Hebrew Literature Part 1

Hebrew Literature.

INTRODUCTION

Hebrew literature contains some of the most profound and most influential productions of the human spirit. It const.i.tutes a potent factor in modern civilization, and possesses merits which place it far above most other literatures of the world. The common salutation of the Hebrew is "Peace,"

while that of the Greeks is "Grace," and that of the Romans, "Safety." The Greek sought after grace, or intellectual and bodily perfection, and the power of artistic accomplishment. The Roman's ideal was strength and security of life and property. The Hebrew sought after peace, peace in the heart, as founded on a sense of Jehovah's good providence, and a moral conformity in conduct to His revealed will. While the Greek in art, literature, and even in morals, made beauty his standard, the Roman stood for power, domination and law, and the Hebrew for religion. The Hebrew, indeed, introduced into Europe the first clear conception of religion, as implied in monotheism, and a rigidly defined moral law, founded upon the will of Jehovah. The basis of morals among the Latins was political, among the Greeks aesthetic, and among the Hebrews it was the revealed will of Jehovah.

While the most important remains of Hebrew literature are comprised in the Scriptures known to us as the Bible, there exists also a voluminous ma.s.s of Hebrew writings which are not included in the sacred canon. These writings are of supreme importance and value, and the selections which we have made from them in the present volume give a good idea of their interest, beauty, and subtlety of thought.

From the very beginning of their history the Hebrews were a deeply poetic race. They were fully alive to the beauties of external nature, and no national poetry contains more vivid descriptions of the sea, sky, and the panorama of forest, stream and mountain, peopled by the varied activities of animated nature. The songs of Zion glow with poetic enthusiasm, but their princ.i.p.al characteristic is their intense earnestness. They are no idle lays of love and wine or warlike triumph. They depict the joy of existence as dependent upon the smile and favor of Jehovah, and all the happiness, plenty, victory and success of life are attributed, without hesitation, to nothing else but "the loving-kindness of the Lord." Yet this religious fervor becomes the basis of sublimity, pathos, and picturesqueness, such as can seldom be approached even by the finest productions of the Attic muse.

But the Hebrews were also philosophers, and if they never attained to what we may call the _nettete et clarte_ of the Greek metaphysician, they excelled all other thinkers in the boldness and profound spirituality of their philosophical mysticism. In proof of this a.s.sertion we may point to that body of writings known as the Kabbalah.

The word "Kabbalah" means "doctrine received by oral tradition," and is applied to these remains to distinguish them from the canonical Hebrew Scriptures, which were written by "the Finger of Jehovah." Hebrew speculation attempts in the Kabbalah to give a philosophical or theosophistic basis to Hebrew belief, while at the same time it supplements the doctrines of the Old Testament. For instance, it is a disputed point whether the immortality of the soul is taught in the Hebrew canon, but in the Kabbalah it is taken for granted, and a complete and consistent psychology is propounded, in which is included the Oriental theory of metempsychosis. This account of the human soul, as distinct from the human body, treats of the origin and eternal destiny of man's immortal part. On the other hand G.o.d and Nature, and the connection between the Creator and the creation, are most exactly treated of in detail. G.o.d is the _En-Soph_, the boundless One, as in modern philosophy G.o.d is the Absolute. He manifests Himself in the ten _Sephiroth_, or intelligences.

It would be easy on this point to show Dante's indebtedness to the Kabbalah in his description of the various heavens of his Paradise. These intelligences control, in groups of three, the three worlds of intellect, of soul, and of matter. The tenth of the _Sephiroth_ is called Kingdom, _i.e._, the personal Deity, as seen in the workings of Providence, with which conception we may compare Dante's description of Fortune, in the seventh book of the "Inferno." This last of the _Sephiroth_ is manifested visibly in the Shekinah. This is the barest and baldest outline of the main features in this famous system.

The rise of Kabbalism is not very clearly known as regards authorship and date; it is in turn, by different Jewish writers, ascribed to Adam, Abraham, Moses and Ezra; but doubtless the work is an aggregation of successive writings, and some critics believe that it was not compiled before the Middle Ages, _i.e._, in the centuries between the conquest of Gaul by the Franks and the period following the death of Dante.

There can be no doubt that the Kabbalah contains the ripest fruit of spiritual and mystical speculation which the Jewish world produced on subjects which had hitherto been obscured by the gross anthropomorphism of such men as Maimonides and his school. We can understand the revolt of the devout Hebrew mind from traditions like those which represented Jehovah as wearing a phylactery, and as descending to earth for the purpose of taking a razor and shaving the head and beard of Sennacherib. The theory of the _Sephiroth_ was at least a n.o.ble and truly reverent guess at the mode of G.o.d's immanence in nature. This conception won the favor of Christian philosophers in the Middle Ages, and, indeed, was adopted or adapted by the angelic Doctor Aquinas himself, the foremost of ecclesiastical and scholastic metaphysicians. The psychology of the Kabbalah, even its treatment of the soul's preexistence before union with the body, found many advocates among Gentile and even Christian philosophers.

