VI Concluding Memoranda
The Talmudical View of the Inspiration of the Scripture
We read in the Mishnah such statements as the following: “He who asserts that the Torah is not from heaven has no part in the world to come.” (Sanhedrim, x. 7.)
As time went on this view of inspiration was held with increasing strictness. At first the commands of “the Law” were all that was signified in such a saying as the one just quoted, but gradually the whole Pentateuch was included in this assertion of the direct Divine authority; in the Mishnah we read startling sayings, such as we have already given, viz.: “He who says that Moses wrote even one word of his own knowledge is a denier and despiser of the Word of God.” (Sanhedrim, 99.) Even the last verses of Deuteronomy which tell of the death of Moses were affirmed to have been written by Moses himself,—having been dictated to him by Divine revelation.
The only point in dispute was whether the whole Torah was given to Moses by God complete at once, or handed to him by volumes. (Gittin 60a.)
In course of time Divine inspiration was taught as belonging to the Prophets and the Hagiographa, to the Mishnah, the Talmud, and even to the Haggadah.
A very singular anticipatory revelation was believed to have been made on Sinai to the prophets. In “Shemoth Rabba” we read: “What the prophets were about to prophesy in every generation they receive from Mount Sinai.” The revelation was apparently made to the souls of those about to be created. And so Isaiah is represented as saying: “From the day that the Torah was given on Mount Sinai, there I was and received this prophecy,—and now the Lord God and His Spirit have sent me.”167
The Talmud conta ins a somewhat similar curious teaching as regards “Miracles”—the course of creation was not disturbed by them, they were all primarily existing, as well as pre-ordained. They were “created” at the end of all things, in the gloaming of the sixth day. Creation, together with these so-called exceptions, once established, nothing could be altered in it. The laws of nature went on by their own immutable force, however much evil might spring therefrom.
The Talmud — Its Story Through the Ages
The wonderful Jewish book—the Talmud—cannot complain of neglect or of oblivion. Never has any writing in the whole human history been so hated and hunted down. It has been proscribed and burnt again and again. Before the marvellous compilation was fully completed the Emperor Justinian, in A.D. 553, condemned it by name. Then for more than a thousand years anathemas, edicts of the sternest condemnation, were issued against the Jewish sacred volume which has done so much for the Chosen People.
Emperors, kings, and Popes in all lands and in every age have warred against it in each succeeding century. It was forbidden, cursed, often publicly burnt.
To give an average example of the spirit with which it was universally condemned by Christians, we would refer to a letter of Pope Honorius IV to the Archbishop of Canterbury (A.D. 1286), in which he speaks of the Talmud as “that damnable Book,” desiring him “to see that it is read by no one, since all evils flow out of it.”
At last, after it had been put out about 1000 years, in the dawn of the Reformation a great Christian scholar arose who defended it. Reuchlin, the most eminent Hellenist and Hebraist of his time, remonstrated against the wild and ignorant prejudice with which Christian men regarded this wonderful compilation. Long and bitter was the controversy, but the patient scholar, although formally condemned for his noble advocacy of the great Jewish book, in the end triumphed, and the Talmud this time was not burned but printed, and since Reuchlin’s time has been allowed to live on unmolested. In our day and time it has come to be regarded as one of the great works of the world, although among Christian folk its contents are comparatively unknown; while its surpassing influence in the past is acknowledged in the scholar community, which recognizes neither land nor race.
It has been curiously suggested that the Talmud contains many of the divine sayings of our Lord recorded in the Gospels. The fact really is, that while some few of the beautiful words of Christ are without doubt to be found in the Talmud, it is only such sayings as are common to other great teachers and thinkers, such as Seneca and the Emperor Marcus Antoninus. However, it is more than probable that the Child Jesus was conversant with some of the more striking maxims of the early Rabbis and teachers, such as Hillel and the elder Gamaliel, and that occasionally sayings of theirs are repeated in the Gospel teaching. But it is beyond all doubt that the general spirit of Rabbinism which lives through the pages of the Talmud—in the Mishnah and Gemara—was absolutely at variance with the spirit of Jesus Christ and His disciples.
To take two notable examples—the position of women and the exclusive position of Israel. The Gospel teaching is completely different on the position of women from what we find in the authoritative teaching of the Talmud treatises. With our Lord the woman was the equal in all respects of the man, in this world and in the world to come.168 The striking inferiority of women in Israel is brought forward again and again in the sayings of the great Rabbis. We would quote a very few of their authoritative Talmudical teachings here:—
R. Meir—second century (Mishnah): “A man is bound to repeat three benedictions every day.” One of these was, “Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, who hast not made me a woman.”
And again: “Are not slaves and women in the same category? The slave is more degraded.”
“Blessed is the man whose children are sons, but luckless is he whose children are daughters.” (Baba-Bathra.)
“The testimony of one hundred women is only equal to the evidence of one man.” (Yevamoth.)
The stern exclusiveness of Israel is pressed constantly in the Talmud. This is diametrically opposed to the New Testament teaching so conclusively formulated by S. Peter (Acts x. 34, 35): “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him.”
