IV The Talmud
One156 who loved with a love passionate, though not always discriminating, this vast wondrous compilation which has so marvellously affected the fortunes of the Chosen People, has written the following words: “The origin of the Talmud is coeval with the return from the Babylonish Captivity (some five centuries before Christ). One of the most mysterious and momentous periods in the history of humanity is that brief span of the Exile. What were the influences brought to bear upon the captives during that time we know not. But this we know, that from a reckless, lawless, godless populace they returned transformed into a band of Puritans.... The change is there, palpable, unmistakable—a change we may regard as almost miraculous. Scarcely aware before of the existence of their glorious national literature, the people now began to press round these brands plucked from the fire, the scanty records of their faith and history, with a fierce and passionate love, a love stronger than that of wife and child. These same documents, as they were gradually formed into a canon, became the immutable centre of their lives, their actions, their thoughts, their very dreams. From that time forth, with scarcely any intermission, the keenest as well as the most practical minds of the nation remained fixed upon them. Turn it, and turn it again, says the Talmud with regard to the Bible, for everything is in it.”
After the fall of the City and the burning of the Temple in A.D. 70 the wonderful records of the Jew and his Book (the Talmud) are all clear and definite. How it was composed, who compiled it, and why it was put out, all this belongs to history, and forms a most important though little known chapter in the annals of the Chosen People; in some respects also it is a most weighty piece of evidential history—perhaps the most weighty—possessed by Christianity.
But some of the materials out of which the great Book (the Talmud), which has so enormously influenced the fortunes of the Chosen People for so many centuries, was composed, existed before the catastrophe of A.D. 70. We will briefly examine what we know of the ancient materials of the Talmud; the examination will be of the highest interest.
It is certain that very early—no doubt in the far-back days of Moses—there must have existed, as we have already suggested, a number of explanatory laws which set forth in detail many of the laws and regulations broadly laid down in the original written code of the great lawgiver. Questions must have been asked again and again—To what cases in actual life the brief written precept applied, what consequences it in general entailed, and what was to be done that the commandments might be fairly, even rigidly observed. In a number of cases the original written Law gave no direct answer.
To supply this need a body of Halachah (the word Halachah, as we have stated, signifies rule, practice, custom) gathered round the written Law (the Torah). Some of these Halachah, tradition said, were given by Moses himself; others were said to have been devised by that primitive council of the desert wanderings, the elders, and by their successors, the later “judges within the gates,” referred to in the Pentateuch. As time went on the Halachah or authoritative oral Law of explanation no doubt formed an important branch of the studies pursued in those schools of the prophets founded by Samuel in the early days of the monarchy—schools of which we know so little, but which throughout the pre-exilic days evidently played a part in the life of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
On the return from the Captivity, some five centuries before the Christian era, the remnant of the nation who returned to their desolated land came back a changed people—“a band of Puritans” we have, with scarcely any exaggeration, termed them; while the Divine Law which once many, perhaps the majority, of the people neglected, the very existence of which they had ignored, almost forgotten, became the object of their passionate love.
During the period of exile, of which we know so little but in the course of which the great change to which we have been dimly alluding passed over the people, the memory of the oral Law, much of the ancient Halachah, the traditions, the sacred expositions which make up the Haggadah, were kept alive by teachers, in the first instance by the men who had been trained in the schools of the prophets. Then after the return from exile the study of all these treasured memories—some, as we have already suggested, possibly dating from the days of Moses—which surrounded the now precious Law, received a new development. The Law, the Halachah, the traditions generally known as Haggadah, were no longer the mere heritage of the scholars who composed the somewhat mysterious schools of the prophets we read of in the days of the kings, but were now regarded as the precious treasure of the whole nation.
