The Talmud in History.— The history of the Talmud is essentially a history of the reli gious and intellectual development of the Jews, which has been elsewhere treated. A spiritual temple arose among the Israelites when the Temple at Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Romans. The Talmud's history, however, is an important theme, and a brief glance at the vary ing fortunes of this volume will show the con tinuous persecution which it has received, like the Jew himself. It was proscribed by state and church, mutilated by the official censor, con demned by councils, burned by popes and kings. Earlier centuries show a scattering fire of ful minations against it, from the era of Justinian, but the Middle Ages were persistent in such in cidents of violence. In 1240 the Jews of France were compelled to surrender their copies of the Talmud and the work was put on trial, the result of which was that it was ordered to be burned. Twenty-four carloads of the Talmud and simi lar writings were seized by Saint Louis and publicly burned in Paris in June 1242. The an ni4ersary was held as a fast and elegies were written on the event. Barcelona had a four days' trial of the Talmud on 20 July 1263. In 1264 Clement IX issued a bull of confiscation and subjected the Talmud to examination by the Franciscans and Dominicans, who expunged what they deemed abusive and blasphemous. Tortosa, Aragon, witnessed a public trial of the Talmud, which lasted from February 1413 until 12 Nov. 1414 and had 68 sessions. Pope Bene dict XIII presided, condemned the work to the flames and prohibited its further study. His bull of 11 clauses issued 11 May 1415 never came into effect, for he was deposed by the Council of Constance. The hue and cry against the Talmud in the beginning of the 16th century was to have a marked influence on the Reforma tion and to pave the way for a Hebrew renais sance. On 19 Aug. 1509 the Emperor Maximilian gave Pfefferkorn full power over the Talmud and similar works; but when he demanded their surrender the Jews of Frankfort appealed to the archbishop of Mayence, who temporarily checked the Dominicans. Reuchlin, the head of the Humanists, was asked to describe the char acter of the Talmud and by him it was vindi cated. Hutten and the author of (Epistola Obscurorum Virorum,' lampooned Hoogstraten and the Dominicans. The Talmud gained new adherents, including Erasmus and Franz von Sickingen. The universities were appealed to for their opinion and the University of Paris condemned the Talmud. Finally the subject was brought before the Lateran Council and the Dominicans were compelled to pay the costs of their suit against Reuchlin, while Leo X per mitted the Talmud to be printed by Daniel Bom berg at Venice. It was in the very year of the editio princeps of the Talmud (1520) that Luther at Wittenberg burnt the Pope's bull. On 12 Aug. 1553 Pope Julius III signed the decree laid before him by the Inquisition-Gen eral, condemning to confiscation and the flames throughout Italy all copies of the Talmud and Hebrew books. Paul IV continued hostile, but Pius IV modified somewhat the harsh laws of his immediate predecessors. His bull (24 March 1564), in accordance with the decision of the Council of Trent, allowed the Talmud to be printed provided its name were omitted and at had been submitted before publica tion to the censor. The mutilations of the Tal mud in accordance with the whim of an igno rant censor were often very curious; that the word heathen can refer to a non-Christian and that the Rome of the early rabbis was not the Rome of the papacy did not dawn upon the in telligence of the learned inquisitors. A brighter day was now to follow, with the Hebrew renais sance. In Holland, England and Switzerland, Talmudic studies attracted a host of scholars, and the Buxtorfs, L'Empereur, Sheringam, Sel den, Surenhuys, were among those who strove to popularize rabbinical lore and who were to be succeeded by a host of learned men down to our own day— translators and interpreters in varied fashion. It is true, the Talmud was now and then subjected to condemnation; as re cently as 1757, a large number of copies were burned in Poland by fanatics. Germany, too, during the wave of anti-Semitism, revived old time accusations. But the Talmud has survived the storm and Christian scholars like Franz De litzsch, August Wiinsche, H. L. Strack and W. H. Lowe have joined with a host of Jewish scholars in its vindication and interpretation. After all its vicissitudes, it seems to have found rest as a distinct addition to the world's cul ture. Pope Clement's proposal in 1307 to found Talmudical chairs at the universities has been adopted to some extent in Europe and America.
