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THE TALMUD 
 
 ARSENE DARMESTETER 
 
THE TALMUD' 
 
 BY 
 
 ARSENE DARMESTETER 
 
 Translated from the French by Henrietta Szold 
 
 philadelphia 
 The Jewish Publication Society of America 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 The following passage from the biography of 
 Ars^ne Darmesteter, prefixed to Volume I of his 
 Reliques Scientifiques, deserves quotation, both on 
 account of its criticism of Emanuel Deutsch's 
 brilliant article on the Talmud, which originally 
 appeared in the Quarterly Review iox October, 1867 
 (reprinted as No. 3 of this Special Series), and as 
 an illustration of the phenomenon, often noted in 
 the scientific world, that investigators, wholly in- 
 dependent and perhaps in ignorance of each other, 
 publish work of similar import simultaneously, 
 though the phase of the subject presented may 
 have been completely neglected up to that time. 
 
 The biographer, Ars^ne's equally distinguished 
 brother, James Darmesteter, says (page xv) : " In 
 that period falls his first essay, an essay on the 
 Talmud, in which he undertook to give an idea 
 of the contents of that vast compilation, of its 
 formation and its history, and which, even leaving 
 out of consideration the age of the author," — he 
 was then about nineteen years old — " is a marvel 
 by reason of its precision, clearness, and grasp of 
 the subject. That essay might have sufficed to 
 establish the reputation of an Orientalist and an 
 historian. Unfortunately, Ars^ne did not find the 
 means to publish it. As he was about to finish it, 
 there appeared in an English review an article 
 
O PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 on the Talmud, treating in reality of scarcely any- 
 thing but the Mishna, and written with perfect 
 appreciation of the public to which the journal 
 appealed. It is the model of a superficial, popular, 
 enjoyable exposition. Deutsch's article created a 
 sensation in England, and was translated in France. 
 Coming after it, Arsene's, superior though it was, 
 would have appeared to be inspired by it. It there- 
 fore remained unpublished despite the efforts later 
 on made by M. Gaston Paris to effect its appear- 
 ance in the French reviews. . . . Notwith- 
 standing the great and happy changes brought 
 about in France during the last fifteen years in 
 studies of this kind, which have found a centre at 
 the Ecole des Hautes -Etudes and an organ in the 
 Revue des Etudes j'uives, his article has preserved 
 its originality unimpaired, and even now is unique 
 in our language as a summing up of the vast Tal- 
 mudic chaos." 
 
 In a foot-note, the biographer says : " My brother 
 later retouched his article, and introduced the ref- 
 erences to Deutsch contained therein." The essay, 
 here translated from the Reliques Scientifiques, 
 finally, in 1889, the year following the death of its 
 author, found its way into the Revue des Etudes 
 juives. 
 
 The Translator 
 
THE TALMUD 
 
 The Talmud, exclusive of the vast Rabbinic liter- 
 ature attached to it, represents the uninterrupted 
 work of Judaism from Ezra to the sixth century 
 of the common era, the resultant of all the living 
 forces and of the whole religious activity of a na- 
 tion. If we consider that it is the faithful mirror 
 of the manners, the institutions, the knowledge of 
 the Jews, in a word of the whole of their civiliza- 
 tion in Judea and Babylonia during the prolific 
 centuries preceding and following the advent of 
 Christianity, we shall understand the importance 
 of a work, unique of its kind, in which a whole 
 people has deposited its feelings, its beliefs, its 
 soul. Nothing, indeed, can equal the importance 
 of the Talmud, unless it be the ignorance that pre- 
 vails concerning it. For what is generally known 
 of this book.' At the utmost its name. People 
 have a vague idea that it is a huge, strange, fantas- 
 tic work, written in a still more fantastic style, 
 in which bits of all sorts of more or less exact 
 knowledge, together with dreams -and fables, lie 
 heaped up with the incoherency of complete dis- 
 order. But it has not yet been made plain, that it 
 is the work of a nation, the expression of a social 
 system, and that in virtue thereof it falls under the 
 laws governing the progress of humanity. It is 
 not understood that it is a human product, whose 
 
 (7) 
 
8 THE TALMUD 
 
 origin and development are human, capable of be- 
 ing resolved into laws, and therefore laying claim to 
 scientific analysis. From a very different point of 
 view it has heretofore been studied. Up to the 
 present, this word Talmud has had the power of 
 kindling passions and exciting acrimonious strife. 
 The impartiality of which the author of the Annals 
 boasts, sine ird et studio, should not be expected 
 of those who have written about this book. I have 
 not in mind the last three centuries, during which 
 its study was oftenest inspired by religious passion ; 
 Christian scholars for the most part looking upon 
 it as a monstrosity, an infernal production, which 
 damned the morality of the Jewish people, and 
 the Jews hotly defending the sacredness of a work 
 that was the bulwark of their faith and the em- 
 bodiment of their religious life. Even in our days, 
 when the demand for a more scientific treatment 
 is justified, the Talmud has in general not been 
 accorded impartial criticism, which, rising above 
 polemics, should examine it dispassionately, and 
 consider its nature and growth in the spirit that the 
 physiologist carries into the study of an animal or 
 the philologist into that of the characters of a lan- 
 guage. The Jews of Germany alone in the European 
 world of scholars have built up the science of the 
 Talmud by the application of the critical method, 
 which was unknown to the Jewish historians of 
 the middle ages. About forty years ago, Jost, 
 Zunz, and Rapoport by their learned researches 
 inaugurated the great movement that continues 
 with unabated vigor in our own time. Many 
 
THE TALMUD 9 
 
 names suggest themselves ; among others those 
 of Krochmal, Herzfeld, Graetz, Frankel, and, above 
 all, Geiger, who is remarkable for the assurance 
 and the force of his bold criticism. Their influ- 
 ence is not confined to the Jewish world. Their 
 work has succeeded in obtruding itself upon Prot- 
 estant scholarship, both liberal and orthodox, forc- 
 ing it to invite Talmudic research into the circle 
 of the sciences. But outside of Germany their 
 labors have met with only faint response. In 
 France and England, they have been almost un- 
 known up to the present time, and although special 
 works are beginning -to see the light of day, it is 
 true that in the main nothing of these studies 
 penetrates to the general public on this as on the 
 other side of the Channel. For the benefit of this 
 public, it is proposed in the following pages to give 
 a cursory idea of the Talmud, by reviewing the 
 principal results of German criticism. The first 
 part shall be devoted to the analysis of the Talmud 
 collection and to the examination of its two com- 
 ponent elements, the Halacha ^ and the Haggada. 
 The second part is reserved for the history of the 
 development of the book and of the laws govern- 
 ing it. Finally, after a glance at its vicissitudes 
 during the middle ages and in modern times, we 
 shall indicate what remains for science to do with 
 the Talmud, and what science may expect to find 
 in it for the history of mankind at large. 
 
 - Ch pronounced as in the German Nacht. 
 
10 THE TALMUD 
 
 PART FIRST 
 ANALYTIC SKETCH OF THE TALMUD 
 
 I ' 
 
 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 If one of the heavy folios that constitute the 
 Talmud collection be opened at random, the eye will 
 be met by a text in the square Hebrew characters, 
 which is framed on the right and left by narrow 
 columns, and above and below by wide bands, of 
 a finer text, printed in the Rabbinic characters. 
 The frame is the work of French commentators 
 of the middle ages; the portion framed is the 
 TALMUD. 
 
 The Talmud, in turn, is composed of two dis- 
 tinct parts, the Mishna and the Gemara ; the 
 former the text, the latter the commentary upon 
 that text. An analysis of the Talmud must there- 
 fore begin with that of the Mishna. 
 
 By the term Mishna we designate a collection of 
 decisions and traditional laws, embracing all de- 
 partments of legislation, civil and religious. This 
 code, which was the work of several generations 
 of Rabbis, received its final redaction towards the 
 end of the second century at the hands of Rabbi 
 Jehuda the Holy. It is divided into six sections. 
 
THE TALMUD II 
 
 which in turn are subdivided into treatises, chap- 
 ters, and paragraphs.' 
 
 Its language a Hebrew that has su£fered a 
 
 ' The section is called Seder; the treatise, Massecheth, 
 literally web; the chapter, Perek; the paragraph, the sim- 
 plest element of the code, bears the name of the code itself, 
 Mishna. 
 
 The following summary of the contents of the six sections 
 will enable the reader to appreciate the extended variety of 
 the subjects embraced by the legislation of the Mishna. 
 
 Section I : Seeds.— After a chapter devoted to the bene- 
 dictions, it treats of tithes, first-fruits, sacrifices, and gifts due 
 from the produce of the land to the priests, the Levites, and 
 the poor ; of the cessation of agricultural labor during the 
 Sabbatic year; and of the prohibited mixtures in seeds and 
 in grafting. — In all eleven treatises. 
 
 Section II : Feasts.— Of the Sabbath and Sabbath rest, of 
 feasts and fasts : Passover, Tabernacles, New Year, the Day 
 of Atonement, and the Fasts ; of work forbidden, ceremonies 
 to be observed, and sacrifices to be brought on those days. — 
 Twelve treatises. 
 
 Section III : Women. — The legislation concerning mar- 
 riage, divorce, the levirate marriage, and adultery ; vows and 
 the regulations for the Nazirite. — Seven treatises. 
 
 Section IV: Fines. — Civil legislation, besides a tractate on 
 idolatry, and one called Aboth, consisting of a collection of 
 the ethical sentences of the Rabbis. This section treats of 
 commercial transactions, purchases, sales, mortgages, pre- 
 scriptions, etc. ; of legal procedure, of the organization of 
 tribunals, of witnesses, oaths, etc. — Ten treatises. 
 
 Section V: Sacred Things. —The legislation concerning 
 sacrifices, the first-born, clean and unclean animals ; the de- 
 scription of Herod's Temple. — Eleven treatises. 
 
 Section VI : Purifications. — Laws concerning Levitical 
 cleanness and uncleanness ; clean and unclean persons and 
 things, objects capable of becoming unclean by contact. 
 Purifications. — Twelve treatises. 
 
12 THE TALMUD 
 
 strong Chaldaic infusion, and has freely adopted 
 Latin and especially Greek words, the Mishna is 
 written in a simple style, so concise as sometimes 
 to be obscure. Digressions are avoided, and the 
 anecdotes met with here and there are introduced 
 with the object of illuminating opinions with the 
 light of facts. 
 
 It is useless to dwell on the legislation of the 
 Mishna, which has so often been expounded and 
 analyzed, recently again in an article in the 
 Quarterly Review ;' let us proceed at once to the 
 Gemara. But a word must first be said concerning 
 a collection called Tosiftha. 
 
 Rabbi Jehuda the Holy had not incorporated in 
 the Mishna all the decisions of the Rabbis that had 
 preceded him. A considerable number found no 
 place in the code, either because in his eyes they 
 were not vested with sufficient authority, or be- 
 cause they werev useless repetitions of those pub- 
 lished by him. Under the name Boraithoth {ex- 
 terme), the greater part of the excluded decisions 
 were collected a little later in the order of the 
 Mishna, with the same divisions and subdivisions, 
 and gave rise to a new book, the Tosiftha, or addi- 
 tion. The Tosiftha, the work of the Babylonian 
 schools, was compiled by R. Hyya and R. Oshaya, 
 and presents the same external characteristics as 
 the Mishna — the same language and the same style 
 — but anecdotes form a far more considerable ele- 
 ment. The Tosiftha and the Boraithoth incorpor- 
 
 ' Emanuel Deutsch, The Talmud, Quarterly Review. 
 October, 1867. 
 
THE TALMUD I3 
 
 ated neither in the Tosiftha nor in the Mishna are 
 among the constituent elements of the Gemara. 
 
 This, then, brings us to the Gemara, the per- 
 petual commentary following the Mishna in all its 
 divisions and subdivisions/ It has come down to 
 us in two different forms or redactions. The one 
 is the work of the Palestinian schools, and was 
 drawn up at Tiberias in about 380; the other ema- 
 nates from the Babylonian academies at Sora, 
 Nehardea, and Pumbeditha, and was reduced to 
 writing by R. Ashi and his disciple Rabina, re- 
 ceiving its final shape from R. Jos6 in about 500. 
 The Babylonian Gemara, improperly called the 
 Babylonian Talmud, is clearer and more complete 
 than the Palestinian Gemara, still more inaccu- 
 rately called the Jerusalem Talmud. The former, 
 therefore, was adopted by the synagogue, and 
 the other, of higher importance to critical research 
 by reason of its greater antiquity, was neglected 
 by the Rabbis and the copyists of the middle ages, 
 and has reached us in a much damaged condition 
 and not without having lost many a page in its 
 journey across the centuries. Unfortunately, too, 
 there exists but one manuscript copy of the Jeru- 
 salem Talmud, that used for the editio princeps ; 
 
 ' Not in absolutely all. Certain parts of the Mishna lack 
 their Gemara, either because the discussions relating to them 
 were not committed to writing, or because, though edited, 
 they have not reached us. Thus, in the first and in the last 
 section, a single treatise has its commentary. In the fifth, 
 that on sacred things, two treatises are bereft of their com- 
 mentaries. 
 9 
 
14 THE TALMUD 
 
 no Other manuscript by the aid of which its muti- 
 lated text might be corrected has been preserved. 
 Its Babylonian rival has had a happier lot ; manu- 
 scripts are not lacking, though for the most part 
 fragmentary, and up to 1864 there had appeared 
 forty-four editions of this Talmud, including the 
 Mishna, the Gemara, and the commentaries, all 
 paged alike, each edition numbering thousands of 
 copies, each copy containing 2,947 leaves, divided 
 up into twelve massive folios. 
 
 In the language of the Mishfaa the groundwork 
 is Hebrew; of the Gemara the same cannot be 
 said. Its language comes closer to the popular 
 idiom, a sort of Aramean, more or less corrupt. 
 However, specimens of the Hebrew of every age are 
 met with, sometimes even of the classic Hebrew, 
 according to the antiquity of the incorporated 
 texts. After the return from the Captivity, Hebrew 
 was an artificial language used by the Rabbis, de- 
 generating little by little into low Hebrew, impreg- 
 nating itself more and more with Aramaic elements, 
 and finally merging into the dialect of the people. 
 This explains how it happens that a single page of 
 the Talmud contains three or four different lan- 
 guages, or rather specimens of one language at 
 three or four different stages of degeneracy. It is 
 not rare to find the redactor of the Talmud confirm- 
 ing the opinion of a Rabbi of the fourth century by 
 quoting that of a teacher of the second, word for 
 word the same as the former, except that it is writ- 
 ten in Hebrew. The general principle may be enun- 
 ciated, that purity of language is testimony to the 
 antiquity of the texts reproduced in the Talmud. 
 
THE TALMUD 1$ 
 
 Let US penetrate further into the Gemara, and 
 consider its various features. The first striking 
 characteristic is the extent of the commentary as 
 compared with that of the text. Many a Mishna 
 of five or six lines is accompanied by fifty or sixty 
 pages of explanation. In so prolix an elaboration, 
 of course, the lucid order of an adept's exposition 
 must not be expected. The broad lines of a well- 
 defined plan providing a proper place for each part 
 of the Gemara would be sought in vain. The mod- 
 ern scholar with his habits of order and method 
 would find himself singularly out of his element 
 there. Usually the Gemara presents the appear- 
 ance of a boundless sea of discussions, digressions, 
 narratives, legends, wherein the Mishna awaiting 
 explanation is completely submerged. The reader 
 of its pages, in which the most widely separated 
 objects are as a matter of course placed in close 
 juxtaposition, in which all things mix and clash with 
 each other in the magnificence of barbaric disorder, 
 might readily imagine himself a spectator at the 
 enactment of an endless dream, subject to no laws 
 but those of the association of ideas. Not even the 
 most circumscribed discussions fail to give room to 
 this characteristic disorder. For instance, to eluci- 
 date a point under discussion a quotation is needed — 
 a quotation of a line. Let it not be supposed that it 
 is considered sufficient to indicate the new argu- 
 ment incidentally. It is developed quite at length 
 with all its ramifications, so that, to grasp its whole 
 extent, it becomes necessary to forget the first and 
 chief object that suggested it. Nor is this all. 
 
l6 THE TALMUD 
 
 This argument in turn calls up another, not in the 
 least germane to the principal question, and after 
 the mind has been straying among unrelated digres- 
 sions for the space of five or six pages, it must, in 
 order to reach the starting point, painfully retrace 
 the successive series of arguments, extricating as 
 it goes along details useful in the discussion, if any 
 there be. Worse still when the commentary by 
 the essential nature of its object lacks stability and 
 precision. In the explanation of a Mishna the opin- 
 ion of a Rabbi is quoted ; the Mishna is put aside 
 in order to reproduce all the opinions bearing this 
 Rabbi's name. Among them are moral dicta or 
 principles of hygiene. In consequence, a whole 
 page of maxims or of medical formulas defile before 
 the reader. Then follow incantations, tales of de- 
 mons, popular legends. Often the connecting link 
 is not visible. Chance has brought together two 
 absolutely irrelevant fragments — sufficient reason 
 for the redactor of the Gemara to join them to each 
 other. In this flood of digressions, the Mishna 
 seems forgotten ; the reader at all events has lost 
 it from sight, so completely have his thoughts been 
 borne away on this rheandering course, directed, it 
 seems, by fancy alone. But suddenly it meets his 
 eye as at a turn in the road. The thread is resumed, 
 the explanation proceeds. But how many digres- 
 sions are needed to make a Mishna exhaust its 
 Gemara ! 
 