As the Divine Law rose in public estimation its scientific study and exposition became a great and popular craft. Every individual of the nation was interested in knowing it and obeying it. A numerous and independent class or guild arose which made its investigation and study the chief business of life. These men were known as the Scribes; they became the recognised teachers of the nation. Some of them were men of independent means, but the majority practised some trade or business out of which they lived. They were tent-makers, sandal-makers, weavers, carpenters, tanners, bakers, etc., but the study of the Law was their loved occupation, and some of them attained great proficiency in their work. Such a class of men had never existed in any people before—has never made its appearance since in any nation.157
This study of the Law became a veritable science, a science that gradually assumed the very widest dimensions. The name given to it is “Midrash”—interpretation, and it included study, meditation, exposition, investigation, inquiry. The men of the “Return from Exile” who devoted themselves to this work took as the foundation of their labours, first the written Law of Moses, then gradually the records of the Prophets and the other writings subsequently included in the Old Testament canon; and to this material was added the oral Law, or such portion of it which had been preserved, including the sacred traditions which had been handed down from the days of Moses and his successors, and treasured up in the schools of the prophets. In this “Midrash”—for we will keep to the well-known term which generally included all this varied and comprehensive study of the Scribes who lived in the period between the Return from the Exile and the Christian era—two distinct currents can be distinguished. The first of these great currents may be termed Prose, the second Poetry. The first (the prose) is called Halachah (rules, customs); the second (the poetry), Haggadah (tradition and legend, including parable, allegory, lessons).158
The Halachah (rules) for a very long period were never written down, but were transmitted from teacher to teacher in an unbroken succession, orally, with many and various additions. The Haggadah (traditions) in many cases were, however, written down, and so transmitted.
Thus from the period of the Return from the Exile a vast bulk of teaching, largely unwritten, traditional, and legendary, all founded on and closely bearing on the Law (Torah), had been collected by the Scribes and their schools stretching over a period of about five centuries. Some thirty years before the Christian era Hillel, the great Rabbinic master of the period, endeavoured to reduce this great mass of teaching, oral and written, rule and tradition, Halachah and Haggadah, to some definite system and order. He did something in this direction, but died before his task was in any real way completed, and for many years nothing further was done in the way of codifying or arrangement.
Then came the great upheaval of A.D. 70, when the Holy City was razed to the ground; when it appeared as though the religion of the Jew was destroyed, now that the Temple round which all the cherished memories of the people were grouped had disappeared. Curiously enough, as it appears to men, the contrary was the case: a wonderful resurrection of religious life was the almost immediate outcome of the fall of the City and Temple.
A group of singularly able and devoted men, as we have already remarked, arose at this critical moment in Jewish history—when all seemed lost. Judaism in the year 70, when the long and bitter war with Rome was finally closed, was stripped of everything. It had lost for ever its position as a nation. Its Temple, the joy of the whole world, as their royal songman pictured it, was a heap of shapeless ruins. Its most sacred treasures were carried away to adorn an Italian triumph. The Holy City was literally razed to the ground. The promised land of their fathers was desolated. Thousands of the people were slain or reduced to slavery. Of the Jews who dwelt as strangers in Egypt, Syria, and Italy—the very name was hated and despised. Only one thing remained to the sad remnant of the Chosen People: the sacred Law of Moses, the Torah—the writings of their old prophets—their treasured Psalms—the undying records of their past glorious history.
And these precious writings, and the wonderful body of rule and tradition, oral and written, which had gathered round them, the Halachah and Haggadah of the Scribes, collected during the previous four or five centuries,—these were saved from the awful wreck, and a group of devoted Jews gathered them together, and with them at once proceeded to train up a new and a yet greater and more influential people than had ever before worshipped the Eternal of Hosts, even in the golden days of their mighty kings David and Solomon; but the foundation stories of the grandeur of the new Israel were not to be built with human materials. No army, no strong fortress, no stately city, not even a visible temple made with hands after the fashion of the glorious lost House of God, were for the future to rank among the proud and cherished possessions of the Jew. Only the Divine Law given him direct from God the One Supreme, the Everlasting, for the future was to represent to the Jew home and hearth, family and nation, City and Temple.