Talmud Manuscripts, Editions and Trans lations.— It is not to be expected that many manuscripts of the Talmud have been preserved after its experiences during the Middle Ages. The bonfire at Cremona in 1559, in which 12,000 volumes of the Talmud were burned, was only one of such incidents. The only known complete manuscript of the Babylonian Talmud, 1369, is in the Royal Library of Munich. Codices of single portions are preserved in the Vatican Library and in the libraries at Oxford, Paris, Leyden and other cities of Europe. Columbia Univer sity has secured from South Arabia a collection of manuscripts containing four treatises which date from 1548. The University Library of Cambridge, England, has a fragment of the Talmud Pesachim, from the 8th or 9th century, edited in 1879, with an autotype facsimile by W. H. Lowe. Manuscripts of the Mishna or
portions of it are found in a few librarie.s broad. The only manuscript of the Palestinian Talmud of any importance is to be found in Leyden. As to printed editions of the Mishna, the first appeared (1492) in Naples and has since been followed by numerous others. In Venice (1520-23) appeared the first edition of the Babylonian Talmud by Daniel Bomberg in 12 folio volumes and it has been followed by many editions in Venice, Basel, Amsterdam, Berlin, Warsaw Vienna, etc. Only four com plete editions of the Palestinian have appeared, Blomberg's Venice edition of 1523-24 being the first. Several parts, however, have been is sued with commentaries. The Mishna has been translated into Latin and German and partially into English. Translations of single treatises of the Babylonian Talmud have appeared in Latin, German, French and English. At pres ent complete translations of the work are being attempted in Berlin and New York. Special monographs have appeared on the medicine of the Talmud, its mathematics, its botany, zool ogy, astronomy, civil and criminal law, its leg ends, its archaeology, meteorology, coins and weights, chronology and calendar, its customs, ethics and psychology, its exegesis, geography and history, linguistics, education, its supersti tions and philosophy, its poetry and proverbs— an extensive list that proves how comprehensive is the work and how many-sided the old-time sages who fought and wrought until the fabric was finished. Out of its mines the workmen are still bringing fresh gems to light and its deep lying strata furnish an inexhaustible field for research in almost every department of human knowledge.
The Talmud's On the Jewish people the influence of the Talmud has been remarkable, not only by maintaining religious ideas among them, but by promoting their soli darity. Its development illustrates the buoyancy of Judaism and the ease with which at a time of national overthrow and dispersion a funda mental reform could be instituted. It was a darings design, when so much of the Mosaic law had lost its application, to infuse new life into the religious code and provide for continu ous intellectual development. The soldiers who defended Jerusalem became scholars whose la bors were to be more successful in the field of progress and thought. The Talmud, too, was a popular institution — it was no exclusive pos session of the few. All could become sages if they had the brain and soul-power. In its dis putations, a purer atmosphere was breathed that made the Dark Ages impossible — it was tonic and preservative as well. Hence Jews could be scientists, physicians, poets, philosophers in goodly number, because their intellects had been Talmud-fed and they had no craving for the riotousness and immorality that prevailed among their contemporaries. The rabbi, too, was no idle ecclesiastic, but a resolute worker, now a saddler, now a weaver, now a carpenter, now a dyer, for the study of the law was held to be most meritorious when combined with some manual employment. Hence the helpful and ennobling domestic life, in ages when fam ily vices, not virtues, were exemplified alike in court, palace and hovel. On the other hand, if must frankly be stated, that the exclusive study of the Talmud was often narrowing and re pressive, with an unhappy influence on Jewish grawth, It produced in such instances an in tellectual Ghetto, utterly foreign to the spirit of representative sages, dwarfing the Jewish soul and its ambitions. When scholars become scholiasts, and broad students fatuous school men, like the mediaeval champions who argued as to how many angels could stand on the point of a needle, mental decay is inevitable. Hence the study of the Talmud degenerated at times into useless dialectic, which met the severe re buke of clear-thinking rabbis, but held sway over many minds and particularly in lands where the Jew knew no vernacular but a mon greljargon of his own, and had no rights or privileges as a citizen, being merely a serf or underling, to be told to "move on!" with every fresh outbreak of the mob —a veritable Ahasu erus of the popular imagination, ever wander ing. No wonder that under such conditions he found solace in his Talmud and built his moun tains of syllogism on very unsubstantial basis. It was Moses Mendelssohn who broke away from the intellectual Ghetto of his coreligion ists and paved the way for their emancipation from the exclusive Talmudic atmosphere. They were to be citizens of the world hereafter and civil and religious liberty became their posses sion. The Talmud was to be cherished, but not made an idol of, to be venerated, but not wor shiped. It was a work to be studied, but not regarded as an infallible authority. It was to be analyzed, dissected, subjected to criticism as the work of men. Bible, Mishna, Gemara, with ritual codes and commentaries, were but steps in the progressive development of Judaism whose sages are restricted to no age and clime, but are continuous as God's revelation. One can thus understand how the Talmud supplies ammunition to all schools in modern Jewry, whether right, left or centre; progressive or conservative; advances of orthodoxy or reform.