 " It is only after a time," says the author of the 
 Quarterly Review article on the Talmud, " that the 
 student learns to distinguish between two mighty 
 
THE TALMUD 17 
 
 .currents in the book — currents that at times flow 
 parallel, at times seem to work upon each other, 
 and to impede each other's action ; the one eman- 
 ating from the brain, the other from the heart — 
 the one prose, the other poetry — the one carrying 
 with it all those mental faculties that manifest 
 themselves in arguing, investigating, comparing, 
 developing, bringing a thousand points to bear upon 
 one and one upon a thousand ; the other springing 
 from the realms of fancy, of imagination, feeling, 
 humor, . . . The first named is called Halachah 
 {Rule, Norm), a term applied both to the process 
 of evolving legal enactments and the enactments 
 themselves. The other, Haggadah {Legend, Saga), 
 not so much in our modern sense of the word, 
 though a great part of its contents comes under 
 that head, but because it was only a ' saying,' a 
 thing without authority . . ." 
 
 In fact, precise as are the boundaries of the domain 
 of the Halacha, so vague and ill-defined are those 
 of the Haggada. It is elusive, varying from the 
 fantastic legend to the moral maxim, from the 
 magic formula to historical narratives and chrono- 
 logical records. It is an accurate definition to say 
 that it is what is not Halacha. The latter, on the 
 other hand, is clearly defined ; for everything called 
 Halacha has a sacred character, compelling the 
 respect of the believer. Halacha is LAW in all its 
 authority ; it constitutes dogma and cult ; it is the 
 fundamental element of the Talmud, and with it 
 we ought to begin our investigation of the Gemara. 
 
l8 THE TALMUD 
 
 II 
 
 THE HALACHA 
 
 The name Halacha applies, not only to the special 
 laws established by the Rabbis, but also to the dis- 
 cussions that result in the establishment of such 
 laws. The schools did not stop at the text fixed by 
 Rabbi Jehuda ; they used it as the point of depart- 
 ure, and^with the aid of various Boraithoth and the 
 Tosiftha, they went on to explain and develop the 
 Mishna and render new decisions. The Mishna, in 
 fact, could not be considered a final text. When 
 earlier decisions are adduced, it usually fails to indi- 
 cate their source ; sometirnes the name of the author 
 is added, but only in order to oppose another author- 
 ity cited in the same way ; and in the latter case, 
 though sometimes a decision between the two an- 
 tagonistic opinions is made, the question is most 
 frequently left suspended. All this must be takeii 
 up again ; the discussions begun must be finished, 
 the points under debate determined with precision, 
 order and light introduced everywhere : this is the 
 work of the Gemara. It first devotes itself to the 
 laws set down as established, inquires into their 
 origin, and rejects the various explanations offered^ 
 until one is found holding its own against all 
 objections. Often it shows that the decision 
 reached by the Mishna is incomplete, obscure, con- 
 tradictory, and that it cannot be made to apply to all 
 
THE TALMUD I9 
 
 the cases that ought apparently to come under it. 
 In other places the Gemara quotes against the Mish- 
 na a Tosiftha or a Boraitha of equal or of greater 
 antiquity, one, therefore, invested with as much 
 or with more authority. Thence arises a great 
 variety of hypotheses ; the discussions grow in ex- 
 tent and depth until an exhaustive explanation of 
 the text is reached. Naturally, free play is granted 
 to infinite variations in form. To give an accurate 
 idea of the discussions would be difficult. It is 
 preferable for us to venture upon a quotation, 
 which will convey more than could be said about it. 
 Opening at random a volume of the Talmud, we 
 make choice of one example among a thousands 
 Here is what we read on folio 37'' of the treatise 
 Gittin, or Divorces : 
 
 MISHNA: A slave taken captive and ransomed by a 
 third party to be a slave, is a slave; ransomed to be set 
 free, he cannot be made a slave. R. Simeon, son of 
 Gamaliel, says that in any case He may be made a 
 slave.' 
 
 'The above translation of the text being somewhat of a 
 paraphrase, it seems to us of interest to give a Latin trans- 
 lation, whose absolute literalness is the excuse for its strange 
 barbarity. 
 
 Mishna : Servus, in captivitatem ductus, et redemptus, in 
 servi nomine, serviet; in liberi nomine non serviet. R. Simeo 
 ben Gamaliel dicit : seu hie, seu illic serviet. 
 
 Gemara: Dequoagimus? An ante repudiationem ? In 
 servi nomine, cur non serviet ? — Veram post repudiationem ? 
 In servi nomine, cur serviet ? 
 
 Dicit Abaia : ante quidem repudiationem ; in servi nomine, 
 serviet priori hero ; in liberi nomine, nee priori hero, nee pos- 
 
20 THE TALMUD 
 
 GEMARA: Of what case does the Mishna speak? 
 Has he been ransomed by the third party before the 
 first owner has renounced his right of possession? 
 Ransomed to become free, why should he not be made 
 a slave ? Is it after that renunciation ? Ransomed to 
 be a slave, why should he not be free ? 
 
 Abaia answers: The Mishna should be explained 
 
 teriori hero serviet. Posteriori hero non, quia in liberi nomine 
 redemit ; priori hero non, ne renuerit eum redimere. R. Simeo 
 ben Gamaliel dicit: seu hie seu illic serviet. Censet, ut offi- 
 cium ingenuos liberare, sic servos oiBcium esse liberare. 
 
 Dicit Raba: post quidem; et, in servi nomine, posteriori 
 hero serviet; in liberi nomine serviet nee priori hero nee pos- 
 teriori hero ; posteriori hero non, quia in liberi nomine redemit 
 eum ; priori hero non, quia post repudiationem est. R. Simeo 
 ben Gamaliel dicit seu hie seu hac serviet, ut rd Hiskiae; 
 quia dicit Hiskias : cur dixere seu hie seu illic serviet, ne 
 singulus ultro hostibus se oflerat et e manu heri vindicet. 
 
 Quaestio: dicit eis R. Simeo ben Gamaliel ut ofBcium in- 
 genuos in libertatem vindicare, sic servos esse officium. 
 Quoad Abai'am, qui dicit ante repudium, hoc est quod dicit 
 TO ut. Sed quoad Rabam, quid to ut? Ob to Hiskiae est? 
 
 Tibi dicit Raba : R. Simeo ben Gamaliel ignorabat quid 
 dixissent Doctores et sic eis locutus est : si ante repudiationem 
 dicitis, hoc est rd ut; si post repudiationem dicitis, ut rd 
 Hiskiae. 
 
 — Et Raba qui dicit post et posteriori hero, posterior herus 
 a quo acquirit ? 
 
 — A captantibus ? — 
 
 — Captantgs ipsi, quis eis acquirit ? etc. . . . 
 
 Now, in this peculiar Latin suppress the hyphens, commas, 
 and periods. Beginning with the word Gemara, let all the 
 sentences form only a long string of words placed one after 
 the other, neither the beginning nor the end of a proposition 
 being distinguishable, and you will have an almost exact fac- 
 simile of the text, which may be reckoned among the easiest 
 to decipher. 
 
THE TALMUD 21 
 
 thus : We are dealing with_ the case in which the first 
 owner has not renounced his right, and the slave ran- 
 somed to remain a slave returns to serve his first mas- 
 ter; ransomed to be fi-ee, he serves neither the second, 
 who ransomed him to set him at liberty, nor the first, 
 who might have permitted him to remain in captivity. 
 R. Simeon, son of Gamaliel, says: In any case he re- 
 mains the slave of the first master, because it is every- 
 body's duty to ransom slaves equally with free men 
 (and consequently it cannot be supposed that the first 
 master would have allowed his slave to remain in cap- 
 tivity). 
 
 Raba answers: This is the way to understand the 
 Mishna: We are dealing with the case in which the first 
 owner has renounced his right upon the slave. And 
 the Mishna declares that, ransomed in order to remain 
 a slave, the slave serves his second master; ransomed 
 to be set free, he serves neither the first, who has re- 
 nounced his right, nor the second, who ransoms him 
 to set him at liberty. And R. Simeon, son of Gamaliel, 
 says that in any case he remains a slave, because he 
 admits Hiskia's principle, namely, that if liberty could 
 be obtained thus, slaves would deliver themselves up to 
 the enemy in the hope of being ransomed and becom- 
 ing free. 
 
 But in a Boraitha it is said: R. Simeon, son of Gamaliel, 
 says to the Rabbis: " As it is a duty to ransom free men, 
 so it is a duty to ransom slaves.'' The explanation of 
 the Mishna given by Abaia agrees with the Boraitha, 
 since Abaia attributes to R. Simeon ben Gamaliel pre- 
 cisely this reason. But how can the Boraitha be under- 
 stood in the explanation by Raba, since Raba can justify 
 R. Simeon ben Gamaliel's opinion only by Hiskia's 
 principle ? 
 
 Raba answers: This Boraitha is incomplete, and itself 
 
22 THE TALMUD 
 
 needs the following interpretation: R.Simeon ben Gam- 
 aliel, not knowing the opinion of the Rabbis exactly, 
 says to them: If you speak of the case in which the first 
 master has not renounced his right, I admit the princi- 
 ple, " As it is a duty to ransom, etc. '' If of the oppo- 
 site case, Hiskia's principle must be admitted. 
 
 But how can Raba, who admits that the slave ran- 
 somed to be a slave belongs to him that has ransomed 
 him, not to his first owner, who has renounced his 
 rights, — how can Raba justify the second owner's rights 
 of possession ? Through whom does he hold them ? 
 
 Through the captors who took the slave prisoner. 
 
 But the captors themselves, whence do they derive 
 their rights ? etc. 
 
 And the discussion on this Mishna of three lines 
 continues for seven whole pages. 
 
 It appears, from the above passage, that in its 
 Halachic portions the Gemara uses the dialogue 
 form. But it will not do to think of Plato's ani- 
 mated dialogues, in which the reader sees not only 
 thoughts conflicting and clashing, but souls with 
 their passions, their sentiments, with all that 
 makes them human. Here we have dialectics in its 
 driest and most laborious development. The dis- 
 putants are not men, but names and arguments. 
 And the style ! — if the language in which the dis- 
 cussions are clothed can be dignified with the name 
 style. At times the phraseology is diffuse, and, 
 swathed in a score of words when six or eight 
 would suffice, the idea drags painfully. Again, at 
 other times, the language is exasperatingly con- 
 cise, a letter standing for a word, a word for a 
 
THE TALMUD 23 
 
 clause. Questions whose complete statement 
 would take lines are indicated by a single term, 
 from which, as it were, they hang suspended. 
 There are peculiar formulas in which whole ideas 
 seem to have deposited themselves and become 
 crystallized. The two words A lama thenan {verum 
 cur docent) mean : "But if you maintain that only 
 the thesis contrary to the one upheld by me is 
 true, why is it taught f " — The word Minalan{unde 
 nobis?), found at the beginning of a number of 
 Gemaras, means: "What is the origin of the_ 
 decision of the Mishna.'" But as one Mishna or- 
 dinarily comprises several, only the answer and 
 the objections made to the answer can clear up the 
 thought. Suppress the commentary by Rashi, that 
 masterpiece of precision and clearness, and the 
 Talmud becomes almost enigmatic even to a pro- 
 ficient Talmudist. Put Buxtorf's Talmudic Dic- 
 tionary (I do not mention a grammar ; there exists 
 none of the language of the Gemara) into the 
 hands of a scholar that has a fair knowledge of He- 
 brew and Aramaic, but has never seen the Tal- 
 mud ; it will be impossible for him to decipher a 
 page. We say decipher, and the figure of speech is 
 not exaggerated ; he truly has before him a text of 
 hieroglyphs or inscriptions in unknown characters. 
 So true is this that even the Jews, who find the 
 study of the Talmud easier than others, speak only 
 of deciphering it. Suppose the teaching of the 
 Talmud suddenly interrupted during the life of a 
 generation ; the tradition once lost, it would be well 
 nigh impossible to recover it. The difficulties are of 
 
 -^ 
 
24 THE TALMUD 
 
 diverse kinds, growing out of the language and the 
 subjects. The linguistic perplexities are certainly 
 not lessened by the methods of teaching employed 
 up to the present time. The inadequacy of the 
 books compels the student to have recourse to the 
 peculiar method of traditional teaching, that pain- 
 ful method which effects mastery of the language 
 only by means of long habit. But a good gram- 
 mar, a complete lexicon, a table of Talmudic form- 
 ulas — they are not excessively numerous — would 
 greatly curtail the labor. Yet, the greatest diffi- 
 culties would remain to be conquered, difficulties 
 almost insuperable, because inherent in the very 
 nature of Talmudic argumentation. The lucid 
 French mind would be hard put to it to reconcile 
 itself to these discussions, which wind in and out 
 through endless labyrinths of subtlest reasoning. 
 It were absolutely necessary to assume the Orien- 
 tal habit of mind, that ease and force of imagina- 
 tion which bear thought beyond the limits of our 
 systematic, straitlaced logic, and enable it to 
 grasp the intangible relations between the most 
 widely separated things. It is necessary to accus- 
 tom oneself to that refinement of reasoning which 
 penetrates to the innermost depths of an idea, and 
 analyzes its most delicate, most evanescent shades, 
 until the feeling of reality fades away. The influ- 
 ence such a book can wield upon the intelligence 
 of a nation is patent. The daily study of the Tal- 
 mud, which among Jews began with the age of 
 ten to end with life itself, necessarily was a severe 
 gymnastic exercise for the mind, thanks to which 
 
THE TALMUD 25 
 
 it acquired incomparable subtlety and acumen. 
 Reasoning accustomed itself to accuracy, thinking 
 to logic ; in a word, intelligence grew in depth. In 
 depth, mark you, not in extent. Discipline a well- 
 endowed mind with Talmudic study, and you will 
 produce a dialectician, forceful by reason of his 
 logic and his penetration; you will have the un- 
 equalled scholars of the French, German, or Polish 
 schools, who spend all their ability on casuistic 
 commentaries ; you will have a Spinoza, who car- 
 ries Talmudic acuteness and profundity into phil- 
 osophy. But do not expect to find largeness of 
 view, breadth of outlook, expansiveness of ideas. 
 The Halacha ignores all that. It is ratiocination, 
 deductive reasoning raised to the highest power, 
 and takes no account of inductive reasoning. 
 
 This characteristic of the Halacha naturally sug- 
 gests another monument raised by learned men to 
 the glory of religion, and one is tempted to pro- 
 nounce the name of Scholasticism. In fact, the 
 comparison is seductive. Scholasticism, like the 
 Halacha, is the work of schools ; like the Halacha, 
 it rests upon deduction ; and like it, employs the 
 deductive method. But though Scholasticism with 
 the Syllogism, and the Talmud with its hermeneu- 
 tic laws, with the seven rules of Hillel, with R. 
 Ishmael's thirteen principles, or Akiba's method, 
 seek to do but one thing, namely, to demonstrate, 
 they differ absolutely as to the aim of their demon- 
 strations. The one wishes by reasoning to estab- 
 lish the reality of dogmatic principles ; the other 
 tries only to remember, to recall half forgotten or 
 
26 THE TALMUD 
 
 badly reported legal decisions, and, by an effort of 
 reasoning memory, to rediscover them in their en- 
 tirety. Scholasticism is a philosophic system, very 
 limited, to be sure, very petty, an enslaved system, 
 ancilla tkeologicB; but as human reason is not called 
 upon to do its full part, this philosophy will some 
 day dominate and overthrow theology. Talmudic 
 Halacha is anything but this. Philosophy it knows 
 not even by name, and cannot know it ; moreover, 
 it ought not to know it, since it aspires to but one 
 thing : to establish for Judaism a Corpus Juris Ecele-' 
 siastici. 
 
 If the nature of the Halacha has been made clear; 
 and if besides it is remembered that it embraces 
 all departments of religious and civil legislation, it 
 will be seen how limited a construction must be 
 put upon thfifword encyclopaedia, which has been 
 freely applied to the Talmud. The Talmud is in- 
 deed an encyclopaedia in the sense that it contains 
 information on all subjects of knowledge cultivated 
 in the epoch of its composition; all of which have 
 left in it some trace or reminder of themselves. 
 But one must not expect to see thfe Rabbis treat 
 the sciences as such. Cast a glance at the sum- 
 mary of the contents of the Mishna given at the 
 beginning of this article. The first section deals 
 with the laws having reference to the products of 
 the field. Some among them bear on the mixing 
 of seeds. Thus the Rabbis are led to speak inci- 
 dentally of botany and to adduce certain botanic 
 facts previously acquired with the sole aim of 
 making them subserve the establishment of the 
 
THE TALMUD 27 
 
 Halacha. The second section treats of the Sab- 
 bath and the feasts. With regard to the Sabbath, 
 one of the great questions is that of Sabbath re- 
 pose. It is prohibited to go beyond a radius of 
 two thousand steps from one's house on that day. 
 But in order to determine the limits in despite of 
 the accidents of the ground, of valleys, hills, water- 
 courses, certain geometric facts must be consid- 
 ered, and hence our Rabbis are obliged to talk 
 geodesy. The fixing of the dates of the festivals 
 presupposes that of^ a calendar, which again re- 
 quires astronomical knowledge. Hence our doc- 
 tors now turn to astronomy, and demand of her 
 guidance in the establishment of the legislation for 
 the feasts. Elsewhere, the discussion turns on 
 prohibited animal food. Meat is forbidden when 
 derived from animals presenting specific character- 
 istics that render them unclean, or from clean 
 animals tainted by certain diseases causing their 
 prohibition. To determine these specific charac- 
 teristics or these morbid conditions, some knowl- 
 edge of anatomy and physiology is necessary. 
 This part of Halachic legislation, then, displays the 
 results of natural history studies without permit- 
 ting the assertion that natural history is specific- 
 ally treated. Finally, in another place, in the 
 laws on the causes of uncleanness in persons (is- 
 sues, menses, etc.), the lawmakers take up physi- 
 ology and medicine, inasmuch as they apply to 
 religious legislation the results of physiologic and 
 medical observation. Thus the Rabbis are led to 
 speak of all the departments of knowledge culti- 
 
28 THE TALMUD 
 
 vated in their time, in order to abstract from them 
 principles available for the establishment of the 
 Halachoth. Moreover, this miscellaneous knowl- 
 edge was acquired, not for its own sake, but to 
 press it into the service of the Halacha. Science 
 was not the end, merely the instrument permitting 
 the attainment of the end. 
 
