Among the absurd notions as to what the Talmud was, given credence in
the Middle Ages, one was that it was a man! The mediaeval priest or
peasant was perhaps wiser than he knew. Almost, might we say, the Talmud
was Man, for it is a record of the doings, the beliefs, the usages, the
hopes, the sufferings, the patience, the humor, the mentality, and the
morality of the Jewish people for half a millennium.
What is the Talmud? There is more than one answer. Ostensibly it is the
_corpus juris_ of the Jews from about the first century before the
Christian era to about the fourth after it. But we shall see as we
proceed that the Talmud was much more than this. The very word "Law" in
Hebrew--"Torah"--means more than its translation would imply. The Jew
interpreted his whole religion in terms of law. It is his name in fact
for the Bible's first five books--the Pentateuch. To explain what the
Talmud is we must first explain the theory of its growth more remarkable
perhaps than the work itself. What was that theory? The Divine Law was
revealed to Moses, not only through the Commands that were found written
in the Bible, but also through all the later rules and regulations of
post-exilic days. These additional laws it was presumed were handed down
orally from Moses to Joshua, thence to the Prophets, and later still
transmitted to the Scribes, and eventually to the Rabbis. The reason why
the Rabbis ascribed to Moses the laws that they later evolved, was due
to their intense reverence for Scripture, and their modest sense of
their own authority and qualification. "If the men of old were giants
then we are pigmies," said they. They felt and believed that all duty
for the guidance of man was found in the Bible either directly or
inferentially. Their motto was then, "Search the Scriptures," and they
did search them with a literalness and a painstaking thoroughness never
since repeated. Not a word, not a letter escaped them. Every redundancy
of expression was freighted with meaning, every repetition was made to
give birth to new truth. Some of the inferences were logical and
natural, some artificial and far-fetched, but all ingenious. Sometimes
the method was inductive and sometimes deductive. That is, occasionally
a needed law was promulgated by the Jewish Sanhedrin, and then its
authority sought in the Scripture, or the Scripture would be sought in
the first instance to reveal new law.
So while the Jewish code, religious and civil, continued to grow during
the era of the Restoration of the second Temple, to meet the more
complex conditions of later times, still the theory was maintained that
all was evolved from original Scripture and always transmitted, either
written or oral, from Moses from Mount Sinai. It was not, however, till
the year 219 after the Christian era that a compiled summary of the
so-called oral law was made--perhaps compiled from earlier summaries--by
Rabbi Jehudah Hanassi (the Prince), and the added work was called the
Mishnah or Second Law. Mark the date. We have passed the period of the
fall of Judea's nationality. And it was these very academies in which
the Jewish tradition--the Jewish Law was studied, that kept alive the
Jewish people as a religious community after they had ceased to be a
nation. This Mishnah, divided into six _sedarim_ or chapters, and
subdivided into thirty-six treatises, became now in the academies of
Palestine, and later in Babylonia, the text of further legal
elaboration, with the theory of deduction from Scripture still
maintained.
Although the life of denationalized Israel was much narrower and more
circumscribed, with fewer outlets to their capacities, nevertheless the
new laws deduced from the Mishnah code in the academies grew far larger
than the original source, while the discussions which grew around each
Halacha, as the final decision was termed, and which was usually
transmitted with the decision, grew so voluminous that it became
gradually impossible to retain the complex tradition in the
memory--remarkable as the Oriental memory was and is. That fact, added
to the growing persecutions from Israel's over-lords, and the consequent
precarious fate of these precious traditions, made it necessary to write
them down in spite of the prejudice against committing the oral law to
writing at all. This work was undertaken by Rav Asche and his disciples,
and was completed before the year 500. The Mishnah, together with the
laws that later grew out of it, called also Gamara, or Commentary, form
the Talmud. While the Palestinian school evolved a Gamara from the
Mishnah which is called the "Palestinian Talmud," it was the tradition
of the Babylonian academies, far vaster because they continued for so
many more centuries, that is the Talmud _per se_, that great work of
2,947 folio leaves. Were we to continue the tradition further, we might
show how often this vast legal compilation was the subject of further
commentary, discussion and deduction by yet later scholars. But that
takes us beyond our theme and is another story.
