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Article THE TALMUD. ← Page 2 of 4 Article THE TALMUD. Page 2 of 4 →
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
The Talmud.
account also of the education , the arts , the sciences , the history , and religion for about a thousand years : —most fully perhaps of the time immediately preceding and following the birth of Christianity . It shows ns the teeming streets of Jerusalem , the
tradesman at his work , the women in their domestic circle , tho children at their play in the marketplace . The prie , ? t and the Levite ministering in their holy rites , the preacher on the- hillside surrounded by the multitudes , uay , even the
storyteller in the bazaar : they all -live and move and have their being in these pages . Nor is it Jerusalem or even the hallowed soil of Judea alone , but the whole antique world that seems to lie embalmed in it . Athens and Alexandria , Rome and Persia , their civilizations and their religions , old and new , appear at every turn . That
cosmopolitanism which for good or evil has ever been the characteristic trait of the Jewish people , is most vividly reflected in this book . One of the most striking historical points is their always coming in contact—mostly against their
willwith the most prominent nations , exactly at the moment when the latter seem to have reached the highest point in their development . Passing the three different stages of the people as Hebrews , Israelites , aud Jews , we find them connected with
Chaldea , Egypt , Phoenicia , Assyria , Babylonia , Persia , Greece , Rome , Arabia . Yet that cosmopolitanism never for one moment interfered with the most marked mental individuality . There always remained that one central sun , the Bible .
Around this ever revolves that great cosmos , the Talmud , and from it , as shown in the Gemara , the Misnali is begotten .
After briefly alluding to the . " Sinaitic" injunctions , which had led some to invent the tale of the Talmud , as such , claiming to be "inspired " —a notion from which its own authors would have shrunk with horror—the speaker proceeded to
dwell more fully on the " dates " of the individual dicta in the book : a subject which seems to have puzzled many not fully acquainted with the nature of eastern tradition . Nothing can be more authentic than the memory of the East . Many
and startling instances are offered by the Brahmins and the Parsee priests who at this moment without the slightest conception of their contexts recite parrot-like entire chapters of their sacred books correct even as to accent . But iu the Tadmud we have , apart from the clearest and most irrefutable evidences of witnesses , all the ordinary
The Talmud.
internal evidences of history . We have an array of carefully preserved historical names and dates the general faithfulness and truth of which have never yet been called into question . From the Great Synagogue down to the final completion of
tho Babylonian Gemara , we have the legal and philosophical development of the nation , always embodied as it were in the successive principal schools and men of their times . After entering into some historical and chronological details , the
speaker alluded to those ethical sayings , parables , gnomes , & c , which were the principal vehicle of the common Jewish teaching from an almost prehistoric period . However sublime aud tender and poetical their expression often be in the Talmud ,
he failed to see any thing surprisingly new in them : anything , in fact , that was not substantially contained in the canonical and uncanonical writings of the Old Testament . Turning to its authors , the speaker touched upon
the " Priests and Pharisees , " and hinted that the cry of separation of Church and State might perhaps be first heard in the Talmud , though but faiutly . The fact being that the priests had sadly deteriorated , as a body— . bright exceptions apartsince the days of the Maccabees , when they by an
accident suddenly found themselves in political power . From being , as Moses had intended them to be , the receivers of the people's free gifts , their messengers—not mediators—and their teachers , they had become , chiefly in their upper strata , an
encroaching , and at the same time , igorant faction . The ordinary priests had mostly sunk into mere local functionaries of the Temple , while many of the High Priests , who in those days bought their sacred office from the ruling foreign power , had
forgotten the very elements of that Bible which they had been especially appointed to teach . The Pharisees , on the other hand , in view of the clouds that they saw gathering round the Commonwealth , had but one cry—Education :
Education catholic , gratuitous , and compulsory . From one end of the Talmud to the other there resounds but one echo : learn—teach ; teach—learn . The Priesthood , the Sacrifices , the Temple , as they all went down at one sudden blow , seemed scarcely
to leave a gap in the religious life of the nation . The Pharisees had long before undermined these things , or rather transplanted them into the people ' s houses and hearts . Every man in Israel , they said , is a priest , every man ' s house a temple , every man ' s table an altar , every man ' s prayer his
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
The Talmud.