If the Jews—the scattered harassed remnant who survived the bloody Roman war of Titus—would with heart and soul keep the precepts of the Divine Law, what mattered insult and cruelty, human scorn and malice, suffering and misery for a little season; for eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, the beatitude which awaited the Jew who loved the Torah. This was the teaching of that group of fervid and devoted men who, so to speak, arose out of the ashes of the ruins of Jerusalem and the Temple. And the sad remnant of the people hearkened to this teaching, and with heart and soul revered the Law, the Torah of their God.
All this is no mere rhetoric, strange though it reads: it is plain unvarnished history.
Undismayed by the crushing ruin of A.D. 70, the chief Rabbinic leaders, when Jerusalem was destroyed, re-established their schools at Jamnia (Jabne), a town close to the sea, south of Joppa. They had little sympathy with the extreme party of Nationalists, the Zealots; for they saw that any serious conflict with Rome was utterly hopeless, so they diverted the thoughts and aspirations of the survivors of the great revolt into other channels. The cult of the Law henceforward must be the work of Israel. They were wonderfully successful, and soon infused into the heart of the Chosen People something of their burning zeal; for what they taught, they maintained, were the very words and commands of the Eternal of Hosts.
A great master, Jochanan ben Zacchai, soon made the new school of Jamnia a notable centre of the new work. We use the term “new”; for although Rabbinism and the scientific study of the Law had existed long before the events of A.D. 70, it received a fresh and striking impulse when the Temple and City existed no longer.
Round the chair of Jochanan gathered quickly a band of faithful disciples who shared in the quiet enthusiasm of the great master, and in the last twenty-five or thirty years of the fatal century which had witnessed the terrible victory of Titus, the real foundations of the Talmud, which united and bound together the Chosen People for centuries, which preserved them from disintegration and welded them once more into one great race, were laid.
Rome allowed this new spirit to grow up among the remnant of the people she had crushed, and made no effort to interfere with the Jamnia Rabbinic school. The statesmen of the Empire were quite content that the restless people, so long a danger to the State, should turn its attention to other matters unconnected with aspirations after independence. It was no doubt with some contempt that they witnessed the growth of the new spirit among the turbulent nation. It was nothing to Rome—this singular devotion to an old Law and a traditional revelation which the Jew considered divine. They little thought that the Jew and his ancient Law would outlive the mighty Empire of which they were so proud, and that the despised and crushed race and its cherished belief would influence in a marvellous way the civilized world for hundreds of years after Rome had become the mere shadow of a name.
The great Jewish revolt of A.D. 117 had little influence upon the fortunes and wonderful growth of the Rabbinic schools, the chief seat of which was in Palestine. The scenes of that rebellion and its ghastly punishment were far removed from Palestine, and what happened in Cyrene, Egypt, and Cyprus only slightly affected the dwellers in the old Land of Promise.
But the next revolt—the rebellion we have termed the third great Jewish war—had a different scene. Once more Palestine witnessed a dangerous and bloody war, when Bar-cochab, a mistaken enthusiast and patriot, raised again the standard of rebellion against Rome, and, asserting that he was the long-looked-for Messiah, gave this last formidable Jewish rising the character of a religious war.
As a rule the great masters of the new Rabbinic schools were out of sympathy with the Zealots who had risen against Rome in this last disastrous revolt; but one of their number, the famous Rabbi Akiba, curiously enough, had espoused their cause, and certain others of the more eminent Rabbinic teachers, no doubt owing to his influence, had rallied to the cause of Bar-cochab in the desperate and hopeless struggle.
Rabbi Akiba occupies among the early group of founders of the Talmud, who flourished from circa A.D. 70 to circa A.D. 190, perhaps the most prominent position. He was even termed the “second Moses,” so sought after were his teachings and expositions of the sacred Law, and its subsequent explanations and additions—the Halachah. He gathered round him not only a host of younger pupils, but among his disciples were numbered a group of Rabbis who became subsequently the chief teachers of their day and time. It has been often asked what induced this great Rabbinic scholar and teacher to throw in his lot with a wild enthusiast like Bar-cochab, and to support that impostor’s baseless claim to be recognized as the promised Messiah.