In forming an estimate of these laws, we must first remember that they
belonged to the days when religion and state were one. So we shall find
priestly laws mixed up with police laws, sanitary regulations side by
side with regulations of sanctity, the injunctions teaching political
economy and morality almost in the same line. It should rather then be
compared to codes of law than to religious scriptures, though often
there the comparison would be incomplete, since the religious atmosphere
pervaded even the most secular circumstance of the life of the Jew.
There was no secular. The meanest function in life must be brought in
relation to the great Divine. This must be understood in studying the
Talmud, this must be understood in studying the Jew. As law, it compares
favorably with the Roman code--its contemporary in part. In the
treatment of a criminal it is almost quixotically humane. It abhors the
shedding of blood, and no man can be put to death on circumstantial
evidence. Many of its injunctions are intensely minute and
hair-splitting to the extreme of casuistry. Yet these elements are
familiar in the interpretation of law, not only in the olden time, but
in some measure even to-day. There are instances where Talmudic law is
tenderer than the Biblical; for example, the _lex talionis_ is softened
into an equivalent.
Yet the legal does not form the whole of the Talmud, nor perhaps the
part that would most interest the casual reader or the world at large.
It is the dry, prosaic half. There is a poetic half, let us say a
homiletic half, what we call Agada, as distinct from the legal portion
called Halacha. The term Agada, "narrative," is wofully insufficient to
describe the diverse material that falls under this head, for it
comprehends all the discursive elements that come up in the legal
discussions in the old Babylonian and Palestinian academies. These
elements are occasionally biographical,--fragments of the lives of the
great scholars, occasionally historical,--little bits of Israel's long
tragedy, occasionally didactic,--facts, morals, life lessons taught by
the way; occasionally anecdotic, stories told to relieve the monotony of
discussion; not infrequently fanciful; bits of philosophy, old
folk-lore, weird imaginings, quaint beliefs, superstitions and humor.
They are presented haphazard, most irrelevantly introduced in between
the complex discussions, breaking the thread that however is never lost,
but always taken up again.
From this point of view the Talmud is a great maze and apparently the
simplest roads lead off into strange, winding by-paths. It is hard to
deduce any distinct system of ethics, any consistent philosophy, any
coherent doctrine. Yet patience rewards the student here too, and from
this confused medley of material, he can build the intellectual world of
the early mediæval Jew. In the realm of doctrine we find that "original
sin," "vicarious atonement," and "everlasting punishment," are denied.
Man is made the author of his own salvation. Life beyond the grave is
still progressive; the soul is pre-existent.
A suggestion of the wit and wisdom of the Talmud may be gathered from
the following quotations:--
A single light answers as well for a hundred men as for one.
The ass complains of cold even in July.
A myrtle in the desert remains a myrtle.
Teach thy tongue to say, "I do not know."
Hospitality is an expression of Divine worship.
Thy friend has a friend, and thy friend's friend has a friend;
be discreet.
Attend no auctions if thou hast no money.
Rather flay a carcass, than be idly dependent on charity.
The place honors not the man, 'tis the man who gives honor to the place.
Drain not the waters of thy well while other people may desire them.
The rose grows among thorns.
Two pieces of coin in one bag make more noise than a hundred.
The rivalry of scholars advances science.
Truth is heavy, therefore few care to carry it.
He who is loved by man is loved by God.
Use thy noble vase to-day; to-morrow it may break.
The soldiers fight and the kings are heroes.
Commit a sin twice, it will seem a sin no longer.
The world is saved by the breath of the school children.
A miser is as wicked as an idolater.
Do not make woman weep, for God counts her tears.
The best preacher is the heart; the best teacher time;
the best book the world; the best friend God.
The philosophy in the Talmud, rather than the philosophy of it, has been
made the subject of separate treatment just as the whole of the Agada
has been drawn out of the Talmud and published as a separate work.
What is the Talmud to the Jew to-day? It is literature rather than law.
