Where late a brook, behold an ocean flows!
For Wisdom’s blessings shall o’er earth extend,
Blessings that know no bound, that know no end.”
The Talmud.—Our treatise would be incomplete without some notice of the mysterious book whose name heads this paragraph,—the Talmud. Comparatively unknown except in name for centuries, it was repeatedly suppressed in the Dark Ages by popes and kings, as likely to be dangerous to Christianity. (See Dr. Jastrow’s “Dictionary of the Talmud.”)
Talmud means learning. It is essentially a digest of law, civil and criminal, and a collection of traditions orally preserved. It consists of two parts, viz., the Mishna, or earlier text; and the Gemara (ghe-mah’ră), a commentary on the Mishna. The age that gave birth to the Talmud was the period after the Captivity, when a passionate love for their sacred and national writings animated the Jews restored to their country and its institutions. Hundreds of learned men, all great in their day, who treasured in their memories the traditions of a thousand years, contributed to its pages.
The Talmud was a cyclopædia treating of every subject, even down to gardening and the manual arts; it depicts incidentally the social life of the people, not of the Jews alone, but of other nations also. It is enlivened by parables, jests, and fairy-tales, ethical sayings, and proverbs; the style is now poetical, anon sublime; and there may be gathered amid its wilderness of themes “some of the richest and most precious fruits of human thought and fancy.”
After two unsuccessful attempts, the Talmud was finally systemized in a code by the Saint Jehuda (about 200 A.D.). A remarkable correspondence exists between it and the Gospel writings, explained by the fact that both reflect in a measure the same times. (Read Sekles’s “Poetry of the Talmud.”)
EXTRACTS FROM THE TALMUD.
“Turn the Bible and turn it again, for everything is in it.
Bless God for the evil as well as the good. When you hear of a death, say ‘Blessed is the righteous Judge.’