The answer perhaps is that Akiba, in common with others of the new school of Rabbinism, which aimed at restoring the fallen Judaism by means of an enthusiastic devotion to the Divine Law, recognised that in Christianity must be sought and found the most dangerous foe to the Rabbinic conception of the Chosen People. After the fall of the City and Temple, and the breaking up of every national and religious bond, there was grave danger that the Jewish people would become absorbed among the Gentile Christians. It is probable that already some of the Rabbis were secretly persuaded of the truth of the Gospel story. Rabbi Akiba was, however, one of the most energetic opponents of Christianity, and he welcomed the appearance of the pseudo-Messiah Bar-cochab as a rival to Jesus of Nazareth.
But great though the influence of Akiba was, for he persuaded some Jews, he evidently did not carry the bulk of the Rabbinic teachers with him, for the Talmud execrates the name of Bar-cochab, though it ever mentions the name of Akiba with the deepest and tenderest veneration. The great learning and the devoted behaviour of the loved teacher under the most excruciating tortures which accompanied his execution by the Roman government, saved his memory from the bitter reproaches with which the Talmud speaks of Bar-cochab and the authors of the last ill-fated and useless revolt.159
Akiba is ever remembered as one of the greatest of this wonderful group of Talmud founders, as well as a very noble martyr.
Rabbi Akiba’s work was not limited to exposition and explanation and elaborate discussions in the academies of the traditional Halachah or oral comments on the Law of Moses. He was virtually the first160 who attempted to codify and arrange the vast accumulation of these Halachah and Haggadah, and to reduce them into something like order and arrangement. Some years after Akiba’s death, about the middle of the second century, his most famous disciple, the Rabbi Meir, who is known in the Talmud as the “Light of the Law,” took up his master Akiba’s work, and went on with arranging and codifying the Halachah, introducing, however, many more Halachah into his codification, and supplementing and illustrating his expositions with many interesting traditions (Haggadah)161; thus preparing the way for the more elaborate collection or recension of Rabbi Judah Ha-Nasi—the Holy—who is known in the Talmud as “Rabbi”—the Rabbi par excellence. “Rabbi’s” great work of codification may be dated about the years A.D. 200–19, or thereabouts.
The work of “Rabbi,” somewhat enlarged and recast, is with us still. It represents fairly the Mishnah which was used as the text of the great Gemara162 commentaries compiled in the schools of Palestine and Babylonia163 between the end of the second century and the last years of the sixth century. The Mishnah of “Rabbi,” which was largely based upon the collections of Rabbi Akiba and his disciple Rabbi Meir, and the Gemaras of Palestine and Babylonia,163 compiled in centuries three, four, five, and six, make up the Talmud.
There was a strict traditional interdiction which dated back at least to the centuries which followed the Return from the Exile, if not earlier, against ever committing the Halachah and the discussions of the Scribes upon the Halachah to writing. The latest Jewish scholars have decided that to a certain extent the interdiction was removed by “Rabbi” in the very early years of the third century, or at the close of the second century.
We may assume, then, with tolerable certainty that “Rabbi” in his old age reduced the great collection of Halachah to writing, transgressing, in a way, the ancient tradition which forbade this. He seems to have considered that the prohibition, if maintained in its ancient strictness, might endanger the preservation of the precious teaching.
“Rabbi” did not entirely abrogate the interdiction, for the oral method of instruction continued during the period of the Gemara discussions in Palestine and in Babylonia: the teacher alone using the written Halachah, which made up the redaction of the Mishnah by “Rabbi” as a guide; the pupils, however, always repeating the lesson orally.
Before the fall of Jerusalem the great Sanhedrim was the ultimate resort for decisions in the law, though it is true that as a rule it accepted the Law as developed by the great teachers; but still, “from thence,” i.e. from the Sanhedrim, as the Mishnah says, “proceeded the Law for all Israel.” But after A.D. 70 the great Sanhedrim ceased to exist. This of course gave a very marked increase in prestige and power to the acknowledged leading Rabbis or Masters in the Rabbinic schools.
The principal task of these doctors was to teach the Law. The ideal was that every Israelite should have a knowledge of this Divine Law. Of course, this ideal was unattainable, but the famous Rabbis without doubt gathered round them great numbers who longed for special instruction in what had come to be looked on as the glory and hope of their race. “Bring up many scholars” was a famous ancient saying.
