
others, in so far as they could be brought into accord with the general
style of the book, for which purpose I permitted myself the liberty of
slight verbal changes. In particulars, I was guided, naturally, by my
own conception of the subject, which the Notes justify in detail.
Besides the pseudepigrapha there are other Jewish sources in Christian
garb. In the rich literature of the Church Fathers many a Jewish legend
lies embalmed which one would seek in vain in Jewish books. It was
therefore my special concern to use the writings of the Fathers to the
utmost.
The luxuriant abundance of the material to be presented made it
impossible to give a verbal rendition of each legend. This would have
required more than three times the space at my disposal. I can
therefore claim completeness for my work only as to content. In form it
had to suffer curtailment. When several conflicting versions of the
same legend existed, I gave only one in the text, reserving the other
one, or the several others, for the Notes, or, when practicable, they
were fused into one typical legend, the component parts of which are
analyzed in the Notes. In other instances I resorted to the expedient
of citing one version in one place and the others in other appropriate
places, in furtherance of my aim, to give a smooth presentation of the
matter, with as few interruptions to the course of the narrative as
possible. For this reason I avoided such transitional phrases as "Some
say," "It has been maintained," etc. That my method sometimes separates
things that belong together cannot be considered a grave disadvantage,
as the Index at the end of the work will present a logical
rearrangement of the material for the benefit of the interested
student. I also did not hesitate to treat of the same personage in
different chapters, as, for instance, many of the legends bearing upon
Jacob, those connected with the latter years of the Patriarch, do not
appear in the chapter bearing his name, but will be found in the
sections devoted to Joseph, for the reason that once the son steps upon
the scene, he becomes the central figure, to which the life and deeds
of the father are subordinated. Again, in consideration of lack of
space the Biblical narratives underlying the legends had to be
omitted—surely not a serious omission in a subject with which
widespread acquaintance may be presupposed as a matter of course.
As a third consequence of the amplitude of the material, it was thought
advisable to divide it into several volumes. The references, the
explanations of the sources used, and the interpretations given, and,
especially, numerous emendations of the text of the Midrashim and the
pseudepigrapha, which determined my conception of the passages so
emended, will be found in the last volume, the fourth, which will
contain also an Introduction to the History of Jewish Legends, a number
of Excursuses, and the Index.
As the first three volumes are in the hands of the printer almost in
their entirety, I venture to express the hope that the whole work will
appear within measurable time, the parts following each other at short
intervals.