account also of the education , the arts , the sciences , the history , and religion for about a thousand years : —most fully perhaps of the time immediately preceding and following the birth of Christianity . It shows ns the teeming streets of Jerusalem , the
tradesman at his work , the women in their domestic circle , tho children at their play in the marketplace . The prie , ? t and the Levite ministering in their holy rites , the preacher on the- hillside surrounded by the multitudes , uay , even the
storyteller in the bazaar : they all -live and move and have their being in these pages . Nor is it Jerusalem or even the hallowed soil of Judea alone , but the whole antique world that seems to lie embalmed in it . Athens and Alexandria , Rome and Persia , their civilizations and their religions , old and new , appear at every turn . That
cosmopolitanism which for good or evil has ever been the characteristic trait of the Jewish people , is most vividly reflected in this book . One of the most striking historical points is their always coming in contact—mostly against their
willwith the most prominent nations , exactly at the moment when the latter seem to have reached the highest point in their development . Passing the three different stages of the people as Hebrews , Israelites , aud Jews , we find them connected with
Chaldea , Egypt , Phoenicia , Assyria , Babylonia , Persia , Greece , Rome , Arabia . Yet that cosmopolitanism never for one moment interfered with the most marked mental individuality . There always remained that one central sun , the Bible .
Around this ever revolves that great cosmos , the Talmud , and from it , as shown in the Gemara , the Misnali is begotten .
After briefly alluding to the . " Sinaitic" injunctions , which had led some to invent the tale of the Talmud , as such , claiming to be "inspired " —a notion from which its own authors would have shrunk with horror—the speaker proceeded to
dwell more fully on the " dates " of the individual dicta in the book : a subject which seems to have puzzled many not fully acquainted with the nature of eastern tradition . Nothing can be more authentic than the memory of the East . Many
and startling instances are offered by the Brahmins and the Parsee priests who at this moment without the slightest conception of their contexts recite parrot-like entire chapters of their sacred books correct even as to accent . But iu the Tadmud we have , apart from the clearest and most irrefutable evidences of witnesses , all the ordinary
The Talmud.
internal evidences of history . We have an array of carefully preserved historical names and dates the general faithfulness and truth of which have never yet been called into question . From the Great Synagogue down to the final completion of
tho Babylonian Gemara , we have the legal and philosophical development of the nation , always embodied as it were in the successive principal schools and men of their times . After entering into some historical and chronological details , the
speaker alluded to those ethical sayings , parables , gnomes , & c , which were the principal vehicle of the common Jewish teaching from an almost prehistoric period . However sublime aud tender and poetical their expression often be in the Talmud ,
he failed to see any thing surprisingly new in them : anything , in fact , that was not substantially contained in the canonical and uncanonical writings of the Old Testament . Turning to its authors , the speaker touched upon
the " Priests and Pharisees , " and hinted that the cry of separation of Church and State might perhaps be first heard in the Talmud , though but faiutly . The fact being that the priests had sadly deteriorated , as a body— . bright exceptions apartsince the days of the Maccabees , when they by an
accident suddenly found themselves in political power . From being , as Moses had intended them to be , the receivers of the people's free gifts , their messengers—not mediators—and their teachers , they had become , chiefly in their upper strata , an
encroaching , and at the same time , igorant faction . The ordinary priests had mostly sunk into mere local functionaries of the Temple , while many of the High Priests , who in those days bought their sacred office from the ruling foreign power , had
forgotten the very elements of that Bible which they had been especially appointed to teach . The Pharisees , on the other hand , in view of the clouds that they saw gathering round the Commonwealth , had but one cry—Education :
Education catholic , gratuitous , and compulsory . From one end of the Talmud to the other there resounds but one echo : learn—teach ; teach—learn . The Priesthood , the Sacrifices , the Temple , as they all went down at one sudden blow , seemed scarcely
to leave a gap in the religious life of the nation . The Pharisees had long before undermined these things , or rather transplanted them into the people ' s houses and hearts . Every man in Israel , they said , is a priest , every man ' s house a temple , every man ' s table an altar , every man ' s prayer his