Chapter VI: The Origin of the Talmud

=1. It will be remembered= that although under Cyrus the Jews were permitted full liberty to return to Palestine, not all the Jewish nation accepted the privilege. A very large number of the wealthiest, and indeed of the most learned classes, remained behind. They did much for the support of the Temple and for other objects among those who had returned to Palestine, but they themselves continued the synagogue service in Babylonia and in Persia, as appears from various statements and allusions, not only in Jewish writings, but also in other history.

=2. Among those Jews=, however, who had returned to Palestine there arose very early a class of devout and earnest students of the Law and of the other books of Scripture. There began also a most diligent collection of the traditions of the Jewish race and the opinions of the learned. Meanwhile a very constant correspondence was cherished between the colonists abroad and those in the Holy Land, and both at home and abroad there were those who were learned in the Law and in the other books.

The whole object of study and correspondence among the learned was to explain and illustrate the sacred literature in all its branches. The information thus gained laid the foundation of that which was soon to be called the Talmud, a name literally meaning Doctrine or Instruction.

=3. But before we treat further= on this remarkable work it is well to consider certain conditions which added much to the formation of the Talmud.

Although the Jews reformed forever from all tendency to idolatry, they nevertheless differed among themselves on many details of both faith and practice, and hence there grew up an exceedingly critical study of the literature and teachings of the book.

THE VARIOUS SCHOOLS.

=4. Between the close= of the Canonical period and the Christian era there arose many intellectual and studious ones, who ranged themselves under three general and widespread schools.

(1) =The Traditionalists=, called by the Jews the Masoretic School, or Pharisees.

(2) =The Philosophic school=, of whom were the Sadducees.

(3) =The Kabalistic school.=

The first of these confined themselves strictly to Scripture and tradition. They derived their name from the Hebrew word _masar_, to deliver, as from hand to hand.

The second entered the paths of speculation unknown to the fathers. They were pleased with the Greek philosophy, due to their contact with the schools of Alexandria. They strove to harmonize the principles of Judaism with the doctrines of Pythagoras, the philosophy of Plato, and the logic of Aristotle. Thus, as virtue was its own reward, they taught that there can be no future reward, and therefore that there was no future life and no resurrection; and this was the belief of the Sadducees.

The third school, Kabalistic, believed in the mysteries, or secret meaning of the words of the Law. They thought they could detect secret truths in the words, and sometimes the letters of the words, which others could not apprehend. They taught that the truths were to the words of Scripture what the soul is to the body, and that we are mistaken if we see only the letter in the Scripture, and fail to ascend by the help of the letter to the ideas of the Infinite Mind.[142]

=5. From the men of the Masoretic school=, who devoted themselves strictly to the Law and Tradition, arose a series of academies, or scholastic institutions. Those were presided over by the most learned members of that body, which, as we have said, followed upon the Great Synagogue after the death of Simon the Just, and which was called the Sanhedrin, or council.[143] This council, about this time, became the seat of supreme legislative power among the Jews, in both civil and ecclesiastical matters, but was subsequently divested of some of its powers by Gabinius, the Roman governor of Syria, B. C. 57.[144] It is referred to in the New Testament (Matt. 5:22; 26:59; Acts 4:15; 5:27, etc.).

=6. But the Sanhedrin=, which was presided over by the high-priest, became the centre of learning and authority so far back as B. C. 200 years.

The priesthood was recognized as the legitimate ministers of the altar; but the people, with whom the Mosaic Law was supreme, entering as it did into all the details of their lives, regarded the expositors and interpreters of that Law with the highest honor. With them “the voice of the rabbi” became “the voice of God.”[145]

=7. For many years before the Christian era= the Sanhedrin was the highest authority in matters of faith, and its utterances, or more particularly those of the most learned of its members, both in traditions and in opinions, became so numerous that from being only orally delivered, they were committed to writing, and these writings and opinions upon the Law were the foundation of that voluminous work called the Talmud, with its divisions.

FORM OF THE TALMUD.

=8. The Talmud therefore= in the main was the growth of centuries, beginning from about B. C. 220 to several centuries after Christ. It was composed of the text of the Law, both the written law and that which was believed to be additional law, although only handed down from age to age, but never written. This was called the _oral law_. All this comprised that part of the Talmud called “the repetition,” or in the Hebrew the MISHNA. Then came the “Commentary” upon every part, and this was called the GAMARA.

THE BABYLONIAN TALMUD.

=9. As there had been a very large and learned class of Jews= in Babylon from the Captivity to the time of Christ, there was also a corresponding number of very important schools in several cities on the Euphrates and east of it. These also gathered a Talmud, with its Mishna and Gamara; but this――called the Babylonian Talmud――was of later origin than the Jerusalem Talmud.

A WONDERFUL MEMORY.

=10. The various traditions= which in all variety of expression, as unwritten laws, as commentaries and opinions, went to make up the Talmud, with its Mishna and Gamara, had remained unwritten for generations because there was a rule given out by some of their learned men and teachers that “things delivered by word of mouth must not be recorded.” But about A. D. 180 one of the most influential and wisest of their number, Rabbi Jehudah, decided that the time had come when the Mishna must be committed to writing. Rabbi Jehudah, for whom the greatest veneration existed, began with his fellow-laborers the heavy task of reducing all these traditions and decisions of many generations to a written form, and this work was performed at Tiberias (on the lake of the same name, 70 miles north of Jerusalem), where a celebrated school existed after Titus had destroyed Jerusalem.[146] It is a memorable fact that for nearly four centuries the vast amount of literature which composed the Talmud had been stored only in the memory of the learned members of the Jewish nation.

=11. The vastness of this labor= of memorial possession may be comprehended in some degree when we learn that of only one rabbi[147] 300 magisterial sentences are recorded in the Talmud, and years before his time Rabbi Hillel[148] reduced 600 or 700 sections, which had been known before only in a complicated mass, into orders, divisions, chapters, and verses, whereby they could be better memorized.

=12. Although this cultivation of the memory= was carried on to a very great extent among the Jews during one or two centuries before the Christian era, and to a degree unexcelled by any other nation, there are evidences that long before the Captivity the cultivation of the memory was largely encouraged.

=13. Manuscripts were rare and costly=, and therefore methods were adopted, as in the composition of several of the Psalms, of Proverbs, and Lamentations, which were aids to memorizing. One method was by beginning consecutive verses or sections with consecutive letters of the alphabet. Psalm 119 is composed of 176 verses, divided into a number of sections, the whole number of sections equal to the letters in the Hebrew alphabet (22), and all the eight verses of each section begin with the same letter. In Proverbs 31:10‒31, the initial letters of all the verses follow the order of the Hebrew alphabet. The Lamentations of Jeremiah are composed in five poems, each, excepting the third, consisting of 22 sections or verses, a verse for each letter in the alphabet. The first four poems begin with the first letter of the alphabet, and in each poem, which makes one chapter, the after sections continue in their initial letters to follow the order of the alphabet. In the third chapter however the stanzas are in sets of three of the Bible verses, and each verse in the set begins with the same letter of the alphabet, but all the sets are in the alphabetical order. Such methods suggest the work of memorizing.

=14.= Again, we may say that, in view of all these facts, it does not seem possible that “the Law” could have been forgotten in the Captivity among all the learned and devout men, some of whom were prophets. It would seem that even without the written copies of the Law, Ezra, if he had so desired, could not have, as some suppose, introduced into the Law an entirely new book of Leviticus or Deuteronomy, and yet no one amid all the Jews have discovered the forgery.