The instruction in the Palestinian schools of Jamnia and Lydda, and a little later more especially at Tiberias, and also in the famous Babylonian schools such as Sura,164 Nehardea, and Pumbeditha, consisted in a continual exercise of the memory. The oral Law before the days of “Rabbi,” at the close of the second century, was never committed to writing, the teacher repeating his matter again and again. This invariable method of teaching in the Rabbinical schools was the origin of the term Mishnah (repetition).165
The system of teaching was absolutely different from that of our modern colleges and universities. The masters of the various schools did not confine themselves to giving lectures which the pupils could take down. Here all was busy life, excitement, debate; question was met by question, and countless questions and answers were given, wrapped up in allegory, parable, and legend,—of course under the guidance and direction of the head of the academy.
A most interesting picture of the inner life and organization of the Rabbinical schools or academies in which the Talmud was slowly and deliberately composed is given in the vast and scholarly Jewish Encyclopædia (completed in the year 1906). A very brief précis of this is attempted here. The date of the picture in question is as late as the tenth century, and refers especially to a comparatively late period in the Rabbinical work; but much of it goes back to the time of the Amoraim, the earliest Rabbis of the Gemara, who were the teachers from the first part of the third century.
It may be taken as an account and general description of the method in which the two versions of the Talmud were composed, in Palestine as well as in Babylonia, in such academical centres of Rabbinism as Sura and Tiberias. The picture especially refers to the Babylonian academies of Pumbeditha and Sura, but without doubt a very similar procedure was followed in the Palestinian academy of Tiberias.
The students or disciples appear to have assembled twice every year, the discussion and instruction lasting four weeks.
In the month Elah at the close of the summer, and in the month Adar at the end of the winter, the disciples desiring instruction in the sacred Law journeyed to the academy, say of Sura, or of Pumbeditha, from their various abodes, having carefully studied and prepared during the previous five months the special treatise of the Mishnah announced at the academy at the close of the preceding session by the head of the Rabbinic school as the subject for discussion at the next session.
They at once presented themselves on arriving at Sura to the head of the academy, who proceeded to examine them on the treatise of the Mishnah fixed beforehand.
They sat in the following order or rank: seventy of the senior or principal pupils were placed nearest to the head, or president, of the school, the number seventy being a reminiscence of the great Sanhedrim.
Behind these seventy sat the other disciples and members of the academy.
The foremost row—the seventy—recited aloud the subject-matter of the discussion and of instruction which were to follow; they recited, too, any passage which seemed to require especial consideration, which they debated among themselves, the “head,” or president, all the while silently taking notes of the debate.
The “head” after this lectured generally on the treatise, the subject of the discussion, adding an exposition of those special passages which had given rise to the debate.
Sometimes in the course of his lecture the “head” asked a question as to how the disciples would explain a certain Halachah. The question had to be answered by the scholars he chose to name. After the answer or answers had been received the “head” added his own exposition of the Halachah in question.
Subsequently one of the “seventy” senior students gave an address, summing up the arguments which had arisen out of the theme—the Halachah—which they had been considering.
In the fourth week of the session the “seventy” and other of the students were examined individually by the “head” of the academy.
Questions received from various quarters were also discussed for final solution. The “head” listened, and finally formulated his decisions, which were written down. The results of the meeting of the academy during the month of session were finally signed by the “head” of the academy.
The details and comments contained in the foregoing sections of the Fifth Book (“The Jew and the Talmud”) are mainly confined to the great official work of Rabbinic Judaism known as the Talmud, made up of the Mishnah and its commentary, the Gemara.
But besides this vast compilation, it must be borne in mind that there exists an enormous mass of Rabbinic literature outside the Talmud, such as the non-canonical Mishnah, the Targumim, the Midrashim, the Kabbala, etc. Some of this dates from a very early period, and possesses a high authority among the recognized Jewish teachers.
Most of these extra-Talmudical writings are Haggadic in character.