Some years after the publication of the Mishnah in the third century (a.d. 230-270), R. Yochanan, who for eighty years had been President of the Sanhedrin, undertook a commentary on the text like the Sharh, which accompanies the Arabic Matu. Aided, it is said, by Rab and Samuel, the disciples of Gamaliel, son of R. Yahúda, he produced about a.d. 390 a book which, united with the Mishnayoth, received the title Talmud (doctrine or learning) of Jerusalem, though written at Tiberias. The product of the Schools of Palestine, it was composed in the West Aramæan tongue; and it calls the Mishnic text by the simple name of Halakah (rule), or dogmatic part. The School of Tiberias flourished apparently in the days of St. Jerome, and passed into oblivion during the fourth and early fifth centuries.
In a.d. 367 Askhi, President of the Babylonian Sanhedrin, whilst teaching the Mishnah, annually commented upon two tracts of that work, which, being concise, and as it were axiomatic, like all books that announce legislative principles, required explanation of the author’s exact intention. He was aided by the opinions of many doctors omitted in the Mishnah, either those who died before R. Yahúda the Holy had finished his labours, or the many who followed during the ensuing years. In order that his learning might not be lost to the world, he compiled and transcribed thirty-five tracts, and died a.d. 427. His son Mar and Marimon his disciple continued the work, and after seventy-three years appeared the Gemara, complement or conclusion. It was written in the Eastern Aramæan tongue, and it corresponds with the Hasheyah of Arabic standard works.
The Mishnah and the Gemara, now forming a single code, became known to history as the Talmud Babli (of Babylon); and when the Talmud is mentioned, the second work, being the fuller and the more minute, is always meant.[65] Presently the Talmudists separated into two great and rival schools in ante-Christian times: that of Hillel,[66] remarkable for his learning, his humility, and his charity, extending even so far as to forbid usury (Tract Baba Metzin, folio 17b); and that of Shammai, inflexible in principles and often inclining to severity.
Both of these voluminous compositions are essentially a corpus juris, to be compared with the Edictum Perpetuum and Responsa Prudentium, with the Pandects, the Novellæ,[67] and the Institutes. They form an encyclopædia of Judæan Law, divine and human, national and international, laical and ecclesiastic, civil and criminal; a doctrinal, judicial, and sentential digest, dealing in exegesis and hermeneutics; a huge compilation of what Muslim divines call Fatwá, or decisions upon legal subjects; and a thesaurus of ceremonial observances borrowed from the Oral Law and the traditions of the heads of schools from Rabbi Gamaliel downwards.[68] Composed in the East, that classic land of the supernatural, they abound in Hagadistic matter, wild and picturesque legends sometimes inculcating moral lessons, like the four nocturnal spectres Lilíth, Naama, Aguerith, and Mahala,[69] at other times puerile tales of the great angels Patspatsiah, Tashbach, Hadarniel, Enkatham, Pastam, Sandalphon, Shamsiel, and Prasta. Its historical, topographical, ethnographical, and geographical information must be received with the greatest reserve, coming from authors of different ages and of several values. For instance, the Gemara (Sanhedrin, vi. 2) informs us that our Lord, having vainly endeavoured during forty days to find an advocate, was sentenced, and on the 14th of Nisan was stoned and afterwards hanged. It is a storehouse of curious allusions to the products of various countries, the occupations of races, agriculture, gardening, professions and trades, arts and sciences, connubial relations, manners and customs, the interiors of houses, and even dress. It portrays the cosmopolitanism and the luxury of Rome in her later days, thereby filling up the somewhat meagre sketches of the post-classical school. We find in the Mishnah allusions to the fish of Spain, the apples of Crete, the cheese of Bithynia, the zythus,[70] lentils, and beans of Egypt, the citrons of Greece, the wines of Italy, the beer of Media, the garments of India and Pelusium, the shirts of Cilicia, and the veils of Arabia.
“At five years of age,” says the Mishnah, “let the child begin to study the Scriptures; let him continue so doing till the age of ten, when he may begin to study the Mishnah; at the age of fifteen let him begin the Gemara” (T. Aboth, chap. v.). This passage in the “vast work or ocean of learning,” as some call it, could not but be distasteful to Christianity. The tone adopted in speaking of the Almighty is anthropomorphic and anthropocentric in the extreme.[71] God spends a fourth part of the day in studying the Law. At every watch of the night He sits and roars like a lion, saying, “Woe is Me that I have laid desolate My house and burned My sanctuary, and sent My children into captivity among the nations of the world” (Berachoth). He plays for three hours every day with the leviathan. And bear in mind there are far more objectionable representations than these in the writings of the Rabbis. It revels more than any known faith in the degradation of women; the Rabbinic court declares women “disqualified by the Law from giving testimony”; the Talmud excludes them from the public worship of God, and teaches that they are under no obligation to learn the revealed will of their Creator,—peculiarly antipathetic doctrines to those who believe in an Immaculate Virgin and in a St. Mary Magdalen. Moreover, the large space given to cursing the Jew and the non-Jew, and to the unhallowed practices of magic and necromancy, the summoning and conversing with devils and spirits, the advocacy of astrology, charms, and philters, served as a pretext for Pope and Inquisition to attack it. In a.d. 553 Justinian proscribed it by Novella 146 as a “tissue of puerilities, of fables, of iniquities, of insults, of imprecations, of heresies, and of blasphemies”; it was destroyed by Gregory IX. in a.d. 1230; it was burnt in Paris by Innocent IV. (a.d. 1244); and it was proscribed by Clement IV., by Honorius[72] IV., and by John XXII. The first printed edition (Venice, 1520) saved it, and not until the third had appeared (Basle, 1578) did it come under the eye of the censor.