 Nevertheless it took protracted study to compass 
 the Halacha in all its extent and diversified mani- 
 festations. The title of Rabbi was not to be gained 
 in a few years, and at a period^in which booksiwere 
 rare, in which, particularly, tradition might not be 
 reduced to writing, a long pupilage was necessary 
 to entitle one to participation in the discussions of 
 the sages. One is almost tempted to take literally 
 the Talmudic accounts that tell of twenty years 
 passed by some of the eminent doctors of the 
 Halacha in the apprenticeship to the Law. 
 
 To complete our examination of the various char- 
 acteristics of the Halacha, the method of instruc- 
 tion remains to be considered. The Rabbis kept 
 schools (Beth ha-Midrash, house of study) in the 
 localities in which they lived, and numerous disci- 
 ples gathered in them. Some doctrinal point was 
 assigned to the students for elaboration, and on 
 the day of the discussion they presented them- 
 selves with their arguments all prepared. The 
 master catechised them, and by a series of ques- 
 tions skilfully put led them to find the answers 
 themselves. The instruction, then, was not tech- 
 nically such ; it was a protracted conversation into 
 which the Rabbis decoyed their disciples, and from 
 
THE TALMUD 29 
 
 which they boasted that they derived as much 
 profit as the latter. The disciples, in turn, spread 
 the doctrine of their master abroad. Thence the 
 expression met with at every step in the Talmud : 
 " Such a one says in the name of so-and-so, who 
 had it from such another." As for the discussions 
 that were to result in the fixation of the Law, 
 they took place in the following way. The Rabbis 
 met in the tribunal or synhedrin, often accompa- 
 nied by their pupils, who listened in silence behind 
 a bar. After a public discussion, the point of doc- 
 trine was decided by a plurality of the votes of the 
 Rabbis. The sesaion was presided over by the 
 JVassi, or prince, and by the president of the tri- 
 bunal {Ab Beth Din, the chief of the house of jus- 
 tice'), the two religious heads of the nation. The 
 Talmud asserts that these two dignities date back 
 to the institution of the Great Synagogue, and 
 perpetuated themselves without interruption from 
 Simeon the Just, contemporary of Alexander the 
 Great and last member of that assembly. The 
 Mishna cites a series of couples {sugoth) of Rabbis 
 succeeding each other in the instruction of the 
 oral Law from Simeon the Just to Hillel and Sham- 
 maT, and seems to confer the title of Nassi on the 
 first, and Ab Beth Din on the second, of each cou- 
 ple. Hillel and Shamma'i were the last of the 
 series of couples, and their successors explicitly 
 bear the two titles. As instruction was obliga- 
 tory and schools were numerous in Palestine, every 
 man, no matter of what rank, could aspire to the 
 highest dignities. Outside of the priesthood, 
 
30 THE TALMUD 
 
 knowledge alone constituted nobility. Witness 
 Akiba, who from the estate of a simple shepherd 
 rose to be the great doctor of the Mishna, " the 
 second Moses." The Talmid Chacham (student), 
 if he distinguished himself, received the title of 
 doctor from his masters, and though gratitude and 
 the admiration of the public reserved the title of 
 Nassi for the illustrious family of Hillel, at least 
 the Rabbis could choose the Ab Beth Din from 
 among those most deserving of the office. When 
 the student was judged worthy of the title of 
 doctor, Rabbinical authority was conferred upon 
 him by a peculiar ceremony called Semicha or Im- 
 position {of the hands). This ordination was abso- 
 lutely necessary to give him the right to decide 
 and to forbid, to invest hitn actually with the power 
 to which his knowledge entitled him morally. The 
 ceremony was of the utmost importance for the 
 Jews, since it was efficacious in insuring the per- 
 petuity of tradition, as was well illustrated during 
 the persecutions of Hadrian, at the time of Bar- 
 Cochba's revolt. Wishing to destroy the Jewish 
 nation, Hadrian condemned to death every Rabbi 
 convicted of having given or received the Semicha. 
 "One day," the Talmud tells, "a government de- 
 cree condemned to the rack both him that gave 
 and him that received the Semicha. The city in 
 which the ceremony took place with its environs 
 in a radius of two thousand steps, was to be de- 
 stroyed. What did Judah ben Baba do 1 He 
 placed himself in a valley between two large towns, 
 Usha and Shepharam, and ordained five disciples, 
 
THE TALMUD 31 
 
 R. Melr, R. Judah, R. Simeon, R. Jos6, and R. 
 Nehemiah. Scarcely was the ceremony completed 
 when the enemy perceived them. R. Judah ben 
 Baba had time only to say to the Rabbis : ' Flee, 
 my sons ! ' — 'And thou, O master ? ' — ' I am like a 
 stone that lies immovable.' And it is said that 
 the Roman soldiers did not abandon his body until 
 they had riddled it like a sieve with three hundred 
 lance-thrusts." Later, when the right of Semicha 
 was irrevocably taken from the Jews of Palestine, 
 the work of the schools stopped, and the chain of 
 tradition was broken. The constantly growing 
 power of the Church thus led to the closing of the 
 Ba(h/-Midrashifn, and in about 370 the critical 
 condition of the school of Tiberias forced the Rab- 
 bis to reduce to writing the Palestinian Gemara 
 ( Talmud Jerushalmi). 
 
 Ill 
 
 THE HAGGADA 
 
 We have now arrived at the second current whose 
 existence in the "sea of the Talmud," to employ 
 the expression of the Rabbis, was mentioned above. 
 The question. What is the Haggada, we answered 
 by saying that whatever in the Talmud does not 
 appertain to the legal discussions, and does not bear 
 upon the explanation of the Halacha, belongs to 
 the realm of the Haggada. It embraces not only 
 homilies, preaching, and edifying explanations of 
 the Bible — all that addresses itself to the heart to 
 
32 THE TALMUD 
 
 touch it, to the mind to persuade it — but also 
 history and legend, the most varied information of 
 a scientific character in mathematics, astronomy, 
 physics, medicine, and natural history. The Hag- 
 gada is talk in all its wide play and vague generality, 
 the daily on dit, simple conversation or moral in- 
 struction, interrupting or following the learned and 
 painful discussions of the school and resting the 
 weary spirit. It is evident, then, that the Haggada 
 cannot have authority, i and though it may elicit 
 veneration from the crowd, because it issues from 
 the mouth of official teachers whose words are 
 respected, its characteristic is not legality; it does 
 not legislate. "Objections are not raised to a 
 Haggada," is one of the rules of the Talmud. Else- 
 where it is said, "A decision is not rendered accord- 
 ing to the Haggada." The Rabbis specially devoted 
 to the study of the Halacha, maliciously applying 
 to the Aggadist a verse from Ecclesiastes, called 
 him, A man to whom God hath given riches, yet 
 giveth him not power to enjoy them, because " he 
 can make use of his Haggadistic knowledge neither 
 to permit nor to forbid, neither to declare clean nor 
 to declare unclean." 
 
 In the immense field of the Haggada the Ori- 
 ental mind unfolds in all its wealth and fulness. 
 Here especially we must seek the beliefs, ideas, 
 sentiments that animated the Jewish, indeed the 
 Asiatic, world, in the productive centuries that 
 saw the enormous expansion of the superstitions 
 of the Empire and the germination and growth 
 of the religion of Jesus and the apostles; that 
 
THE TALMUD 33 
 
 saw the rich development of Oriental mysticism 
 and the supreme effort of Greek philosophy shed- 
 ding a last and brilliant gleam. This treasury, 
 where the noblest beliefs the world has been 
 able to conceive, as well as the most fantastic 
 thoughts that have ever crossed human brain, lie 
 promiscuously heaped up, is a sort of microcosm, 
 in which that submerged civilization reappears in 
 its most salient features. Add all that is charac- 
 teristic of Judaism, and gives it its distinctive stamp 
 — its religious and moral beliefs, its customs and 
 usages springing from its religious doctrines, or, 
 if borrowed from neighboring nations, so completely 
 transformed and so well marked by the Jewish im- 
 press as to appear Jewish — and you will understand 
 the profound charm exercised by the Haggada over 
 the thinker and the scholar that investigate the 
 manifestations of human thought under whatever 
 form they appear. A great piece of work might be 
 done — the sifting and co-ordinating of the Hag- 
 gada's heterogeneous wealth. It would be neces- 
 sary to go over the whole ground, and make a 
 systematic classification, such as we of modern 
 times demand; show what the Haggada knew of 
 the exact and what of the natural sciences ; present 
 the allotment of truths which it has been able to 
 discover and of errors which it harbors. It would 
 be necessary to scrutinize its morality and its re- 
 ligious philosophy (the only philosophy it knows), 
 and see to what level it was able to rise. And it 
 were specially important to study the oddities, the 
 fables, the superstitions of the Haggada, since in 
 
34 THE TALMUD 
 
 the history of the human mind nothing is more 
 instructive than the study of the diseases of the 
 intellect, which enable us the better to understand 
 the mind in its healthy state, on the principle that 
 sends physiology to the examination of morbid 
 phenomena. The stranger the customs of other 
 nations appear to us, the odder their manner of 
 feeling and of regarding things, the more fruitful a 
 source are observation and research for the phi- 
 losopher. Nothing, therefore, may be neglected, 
 and without fearing the outrage to our habits or 
 the shock to our modern taste, we should accept 
 the pebble as well as the precious stone, mud and 
 slime as well as the pure and limpid waters ; in a 
 word, bring together all the productions of the 
 popular imagination, whatever they may be, in 
 which nature expresses herself in all her naivete, 
 and displays herself in her nakedness. This is the 
 work, not without dignity and charm, that awaits 
 performance, and that might tempt a mind at once 
 patient and bold. But it is easy enough to trace out 
 a plan or point out a desideratum. The important 
 thing is to realize both. 
 
 We make no pretense of giving even a sketch 
 of the work indicated. We content ourselves with 
 putting together some few features that convey 
 at least an idea of the Haggada. 
 
 In the exact sciences, the Haggada presents the 
 singular characteristic of a mixture of truths and 
 errors, thus seeming to prove the acceptance of 
 certain scientific traditions from alien sources, 
 
THE TALMUD 35 
 
 rather than the existence of a method of investiga- 
 tion. Everywhere in the Talmud the ratio of the 
 circumference to the diameter is as three to one, 
 although four or five centuries earlier Archimedes 
 had found it to be ^. The method indicated by 
 the Mishna for measuring the width of a hill is 
 most primitive. Two men measure it with a chain 
 about four cubits in length, one of them holding 
 one end against his stomach, the other holding the 
 other end with his feet. The Talmud says : " The 
 circumference of the world (that is, the length of 
 the orbit described by the sun in his course from 
 rising to setting) is about six thousand Peras, and 
 the thickness of the firmament (that is, the distance 
 from the sun to the earth) is about one thousand 
 Peras." The first of these statements is an old tra- 
 dition ; the second is an inference from R. Jocha- 
 nan's saying : A man walking at the ordinary pace 
 can take thirty thousand steps a day, five thou- 
 sand from the beginning of dawn to the first rays of 
 the sun, and five thousand from sunset to the ap- 
 pearance of the stars. Thus the time taken by 
 the sun to send us his light, namely, the period of 
 the five thousand steps during dawn or twilight, is 
 the sixth part of that devoted to the illumination of 
 the world, the period of the thirty thousand steps. 
 Then the thickness of the firmament is one-sixth 
 of the length of the solar orbit. €y the side of 
 such puerilities, statements like the following are 
 found : R. Gamaliel says : " There is a tradition 
 in my grandfather's family that the new moon 
 sometimes is ahead of her time, sometimes is de- 
 
36 THE TALMUD 
 
 layed ; in no case does she appear before the lapse 
 of igyi days plus ^ and 73 parts of an hour." The 
 hour in the Talmud is divided into 1080 parts — in 
 passing, notice the happy choice of a number divis- 
 ible by every digit except 7. All reductions being 
 made, we have 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, 3.3 + 
 seconds. The mean length of a synodic revolution 
 being 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, 2.8 seconds, 
 the approximation is seen to be very close. Here 
 is a curious assertion : " The sages of Israel main- 
 tain that the sphere is motionless, and that it is the 
 planets that move ; the learned men of other na- 
 tions maintain that the planets are fixed to the 
 sphere, which turns." But what is one to say 
 about the following .' " The sages of Israel main- 
 tain that during the day the sun rolls under the 
 firmament, and during the night above it (which 
 renders him invisible) ; the sages of other nations 
 maintain the contrary." It seems that R. Joshua 
 (towards the end of the first century) knew how 
 to calculate the period of the comet to which Hal- 
 ley's name is attached. The Talmud speaks of the 
 profound astronomical learning of Samuel the 
 Babylonian, who made a special study of the moon. 
 He is the one who asserted that he was as well 
 acquainted with the paths of the heavenly bodies 
 as with the streets of Nehardea ; but he was wholly 
 unable to explain the nature of comets. "We 
 know only by tradition," he added, "that the com- 
 ets do not cross Orion, else they would shatter the 
 world, and if they appear to cross it, it is the light 
 they cast that traverses the constellation, not they 
 
THE TALMUD 37 
 
 themselves." These quotations, in which the word 
 tradition occurs several times, seem to prove that, 
 though some of the Rabbis devoted themselves 
 specially to the exact sciences, the others were 
 totally unacquainted with them. Had they a scien- 
 tific method of research .' We do not think so ; we 
 rather incline to the opinion that the greater part 
 of these scientific facts were borrowed either from 
 the inhabitants of Irak or from the Greeks. 
 
 In natural history and in anatomy the Haggada 
 is clearer. Here the Rabbis made observations, 
 doubtless because the Halacha is more particu- 
 larly interested in these departments, having, for 
 instance, to legislate on agricultural, subjects, 
 classify the mammals, the fish, and the birds as 
 clean and unclean, and study the diverse dis- 
 eases that can attack the clean animals. There- 
 fore, facts were collected, animals dissected, their 
 organs studied : the brain, whose superior and 
 inferior membrane are known ; the cerebellum, 
 whose diseases may cause impotence ; the spinal 
 cord, which is the prolongation of the cerebellum, 
 and whose lesions in certain cases are fatal, in 
 others do not bring on death ; the heart, with its 
 two ventricles, its two auricles, and the peri- 
 cardium. The lungs and the stomach are the 
 objects of special study. By the side of ingenious 
 observations, general principles are found : " Every 
 horned animal is clovenfooted." "The presence 
 of scales proves the existence of fins." The form 
 of the egg indicates the class of the bird. The 
 
38 THE TALMUD 
 
 Rabbis observed that the milk of an unclean animal 
 does not curdle ; that animals cast their young by- 
 day or by night, according as they copulate by day 
 or by night ; that the union of animals with the 
 same mode of copulation and the same period of 
 pregnancy is fruitful. They know the amianthus 
 that whitens in the fire. But they assert, agreeing 
 in this respect with Lucretius, Pliny, and the 
 whole ancient world, that the lion is afraid of the 
 crowing of the cock ; nor do they contradict an- 
 other of Pliny's statements, that the salamander 
 extinguishes fire. They look upon apes of the 
 larger kinds as half men, and they know the 
 Shamir, created, says the Mishna, during the twi- 
 light of the sixth day, a worm as large as a barley 
 grain, whose look cleaves rocks ; therefore, as the 
 Temple was to be constructed with stones un- 
 touched by iron, the Shamir was used to cut them. 
 
 Natural history leads us to medicine, which was 
 always cultivated among the Jews, and remained a 
 scientific tradition with them up to modern times. 
 It is, therefore, not surprising to find fairly ex- 
 tended information on the subject in the Haggada. 
 Whole pages are taken up with the explanation of 
 medical formulas and pharmaceutic prescriptions. 
 There are hygienic lessons and series of injunc- 
 tions as to the use of simples. Our ignorance of 
 these matters forbids our making a selection and 
 giving extracts. We believe, however, that it 
 would be interesting to investigate whether the 
 Haggada contains a collection of personal obser- 
 
THE TALMUD 39 
 
 vations and true experiments, as they were con- 
 sidered to be by the Jewish scholars of the middle 
 ages. The author of the Cozari, Jehuda Halevi, 
 maintains that the Talmud boasts knowledge not 
 to be found in either Aristotle or Galen. Perhaps, 
 too, its notions are connected by general system- 
 atic views, in which case it would be necessary 
 to investigate whether the medical theories were 
 not borrowed from, or at least influenced by, the 
 schools of Hippocrates, Galen, and Soranus. At 
 all events, in our opinion, we have here an inter- 
 esting problem in the history of medicine. 
 