We are therefore led to the conclusion that the Kabbalah is by far the most exalted, the most profound and the most interesting of all that ma.s.s of traditional literature which comprises, among other writings, such remains as the Targums and the Talmud.

A study of Hebrew literature would indeed be incomplete unless it included the Talmud.

"Talmud" in Hebrew means "Doctrine," and this strange work must be looked upon as a practical handbook, intended for the Jews who, after the downfall of Jerusalem and the Dispersion, found that most of the Law had to be adjusted to new circ.u.mstances, in which the inst.i.tution of sacrifices and propitiatory offerings had been practically abolished. The Talmud contains the decisions of Jewish doctors of many generations on almost every single question which might puzzle the conscience of a punctilious Jew in keeping the Law under the altered conditions of the nation. The basis of the Talmud is the Mishna, _i.e._, an explanation of the text of the Mosaic laws, and their application to new cases and circ.u.mstances. The Mishna has been well described by the ill.u.s.trious Spanish Jew, Maimonides, who in the twelfth century published it at Cordova, with a preface, in which he says: "From Moses, our teacher, to our holy rabbi, no one has united in a single body of doctrine what was publicly taught as the oral law; but in every generation, the chief of the tribunal, or the prophet of his day, made memoranda of what he had heard from his predecessors and instructors, and communicated it orally to the people. In like manner each individual committed to writing, for his own use and according to the degree of his ability, the oral laws and the information he had received respecting the interpretation of the Bible, with the various decisions that had been p.r.o.nounced in every age and sanctified by the authority of the great tribunal. Such was the form of proceeding until the coming of our Rabbi the Holy, who first collected all the traditions, the judgments, the sentences, and the expositions of the law, heard by Moses, our master, and taught in each generation."

The Mishna itself in turn became the subject of a series of comments and elucidations, which formed what was called the Gemara. The text of the original Hebrew scripture was abandoned, and a new crop of casuistical quibbles, opinions and decisions rose like mushrooms upon the text of the Mishna, and from the combination of text and Gemaraic commentary was formed that odd, rambling, and sometimes perplexing work, "wonderful monument of human industry, human wisdom and human folly," which we know as the Talmud. The book is compounded of all materials, an encyclopaedia of history, antiquities and chronology, a story book, a code of laws and conduct, a manual of ethics, a treatise on astronomy, and a medical handbook; sometimes indelicate, sometimes irreverent, but always completely and persistently in earnest. Its trifling frivolity, its curious prying into topics which were better left alone, the occasional beauty of its spiritual and imaginative fancies, make it one of the most remarkable books that human wit and human industry have ever compiled.

The selections which we print in this volume are from the Mishna, and form part of the Sedarim, or orders; in them are given minute directions as to the ceremonial practice of the Jewish religion.

The treatise on "Blessings" speaks of daily prayers and thanksgiving. It is most minute in prescribing the position of the body, and how the voice is to be used in prayer. It specifies the prayers to be said on seeing signs and wonders, on building a house, on entering or leaving a city; and how to speak the name of G.o.d in social salutations. That on the "Sabbatical Year" is a discourse on agriculture from a religious point of view. The Sabbatical year among the Hebrews was every seventh year, in which the land was to be left fallow and uncultivated, and all debts were to be remitted or outlawed. Provision is made in this section for doing certain necessary work, such as picking and using fruits which may have grown without cultivation during the Sabbatical year, with some notes on manuring the fields, pruning trees and pulling down walls. Very interesting is the section which deals with "The Sabbath Day." The most minute and exhaustive account is given of what may and what may not be done on the seventh day.

The treatise on "The Day of Atonement" deals with the preparation and deportment of the high-priest on that day. That on "The Pa.s.sover" treats of the Lamb to be sacrificed, of the search for leaven, so that none be found in the house, and of all the details of the festival. "Measurements"

is an interesting and valuable account of the dimensions of the Temple at Jerusalem. "The Tabernacle" deals with the ritual worship of the Jews under the new conditions of their exile from Palestine.

All of these treatises show the vitality of Jewish religion in Europe, under the most adverse circ.u.mstances, and ill.u.s.trate the place which the Talmud must have occupied in Jewish history, as supplying a religious literature and a code of ritual and worship which kept Judaism united, even when it had become banished and dissociated from Palestine, Jerusalem, and the Temple.

SELECTIONS FROM THE TALMUD

The Talmud (teaching) comprises the Mishna and the Gemara. The Mishna ("learning" or "second law") was, according to Jewish tradition, delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai. "Rabbi Levi, the son of Chama, says, Rabbi Simon, the son of Lakish, says, what is that which is written, 'I will give thee tables of stone, and a law and commandments which I have written, that thou mayest teach them'?(1) The Tables are the ten commandments; the Law is the written law; and the commandment is the Mishna; 'which I have written' means the prophets and sacred writings; 'that thou mayest teach them' means the Gemara. It teaches us that they were all given to Moses from Mount Sinai." From Moses the Mishna was transmitted by oral tradition through forty "Receivers," until the time of Rabbi Judah the Holy. These Receivers were qualified by ordination to hand it on from generation to generation. Abarbanel and Maimonides disagree as to the names of these Receivers. While the Temple still stood as a centre of unity to the nation, it was considered unlawful to reduce these traditions to writing.

