THE TALMUD
The Amoraim compile the Palestinian Talmud and the Babylonian
Talmud.--Representative Amoraim:
I (220-280) Palestine--Jochanan, Simon, Joshua, Simlai;
Babylonia--Rab and Samuel.
II (280-320) Palestine--Ami, Assi, Abbahu, Chiya;
Babylonia--Huna and Zeira.
III (320-380) Babylonia--Rabba, Abayi, Rava.
IV (380-430) Babylonia--Ashi (first compilation of the
Babylonian Talmud).
V and VI (430-500) Babylonia--Rabina (completion of the
Babylonian Talmud).
The _Talmud_, or _Gemara_ ("Doctrine," or "Completion"), was a natural
development of the Mishnah. The Talmud contains, indeed, many elements
as old as the Mishnah, some even older. But, considered as a whole, the
Talmud is a commentary on the work of the Tannaim. It is written, not in
Hebrew, as the Mishnah is, but in a popular Aramaic. There are two
distinct works to which the title Talmud is applied; the one is the
Jerusalem Talmud (completed about the year 370 C.E.), the other the
Babylonian (completed a century later). At first, as we have seen, the
Rabbinical schools were founded on Jewish soil. But Palestine did not
continue to offer a friendly welcome. Under the more tolerant rulers of
Babylonia or Persia, Jewish learning found a refuge from the harshness
experienced under those of the Holy Land. The Babylonian Jewish schools
in Nehardea, Sura, and Pumbeditha rapidly surpassed the Palestinian in
reputation, and in the year 350 C.E., owing to natural decay, the
Palestinian schools closed.
The Talmud is accordingly not one work, but two, the one the literary
product of the Palestinian, the other, of the Babylonian _Amoraim_. The
latter is the larger, the more studied, the better preserved, and to it
attention will here be mainly confined. The Talmud is not a book, it is
a literature. It contains a legal code, a system of ethics, a body of
ritual customs, poetical passages, prayers, histories, facts of science
and medicine, and fancies of folk-lore.
The Amoraim were what their name implies, "Expounders," or
"Discoursers"; but their expositions were often original contributions
to literature. Their work extends over the long interval between 200 and
500 C.E. The Amoraim naturally were men of various character and
condition. Some were possessed of much material wealth, others were
excessively poor. But few of them were professional men of letters. Like
the Tannaim, the Amoraim were often artisans, field-laborers, or
physicians, whose heart was certainly in literature, but whose hand was
turned to the practical affairs of life. The men who stood highest
socially, the Princes of the Captivity in Babylonia and the Patriarchs
in Palestine, were not always those vested with the highest authority.
Some of the Amoraim, again, were merely receptive, the medium through
which tradition was handed on; others were creative as well. To put the
same fact in Rabbinical metaphor, some were Sinais of learning, others
tore up mountains, and ground them together in keen and critical
dialectics.
The oldest of the Amoraim, Chanina, the son of Chama, of Sepphoris
(180-260), was such a firm mountain of ancient learning. On the other
hand, Jochanan, the son of Napacha (199-279), of dazzling physical
beauty, had a more original mind. His personal charms conveyed to him
perhaps a sense of the artistic; to him the Greek language was a
delight, "an ornament of women." Simon, the son of Lakish (200-275),
hardy of muscle and of intellect, started life as a professional
athlete. A later Rabbi, Zeira, was equally noted for his feeble,
unprepossessing figure and his nimble, ingenious mind. Another
contemporary of Jochanan, Joshua, the son of Levi, is the hero of many
legends. He was so tender to the poor that he declared his conviction
that the Messiah would arise among the beggars and cripples of Rome.
Simlai, who was born in Palestine, and migrated to Nehardea in
Babylonia, was more of a poet than a lawyer. His love was for the
ethical and poetic elements of the Talmud, the _Hagadah_, as this aspect
of the Rabbinical literature was called in contradistinction to the
_Halachah_, or legal elements. Simlai entered into frequent discussions
with the Christian Fathers on subjects of Biblical exegesis.
The centre of interest now changes to Babylonia. Here, in the year 219,
Abba Areka, or Rab (175-247), founded the Sura academy, which continued
to flourish for nearly eight centuries. He and his great contemporary
Samuel (180-257) enjoy with Jochanan the honor of supplying the leading
materials of which the Talmud consists. Samuel laid down a rule which,
based on an utterance of the prophet Jeremiah, enabled Jews to live and
serve in non-Jewish countries. "The law of the land is law," said
Samuel. But he lived in the realms of the stars as well as in the
streets of his city. Samuel was an astronomer, and he is reported to
have boasted with truth, that "he was as familiar with the paths of the
stars as with the streets of Nehardea." He arranged the Jewish Calendar,
his work in this direction being perfected by Hillel II in the fourth
century. Like Simlai, Rab and Samuel had heathen and Christian friends.
Origen and Jerome read the Scriptures under the guidance of Jews. The
heathen philosopher Porphyry wrote a commentary on the Book of Daniel.
So, too, Abbahu, who lived in Palestine a little later on, frequented
the society of cultivated Romans, and had his family taught Greek.
