Chapter I: Preface

The present volume contains a collection of essays, the majority of which were read as papers before various literary societies, such as the International Congress of Orientalists, the Biblical Archaeological Society, and the Jews' College Literary Association. Several of them have already appeared in various periodicals, such as the _Imperial Asiatic Review_, the _Jewish Quarterly Review_, and the _Jewish Chronicle_, and are now reproduced, with some slight modification, by the courtesy of the editors. Translations of some of the essays have also been published in Hebrew, French, and German periodicals.

The essays, it may be remarked, deal somewhat extensively with the humour and satire that is not infrequently to be found in the works both of ancient and modern Hebrew writers; and, as this subject has hitherto attracted but little attention, I am not without hope that these pages may be of interest to the general reader.

J. C.

London, _June_, 1905.

CONTENTS

page
Preface v
I. Humour of the Bible 1
II. The Bible and the Ancient Classics 13
III. Art among the Ancient Hebrews 24
IV. The Life of the Hebrew Women of Old 36
V. Curiosities of certain Proper Names in the Bible 43
VI. Sketch of the Talmud 47
VII. The Humour of some Mediaeval and Modern Hebrew Writers 58
VIII. Yedaya Bedaresi, a Fourteenth-Century Hebrew Poet and
Philosopher 71
IX. Immanuel di Roma, a Thirteenth-Century Hebrew Humorist, and
a Friend of Dante 82
X. Kalonymos ben Kalonymos, a Thirteenth-Century Satirist 103
XI. Abraham Ibn Chasdai, and his Book “The Prince and the
Dervish” 117
XII. Isaac Erter, a Modern Hebrew Humorist 127
XIII. Leopold Zunz 140
XIV. Samuel David Luzzatto and Zachariah Frankel 154
XV. The Influence of Hebrew Literature on Heinrich Heine 165
XVI. Modern Hebrew Journalism 174

I

ERRATA

Page 34, line 28, read _Philo_ instead of _Plato_.

Page 37, line 27, read _conjux_ instead of _coniux_.

Page 79, line 14, read פירוש . . . ופירוש instead of פרוש . . .ופרוש.