 Did the Rabbis look with favor upon magical 
 medicine, that mass of superstitious practices 
 with which Chaldea flooded Asia and Europe .' 
 Knowing their disposition to be what it is, we can 
 boldly answer. No. Somewhere in the Talmud it 
 is told that King Hezekiah hid and destroyed a 
 medical book, and the act is praised, because, says 
 Maimonides, the book contained talismanic reme- 
 dies. It is, nevertheless, not astonishing to find a 
 large part of the Haggada given over to magic. 
 Yet among the masters of the black art figures 
 neither Samuel the Babylonian nor Theodosius the 
 Palestinian, of whose medical science the Talmud 
 makes boast. There are Rabbis that recall with 
 more or less credulity the popular superstitions, 
 the study of which, it must be conceded, is not 
 without interest, for it is very curious to see how 
 pseudo-medical practices, common to the whole 
 of Asia, among the Jews take on forms in which 
 their peculiar genius is revealed. According to 
 
40 THE TALMUD 
 
 Pliny, the quartan fever is cured by suspending 
 from one's neck the longest tooth of a black dog, 
 or some dust in which a sparrow has wallowed, 
 tied up in a piece of linen attached by a red 
 thread. R.- Huna is more exacting : " One must 
 take seven thorns from seven palm trees, seven 
 splinters from seven beams, seven pegs from seven 
 bridges, seven cinders from seven ovens, seven 
 grains of dust from seven door pivots, seven kinds 
 of pitch from seven ships, seven caraway seeds, 
 and, finally, seven hairs from seven old dogs." 
 You recognize, do you not, in the multiplication 
 of ingredients, the riotous imagination of the Ori- 
 ental, and in the use of seven the Jewish tendency 
 to make this number sacred } Perhaps, however, 
 it is proper to look upon this prescription by R. 
 Huna as hidden irony against the popular preju- 
 dices, which he is secretly combating even while 
 appearing to lower himself to them. The follow- 
 ing advice is characteristic, and leaves no room 
 for uncertain interpretations : "Against a burning 
 fever," says R. Jochanan, "take a knife made en- 
 tirely of iron, go into the underbrush and tie a 
 white hair to it ; on the first day cut a notch into 
 a thorn while saying the verse from Exodus : ' The 
 angel of the Lord appeared unto Moses,' etc. (in 
 the burning bush). The next day make another 
 incision in the thorn, and say : ' The Lord saw 
 that Moses turned aside to see.' The third day 
 return, and say: 'God said to Moses, Draw not 
 nigh hither.' That done, bend to the ground, and 
 pronounce these words : ' Bush ! Bush ! it is not 
 
THE TALMUD 4 I 
 
 because thou art the greatest, but because thou 
 art the humblest of the trees that the Holy One, 
 blessed be He, has made His glory to descend 
 upon thee, and as the fire was lighted before 
 Hanania, Mishael, and Azaria, and fled before 
 them, so may the fever which burns in me flee 
 before me ! ' " If this practice was inspired by 
 alien customs, Judaism has transformed it in a 
 singular way, and given it its own impress. Means 
 are found of turning popular superstitions to edi- 
 fying uses and of reading an elevated lesson of 
 morality into a good wife's prescription. — Else- 
 where Abala reports numerous formulas in the 
 name of his mother, a woman celebrated in Tal- 
 mudic demonology : three madder-colored threads 
 (the red thread of Pliny i') around one;'s neck 
 arrest disease, five drive it away, seven are a safe- 
 guard against spells. — "Yes," says R. Aha bar 
 Jacob, " if the wearer of the threads sees neither 
 the sun, nor the moon, nor rain, and hears not 
 the noise of iron, nor that of the forge, nor the 
 crowing of a cock." — " Why, then, the virtues of 
 thy madder-colored threads fall to the ground," 
 answers R. Nachman, "for thou demandest the 
 impossible." 
 
 Turn a page, and from magic receipts we pass to 
 pure magic. The Haggada unveils strange mys- 
 teries. It tells at great length of demons, who 
 like mortals eat and drink, live and die, and repro- 
 duce themselves, in these respects partaking of 
 human weakness, but who are winged, transport 
 themselves in an instant over the whole universe. 
 
42 THE TALMUD 
 
 know the future, and invisible can assume any 
 form they please. You are informed that some 
 are charged with the mission of rubbing up against 
 you without your knowledge, and that is the rea- 
 son your garments wear out ; that others delight 
 in destroying unoccupied dwellings, but leave them 
 at the sight of a man. Therefore, the owner of a de- 
 serted house ought to be grateful to him who takes 
 up his residence in it. Some perch on the roofs, 
 and are on the lookout for passers-by to cast a spell 
 on them ; others sit down on the parings of nails 
 incautiously thrown on the ground ; then woe to 
 the woman with child who walks over them ; others 
 on onions, or on garlic with the outside skin taken 
 off : beware of swallowing them along with those 
 vegetables ! Others hide themselves in water dur- 
 ing the night ; therefore, precautions must be taken 
 when one is thirsty at night ! Thus : 
 
 " Do not drink at night. The demon Shabriri, 
 who takes up his abode in water, is to be feared ; 
 he strikes blind those who drink. If, however, 
 you are thirsty, awaken your companion, and say, 
 Let us drink together. The demon will keep him- 
 self quiet. If you are alone, make a noise with 
 your pillow, and say aloud, Thou so-and-so, son of 
 so-and-so, thy mother has told thee : Beware of 
 Shabriri, briri, riri, iri, ri, i, in white vases." 
 
 We might continue our quotations endlessly. 
 The reader sees a phantasmagoria pass before his 
 eyes, sometimes strange, odd, ridiculous, some- 
 times impish, bold, audacious, seeming to mock at 
 the laws of nature and bid defiance to the rules of 
 
THE TALMUD 43 
 
 good sense or taste. Under the conjuring wand 
 of the Haggada, new life animates the universe. 
 The human soul seems to have transfused nature 
 with her sentiments, her passions, her language. 
 Trees, animals, stones are endowed with speech. 
 The souls of the dead converse with one another 
 in the graveyards. The infinitely great and the 
 infinitely small are intermingled and confounded; 
 by the side of the Shamir, the marvellous worm 
 whose look cleaves rocks, are gigantic monsters : 
 the Behemoth, which every day browses on the 
 grass of a thousand mountains, but which God 
 castrated, that its progeny might not destroy the 
 whole of terrestrial vegetation ; and the Leviathan, 
 whose female, killed from a similar precaution, 
 girdles the earth with her carcass. It is the un- 
 rolling of a vast fairy world, in which reason must 
 perforce yield to riotous imagination. 
 
 Who shall tell the history of these poetic or sin- 
 gular legends and their successive transformations 
 in Mahometan and Christian mythology.' Who 
 shall tell the history of the tales of Asmodeus, 
 Lilith, Sammael, originating doubtless in the 
 depths of Chaldea and preserved by pious tradi- 
 tion throughout the centuries up to our day .' Go 
 to the remote parts of Alsace, or to Germany, or 
 Poland ; enter Jewish homes in which old customs 
 have scarcely been encroached upon by modern 
 civilization, and there, in the intimate intercourse 
 of winter evenings, some good wife will tell you 
 with pious terror the fantastic tales that mayhap 
 
44 THE TALMUD 
 
 her captive ancestors heard two thousand years 
 ago on the banks of the Euphrates. 
 
 Between legend and history the boundary line is 
 not well marked, especially not in the imagination 
 of an Oriental. Let us cross it, and inquire into 
 the value of the Haggada as an historic authority. 
 This question admits of two contradictory answers, 
 for, according to the point of view, it is equally just 
 to concede and to refuse value to it. To hope to 
 find in the Haggada precise and detailed chroni- 
 cles, scrupulously exact and circumstantial narra- 
 tives of events, is to run the risk of complete 
 disappointment. The Haggada is totally ignorant 
 of what is properly called history. Reality and 
 dream mingle in nebulous vagueness. It does not 
 seem to have an accurate idea of time. The 
 Orient, in fact, immobile in its unchangeable exist- 
 ence, cannot have the precise notion of time so 
 clearly conveyed to the Occidental mind by per- 
 petual mutations. Thus the various epochs of the 
 past seem to be put upon the same plane. Edom, 
 Nebuchadnezzar, Vespasian, Titus, Hadrian, all 
 the enemies of the Jewish race, merge into one 
 type, and one is substituted for the other in the 
 long martyrology of its history. If, for instance, 
 there is any event that should have left deep traces 
 in the memory of the nation, it assuredly is the 
 destruction of Jerusalem and the "Holy House." 
 Yet, concerning the various phases of the struggle, 
 the men that took part in and directed it, and the 
 final catastrophe, clear and accurate data are sought 
 
THE TALMUD 45 
 
 in vain. Aside from some vague details, in which 
 the element of truth they may contain waits to be 
 set free by criticism, absolutely nothing can be 
 found. But what the Haggada does know, are 
 the poetic legends that thrill the populace, and 
 go straight to one's heart. It tells the story of 
 Martha, the wife of the high priest Joshua ben 
 Gamala, the elegant, fastidious lady to whom were 
 applied the words of Deuteronomy : "The tender 
 and delicate woman among you, which would not 
 adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the 
 ground for delicateness and tenderness," and who 
 dies of hunger in the streets of Jerusalem, or, ac- 
 cording to another version, is dragged across coun- 
 try bound by her hair to the tail of a wild horse. 
 It tells the story of that Zadok who bewails the 
 misery of his land, and in his grief condemns him- 
 self to a forty years' fast. " He ate only one fig a 
 day, and he grew so thin that this fig could be seen 
 to pass down his throat." It recounts with all 
 possible precision the fortunes of the son and the 
 daughter of the high priest Ishmael ben Elisha 
 after the sack of the Holy City. They were sold 
 as slaves to two neighboring masters. — Said the 
 first, I have a slave of incomparable beauty. — And 
 I, said the other, possess the most beautiful maiden 
 imaginable. Let us join them in marriage, and 
 share their children. — In the evening they locked 
 them up together in a chamber. The youth re- 
 mained in one corner, the maiden in another. 
 The former said: I, a priest, the son of a high 
 priest, should take to wife a slave ! The latter 
 
46 THE TALMUD 
 
 said : I, the daughter of a high priest, should marry 
 a slave ! Thus they lamented all night. With the 
 dawn came recognition, and each leaping towards 
 the other, they stood clasped in close embrace until 
 their souls took flight. And, stirred to his depths, 
 the narrator, recalling the verse in Lamentations, 
 exclaims, " For these things I weep : mine eye, 
 mine eye runneth down with water." — Such are 
 the recollections that remain of the catastrophe 
 — legends and tales. This is no longer history, or, 
 if you will, it is still history, but of the kind made 
 by the people. 
 
 Assuredly, it will not do to require of the Hag. 
 gada the exactitude of an historic chronicle. And 
 if perchance we find here and there, buried under 
 a thick layer, a few precise data, a few accurate 
 notes, a few lines of history, the Seder Olam 
 {Chronicle of the World), the Megillath Taanith 
 {Roll of Fasts), it must nevertheless be conceded 
 that the Haggada has nearly no value at all as a 
 documentary source. 
 
 But precisely because the narrative of facts is 
 merged into legend, the Haggada ought to yield 
 all the interest of legendary chronicles. It will not 
 do to turn up one's nose at legend ; it is the abso- 
 lutely necessary complement of history, which 
 usually presents facts in all their nudity and dry- 
 ness. But facts are far from being all that is essen- 
 tial. There is the idea hiding beneath the facts 
 and dominating them, as vital force animates the 
 skeleton of an animal. Now this idea, which only 
 with great difficulty can be abstracted from a series 
 
THE TALMUD 47 
 
 of facts, appears in all its clearness in legend. By 
 means of legends, a people expresses its desires, 
 its aspirations, its ideal, later translated into facts, 
 and expresses them with precision so much the 
 greater as the form of the legend is vague and its 
 web loose. In legend we have first a narrative, in 
 itself without historic value, and then the idea, 
 which is crystallized in the narrative form, and 
 which answers to a real sentiment, reproduced with 
 the greatest clearness, and therefore of consider- 
 able value to the historian. In this sense legend 
 should be invested with authority of a certain kind, 
 and this is the authority that the Haggada may lay 
 claim to. In the Haggada, we find local color ; it 
 conveys Jewish manners, customs, and beliefs, the 
 spirit of the institutions and the religion, in a word, 
 the soul and the life of the nation. 
 
 To complete this all too superficial examination 
 of the Haggada, there remains for us to speak of 
 its moral and religious philosophy. The Quarterly 
 Review writer, with the warmth characteristic of 
 his fine plea for the Talmud, has given an eloquent 
 exposition of the system, reproducing Abraham 
 Nager's substantial contribution to the subject. 
 We shall give a resuml of the same work, supply- 
 ing certain features that were omitted and that to 
 us appear important. 
 
 In the beginning there was nothing. God, by an 
 act of His will, created matter or the first sub- 
 stance, according to some, water, according to 
 others, water, air, and fire, and organizing these 
 elements, He formed, "in His own good time," the 
 
48 THE TALMUD 
 
 world as it is. God, then, is at once "creator and 
 architect." — What was the process of creation? 
 That is a mystery. Certain it is that the angels 
 had naught to do with it, for they were formed at 
 the earliest on the second day of creation, " that it 
 might not be said : Michael stretched out the firm- 
 ament to the north, and Gabriel to the south." But 
 the world once created, Providence brought nothing 
 to pass "without consulting the celestial house- 
 hold." Besides, there is an angel, " the master of 
 the world," who is the intermediary between heaven 
 and earth, Metatron, that is, the one seated near 
 the heavenly throne {meta thronos). Each nation, 
 nevertheless, has its special tutelary angel, as well 
 as its guardian constellations, with the exception of 
 Israel, who has "neither angel nor constellation, so 
 long as he observes the divine law." Israel stands 
 under the eye of God Himself. 
 
 At the same time with the world, God cfeated 
 miracles, which thenceforth fall under the immut- 
 able laws of nature regulating the universe despite 
 the evil that may result. Creation has for its end 
 man, who in turn is to use the world to execute 
 the will of God on earth, the aim of creation thus 
 being the realization of the divine here below. "If 
 Israel accepts the Law (all other nations having 
 refused it), God will maintain the world ; if not, 
 He will cause it to drop back into nothingness." 
 The aim of man on earth, then, is the knowledge 
 and the practice of the Law, "without which there 
 were neither heaven nor earth" — the Law "on 
 which God had His eye fixed when He created the 
 
THE TALMUD 49 
 
 universe, as the mason that builds a house has in 
 mind the plans and the external appearance." 
 Man endowed with free will, "created last on the 
 eve of the Sabbath, that he might at once take his 
 place at the holy banquet," ought therefore to 
 strive endlessly for perfection, which eventually 
 renders him superior to the angels, for, in spite of 
 their eternal and infinite perfection, they are with- 
 out liberty, and neither earn commendation nor 
 incur censure. 
 
 How is this perfection reached ? By the prac- 
 tice of the Law and the doing of good deeds. Use- 
 less to give examples of the morality of the Phari- 
 sees. The subject is too familiar. It is well known 
 that the Talmud may lay claim to the most exalted 
 ideals of goodness that human mind can conceive 
 of, and that all the moral ideas incorporated in the 
 Gospels had long before passed from mouth to 
 mouth in the streets of Jerusalem. Glance through 
 the Mishnic treatise Aboth, and you will find all 
 that the most delicate charity, the most refined and 
 intelligent kindliness can inspire into souls nat- 
 urally disposed to the good. Human dignity, the 
 sacredness of manual labor, the superiority of good 
 works over learning, the equality of men before 
 the divine tribunal, no matter what religion they 
 may profess, — these are the great principles asserted 
 and preached by the Haggada on every page. 
 
 The Talmud, says Nager, has its peculiar psy- 
 chology. In a number of passages the Platonic 
 theory of the pre-existence of souls is stated, but 
 nowhere does metempsychosis appear. Plato's 
 
JO THE TALMUD 
 
 doctrine appealed to the poetic imagination of the 
 Rabbis more than the Aristotelian theory, which 
 made of the soul the entelechy of the body. All 
 the souls called to terrestrial life were created in 
 the beginning, and kept in reserve. They have 
 all-embracing knowledge of the Law up to the 
 moment in which they unite with a body. Then an 
 angel closes the mouth of the child, and the soul 
 forgets all it knew. — No original sin : "As God is 
 pure, so the soul is pure." — Every child on leav- 
 ing its mother's womb is made to swear by an 
 angel that it will be just. " Be assured," he says to 
 it, "that God is pure, that His servants are pure, 
 and that the soul given to thee is also pure." In 
 one passage, however, a teacher speaks of the crime 
 of Adam, which recoils on the whole of mankind. 
 "When the serpent tempted Eve, it corrupted 
 her with its venom. Israel, by being witness 
 of the Revelation at Sinai, was cured of the dis- 
 ease; "the idolaters could not be cured." But in 
 general the story of the iirst sin has not found an 
 echo in the teachings of the sages. Elsewhere it 
 is expressly said : " No death without sin, no grief 
 without fault." It is also said that children dying 
 in infancy or at birth may enter into the future 
 life. 
 
