II — (a) Rabbinism
We have described the three fatal wars at some length, because the wonderful history of the Jewish race entered upon an entirely new phase after the disastrous termination of the third of these terrible revolts. From the year of our Lord 134–5 they ceased to be a nation and became wanderers over the earth.
Yet in numbers and influence they can scarcely be said to have diminished. They amalgamated with no nation; they remained a marked and separate people, and so they continue to this day, though well-nigh eighteen long and troubled centuries have passed since the great ruin.
To what earthly cause is this marvellous preservation of the Jews to be attributed? Unhesitatingly we reply, Not to the rise of Rabbinism,—it had long existed among the Chosen People,—but to the development and consolidation of Rabbinism and to the famous outcome of Rabbinism, the Talmud.
The traditional history of Rabbinism and the beginning of the marvellous Rabbinic book, the Talmud, is given in the Mishnah treatise “Pirke Aboth” (Sayings of the Fathers). It is as follows:—
Moses received the written Law (the Torah) on Mount Sinai. He also received from the Eternal a further Law, illustrative of the written Law. This second Law was known as the “Law upon the lip.” This was never committed to writing, but was handed down from generation to generation. Moses committed this oral Law to Joshua; Joshua committed it to the Elders; the Elders committed it to the Prophets; the Prophets handed on the sacred tradition of “the Words of the Eternal” to the Men of the Great Synagogue. These last are regarded as the fathers of “Rabbinism.” Maimonides tells us that these fathers of “Rabbinism” succeeded each other (to the number of 120), commencing with the prophet Haggai, B.C. 520, who in the Talmud is described as the Expounder of the oral Law. The last member of the “Great Synagogue” was Simon the Just, circa B.C. 301.
After Simon the Just a succession of eminent teachers known as the “Couples” handed down the sacred traditions of the “Law upon the lip” to the time of Hillel and Shammai, when we approach to the Christian era. Hillel, according to the Talmudic tradition, is said to have lived 100 years before the destruction of Jerusalem, A.D. 70, and thus to have been a contemporary of Herod the Great.
Very little really is known of the “Men of the Great Synagogue,” or of the ten “Couples” who succeeded them; little more than their names has been preserved. It is scarcely probable that in each generation only a pair of specially distinguished scholars should have lived. Most likely just ten names were known, and they were formed into five pairs or couples of contemporaries, after the fashion of the last and most famous pair, Hillel and Shammai. But from the times of Hillel and Shammai we have abundant historical testimony as to the existence and labours of the Rabbinic schools. Well-nigh all that we have related in the above passage is purely traditionary. There is no doubt a basis of truth in the account we have given, but the contemporary history is too scanty for us to describe this relation in the treatise “Pirke Aboth,” which thus connects the Mishnah compilation in a direct chain with Moses, as anything more than a widely circulated legendary and traditional story.
We can, however, certainly assert that the foundations of the teaching of the school of Rabbinism which, after the great ruin of the year of Grace 70, began to exercise a paramount influence over the fortunes of the Jewish race, were laid at a very early period, several hundred years before the Christian era.
There is no doubt that Hillel and Shammai founded or, more accurately speaking, developed the existing Rabbinic schools and gathered into them large numbers of disciples. The great development of Rabbinism which is ascribed to the two famous teachers Hillel and Shammai was evidently owing to the complete absorption of Palestine by Rome, under the baleful influence of the royalty of Herod the Great; these causes were gradually undermining Judaism, not only in a political but also in its religious aspect. Hillel and Shammai were fervid and earnest Jews, and were determined to infuse a new religious spirit into the nation. Still, it is more than probable that all this early Rabbinism would scarcely have been more than a school of curious literary speculation, and perhaps would not have seriously and permanently influenced the life of the Jewish people, had it not been for the awful events of the year A.D. 70. When Jerusalem ceased to exist, and the Temple was finally destroyed, then Christianity emerged from the heart of Judaism, and gathered into its fold many of the Chosen People.
What happened in the year A.D. 70 had a tremendous effect on the life of the Jews,—far more than the ordinary historian usually assigns to it. It has been tersely but truly said that, “unparalleled as were the calamities which attended the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple, by far the most terrible of all was the total collapse of Judaism as a Creed, owing to the annihilation of all the divinely instituted means of access to God. The religious pulse of the nation ceased to beat, as it were, with a suddenness most appalling. We hear nothing of the Sadducees in those days,... they were swept away like chaff before the tempest never to appear any more; but the Pharisees, to whom the Rabbis and Scribes belonged, remained steadfast, and, collecting the poor remnant of the people around them, determined to infuse new life into them.”
Mosaism was irretrievably destroyed in the year of our Lord 70, but the foundations of Rabbinism had, as we have noticed, been laid long before. It was only necessary to consolidate it, to give it shape and form, and to claim for the words of its expounders a yet higher authority than had as yet been conceded even to the written Law (the Torah). And this was done, or more accurately speaking was commenced, in the last twenty or thirty years of the first century (the years immediately following the catastrophe of A.D. 70) by the disciples of Rabban Jochanan ben Zacchai, who were certainly the earliest elaborators of the Mishnah,151 the first and oldest part of the famous Talmud.