But when the Temple was burned, and the Jews were dispersed among other peoples, it was considered politic to form them into a written code, which should serve as a bond of union, and keep alive the spirit of patriotism.

The Jewish leaders saw the effect of Const.i.tutions and Pandects in consolidating nations-the advantage of written laws over arbitrary decisions. Numberless precedents of case law, answering to our common law, were already recorded: and the teachings of the Hebrew jurisconsults, or "_Responsa prudentium_" which were held to be binding on the people, had been preserved from former ages.

All these traditions Rabbi Judah the Holy undertook to reduce into one digest. And this laborious work he completed about A.D. 190, or more than a century after the destruction of Jerusalem by t.i.tus. Rabbi Judah was born on the day that Rabbi Akibah died. Solomon is said to have foretold the event: "One sun ariseth, and one sun goeth down." Akibah was the setting and Judah the rising sun. The Mishna of Rabbi Judah, afterward revised by Abba Areka in Sura, is the text of the Babylon Talmud. The commentaries written on this text by various Rabbis in the neighborhood of Babylon, until the close of the fifth century, are called the Gemara (completion), and are published in twelve folio volumes, called the Babylon Talmud-the Talmud most esteemed by the Jews. The Jerusalem Talmud contains commentaries written partly by Rabbis in Jamnia and partly in Tiberias, where they were completed by Rabbi Jochanan in the beginning of the fourth century. As now published it has only four out of the six orders or books of the Mishna, with the treatise Niddah from the sixth. In the time of Maimonides it contained five orders. On twenty-six treatises it has no Gemara, though in the treatise on shekels the Gemara of Jerusalem is used for the Babylon Talmud. The six books of the Mishna are subdivided into sixty-three treatises, in the following manner:

Book I

This book, called Order of Seeds, contains the following treatises:

1. "Blessings," together with prayers and thanksgivings, with the times and places in which they are to be used.

2. "A Corner of a Field" (Lev. xxiii. 22; Deut. xxiv. 19) treats of the corners of the field to be left for the poor to glean them-the forgotten sheaves, olives, and grapes-and of giving alms, etc.

3. "Doubtful" treats of the doubt about the t.i.thes being paid, as the Jews were not allowed to use anything without its being first t.i.thed.

4. "Diversities" (Lev. xix. 19; Deut. xxii. 9-11) treats of the unlawful mixing or joining together things of a different nature or kind-of sowing seeds of a different species in one bed-grafting a scion on a stock of a different kind, suffering cattle of different kinds to come together.

5. "The Sabbatical Year" (Exod. xxiii. 11; Lev. xxv. 4) treats of the laws which regulated the land as it lay fallow and rested.

6. "Heave Offerings" (Num. xviii. 8) treats of separating the heave offering-who may eat it, and who may not eat of it-of its pollutions, etc.

7. "The First t.i.thes" (Lev. xxvii. 30; Num. xviii. 28) treats of the law of t.i.thes for the priests.

8. "The Second t.i.thes" (Deut. xiv. 22; xxvi. 14) treats of those which were to be carried to Jerusalem and there eaten, or to be redeemed and the money spent in Jerusalem in peace offerings.

9. "Cake of Dough" (Num. xv. 20) treats of setting apart a cake of dough for the priests; also, from what kind of dough the cake must be separated.

10. "Uncirc.u.mcised Fruit" (Lev. xix. 23) treats of the unlawfulness of eating the fruit of any tree till the fifth year. The first three years it is uncirc.u.mcised; the fourth year it is holy to the Lord; the fifth year it may be eaten.

11. "First Fruits" (Exod. xxiii. 19; Deut. xxvi. 1) treats of what fruits were to be offered in the Temple, and in what manner; also of the baskets in which they were to be carried.

Book II

The Order Of The Festivals:

1. "Sabbath" treats of the laws relating to the seventh day.

2. "Mixtures," or combinations, treats of the extension of boundaries, whereby all the inhabitants of the court, or entry, where the mixture is made, are counted as one family inhabiting one domicile; and are therefore allowed to carry victuals from one house to another. It also treats of the mixtures for a Sabbath day's journey, whereby the distance may be extended for an additional 2,000 cubits.

3. "Pa.s.sovers" treats of all rites and ceremonies relating to the Paschal Lamb.

4. "Shekels" (Exod. x.x.x. 13) treats of the half shekel, which every Jew, rich or poor, was obliged to pay every year to the daily sacrifice.

5. "Day of Atonement" treats of the solemnities peculiar to it.

6. "Tabernacles" teaches how they are to be built, and how to be used.

7. "The Egg Laid on a Festival" treats of the works which may or may not be done on any of the festivals, which are called days of holy convocation, on which no servile work may be done.

8. "New Year" treats of the laws and solemnities of the feast of the New Year, as also of the feasts of the New Moons.

9. "Fasts" treats of the various fasts throughout the year.