 Whence, then, comes sin ? From man's free 
 will. " Everything is foreseen," says Akiba, " but 
 liberty is granted." And elsewhere : " Everything 
 is in the power of God except the fear of God." 
 
 Human destiny is not fulfilled here below ; the 
 other world is the soul's true home. This earth is 
 
THE TALMUD Jl 
 
 but "the caravansary by the wayside," in which a 
 brief rest is taken. The dogmas of the immortality 
 of the soul and a future life are energetically as- 
 serted by the Rabbis, who regard their negation as 
 veritable heresy. But how is one to understand the 
 entrance into the future life ? Do you understand 
 the entrance into this life ? Death and birth re- 
 semble each other, say the Rabbis. Suppose a child 
 in its mother's womb to know that after the lapse 
 of a few months it will leave the place it occupies. 
 That would seem to it the most grievous event that 
 could happen. It is so comfortable in the element 
 that surrounds it, and protects it against outside 
 influences ! However, the time of separation ap- 
 proaches ; with terror it sees the protecting envel- 
 opes torn asunder, and it believes that the hour of 
 death has arrived. But the moment of leaving its 
 little world marks the beginning of a nobler, more 
 beautiful, more perfect life, which lasts until a voice 
 again sounds at its ear proclaiming : Thou must 
 leave earth, as thou didst leave thy mother's womb, 
 and, stripping oflf this earthly vesture, thou must 
 once more die, once more begin life. 
 
 A new life opens for man, a life wholly spiritual, 
 in which he receives the recompense or the chas- 
 tisement for his conduct here below. " In the 
 world to come, there is neither eating, nor drink- 
 ing, nor any material pleasure ; but the just sit 
 there with crowns on their heads, and delight in 
 the glory of the Divine Presence." — "The souls of 
 the just, at the foot of the celestial throne, contem- 
 plate the splendor of God." Those of the impious 
 
52 THE TALMUD 
 
 are condemned to the torments of the nether 
 world. Eternal punishment is reserved for well- 
 defined classes of sinners, as, for example, those 
 who knowing the Law have entirely abjured it, and 
 those who not only sin themselves, but draw others 
 into crime. The description of these tortures is 
 vague and contradictory, as is that of the lower re- 
 gions themselves. In fact, the Talmud gives us, 
 not so much a system, as a series of individual opin- 
 ions. The fire in the Valley of Hinnom {gd-Hin- 
 nSm, gehenne) plays the principal r61e. As the 
 Rabbis incline more or less to the popular beliefs, 
 the descriptions are more or less material. The 
 same holds good in the descriptions of future re- 
 wards. For instance, we have the peculiar belief 
 that the flesh of the Leviathan, preserved in salt 
 since the first days of creation, will be divided among 
 the just, and that from its tanned hide tents will be 
 made whose brilliancy will fill the universe. Such 
 fantastic features, equally characteristic of the hell 
 and the paradise of the middle ages, do not affect 
 the elevated spirituality pervading these beliefs. 
 Thus we have one Rabbi denying the very existence 
 of hell. " There is no hell in the future world," 
 says R. Simon ben Lakish. " But the Most Holy 
 makes to shine His sun, whose splendor fills the 
 righteous with happiness, and causes the wicked to 
 suffer." Thus the soul finds reward or punishment 
 within itself. The student recognizes, to use the 
 expression of the schools, the subjective character 
 of the sanction attached to the moral law. 
 
 Such are the teachings transmitted by the Hag- 
 
THE TALMUD 53 
 
 gada, and spread among the people by popular 
 preaching. They were conveyed in a peculiar and 
 rather original form well worthy of description. 
 All of them were connected with the Bible, to 
 which the Rabbis considered themselves obliged to 
 trace the ideas they developed. It is the applica- 
 tion to .the Haggada of the method created by R. 
 Akiba for the Halacha. The orator took a verse, 
 which he commented on in a thousand ingenious 
 ways, educing from it all sorts of moral lessons. It 
 mattered little to him, if he did violence to the 
 words, or abused a grammatical construction, or 
 changed letters or words according to his caprice. 
 Equally little it concerned his listeners, who, 
 however, were not deceived, knowing as well as 
 himself the fantastic character of his explanations. 
 But nothing equals the ease with which they ac- 
 cepted them, for they craved only edification. Yet 
 the preacher called to his aid allegory, parable, le- 
 gend, which accompanied the commentary on the 
 text, and sometimes even were confused with it. 
 And as he had the powerful and facile imagination 
 of the Oriental, he needed only the gift of fluent 
 speech to charm an audience disposed to yield to 
 his fascinations, convinced in advance, and happy 
 to hear another give utterance to the feelings hid- 
 den in their hearts. The orator might be one of 
 the doctors of the Halacha that addressed the 
 congregations assembled in the synagogues on days 
 of reunion, Sabbaths or holidays. In such cases 
 true homilies were pronounced. But usually the 
 speaker was any chance person that gathered a 
 
54 THE TALMUD 
 
 crowd about him on the street, and held it under 
 the spell of his improvisations. Such were Judah, 
 the son of Seripheus, and Matathias, the son of 
 Margaloth, those victims of' Herod of whom Jo- 
 sephus speaks, those beloved orators endowed with 
 the gift of inspiring crowds and enkindling popular 
 risings. " Who wishes to live, to live long ?" cries 
 an Aggadist in the open street. ',' Who wishes to 
 buy happiness ? " The original questions attract 
 a crowd demanding to know the orator's secret. 
 "Thou desirest to live many days," he answers, 
 "thou Wishest to enjoy peace and happiness.' 
 Keep thy tongue firom evil, and thy lips from speak- 
 ing guile. Seek peace, and pursue it. Depart from 
 the evil, and do good." And paraphrasing these 
 words of the Psalmist (Ps, xxxiv, 13-15), he devel- 
 ops his ideas in the midst of the attentive crowd. 
 What> in fact, was the importance of Aggadistic 
 teaching.' Assuredly it had considerable value. 
 The study of the Halacha could have appealed only 
 to a restricted part of the Jewish population. The 
 schools and the academies doubtless were fre- 
 quented by a large number of disciples, eager to 
 listen to the instruction of the Rabbis. But they 
 by no means constituted the kernel of the popula- 
 tion, and what was there for the people outside of 
 this popular preaching, these moral lessons given 
 by men that spoke its simple language, and put 
 themselves on a level with it ? The Rabbis them- 
 selves, whose erudition raised the great monu- 
 ment of the Halacha, did not disdain to speak to 
 the populace and, dropping all scientific apparel, 
 
THE TALMUD 55 
 
 array themselves in the simplicity of heart 
 and the ingenuousness of the humble men they 
 addressed. A number of names might be cited. 
 One will suffice, that of Akiba, the first redactor 
 of the Mishna, whom' the admiration of his con- 
 temporaries placed by the side of Moses, and who, 
 says the Talmud, was great in the Halacha and 
 equally great in the Haggada. Nevertheless, it is 
 easy to recognize two well-marked tendencies, two 
 distinct movements, and at first sight it is evident 
 that, though these two movements were sometimes 
 parallel, they might sometimes contradict each 
 other. Were all the Halachist doctors Aggadists ? 
 Obviously not. The Halacha and the Haggada de- 
 manded opposite gifts ; they illustrate the natural 
 opposition between science and poetry. Again, 
 the Haggada was calculated to bring about by in- 
 sensible degrees the predominance of inner religion 
 over external forms and the depreciation of observ- 
 ances and ceremonies — an instinctive tendency 
 bound to work its effect upon logical minds ; a 
 germ of dissidence apt to grow and lead to the 
 separation of Halachists and Aggadists. 
 
 These inferences find full confirmation in the 
 study of facts. We are fortunate to be able to 
 shelter ourselves behind the authority of the 
 learned author of the Essay on the History of Pales- 
 tine: "The inhabitants of Galilee," says M. De- 
 renbourg (p. 350), "in ill repute on account of their 
 ignorance of legal affairs, seem to have replaced 
 subtlety of mind by ardor of heart, and supplied 
 lack of ability for brilliant tilts in scholastic discus- 
 
56 THE TALMUD 
 
 sions by excessive energy of feeling and tricks of 
 expression, original rather than delicate. One 
 always ends by attaching little value to what one 
 is ignorant of, and has not been able to learn, espe- 
 cially if success comes in despite of ignorance, and 
 seems to come precisely from a quarter despised 
 by the informed and instructed. The merchant 
 Hanania, who converted the young prince of Adia- 
 bene to Judaism, did not scruple to absolve him from 
 the duty of circumcision, considering it binding 
 only on the seed of Abraham. The Aggadists, 
 indeed, learned from Isaiah and even Jeremiah a 
 certain disdain for ceremonial observances, which 
 naturally reacted on the Halachists occupied with 
 hairsplitting casuistry on the subject of those very 
 ceremonies. . . . 
 
 " Doubtless there were men who, though devoted 
 to Rabbinic science, still occupied themselves with 
 the instruction of the people at the synagogues in 
 religious truths, which they sought to support with 
 texts from the poetic portions of the Scriptures. 
 But it is equally certain that others, by reason of 
 temperament or inclination, gave themselves up to 
 the one or the other development of Judaism exclu- 
 sively. A glance at the Talmuds and the Midrashim 
 suffices to reveal many names that figure in the 
 Halacha, and are never met with in the Agada, as 
 likewise Aggadists are found that are never men- 
 tioned in the Halachic discussions. To become an 
 Aggadist only ardent conviction, lively imagina- 
 tion, and facility of invention were necessary — quali- 
 ties not rare in times when oppression by aliens 
 
THE TALMUD 57 
 
 revives national zeal, and among a people that 
 receives impressions rapidly, and promptly trans- 
 lates them into words. An Aggadist, then, could 
 be produced without great difficulty, but long and 
 serious study was necessary to penetrate to the 
 depths of the Halacha. As the value of a thing is 
 usually measured by the difficulties surmounted in 
 its acquisition, the Halachists in their turn under- 
 rated the preachers or Aggadists, who, as said 
 above, were not always charmed with the deduc- 
 tions of the Rabbis. 
 
 " The Talmuds have preserved numerous indica- 
 tions of the slight repute in which the Aggadists 
 were held by the Rabbis. If, however, the passages 
 relating to this subject contradict each other, and 
 if a Rabbi who but now extolled preaching speaks 
 of it scornfully, we must not be surprised ; they 
 are judgments rendered under the influence of an 
 Agada recently heard, and are determined by the 
 more or less respectful attitude assumed in it to- 
 wards Rabbinic studies. Disdain for the Halacha 
 has found a place particularly in Christian writings 
 and in the school of St. Paul. We think that we 
 do, not err in maintaining that at its birth the Ag- 
 gadists were the most powerful auxiliaries of Chris- 
 tianity." 
 
 The results of historic criticism, then, establish 
 the justness of the deductions reached by psycho- 
 logic observation. Human nature is too feeble to 
 attain to a complete expansion of all its faculties ; 
 one of them at least is sacrificed to the cultivation 
 of the others. Some pursue the ideal of the good, 
 
58 THE TALMUD 
 
 Others that of the true, and only in rare instances 
 is the perfection at once of knowledge and of good- 
 ness reached. Surely what is true of the individual 
 is with greater force true of the crowd, in which 
 tendencies realize and assert themselves more 
 powerfully. Judaism is proof thereof, but not the 
 only proof. Without going far afield, we find an 
 illustration of a -similar phenomenon in the' Cathol- 
 icism of ,the middle ages. It likewise offers the 
 spectacle of these two opposite currents swaying 
 the minds of men in the rivalry of its two monastic 
 orders, the Benedictine and the Franciscan, the 
 learned 'order and the mendicant order, which epit- 
 omize their duties, the one, in the pursuit of the 
 true, the other, in the pursuit of the good, and 
 which — to conclude with an expression of the Rab- 
 bis — might have said, the former, truth saves from 
 death, the latter, charity saves from death.' 
 
 ' It may be useful to give here a list of the books composing 
 the Haggada literature. This literature comprises only exe- 
 getic explanations or Scripture interpretations given in the 
 synagogues or in popular homilies. The epithet Midrash, or 
 explanation, was applied to them. The chief collections of 
 Midrashim are the following : 
 
 The great Pesikta, or Pesikta Rabbathi, of Palestinian 
 origin, attributed to R. Cahana. 
 
 The Midrash Rabba, Haggadistic commentary on the 
 Pentateuch and the books of Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of 
 Songs, Ruth, and Lamentations. 
 
 The Midrash Yelamdenu and the Tanchuma on the 
 Pentateuch. 
 
 The Midrash Shokher Tob on the Psalms and the Proverbs. 
 
 The compilation of these Midrashim, niiost of them very 
 ancient, cannot be traced back further thari the sixth century. 
 
THE TALMUD 59 
 
 A number of Midrashim on the Prophets have been lost, or 
 are still reposing on the shelves of various European libraries. 
 In the twelfth century, a Rabbi, Simeon, conceived the idea of 
 making a compilation of diverse Midrashim. This compila- 
 tion, which bears the name Yalkut Shimeoni, or Sinteoii's 
 Collection, has preserved a number of Midrashim that would 
 otherwise not have reached us. 
 
60 THE TALMUD 
 
 PART SECOND 
 
 THE FORMATION OF THE TALMUD— 
 THE SPIRIT OF ITS FORMATION 
 
 The essential character of every revealed re- 
 ligion is immutability. Claiming the exclusive 
 possession of the truth, it cannot admit that it 
 modifies itself at the will of the times, and follows 
 the march of human thought in its successive 
 transformations. For truth issuing from God is 
 immutable ; an expression of divinity, it may apply 
 to itself the biblical word, " I am that I am." 
 Like Catholicism, Judaism declares emphatically 
 that religion has suffered no change during the 
 long series of centuries. As it was revealed to 
 Moses, as such it has perpetuated itself to our day, 
 unaffected by the influence of the ages and of di- 
 verse civilizations. Potentially it was contained 
 in the principles taught at Sinai, and Moses, seeing 
 the future of the nation and the religion founded 
 by himself unroll before him, could embrace in a 
 single glance the vast, yet homogeneous succes- 
 sion of laws and doctrines. 
 
 Now Judaism finds its expression in the Talmud, 
 which is not a remote suggestion and a faint echo 
 thereof, but in which it has become incarnate, in 
 which it has taken form, passing from the state of 
 an abstraction into the domain of real things. The 
 
THE TALMUD 6l 
 
 Study of Judaism is that of the Talmud, as the 
 study of the Talmud is that of Judaism. To wish 
 to understand one without entering upon the ex- 
 planation of the other is chimerical. They are two 
 inseparable things, or better, they are one and the 
 same. 
 
 But the expression Talmud is here limited to 
 Halacha. For, besides its information on various 
 sciences, besides its moral principles which have 
 been codified, and so fall under the Halacha, the 
 Haggada contains only legends, fables, the whole 
 poetic literature of the Midrashim. As one would 
 not think of going to the legends of the Virgin, of 
 the saints, and of Satan for the study of the Cath- 
 olic dogmas, so the religious idea of Judaism in its 
 primary and essential form must not be sought in 
 Midrashic literature. 
 
 To the Halacha alone, then, attention must be 
 paid in order to understand the Talmud and trace 
 the law of its genesis. It is the only letter in 
 which Judaism has embodied itself. In point of 
 fact, when the Synagogue is questioned about the 
 origin of tradition, we are told that the oral Law 
 ascends to the Sinaitic revelation, that its develop- 
 ment is deductive, and shaped by unalterable prin- 
 ciples, and that this astounding efflorescence of 
 Halachoth is only the natural expansion of a primi- 
 tive law and idea. " The Scriptures, the decisions 
 of the Rabbis, and all that a reverent disciple of 
 the Law may teach, were given to Moses on Sinai." 
 
62 THE TALMUD 
 
 THE HALACHA ACCORDING TO THE SYNAGOGUE 
 
 It is a cardinal principle of Judaism that, along 
 with the code comprised in the Pentateuch, Moses 
 received from God on Mount Sinai an oral Law, 
 which is the commentary developed from the writ- 
 ten Law. Not a precept, not a decision, not a 
 ceremonial injunction was left unaccompanied by 
 oral explanations, which Moses was to transmit by 
 word of mouth. These explanations, moreover, 
 were of the same sacred character as the written 
 Law. In its conciseness, the latter often is ob- 
 scure ; it is incomplete, for usually it proceeds by 
 examples ; sometimes even it consists of apparent 
 contradictions, sometimes of seemingly useless 
 repetitions. Examples abound : " At the mouth of 
 two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses 
 shall the matter be established," it says in Deuter- 
 onomy XIX, 15. Is it two.' Is it three? In Le- 
 viticus XXI, 12, the high priest is forbidden to go 
 out of the sanctuary. Under what circumstances ? 
 Is he to be shut up in it all his life ? Elsewhere it 
 is said: "Thou shalt kill animals as I have com- 
 manded thee." Where is this command ? A 
 second passage^ relative to this ordinance would 
 be sought in vain in the whole Pentateuch. The 
 obligation to "lay Tephilin," one of the essential 
 
THE TALMUD 63 
 
 observances of Judaism, is barely indicated by a 
 word. On the other hand, the following is found 
 in three different places : " Thou shalt not seethe 
 a kid in its mother's milk." Elsewhere historic 
 facts in complete contradiction to the Law are 
 told, although the men to whom they are attributed 
 are charged with the duty of teaching the Law. 
 