He no longer goes to the voluminous Talmud to find specific injunction
for specific need. Search in that vast sea would be tedious and
unfruitful. Its legal portion has long been codified in separate
digests. Maimonides was the first to classify Talmudic law. Still later
one Ascheri prepared a digest called the "Four Rows," in which the
decisions of later Rabbis were incorporated. But it was the famous
Shulchan Aruch (a prepared table) written by Joseph Caro in the
sixteenth century, that formed the most complete code of Talmudic law
enlarged to date, and accepted as religious authority by the orthodox
Jews to-day.
I have already referred to the literature that has grown out of the
Talmud. The "Jewish Encyclopedia" treats every law recognized by nations
from the Talmudic stand-point. This will give the world a complete
Talmudic point of view. In speaking of it as literature, it lacks
perhaps that beauty of form in its language which the stricter demand as
literature _sine qua non_, and yet its language is unique. It is
something more than terse, for many a word is a whole sentence. Written
in Aramaic, it contains many words in the languages of the nations with
whom Israel came in contact--Greek, Roman, Persian, and words from other
tongues.
Like the Jew, the Talmud has had a history, almost as checkered as that
of its creator. Like him it was singled out for persecution. Louis IX.
burned twenty-four cart-loads of Talmuds in Paris. Its right of survival
had often been wrested through church synods and councils. It has been
banned, it has been excommunicated, it has been made the subject of
popish bulls; but it was in the sixteenth century that the Benedictine
Monks made a particular determined effort to destroy it. Fortunately
they knew not the times. It was the age of Humanism, the forerunner of
the Reformation, and the Talmud found its ablest defender in the great
Christian humanist, John Reuchlin. He was the one first to tell his
co-religionists, "Do not condemn the Talmud before you understand it.
Burning is no argument. Instead of burning all Jewish literature, it
were better to found chairs in the universities for its exposition." The
cause of liberality and light gained the day, and the printing-press
decided the perpetuation of the Talmud.
In the second stage of its persecution the censor figures. His
Philistine pen passed ruthlessly over everything that seemed to hint at
criticism of the Church; but not content with expunging the heretical
and the inferentially heretical, the censor at times went even so far as
to erase sentiments particularly lofty, in order that the Talmud should
not have the credit of expounding noble doctrine, nor the Jew the
advantage of studying it.
But the latest stage of its persecution belongs to more modern days,
when inquisitions were out of date and monkish claws were cut. The
traducer would spitefully engage the services of some renegade Jew, to
gather from the Talmud all portions and passages that might seem
grotesque and ridiculous, so that the world might form an unfavorable
impression of the Talmud and of the people who treasure it. This has
been done with so much success that up till very recently the Gentile
world, including the Christian clergy, knew of the Talmud only through
these unfortunate perversions and caricatures. Imagine the citation of a
chapter from _Leviticus_ and one from _Chronicles_, of some vindictive
passages in the _Psalms_, of a few skeptical bits in _Ecclesiastes_ and
_Job_, and one or two of the barbaric stories in _Judges_, to be offered
to the world as a fair picture of the Bible, and you will understand the
sort of treatment the Talmud has received from the world at large and
the kind of estimate it has been given opportunity to form.
What is the value of the Talmud for the Jew? Certainly its greatest
value was rendered in the Middle Ages, when literature was scant and
copies of the few books in existence were rarer. When the Jew was shut
out of the world's pleasure and the world's culture and barred up in
Ghetto slums, then it was that the Talmud became his recreation and his
consolation, feeding his mind and his faith. In this way it not only
became in the Middle Ages a picture of the Jew, but largely formed his
character. It made him a keen dialectician, tempered with a thoughtful
and poetic touch. It fostered his patience and his humor and kept vivid
his ideals. It linked him with the Orient, while living in the Occident
and made him a bridge between the old and the new.
To the world at large it has great value archæologically. Here are
preserved ancient laws, glint lights on past history, forgotten forms in
the classic tongues, and pictures of old civilization. No one criticism
can cover the whole work. It is so many-sided. It includes so many
different standards of worth and value. If we take it as a whole, it is
good, it is bad and indifferent; it is trash and it is treasure; it is
dust and it is diamonds; it is potsherd and it is pearls; and in the
hands of impartial scholars, it is one of the great monuments of mental
achievement, one of the world's wonders.