In 1553 and 1555 Julius III. promulgated a proclamation against what he called grotesquely the Talmud Gulnaroth; and this proceeding was repeated by Paul IV. in 1559, by Pius V. in 1566, and by Clement VIII. in 1592 and 1599.
A well-known anti-Talmudical writer remarked in 1836: “The promised German translation of the Talmud, if ever completed, must without any discussion overthrow Talmudism. Its exhibition in any European language is the most fatal attack that can be made on its authority.” This is utterly unphilosophical; the Book of Mormon, with all its Americanisms and its internal evidences of futile forgery, confirmed instead of destroying Mormonism. The Mishnah was translated into Latin by Surenhusius (Amsterdam, three vols. 4o) as early as 1698-1703, and into German by the Chaplain J. J. Rabi (Onolzbach & Ansbach, first to sixth part, 4o) in 1760-1763. Without any knowledge of Hebrew or Aramæan, those who read Latin, French and Italian, German and English, will find in any great library—that of the British Museum for instance—a translation of almost every part, and they may be assured that the small remnant still untranslated contains nothing of importance. The modern verdict is that the Talmuds are a “spotted orb,” and that they contain two distinct elements—the sacred light in the true interpretation of the word of God, and the purely human darkness in its folly and infirmity. But it does not confirm the following assertion of the Initiation of Youth (Rabbi Ascher): “The Talmudical writers enjoin upon us to treat Christians as our own brethren in every social matter.”[73]
The second great Rabbinical School arose at Safed, also a city of Galilee, and rising within sight of Tiberias. Benjamin of Tudela (a.d. 1163) visited the tombs of Hillel and Shammai, “near Merún, which is Maron,” supposed to be the Beth-maron of the Talmud; but he says nothing about Jews being in Safed, then a fortress held by the Templars. “The city set upon a hill” is also ignored by travellers of the next three hundred years, and appears in history only about the sixteenth century.[74] It then became the great centre of Jewish learning—in fact, another Jerusalem. The children of Israel dwelt there in great numbers, and had a vast Khan, a square lead-roofed fortress, where many of them lived, and which contained a fine synagogue. Besides the schools in which the sciences were taught, they counted eighteen synagogues, distinguished by the names of the several nations which possessed them, as the Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and others. The printing-press, of which there are remnants at the north-eastern village Ein el Zeitún, issued many volumes, now becoming exceedingly rare because so much in request amongst European bibliophiles. The College (Madrásh) of the Rabbis still remains, a two-arched hall, of which no part is ancient except the eastern side. All the rest has been shaken down by earthquakes, which are supposed to destroy the city as each Sabbatical year comes round. In the cemetery below the settlement are the whitewashed graves of Joseph Caro, of Shalomon Alkabez, and of other notables.
The peculiar ferocity of the Safed School resulted partly from the domination of the sons of Ishmael, which, however mild, is everywhere distasteful to the children of Israel.[75] If “Esau hateth Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him,” Jacob returns the hate with at least equal heat, adding fear and contempt—he would willingly, to use the words of Rashi, “blot out Esau and his seed.” But doubtless the harshness and cruelty which distinguished its doctors must be explained by the nature of the place and its surroundings. Situated in the bleak and windswept, the stony and barren highlands of Upper Galilee, shaken by earthquakes, and exposed to terrible storms, Safed is one of the least amene sites in the whole of Syria. The climate is ever in extremes, the water is hard and full of constipating lime, the earth is cold and fruitless, and the people are crafty and cruel as Simeon and Levi. After a few days’ residence, strangers complain of sickness, cramps, and malaise, and their only desire is to escape from the gloom and seclusion of this town upon the hillside. Even the Muhammadans contrast the facile manners of their own women at soft and low-lying Tiberias with the asperity and the violence of those who inhabit the upland settlement. “Safad fasad” (Safed ever giveth trouble) is the jingling saw of the neighbourhood, and it contains abundant truth. The amount of intrigue and plotting is excessive even in a Syrian settlement, the charges bandied about by men against one another are atrocious—this doctor is a murderer, that scribe is an adulterer, and the third is a swindler and a thief. If the visitor were to believe half what he hears, he would find himself in a den of brigands. That not a few of these charges are founded on fact may be gathered from what travellers have printed concerning certain sons of this Holy City, some of which are too revolting for publication. The rich divines are accused of shamelessly embezzling the Halúkah, large sums sent from Europe for the maintenance of the community; and the poor are ready with complaints upon the most trivial occasions—the breaking of a hen’s leg sends them on a hurried official visit to their Vice-Consuls. It is not too much to say that if Safed again produced a theological school, it would rival in its narrow bigotry and peculiar ferocity that which disgraced the sixteenth century.
The Talmud had spoken its last upon the interpretation of the Torah, it had closed the discussions which arose from the sacred text, and it had exhausted the traditional lore and the rules established by the Rabbis of Palestine and Babylon till the fifth century after the Christian era. Still, the Talmud itself required after the course of ages to be interpreted, and this gave rise to a variety of mediæval abridgments and to a vast series of glosses and commentaries. The more modern Rabbis especially resolved that no uncertainty should rest upon the Halakah, or doctrinal part of the work, and they strictly applied themselves to codify the whole body of the Talmud.