 The pious king Hezekiah celebrates the Passover 
 in the second month, although Moses fixes it on the 
 fifteenth day of the first month. The prophet Eli- 
 jah offers a sacrifice on Carmel, in spite of the law 
 in Deuteronomy forbidding sacrifices outside of the 
 Temple. Finally, in another sphere of ideas, a 
 striking feature of the Books of Moses is their un- 
 broken silence concerning primary dogmas of the 
 Jewish religion, the dogmas of the immortality of 
 the soul and the future life. These are not the only 
 examples. A considerable number of similar facts, 
 of obscure laws that cannot do without explanation, 
 of important omissions, and of apparent contradic- 
 tions, might be collated. It is evident, then, that the 
 written Law stands in need of a perpetual commen- 
 tary. This is the commentary received by Moses 
 on Mount Sinai. Thence its name : The Law of 
 Moses from Sinai (Halacha le-Moshi mis-Sinai =■ 
 lex ad Mosem e Sinai). This Law descended orally 
 from generation to generation. "Moses," says the 
 Mishna,"receivedthe(traditional) Law on Sinai, and 
 transmitted it to Joshua ; Joshua transmitted it to the 
 Elders ; the Elders transmitted it to the Prophets, 
 and the Prophets to the Men of the Great Assem- 
 bly." The Great Assembly, to which the last three 
 
64 THE TALMUD 
 
 prophets, Haggal, Zechariah, and Malachi.belonged, 
 finally transmit the oral Law to the teachers that 
 succeed each other from the coming of the Seleu- 
 cidae into Syria to the second century of the Chris- 
 tian era. 
 
 The oral Law was never to be entrusted to writ- 
 ing, but was to remain in the memory of men and 
 form a living tradition. But when the misfortunes 
 that began to break in upon the people in the days 
 of the last Maccabees imperilled the preservation 
 of the sacred pledge ; when Titus had destroyed the 
 Temple, and Hadrian had scattered the Jewish 
 people, and proscribed the study of the Law, it 
 was feared that the chain of tradition might be rup- 
 tured, and the oral Law disappear in the cataclysm 
 that swept away Jewish nationality. For the sake 
 of the welfare of Judaism, R. Judah the Holy de- 
 cided to violate the prohibition and reduce the 
 oral Law to writing. This was the origin of the 
 Mishna. 
 
 The synagogue declares that from the- Sinaitic 
 revelation until the rebuilding of the Temple, after 
 the return from the Captivity, even until within a 
 short time before the Christian era, the oral Law 
 maintained itself intact, without uncertainty or 
 obscurity. After the return, the novel conditions 
 surrounding the nation brought up new problems 
 for which tradition offered no solution. What 
 were the Rabbis to do .' Obviously classify them 
 by means of certain ratiocinative processes under 
 cases provided for by tradition. These exegetic 
 processes themselves are taught by tradition. God 
 
THE TALMUD 65 
 
 had foreseen that a day would come when certain 
 religious prescriptions would sink into oblivion, 
 when new questions would obtrude themselves, 
 and He gave unto Moses a hermeneutic system, by 
 virtue of which the decisions of the oral Law might 
 be rediscovered in the written Law, all the teach- 
 ings of tradition might be brought into connection 
 with the text, and general principles confidently 
 applied to new details and unforeseen cases. The 
 only thing to be done, therefore, was to make the 
 points under discussion submit to these hermeneutic 
 processes. But differences of opinion might thus 
 arise. For, though the applicability of certain prin- 
 ciples might be so obvious as to force immediate and 
 unanimous assent, sometimes there might, on the 
 other hand, be reason for hesitation and discussion. 
 In these cases a vote was decisive, likewise in ac- 
 cordance with a principle established by the Scrip- 
 tures, that, to employ the biblical expression, the 
 multitude ought to be followed. A majority makes 
 the law. The following account from the Mishna is 
 a curious illustration. "Akabia ben Mahalalel main- 
 tained four propositions. The Rabbis said to him : 
 Abandon them, and we shall give you the title of 
 the chief of the Great Council. He replied : I pre- 
 fer to be considered a fool all the days of my life to 
 appearing infamous for a single instant before God 
 by surrendering my convictions in exchange for 
 honors. . . Nevertheless, at the point of death, he 
 said to his son: Abandon the four propositions 
 that I have taught thee. — And why didst thou 
 not yield .' — Because I had received them from teach- 
 
66 THE TALMUD 
 
 ers as numerous as those who had taught my adver- 
 saries the opposite opinions, and I supported what I 
 had learnt as firmly as they maintained their tradi- 
 tions. But as for you, you have learned the four 
 decisions only from me, and an individual' s opinions 
 ought to give way before those of a number. — To this 
 principle add the other that numbers being equal, 
 the opinions of the older teachers prevail over those 
 of the more recent ones. And that is just. For 
 truth is subject to change as the distance from its 
 origin across the ages lengthens ; and though 
 divergence of opinions began to manifest itself 
 only very late, and H illel and ShammaT, at the be- 
 ginning of the Christian era, were at variance on 
 only three points, yet in the space of three cen- 
 turies differences multiplied so extensively as to 
 produce the vast "sea of the Talmud." It is 
 natural, then, that an opinion which has come down 
 to us through few intermediaries should have more 
 weight than one that has passed through naany 
 mouths. An Amora, or teacher of the Law poste- 
 rior to the compilation of the Mishna, cannot pre- 
 vail against a Tana, or teacher of the Mishna, no 
 more than a Tana can enforce an opinion opposed 
 by the Dibri Sopherim, the words of the Scribes. 
 With these principles regulating the discussion, 
 the development was most simple ; nothing was 
 left to arbitrary chance. Discussion reduced itself 
 to a deductive process. New laws were sacred by 
 the same warrant as the revealed laws, since the 
 latter enjoined the former by implication. The 
 work of the Rabbis consisted simply in educing 
 
THE TALMUD 67 
 
 them, and we arrive at the explanation of the Tal- 
 mudic sentence : " The Scriptures, Tradition, the 
 decisions of the Rabbis, and all that a reverent dis- 
 ciple of the Law may teach, were given to Moses 
 on Sinai." 
 
 Such is this theory of tradition, a theory remark- 
 able for simplicity and consistency, and based upon 
 a profoundly true view. Even if criticism cannot 
 throw brilliant light upon the history of tradition 
 in its primitive stages, it cannot fail to confirm the 
 correctness of the view, that the development of 
 the Halacha was logical and n'='cessary, as we pro- 
 pose to demonstrate in the following pages. 
 
 II 
 
 HISTORY OF THE FORMATION OF THE HALACHA 
 
 One of the most curious problems in the history 
 of religions assuredly is that presented by the state 
 of the Jews on their return from the Captivity. Up 
 to the last moments of the monarchy, the minds of 
 the people are controlled by one of two religious 
 currents. On the one side is popular superstition, 
 the grossly sensual idolatry borrowed from Phen- 
 icia, against which the Jeremiahs and the Ezekiels 
 thundered, often in vain. On the other side is the 
 elevated, austere spirituality of the Prophets, who 
 seek to lead back the multitude to the feet of Je- 
 hovah's altars, and energetically struggle against 
 the depraving tendencies of paganism. On the 
 return from the Exile, two changes have taken 
 
68 THE TALMUD 
 
 place. The whole people has rallied about the 
 religious chiefs, and the latter are no longer Proph- 
 ets, but Scribes. Thenceforth the streets of Jeru- 
 salem do not resound with the eloquent invectives 
 of the Nebiim. Instead, the explanations and the 
 commentaries of the Sopherim fill the schools and 
 the synagogues. We no longer have dealings with 
 an inconstant people hesitating between Baal and 
 Jehovah, but with a nation that has made its choice, 
 and enthusiastically accepts and develops a cult, 
 that is, a well co-ordinated system of beliefs, laws, 
 and practices. Its literature suits itself to this 
 transformation. No longer the rich and vigorous 
 efflorescence to which we owe such masterpieces as 
 the Psalms, Isaiah, Job, it has become severe, dog- 
 matic, scholastic instruction, which after eight 
 laborious centuries will result in the Talmud. In 
 a word, Hebraism is at an end, Judaism is bom. 
 What are the causes of the transformation } What 
 series of circumstances could have effected it in so 
 limited a period as the Captivity .■• Dark questions, 
 the answers to which may be guessed at, but the 
 elements of an unimpeachable solution are lack- 
 ing. This is not the place to examine and discuss 
 the problem ; the statement of the change must 
 suffice. 
 
 A new era begins for Israel. The whole nation 
 crowds about the Sopherim to hear the explanation 
 of the Law. It is learnt by heart, it is commented 
 upon. Schools of Rabbis spring up, which charge 
 themselves with the duty of teaching and explain- 
 ing the sacred word. The Bible, the Book, espe- 
 
THE TALMUD 69 
 
 daily the Pentateuch, Mikra, that is, Reading, — 
 this is the only mental nourishment indulged in 
 by the people. It is the aim of all science, and it 
 is science itself. For all things flow from the Bible, 
 as all converge towards it. The admonition ad- 
 dressed to Joshua, "Thou shalt meditate therein 
 day and night," has become a reality. In a word, 
 it is the axis on which turns the whole activity of 
 the Jewish mind. 
 
 Thus originates and grows the study of the Law, 
 which is called to play so considerable a r61e, and 
 whence springs the body of traditional laws that 
 will constitute the Talmud. 
 
 How do these traditional laws originate .' Un- 
 less we accept the theory of their Sinaitic origin, 
 affirmed, but not demonstrated, by the Synagogue, 
 the historic documents fail to make direct answer 
 to this question. The first traces of these tradi- 
 tions are met with late, in the Septuagint, in the 
 Books of the Maccabees, in the Book of Daniel, 
 contemporary with the Maccabees ; but they suf- 
 fice to put it beyond a doubt that as early as the 
 time of Antiochus Epiphanes a number of deci- 
 sions were definitely established ; that even then 
 the ceremonies connected with the cult and not 
 indicated in the Pentateuch were regulated ; in a 
 word, that a rather extensive system of observances 
 and laws existed. Doubtless it was during the 
 long period of more than 250 years from Ezra to 
 the Maccabean rebellion that this system grew up, 
 and imposed itself upon the Jewish nation. Jo- 
 sephus passes over this religious development with 
 
JO THE TALMUD 
 
 profound silence ; but it is well known that for this 
 historian, more or less scrupulous concerning facts, 
 the history of beliefs, ideas, and religious institu- 
 tions was almost as though non-existent. How- 
 ever, it is beyond question that the Men of the 
 Great Synagogue developed the Mosaic prescrip- 
 tions, and especially by their personal authority 
 raised "a hedge" about the Law. It is not possi- 
 ble to trace the traditional system further back 
 with any degree of certainty. The critical study 
 of several Mishnic traditions beginning with Has- 
 monean times enables us to follow the. develop- 
 ment of Jewish legislation, at once religious and 
 civil. The searching investigation of juridic points 
 led to its gradual extension. In the civil law the 
 extension presents no peculiar features, its only 
 object being the protection of the interests of the 
 individual and the promotion of the intercourse 
 and the transactions of the citizens with each 
 other. But with the religious law the case was 
 different. Eminently restrictive in character, it 
 was developed to the point of burdening daily life 
 with numerous observances. Its decisions multi- 
 plied indefinitely, and each became the fountain- 
 head for others. Some, laid down as principles, 
 were to bring forth, when fecundated by ratiocina- 
 tion, a close-linked chain of endless prescriptions 
 embracing every moment of human life. To be 
 clear, let us take examples. 
 
 A Pentateuch verse says : " Thou shalt not seethe 
 a kid in its mother's milk." An old tradition, first 
 expressed in the Septuagint, explains this verse by 
 
THE TALMUD 7(. 
 
 the prohibition to cook meat with milk food. This 
 prohibition, universally recognized, the Rabbis take 
 as their point of departure. They deduce there- 
 from a group of special laws, which, in turn, will 
 prove no less fruitful. For instance, it will give 
 rise to the prohibition of eating meat with milk 
 food, of eating milk food immediately after meat, 
 of using the same vessel for meat and milk, and 
 many others. And the logical deductions will go 
 on to the bitter end, nor shrink from the consider- 
 ation of the minutest details connected with the 
 kitchen. — In the Pentateuch we read : " Thou shalt 
 not eat flesh that is torn of beasts in the field." 
 From this prohibition an entire code will be devel- 
 oped. In fact, what matters it whether it was torn 
 in the city or in the field, so long as it is the carrion 
 of an animal killed by a wild beast or dead of a dis- 
 ease.' The purpose evidently is to forbid eating 
 the flesh of a sick or unhealthy animal. But when 
 is an animal sick or unhealthy ? Thence so and so. 
 many new laws to determine all the cases falling 
 under the interdiction. Again, the prohibition of 
 working on the Sabbath. What is meant by the 
 word work ? Some more new laws to demonstrate 
 what is forbidden and up to what limits. — Nor is 
 this all. To these laws, logically and unavoidably 
 deduced from more general, long recognized laws, 
 must be added ordinances of recent institution. 
 One Rabbi maintains somewhere in the Talmud 
 that certain ones of these ordinances were later 
 considered traditional, Sinaitic laws. Besides, 
 there are measures and decrees (Tekanoth, Geze- 
 
72 THE TALMUD 
 
 roth) passed by the Synhedrin at the dictate and 
 under the stress of circumstances, which, from the 
 moment of their promulgation, had the authority 
 of religious laws. Thus is woven an intricate web 
 of prescriptions, ceaselessly reproducing others of 
 their kind, which, enthusiastically accepted by a 
 people enamored of its religious system, are at once 
 consecrated by usage. Such is the work to which 
 the schools devote themselves, especially in the 
 century preceding and in that following the de- 
 struction of the second Temple. By that time the 
 multiplicity of laws was so great that the links 
 connecting a particular law with the primitive law, 
 biblical or traditional, from which it was derived, 
 could be grasped only with difficulty. Recourse 
 was therefore had to artificial methods for the pur- 
 pose of establishing a direct connection between 
 the Pentateuch text on the one hand, and the 
 early traditional laws, the deduced laws of whatso- 
 ever derivation, and the laws of recent institution, 
 on the other. There were first Hillel's seven rules 
 of interpretation, from which R. Ishmael evolved 
 thirteen. Then came the curious, bold method 
 that Akiba has the distinction of having applied 
 and developed with undaunted consistency. It is 
 based on the principle that in the Scriptures no- 
 thing is superfluous, neither phrase, nor word, nor 
 particle, nor letter ; that down to the most insig- 
 nificant detail everything has peculiar value, and 
 that besides the obvious meaning of the text the 
 intelligent mind ought to discover a thousand hid- 
 den meanings, a thousand occult hints. Such and 
 
THE TALMUD 73 
 
 such a word, contrary to usage, is written with a 
 •waw ; in another the waw is lacking' apparently 
 without reason ; here the word and is redundant, 
 there the conjunction is suppressed — all indica- 
 tions of half-revealed things, of laws, if the verse 
 has a legal bearing, of facts, if the verse is of an- 
 other character. The book of Genesis, for example, 
 opens with the words : " In the beginning God 
 created heaven and earth." The word " heaven " 
 in Hebrew is preceded by the particle eth, usually 
 the sign of the accusative, but sometimes also mean- 
 ing with. That particle must have some meaning, 
 says Akiba, and he explains the verse in the follow- 
 ing manner : " God created with (the celestial hosts, 
 that is, the stars) heaven and earth." This method, 
 which in principle was recognized by the Fathers 
 of the Church, St. Basil, St. Jerome, St. Chrysos- 
 tom, was applied to all the religious prescriptions 
 established by the Rabbis. Thenceforth the ordi- 
 nances of the Rabbis and the practices sanctified by 
 time, but lacking a sure foundation, were clothed 
 with a sacred character, and animated with new life, 
 by contact with the Holy Scriptures. The impor- 
 tance of the method is patent. In modern society 
 the law preserves its character for majesty in the 
 eyes of the people. Yet it is considered a human 
 work, subject to error, capable of modification or 
 amelioration according to changing needs. It is 
 respected, because it has been freely assented to by 
 all, and the people honor in it the wish and work of 
 all. In a society pre-eminently religious, like that 
 of the Jews, the same feeling cannot prevail. A 
 
74 THE TALMUD 
 
 number of Rabbinic prescriptions could doubtless 
 have been shown to originate in ancient and ven- 
 erable traditions, but many were of recent institu- 
 tion. How could they be urged upon the people 
 and made to influence their manners, if they were 
 not clothed with a sacred character, and in whatso- 
 ever way possible justified by the very letter of the 
 Scriptures ? This method, likewise, by providing 
 the shelter of the Law, opened the way to the modi- 
 fications and the useful reforms made necessary by 
 circumstances. Thus Judaism accommodated itself 
 to the constantly shifting needs of a society con- 
 stantly in a state of upheaval, and, consecrating the 
 aspirations of each new generation, it could develop 
 and progress boldly on the path of reforms. This 
 method secured the religion against the inert wor- 
 ship of the word and the letter, snatched it away 
 from stagnation, and, by the flux and movement it 
 produced, vivified and fortified faith. Thus it sanc- 
 tioned at once tradition, which thenceforth was 
 fixed, and future innovations that might crop up. 
 Did the people understand immediately the im- 
 mense import of the procedure ? We do not know, 
 but certainly they conceived profound admiration 
 for the man able to educe "bushels of decisions from 
 eyery stroke of a letter." Arbitrary as the method 
 may seem to us, the favor it met with may be ex- 
 plained by the ardent desire of the people, pointed 
 out above, to find everything in the Holy Scriptures. 
 They are looked upon by the people as the source 
 of all knowledge. The Rabbis invent nothing; 
 they merely rediscover in the Sacred Writings 
 
THE TALMUD 75 
 
 the laws that they establish. Far from setting 
 out on the search for the unknown, they repeat 
 tradition. They are the Tana'im, " the repeaters," 
 and the work taught by them in the schools is the 
 Mishna, that is, "the repetition." The aspirations 
 of the crowd, then, are satisfied by this method, 
 which, moreover, appeals to its admirers by its 
 boldness and ingenuity ; hence its triumph. 
 