While in the Talmud we read—
“Almsgiving exalteth a nation [that is, Israel],... but benevolence is a sin to nations,”—that is to say, for the Gentiles to exercise charity and benevolence is sin. (Compare Baba-Bathra, fol. 10, col. 2.)
And again: “All Israelites have a portion in the world to come.” (Sanhedrim, fol. 90, col. 1.) “The world was created only for Israel; none are called the children of God but Israel, none are beloved before God but Israel.” (Gèrim.)
“Three things did Moses ask of God”:—1. “He asked that the Shekinah (the glory of God) might rest upon Israel.” 2. “That the Shekinah might rest upon none but Israel.” 3. “That God’s ways might be made known unto him: and all these requests were granted.” (Cf. Berachotk, fol. 7, col. 1.)
Such teachings as these from the Talmud might be multiplied indefinitely.
The Authority and Influence of the Talmud on Judaism
The influence of the Talmud on Judaism has been measureless.
In the second, third, fourth, fifth, and part of the sixth centuries which followed the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, the Rabbinic schools of Palestine and Babylonia, where “the great book” was thought out and compiled, became for the scattered people new centres, where the old sacred learning was not only carried on, but made to shine with a yet greater splendour—a splendour never possessed in any of the ages of its long story.
And when the Book (the Talmud) was finally completed in the sixth century it was recognized throughout the scattered Jewish people as having put new life and new meaning into the sacred writings, which to a certain extent, especially in the case of the Ritual Law, naturally, after the fall of the Temple and the Holy City, had lost much of their power and special application.
Then, as time went on, “the Book” became the strongest bond of union between the exiles of the West and East; between the Jews of Rome and Constantinople, of Alexandria and the distant East. And later, when the old Empire of Rome was dissolved and the Teutonic tribes had become masters of the Western world, the Talmud was still the bond of union between all the Jews of “the Dispersion” through the Middle Ages.
Thus the Talmud has for centuries been the link which has welded into one great people all the scattered Jewish race. For every professing Jew has felt that the great compilation embodied all the ancient cherished traditions of the people, and was persuaded that the Talmud in some respects was equal to the Bible, especially as a source of instruction and decision in the problems of religion.
It has preserved and fostered for some fifteen hundred years in the “Dispersion” that spirit of deep religion and strict morality which has kept the Jewish people separate and intact; and be it remembered under the most unfavourable external conditions, for, with certain rare exceptions, since the days of the Emperor Constantine and the victory of Christianity the Jew has been generally hated, despised, persecuted, an exile and a wanderer over the face of the earth.
In the Jewish race the study of the Talmud has awakened and stimulated intellectual activity in an extraordinary degree. Its study has given to the world of letters a vast number of scholars, men of the loftiest character, belonging to the first rank of philosophers and writers, whose works, limited though they mostly are by the Rabbinic area of thought and speculation, have been of high service to civilization.
Among these great ones issuing from the Jews of no one land, and who form a numerous band, it is difficult in this brief study to particularize even the most distinguished, but the following names will at once occur to any competent scholar as prominent examples of famous men of the Rabbinic school, whose works have shed real light on the so-called dark mediæval period:—
| Raschi | A.D. | circa | 1040–1105 |
| Maimonides | ″ | ″ | 1135–1204 |
| D. Kimchi | ″ | ″ | 1158–1235 |
The names, however, of distinguished scholars and writers of the Rabbinic school who have arisen during the last fifteen centuries in different lands might be multiplied almost indefinitely.
And this people is with us still, more influential, probably more numerous, than at any period of its immemorial history. The numbers at the present day are variously computed as amounting to from seven to eleven millions.
The Influence of the Talmud on Christianity
But not only among the Jewish peoples of the “Dispersion” has this strange and wonderful book exercised a surpassing influence, but even among the Christian nations of the world has its spirit percolated, and in a remarkable way has influenced and coloured certain important phases of religious thought and belief.
Among Christian peoples the Talmud is virtually unknown; to well-nigh every individual in the Christian nations it is but the shadow of a name, to the great majority scarcely even that; and yet the profound, the awful reverence for the Old Testament Scriptures which lives among all Christian folk, a reverence that often shades into a passionate love, though they guess it not, springs largely out of the teachings of that great Rabbinic book the Talmud, the very name of which so many have scarcely heard.
For the Mishnah and Gemara which make up the Talmud, the thousand treatises which have been written by learned Rabbis at different periods during the last sixteen hundred years of the Jewish Dispersion, are simply all comments upon, explanations and developments of traditions and history bearing upon the Old Testament Scriptures, the one precious heritage of the Jew handed down from generation to generation of the Chosen People from time immemorial.
This story of the changeless love of the Hebrew race for their ancient writings and records, which the Jew is never weary of reiterating, came to him direct from God Almighty, and has found an echo in unnumbered Christian hearts, and so it has come to pass that the Old Testament Scriptures—the Torah (the Law) of Moses, the Prophets, and the other sacred books—are received to this day with a deep reverential love as the expression of the will of the Eternal of Hosts, alike in Christian Churches as in the Jewish Synagogues.169