Abbahu was a manufacturer of veils for women's wear, for, like many
Amoraim, he scorned to make learning a means of living, Abbahu's modesty
with regard to his own merits shows that a Rabbi was not necessarily
arrogant in pride of knowledge! Once Abbahu's lecture was besieged by a
great crowd, but the audience of his colleague Chiya was scanty. "Thy
teaching," said Abbahu to Chiya, "is a rare jewel, of which only an
expert can judge; mine is tinsel, which attracts every ignorant eye."
It was Rab, however, who was the real popularizer of Jewish learning. He
arranged courses of lectures for the people as well as for scholars.
Rab's successor as head of the Sura school, Huna (212-297), completed
Rab's work in making Babylonia the chief centre of Jewish learning. Huna
tilled his own fields for a living, and might often be met going home
with his spade over his shoulder. It was men like this who built up the
Jewish tradition. Huna's predecessor, however, had wider experience of
life, for Rab had been a student in Palestine, and was in touch with the
Jews of many parts. From Rab's time onwards, learning became the
property of the whole people, and the Talmud, besides being the
literature of the Jewish universities, may be called the book of the
masses. It contains, not only the legal and ethical results of the
investigations of the learned, but also the wisdom and superstition of
the masses. The Talmud is not exactly a national literature, but it was
a unique bond between the scattered Jews, an unparallelled spiritual and
literary instrument for maintaining the identity of Judaism amid the
many tribulations to which the Jews were subjected.
The Talmud owed much to many minds. Externally it was influenced by the
nations with which the Jews came into contact. From the inside, the
influences at work were equally various. Jochanan, Rab, and Samuel in
the third century prepared the material out of which the Talmud was
finally built. The actual building was done by scholars in the fourth
century. Rabba, the son of Nachmani (270-330), Abayi (280-338), and Rava
(299-352) gave the finishing touches to the method of the Talmud. Rabba
was a man of the people; he was a clear thinker, and loved to attract
all comers by an apt anecdote. Rava had a superior sense of his own
dignity, and rather neglected the needs of the ordinary man of his day.
Abayi was more of the type of the average Rabbi, acute, genial,
self-denying. Under the impulse of men of the most various gifts of mind
and heart, the Talmud was gradually constructed, but two names are
prominently associated with its actual compilation. These were Ashi
(352-427) and Rabina (died 499). Ashi combined massive learning with
keen logical ingenuity. He needed both for the task to which he devoted
half a century of his life. He possessed a vast memory, in which the
accumulated tradition of six centuries was stored, and he was gifted
with the mental orderliness which empowered him to deal with this
bewildering mass of materials.
It is hardly possible that after the compilation of the Talmud it
remained an oral book, though it must be remembered that memory played a
much greater part in earlier centuries than it does now. At all events,
Ashi, and after him Rabina, performed the great work of systematizing
the Rabbinical literature at a turning-point in the world's history. The
Mishnah had been begun at a moment when the Roman empire was at its
greatest vigor and glory; the Talmud was completed at the time when the
Roman empire was in its decay. That the Jews were saved from similar
disintegration, was due very largely to the Talmud. The Talmud is thus
one of the great books of the world. Despite its faults, its excessive
casuistry, its lack of style and form, its stupendous mass of detailed
laws and restrictions, it is nevertheless a great book in and for
itself. It is impossible to consider it further here in its religious
aspects. But something must be said in the next chapter of that side of
the Rabbinical literature known as the _Midrash_.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
THE TALMUD.
Essays by E. Deutsch and A. Darmesteter (Jewish Publication Society
of America).
Graetz.--II, 18-22 (character of the Talmud, end of ch. 22).
Karpeles.--_Jewish Literature and other Essays_, p. 52.
Steinschneider.--_Jewish Literature_, p. 20.
Schiller-Szinessy.--_Encycl. Brit._, Vol. XXIII, p. 35.
M. Mielziner.--_Introduction to the Talmud_ (Cincinnati, 1894).
S. Schechter.--_Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology_, _J.Q.R._, VI,
p. 405, etc.
---- _Studies in Judaism_ (Jewish Publication Society of America,
1896), pp. 155, 182, 213, 233 [189, 222, 259, 283].
B. Spiers.--_School System of the Talmud_ (London, 1898)
(with appendix on Baba Kama); the _Threefold Cord_ (1893)
on _Sanhedrin, Baba Metsia_, and _Baba Bathra_.
M. Jastrow.--_History and Future of the Text of the Talmud
(Publications of the Gratz College_, Philadelphia, 1897, Vol. I).
P.B. Benny.--_Criminal Code of the Jews according to the Talmud_
(London, 1880).
S. Mendelsohn.--_The Criminal Jurisprudence of the Ancient Hebrews_
(Baltimore, 1891).
D. Castelli.--_Future Life in Rabbinical Literature_, _J.Q.R._,
I, p. 314.
M. Güdemann.--_Spirit and Letter in Judaism and Christianity_,
_ibid._, IV, p. 345.
I. Harris.--_Rise and Development of the Massorah_,
_ibid._, I, pp. 128, etc.
H. Polano.--_The Talmud_ (Philadelphia, 1876).
I. Myers.--_Gems from the Talmud_ (London, 1894).
D.W. Amram.--_The Jewish Law of Divorce according to Bible and
Talmud_ (Philadelphia, 1896).