 However, the work of the teachers was not ap- 
 proved by the entire nation. One class of society 
 was outspoken in its opposition to the doctrines 
 and the instruction of the Pharisees. The aris- 
 tocracy, the rich priestly families, saw with dis- 
 pleasure the growth of an inconvenient legislative 
 system, which compelled them to a life of austeri- 
 ties and sacrifices far from charming to their taste. 
 The party of the Sadducees can be traced back to 
 the establishment of the sacerdotal royalty of thfe 
 Hasmoneans, to the day on which an aristocracy 
 began to form about the reigning family. The Sad- 
 ducees admitted all the religious traditions that 
 time had consecrated up to their day. But they were 
 opposed to the development of traditional legisla- 
 tion, and as Akiba's method was its most powerful 
 instrument, they combated it with all their ability. 
 Though living up to traditions that could not be 
 explained by the Pentateuch, they insisted that 
 they abided only by the pure and simple meaning 
 of the text ; they followed, or at least pretended 
 to follow, scrupulously the letter of the Law, and 
 observed its explicit injunctions, refusing to modify 
 them by the ordinances of recent institution. They 
 
7^ THE TALMUD 
 
 had no schools whose disciples might have been 
 recruited from among the people. But the priests 
 formed a college, and among themselves they prop- 
 agated their traditions, which, however, were re- 
 jected by the people. During the great upheaval 
 that terminated in the catastrophe of the year 
 70, the Sadducees, who were sincere Jews, and 
 repudiated only the exaggerations of the Pharisaic 
 system, fused with the people, and all dissension 
 was forgotten in the face of the common danger. 
 But after the destruction of the Temple, when the 
 Rabbis established their schools at Jabne, in the 
 north of Palestine, the priests, whose services had 
 become superfluous, exiled themselves to the Da- 
 roma, or the South, and there established rival 
 schools, in which they taught the sacerdotal tradi- 
 tion. While Akiba's numerous disciples developed 
 the word of the master, R. Ishmael ben Elisha, 
 high priest, taught in the Dardma. Rigorously 
 confining to its narrowest limits the system of in- 
 terpretation adopted by Akiba, he explained the 
 Pentateuch according to its simplest sense. He 
 thrust out of the Books of Moses the lessons that 
 the school of the north made dominant, and pre- 
 served the variants that ancient priestly tradition 
 had sanctified. We owe to him commentaries on 
 all the Books of the Pentateuch except Genesis. 
 They are the Mechilta {measure), commentary on 
 Exodus ; Sifra {book), commentary on Leviticus, 
 also called Torath Cohanim, or Law of the Priests, 
 on account of the numerous Levitical prescriptions 
 which form the object of the third Book of Moses ; 
 
THE TALMUD TJ 
 
 finally, Sifr^ (books), the commentaries on Numbers 
 and Deuteronomy. These are the only works be- 
 queathed by the school of Dar6ma. The school, 
 in fact, soon vanished into darkness, being each 
 day more and more obscured by the brilliant light 
 irradiating from its northern rival. The mentioned 
 works, moreover, were preserved only because the 
 Pharisaic schools adopted them after having modi- 
 fied them by touches changing their character. 
 However, the alterations were not so radical but 
 that under the Pharisaic layer traces remained of 
 the Sadducean, or at least sacerdotal, method. 
 Thanks to these vestiges, the historic science of 
 our day has succeeded in rediscovering the spirit 
 of the original work by a circumstantial study of 
 the language, of the Halachoth, and the Pentateuch 
 injunctions involved in them. By re-establishing 
 the text three-fourths effaced, a species of palimp- 
 sest, it not only restored the work of Ishmael ben 
 Elisha's school, but demonstrated the permanence 
 of Sadducean instruction. 
 
 Akiba, however, had not yet finished his work. 
 To have connected all the traditional and recently 
 instituted laws with the Pentateuch was not suffi- 
 cient. It was necessary to co ordinate and unite 
 them into a sort of code. In fact, in the schools 
 the commentaries and the instruction of the Rab- 
 bis had at first followed the text of the Law, and ' 
 the order of its chapters and verses determined 
 the order of the Halachoth. But when the Halach- 
 oth, by the successive labors of the schools, had 
 multiplied extensively, it became impossible to 
 
78 THE TALMUD 
 
 teach them in that order. Each verse was accom- 
 panied by a commentary of infinite length ; the 
 text disappeared, buried under the notes. A clas- 
 sification thus became necessary, and this again 
 was Akiba's work. His master mind succeeded in 
 putting order into the vast chaos of decisions. But 
 he could do no more than trace the outlines. The 
 Roman hangman prevented him from finishing the 
 work, which his school continued, and a disciple of 
 his followers, R. Judah the Holy, of the illustrious 
 family of Hillel, had the glory of making the final 
 compilation of the Mishna and attaching his name 
 thereto. 
 
 It was an important achievement, this codifica- 
 tion of the oral law, and one big with results. 
 Once taught from the written word in the Mishna, 
 Tradition received its final consecration. It ceased 
 to be tradition to become a new Law — a Law com- 
 pleter, preciser, and clearer than the ancient Law, 
 which found itself relegated to the background. 
 " It is better to be occupied with the Mishna than 
 with the Law," said the Rabbis; "the Law may 
 be compared to water, but the Mishna is wine." 
 Why, in fact, should one lose time in puzzling over 
 the original text, when complete explanation is 
 within reach of all, when the Mishna contains 
 both text and commentary ? So tradition, from 
 being a commentary on the Law, itself becomes a 
 second law, a Deuterosis, to use the expression of 
 the Fathers of the Church, and takes the place of 
 the first. Thereafter, the work of the schools, 
 thought to be at an end, will be resumed. The 
 
THE TALMUD 79 
 
 long labor expended on the Pentateuch and ter- 
 minating in the Mishna will be applied to the 
 Mishna to produce finally the Gemara. The text 
 of the Mishna will be taken up again and dis- 
 cussed. Every Rabbinic opinion, whether anony- 
 mous, that is, admitted by all, or cited with its 
 author's name, that is, with every possible reserva- 
 tion, will be argued, debated, developed, explained. 
 Obscure points will be illuminated, and so again 
 new decisions will be arrived at. And after three 
 centuries of discussion, the Gemara will be finished, 
 and the Talmud closed. Thus a new era begins 
 with the compilation of the Mishna. But a new 
 era must have a new name. The doctors of the 
 Mishna had been Tanaim, repeaters ; the teachers 
 of the epoch upon which we are about to enter 
 are called Amoraim, discoursers — two well chosen 
 names, in each case characterizing exactly the 
 nature of the instruction. For if, on the one 
 hand, the Tanaim only taught tradition, only re- 
 produced and repeated decisions received from 
 ancient times to transmit them to disciples, then, 
 on the other hand, this tradition once fixed, there 
 remained nothing more than to discuss the Law 
 and to discourse. 
 
 This work of the teachers of the Gemara does 
 not withdraw itself wholly from foreign influences. 
 While they are building up the code on the solid 
 basis of the Mishna, a neighboring nation, whose 
 formidable power they know only too well, is en- 
 gaged about a similar task, and with incomparable 
 force and marvellous genius raises the monumental 
 
80 THE TALMUD 
 
 Corpus Juris civilis, on which will be propped 
 the legal systems of Europe. How was it possi- 
 ble for the Rabbis to escape the influence that 
 Roman legislation, whose rigor and formalism they 
 should have been the first to admire, could exer- 
 cise upon them ? In point of fact, the civil law of 
 the Talmud is impregnated in almost all its parts 
 with the spirit of the Roman system. Even formu- 
 las and expressions borrowed from Rome can be 
 found in it. Certain departments of legislation, 
 such as the laws on slavery and prescription, for 
 which the Pentateuch furnishes not a hint, or 
 sketches barely the shadow of a theory, are almost 
 entirely inspired by Roman legislation. But all 
 they borrow takes on modifications under the ma- 
 nipulation of the Rabbis. The Jewish mind trans- 
 formed the alien elements by impressing upon 
 them its peculiar character. And from this vast 
 crucible, in which three centuries had melted down 
 the materials of diverse origin gathered by the 
 schools, was to emerge the essentially uniform and 
 homogeneous work of Talmudic legislation. 
 
 Ill 
 
 INFLUENCE OF EVENTS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
 THE HALACHA 
 
 In the preceding pages, we studied only the in- 
 ternal development of the Halacha. It is now time 
 to consider whether external circumstances exer- 
 cised influence upon this development ; whether 
 and up to what point they trammelled or favored it. 
 
THE TALMUD v 8l 
 
 Although its first traces are found only in the 
 Maccabean epoch, it is well known that the work of 
 the Jewish schools resulting in the Talmud began 
 on the return from the Captivity. From that pe- 
 riod until the time of the final redaction of the 
 Talmud, four great events mark the history of 
 Judea : the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes, 
 followed by the re-establishment of the kingdom 
 by the Hasmoneans ; the birth of Christianity ; 
 the destruction of the Temple, and the last revolt 
 of the Jews under Hadrian. We shall examine 
 the influence upon the formation of the Halacha 
 attributable to each of these events. 
 
 In the long and tranquil years of the Persian 
 domination, Judaism, under the direction of the 
 Men of the Great Synagogue, could grow un- 
 shackled, and instruction, little by little penetrat- 
 ing the mass of the people, formed the national 
 mind. The persecutions of Antiochus, therefore, 
 were nothing more than a passing storm, which, we 
 may well believe, effected a revival and strengthen- 
 ing of religious feeling. We say, we may well be- 
 lieve, for we possess no documents to acquaint us 
 with the precise nature of their influence. The 
 triumph of the Maccabees again insured a certain 
 tranquillity for the Jews, thanks to which the Rab- 
 bis, as under the Persian domination, could calmly 
 prosecute their long continuing work. But Rome 
 enters upon the scene. Pompey takes possession 
 of Jerusalem, and desecrates the Sanctuary. Soon 
 Judea falls under the iron yoke of the procurators, 
 whose odious tyranny leads to the terrible insur- 
 
82 THE TALMUD 
 
 rection of the year 65. The history of the heroic, 
 superhuman struggle ending with the burning of 
 the Temple and the annihilation of the Jewish 
 state, is well known. It would seem that a revo- 
 lution like this ought to react powerfully upon 
 religious conditions. The results, however, do not 
 correspond to the greatness of the catastrophe ; 
 for the influence was material rather than moral. 
 With the destruction of the Temple disappeared a 
 part of the cult and a whole set of ceremonies. All 
 connected with the sacrifices was abrogated by the 
 force of circumstances. But the rest of the cult re- 
 mained intact, no cause, moreover, presenting itself 
 to modify its spirit. The fact is that, though the 
 Jewish nationality was crushed, the religion was 
 not persecuted. The political mold shattered, the 
 religious mold remained perfect, and preserved the 
 hope of the re-establishment of national independ- 
 ence. This is what Vespasian did not under- 
 stand, and in permitting R. Jochanan ben Zakkal 
 to transport his school to Jabne, he did not realize 
 that he was allowing a fire to be kindled on a new 
 hearth of insurrection. Sixty years after the fall of 
 Jerusalem, in fact, the grandsons of those who saw 
 the ruin of the " Holy House," rise at the call of 
 Akiba, rush to arms, chase the Romans out of Pal- 
 estine, reconquer their land, summon all their 
 brethren of the Empire, and for an instant re-erect 
 the kingdom of their ancestors. It is a grave mo- 
 ment, for this struggle is to decide, not only upon 
 Israel's fate, but also upon that of the new sect 
 that Israel has permitted to go forth from his 
 
THE TALMUD 83 
 
 midst. The Christianity of about the year 70 had 
 not acquired sufficient power to feel the conse- 
 quences of the catastrophe. A little sect without 
 influence, it found protection in its own feebleness. 
 But from that time until Hadrian, it grew and ex- 
 tended itself, and the germs of dissidence present 
 from its birth in the antagonism of Peter and Paul 
 developed. The Church was divided into two 
 chief sects : the Judeo-Christians, disciples of 
 Peter, and the adepts of Paul. The Judeo-Chris- 
 tians still count themselves as Jews, and accept 
 all the religious teachings of the Rabbis, adding 
 only the article of faith that the Messiah had come 
 in the person of Jesus. Paul and his disciples re- 
 ject all the ceremonies, all the traditional laws, 
 more than that, even the Law of Moses, and pro- 
 fess a new doctrine, whence Catholicism was later 
 to issue. This is the situation when Bar Coziba, 
 the Son of the Star, the new Messiah whom Akiba 
 salutes, stirs up the Jews in revolt against Tinnius 
 Rufus. The Judeo-Christians, mindful of the Mas- 
 ter's word, "My kingdom is not of this world," 
 refuse to fight at the side of the Jews. Coziba, by 
 threats of punishment, forces them to take up 
 arms. But when Severus triumphs, and Bethar 
 falls into the power of the Romans, the most terri- 
 ble vengeance strikes all who bear the name Jew. 
 Hadrian does not fall into Vespasian's error : he 
 perceives that the Jews are to be feared so long as 
 anything recalls the memory of their nationality, 
 and religious ceremonials are proscribed on pain 
 of death. " Why art thou condemned to death ? " 
 
84 THE TALMUD 
 
 says a Talmudic text. " Because I ohs^ved the 
 law of circumcision. — Why art thou led away to 
 punishment .' — Because I was faithful to the Sab- 
 bath- — Why art thou scourged .' — Because I obeyed 
 the injunction of the Lulab." In the face of these 
 consequences, the Judeo-Christians break the last 
 bond uniting them with the Jews, and throw them- 
 selves into the arms of the Paulinians. The 
 Church, which preaches the abolition of ceremo- 
 nies, sees her triumph assured. 
 
 But if the result of this war is to precipitate the 
 Church along the road upon which she has just 
 entered so resolutely, it ought to have the opposite 
 influence on Judaism, plunging it deeper into 
 Pharisaism. And that for two reasons. The first, 
 producing an effect only during a limited period, is 
 the religious persecution which Hadrian himself 
 enforces against the Jews. For, the more the cer- 
 emonies are persecuted, and the more the people 
 feels its lot bound up with them, the greater grows 
 their importance in the eyes of the believer, the 
 more do they tend to become absolute. Then, 
 when the persecutions abated, and the people 
 began to breathe more freely, it was necessary to 
 institute a separation from the Church, which 
 gained territory day after day. The differences 
 dividing the two religions had to be marked more 
 clearly. And the more unreservedly growing 
 Christianity opened its ample bosom to the pagan 
 nations, the more Judaism inclined to retreat, jeal- 
 ously withdrawing into itself and multiplying its 
 practices and observances from day to day, from 
 
THE TALMUD 8$ 
 
 hour to hour. The abyss parting it from the Chris- 
 tians and the pagans deepened. It remained iso- 
 lated in the midst of hostile nations, and this isola- 
 tion constituted its strength. Thus became possi- 
 ble the strange phenomenon, unique in history, I 
 believe, of a people dispersed to the four corners of 
 the earth, yet one, of a nation without a land, yet 
 living. The miracle was accomplished by a book, 
 the Talmud. The Talmud was the ensign which 
 served as a rallying point for the dispersed of Israel. 
 The thousand austere and minute practices that 
 it enjoins were so many strong bonds attaching 
 one to the other. Thus, by a curious series of 
 actions and reactions, the religious movement 
 that gave birth to the Mishna brought about the 
 national uprising under Hadrian. Through its 
 influence on Christianity, this rebellion reacted 
 indirectly on the religious movement that produced 
 the Talmud. And the Talmud, in turn, maintained 
 the unity of the people, conquered and crushed, 
 yet none the less living and resisting. 
 
 IV 
 
 SPIRIT OF THE HALACHIC DEVELOPMENT 
 
 Let us now cast a glance backwards, and take a 
 bird's-eye view of this effective development of 
 Pharisaic formalism. We are at once struck by 
 its system of observances having relation to every 
 moment of life. The beUever finds himself en- 
 meshed in a net-work of prescriptions, which close 
 
86 THE TALMUD 
 
 in upon him on all sides, and reduce him to never- 
 ending slavery-=— slavery accepted freely and with 
 joy, for this sacred, a thousand times blessed yoke 
 is the condition of happiness. Chained down by 
 the many links that his religion has forged into a 
 system around him, he has only to follow without 
 fatigue or effort the divine commandments. He 
 has no need for long reflection upon his duties and 
 for much reasoning on the rules of conduct, ab- 
 solved as he is by religion, which has done all this 
 work for him. Each day, each hour, is unalterably 
 arranged by regulations from on high. In the 
 morning, prayers and thanksgivings ; at noon, 
 prayers and thanksgivings ; in the evening, pray- 
 ers and thanksgivings ; benedictions before the 
 meal ; after the meal, benedictions. At sight of the 
 imposing phenomena of nature, of a storm, the sea, 
 the first spring blossoms, thanksgivings. Thanks- 
 givings for a new enjoyment, for unexpected good 
 fortune, on eating new fruits, at the announcement 
 of a happy event. Prayers of resignation at the 
 news of a misfortune. At the tomb of a beloved 
 being, set prayers ; words all prepared to console 
 the sorrowstricken, who have just been overtaken 
 by affliction. Every emotion and every feeling, 
 the most fugitive as well as the most profound, are 
 foreseen, noted, and embodied in a formula of 
 prayer or of benediction. In the most solemn mo- 
 ments of life as in the most vulgar, when the soul 
 forgets itself and allows itself to drop into the 
 prose of daily routine, or when, crushed under the 
 load of lively emotions, it gives way, yielding to its 
 
THE TALMUD 8/ 
 
 powerlessness, the believer finds himself in the 
 presence of a commandment, of a Mitzwa to be 
 accomplished, recalling him to heavenly things, 
 sanctifying the present hour, and keeping him in 
 perpetual communication with the divine. If he 
 wishes to breathe forth his feelings and give them 
 definite shape, he finds ready-made formulas at 
 hand, which he has but to repeat with fervor in 
 order to pour out his soul before God. The Israel- 
 ite, then, has no need of painful efforts in seeking 
 the road to salvation. It is wide open to him, 
 thanks to his religion, that tender, provident 
 mother who convoys him to happiness, provided he 
 obeys the divine prescriptions, and with docility 
 goes whither God leads him. Such is the system 
 the rearing of which the Talmud has pursued with 
 the force of bold logic. Curiously enough, no- 
 where can the precisely formulated expression of 
 this system be found. Moreover, it is well known 
 that the Synagogue has never summoned a Coun- 
 cil to decree a dogma and impose it upon the' faith 
 of the nation. But whether a precise formula 
 embodying their system was present in the minds 
 of the Rabbis, or whether they unconsciously fol- 
 lowed it out, it may none the less be abstracted in 
 all its clearness from the very spirit of Halachic 
 development : namely, impotence of human reason 
 to direct itself in the search for truth, and the duty 
 imposed upon religion to teach it truth. 
 
 In fact, is not this the system of all religions .? Do 
 they not one and all recognize the powerlessness 
 of human reason to arrive at truth without assist- 
 
88 THE TALMUD 
 
 ance from above? Are they not all sent down 
 from heaven to lead man to salvation ? Judaism, 
 then, has followed out a natural evolution, and per- 
 haps this is the point of view to be assumed in 
 explaining its derivation from Hebraism. Every 
 religion is at first based upon ideal principles, 
 principles of justice and charity, which for some 
 time, in a vague and indeterminate form, satisfy 
 certain ardent, religious spirits. But it cannot 
 long persist in this indeterminate form ; it clothes 
 itself with a body, becomes a dogma, and is trans- 
 formed from moral instruction, which it first was, 
 into a positive religion. Then, if it is logical, it 
 condemns itself to pursue the course boldly taken 
 by Pharisaism. That is what we are taught by 
 the theoretic conception of the religious idea, and 
 that is what is proved by history. History tells 
 us that every religion rests upon formalism. It 
 tells us that Mahometanism, like Judaism, has ar- 
 rived at a cult burdened with ceremonies. It 
 shows us in Italic polytheism an infinite multiplic- 
 ity of divinities directing the conduct of men. It 
 shows us the Roman peasant trembling before the 
 four thousand gods that presided over every act 
 and moment of life and Lucretius delivering men 
 from the chains of religion. It tells us that the 
 Brahmins arrive at scholasticism comparable with 
 the Talmud ; that the doctrine of St. Paul itself, 
 the doctrine founded on the rejection of every exter- 
 nal observance, later gives birth to the Summa The- 
 ologice of St. Thomas Aquinas and to the system of 
 ceremonies from which Protestantism was a reac- 
 
THE TALMUD 89 
 
 tion. It tells us, finally, that, if Protestantism alone 
 has hitherto escaped this law, it is because it is 
 a compromise between religion and philosophy, 
 and that logic condemns it to end up either in form- 
 alism or in deism. Judaism, then, could not but 
 pursue this course, and urged by the logic of 
 things, which was favored by an array of circum- 
 stances destructive of the political existence of the 
 nation, beneficent for its religious work, it pursued 
 it to the end. Accordingly, the Talmud is the 
 completes! expression of a religious movement, 
 and this code of endless prescriptions and minute 
 ceremonials represents in its perfection the total 
 work of the religious idea. In our eyes, this is its 
 greatest title to the respect and the consideration 
 of thinkers ; this is its greatest merit. Certainly, 
 Judaism may be regarded as austere and arid. It 
 has not the splendor and brilliant exuberance of 
 Greek or Hindoo polytheism. We are far removed 
 from the superabundant, vigorous poetry pervad- 
 ing the dazzling efflorescence of Aryan mytholo- 
 gies. Herein lies the great advantage of polythe- 
 ism and pantheism over monotheism. But we are 
 now not considering religions from the point of 
 view of art ; we are investigating only their dog- 
 matic development, in so far as it can be abstracted 
 and extricated from the rest of human faculties. 
 Taken in this way, that of Judaism has been most 
 logical, since without hesitation it has proceeded 
 to extreme consequences. If these consequences 
 incur condemnation, then the system as a whole 
 must be condemned, for the starting point is 
 
90 THE TALMUD 
 
 wrong. If the starting point is accepted, it is nec- 
 essary to go to the bitter end, and endorse all the 
 consequences. At all events, the Talmud has done 
 so, and thanks to it we have in Judaism the cora- 
 pletest, and consequently the most perfect, expres- 
 sion of the religous idea. 
 
 V 
 
 THE TALMUD IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND MODERN 
 TIMES 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 We have arrived at the end of our task. En- 
 deavoring to apply the critical method to the 
 investigation of the Talmud, we have demanded 
 from an analytic study information on the elements 
 composing it, and from an historic study the 
 supreme law or idea governing its formation. Be- 
 fore we close this article, it may be proper to cast 
 a glance at the fortunes of the book in the middle 
 ages and in modern times and to indicate cursorily 
 what science may still demand of it for the general 
 history of humanity. 
 
 When, a century after the compilation of the 
 Palestinian Gemara, the Babylonian Talmud, in its 
 turn, received its final shape, it was universally 
 adopted in the Jewish schools, and the chiefs of 
 the Academies, the Sabora'im {opinion givers, from 
 the sixth to the eighth century), declaring the text 
 fixed, decided that no more modifications could be 
 
THE TALMUD 9 1 
 
 introduced into it. Despite the persecutions of 
 Jezdegerd II, Firuz, and Kobad, who closed the 
 schools in Persia for a period of sixty-three years, 
 and interrupted the teaching of the tradition, the 
 Talmud became a classic to be studied and com- 
 mented. The Saboralm occupied themselves more 
 especially with grammar, fixing the system of 
 vowel points for the Bible, while the Geonim {excel- 
 lencies, from the eighth to the ninth century), 
 along wi.th lexicographic work, devoted themselves 
 especially to the study of the Talmud. Under 
 ' their influence, this book formed the basis of in- 
 struction, and became for the schools what the 
 Mishna had been for the Amora'fm. To that epoch 
 belongs the redaction of the Great Decisions {Ha- 
 lachoth GedolotH), a work in which the principal 
 decisions of the Talmud are classified in the order 
 of the 613 commandments of the Pentateuch to 
 which they had been attached, With the con- 
 quests of the Arabs, Jewish studies spread over 
 Africa and Spain. A little later the movement 
 takes possession of the Provence and of Italy, 
 then of the regions to the north of the Loire as 
 far as the German provinces on the Rhine. On 
 all sides schools are opened, and remarkable works 
 of various kinds published. R. Hananel under- 
 takes an abridgment of the Halachic parts of the 
 Talmud, which inspires, and in turn is displaced 
 by, the similar work of R. Isaac of Fez (1013- 
 1103). At the same time appears the complete 
 Commentary by R. Solomon Isaaci, called Rashi, 
 of Troyes in the Champagne, a masterpiece of 
 
92 THE TALMUD 
 
 brevity, precision, and clearness. In the following 
 century, Maimonides, "the eagle of the Syna- 
 gogue," publishes his Arabic commentary on the 
 Mishna and the masterly work called Mishne To- 
 rah, "the second law," in which, embracing the 
 whole domain of the Halacha, he seeks to system- 
 atize the vast mass of decisions. In France, Rashi 
 created a school. With him directly is connected 
 the galaxy of French Rabbis in the twelfth and 
 thirteenth centuries, to whom the world owes the 
 Talmudic glosses called Tosaphoth, or Additions. 
 It is this work of the Tosaphists together with 
 Rashi's commentary, become a classic, that frames 
 the text of the Mishna and the Gemara in all the 
 editions. From France the movement spreads to 
 north-western Germany, which in the thirteenth 
 and the fourteenth century furnishes its contingent 
 of commentaries and supercommentaries. These 
 diverse works bear the same character. In all, the 
 various decisions reached by the Gemara in the 
 different cases discussed are compared ; one is 
 sought to be explained by the other, the import and 
 extent of each are determined, and in all, the order 
 or rather the disorder of the Gemara, somewhat 
 palliated, is followed. With the exception of Mai- 
 monides, no one thought of introducing the light 
 of method into this vast chaos and of classifying 
 all the Halachoth logically. The German, Jacob 
 ben Asher, in the fourteenth century, taking the 
 Mishne Torah as his model, undertakes a methodic 
 piece of work. For a century the attempt remains 
 without imitation ; the fifteenth century produces 
 
THE TALMUD 93 
 
 nothing for the Halacha. But in the sixteenth 
 century appears the Polish school, whose worksy 
 though not characterized by the breadth of concep- 
 tion that distinguishes Maimonides' Mishne To- 
 rah, are remarkable for penetration and depth, 
 perhaps lacking in that book. This school has for 
 its aim the completion of R. Jacob ben Asher's 
 work, and in 1567 Joseph Karo publishes his Shul- 
 han Arukh (the prepared table'), in which all the 
 religious and civil laws of the Jews, article by arti- 
 cle, are classified according to subjects. The codi- 
 fication of the Halacha is thereby completed, but 
 not the work of the commentators, which con- 
 tinues upon the text of the Code during the eigh- 
 teenth century, and in our day is not at an end in 
 Bohemia, in Hungary, and in all the sections of 
 the world where the Jews have most faithfully pre- 
 served the customs and usages of past times. 
 
 While Judaism in the whole of Europe is em- 
 ploying all its intelligence and all its activity in 
 the completion of its great Talmud work, what is 
 the fortune of the book among Christians .' The 
 Jews were persecuted ; the work that was the 
 soul of the unfortunate nation was not to be 
 spared. " It has been proscribed, and imprisoned, 
 and burnt, a hundred times over," says the author 
 of the Quarterly Review article. ' ' From Justinian, 
 who, as early as 553 A.D., honored it by a special 
 interdictory Novella (Novella 146), down to Clem- 
 ent Vni and later — a space of over a thousand 
 years — both the secular and the spiritual powers. 
 
94 THE TALMUD 
 
 kings and emperors, popes and anti-popes, vied 
 with each other in hurling anathemas and bulls 
 and edicts of wholesale confiscation and conflagra- 
 tion against this luckless book." In 1239, Gregory 
 IX has it burnt in France and in Italy; in 1264, 
 Clement IV renews the prohibition, and condemns 
 to the stake those who harbor manuscripts of it. 
 Two centuries later the interdict is not yet re- 
 moved, and it took from 1484 to 1519, that is, 
 thirty-six years, to print twenty-three treatises — 
 the publication was secret. In 1520, Leo X abro- 
 gates the decree. But in 1553, at the instigation 
 of the apostate Jew, Solomon Romano, Julius III 
 again imposes the interdict, and has the Talmud 
 burnt at Rome and at Venice. Paul IV, incited by 
 Vittorio Eliano, the worthy brother of Romano, 
 ipiitates Julius III in 1559. Four years later, the 
 Council of Trent permits the publication of the 
 Talmud, but under so close a surveillance by the 
 censor that at first the Jews refuse to profit by 
 the authorization. Not until 1578 does the Basle 
 edition appear, "so expurgated that it might be 
 read with profit even by Christians." But, though 
 Pius VI in 1566 and Clement VIII in 1592 and 
 1599 renew the decrees of prohibition in spite of 
 the Council, the editions of the Talmud multiply 
 rapidly, and the sixteenth century, under the influ- 
 ence of the Reformation, sees Jewish studies in 
 honor with Christian scholars, who seek the in- 
 struction of Rabbis. The most celebrated scholar 
 of the sixteenth century is Reuchlin, the impartial 
 savant, the intrepid champion of the Talmud. 
 
THE TALMUD 95 
 
 Among others, there is Maximilian I's physician, 
 Paul Riccio, the first, I believe, to attempt a Latin 
 compilation of the Talmud. In the following cen- 
 tury works abound. Above all should be cited 
 those of the two Buxtorfs, who for more than 
 seventy years occupy in succession the chair of 
 Hebrew at Basle, and publish Hebrew grammars 
 and lexicons, translate Jewish authors of the mid- 
 dle ages, and instruct their contemporaries in Rab- 
 binic studies. Next, Latin translations of diverse 
 Talmudic texts are attempted. Constant I'Empe- 
 reur translates and annotates the treatises Baba 
 Kamma and Middoth ; Cocceius, the treatises Mak- 
 koth and Synhedrin; Surenhusius, the Mishna, 
 which had been translated before into Spanish and 
 Latin by the Jew Jacob and his brother Isaac 
 Abendana. Selden publishes his learned studies 
 on The Jewish Woman, the Civil Year, Natural 
 Law according to the Hebrews, the Tribunals ; 
 Lightfoot issues his Hebraic and Talmudic Hours; 
 Shickard his Royal Law among the Hebrews, 
 "snatched from Rabbinic Darkness ;" Bartolocci, 
 finally, his "great Rabbinic library." In the eigh- 
 teenth century, we have among others the works 
 of Wagenseil, Danz, Schcetggen, Rheinfeld, Egger. 
 But though these authors in various respects de- 
 serve commendation, the greater part of them 
 write under the influence of religious prejudice or 
 the narrowest fanaticism, and wittingly or unwit- 
 tingly sacrifice truth to party spirit. Often reli- 
 gious passion is openly displayed, and has the 
 frankness to announce itself in the very titles. 
 
96 THE TALMUD 
 
 Wagenseil, the learned translator of Sola, gives us 
 his Fiery Datts of Satan, or, the Secret and Horri- 
 ble Books of the Jews against Jesus Christ and the 
 Christian Religion, and later, his Christian Denun- 
 ciation of the Blasphemies of the Jews against Jesus 
 Christ. Danz, the author of Rabbinism Explained, 
 publishes, The Jews slain with their own Sword; 
 Eisenmenger, Judaism Unmasked, or the Complete 
 Account of the Calumnies, Blasphemies, Errors, and 
 Fables of the Jews. Have such studies, inspired 
 solely by ardent and malignant fanaticism, the 
 rights of citizenship in the Republic of Letters ? 
 
 The science of our day owes to itself the duty of 
 studying the Talmud impartially. It will judge 
 worthy of its attention this monument of a religion 
 and a civilization whose influence has not been 
 void in the world, and, whatever its absolute value 
 may be adjudged to be, science will understand it, 
 and study its formation and development. It will 
 demand of the Talmud instruction, or at least in- 
 formation, almost as varied as the subjects coming 
 within the compass of science. The historian will, 
 address himself to it for light upon the history of 
 the early centuries of the Christian era and of the 
 centuries immediately preceding it, and though not 
 seeking in it precise data, which it cannot furnish, 
 he will be sure to find a faithful picture of the be- 
 liefs and ideas of the Jewish nation, of its moral 
 and spiritual life. The naturalist will ask of it 
 numerous questions concerning the sciences, phys- 
 ical, natural, or medical. Has it ever occurred to 
 any one to compile, if not the fauna, at least the 
 
THE TALMUD 97 
 
 flora of the Talmud, that is, of the Palestine and 
 Babylonia contemporary with the Empire? It 
 ■were easy with it as a basis to furnish a second edi- 
 tion of Pliny's Natural History, certainly as valuable 
 as the first. The lawyer will question it on the 
 history of its jurisprudence, will investigate 
 whether, how, and by what intermediaries Roman 
 law and Persian customs influenced it, and it will 
 be a curious study to compare the results that 
 two different civilizations, directed by opposite 
 principles, have reached in the Jus civile and the 
 Jus Talmudicum. The mythologist will dive into 
 its legends, and, by a wise application of the 
 comparative method, determine the history of Mi- 
 drashic mythology. The philologist will devote 
 himself to the language — that abrupt, rough lan- 
 guage, by means of which the Talmud seems to- 
 please itself in heaping up obscurities of form 
 over those of the thought, and he will be sure to 
 make more than one happy find. For, says the 
 author oitheHistoryoftke Semitic Languages, "the 
 lexical spoliation and grammatic analysis of the 
 Talmudic language, according to the methods of 
 modern philology, remain to be made. . . . That 
 language fills a hiatus in the history of Semitic 
 idioms." Finally, the philosopher will demand of 
 the Talinud the explanation of Judaism and the 
 history of Jewish institutions, and as the Talmudic 
 books offer the completest expression thereof, and 
 as he has at hand all the component elements, a 
 scrupulous analysis will give him the law of the 
 development of the Jewish religion.