THE CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER. OCTOBER, 1868. ART. I.-1. Le Talmude. Par L'Abbé CHIARINI. 2. Geschichte des Judenthum's und seiner Secten. J. M. JOST. 3. Die Juden in Asien. Dr. JUL. FÜRST. 4. Das Judenthum. Dr. ABR. GEIGER. 5. Gottesdienstliche Vorträge der Juden. Dr. Zunz. 6. Syngogal Poesie der Juden. Dr. Zunz. 7. La Kabbale. Par AD. FRANCK. 8. Moreh Nevochim de Maimonide. S. MUNK. THE Talmud promises to become a household word with us. After a long period of darkness the cloud drifts apart and begins to disclose the 'terra incognita' of Judaism. But no two persons see it alike. Some anticipate a glorious prospect, beautiful as the moon in Nisan, with hill and dale and pleasant lake, vineyards and cornland, olive-gardens and cattle upon a thousand hills. Others of less enthusiastic temperament say, 'Wait a bit, till the prospect clears. The distant mountains may 'be fogbank; the lakes only mirage; the flocks a rocky desert, bleak and bare of vegetation, chaos come again.' Yes, let us wait; still, while the reek is clearing, by reviewing what is known we may anticipate what may be expected when the sun shines forth in his strength. The value to be attached to the Talmud has given rise to much difference of opinion. By some it has been described as a vast mine of inexhaustible wealth, yielding in profuse abundance gold and jewels, rich and rare; confessedly also its full share of slag and refuse; branching out in all directions into endless galleries, and descending in shafts to lodes of priceless value, the wealth of which is never to be exhausted. miner's land in general, it is a region of innumerable superstitions, and peopled with its own Talmudic sprites and gnomes. Professing no such love or veneration for the Talmud, it is necessary that we should disclaim on the other hand all attempt to depreciate it without necessity; a dead language will not be Like assumed as a decent cloak for the 'tacenda' that it contains: the rake and wallet of the chiffonier' tell nothing with respect to the civilization of Paris; neither do the scraps collected by Eisenmenger in his Entdecktes Judenthum,' and Wagenseil in his Tela Ignea Satanæ,' nor the indifferent Latin of modern reviewers, give a true notion of the average character of the Talmud. Scurrilous passages referring to Christianity abound in Rabbinical writings of the time of the Crusades, and have been carefully collected by Christian writers; but it should be borne in mind that the extraction of molar teeth-never a pleasing operation-may have been a horrible process under Crusading dentistry: and the shrieking of Judaism at that period may well claim our pity even now. Allowance must also be made for the disappointed ambition of a nation that beheld its hopes of a world-wide empire gradually fading into thin air. The Talmud itself contains, or rather contained, many a trace of deadly hate for the Christian name; but, so far as possible, such passages have been removed or softened down. The earliest printed text of the Talmud shows what it once contained. A copy, formerly in possession of Selden, but now in the Bodleian Library, betrays the care that was taken to remove all that might offend the eye of Christian censorship. Whole passages are blotted out, and with such determination that the ink, soaking through the paper, renders the text on the obverse side also illegible. Rabbi Talmud' is detected at his incog. toilette; his eye is patched, his beard shaved away, and his gabardine Christianized, that he may pass unchallenged amid the crowd of his persecutors. The book in question is to be found in the Bodleian, II. Act. Seld. 7-19. The truth, as usual, is neither with encomiast nor vilifier. Let us then арproach our subject in an impartial spirit, with the respect due to the thorough and earnest character of Judaism, that during so many ages maintained and propagated through the length and breadth of the heathen world a knowledge of the Lord Jehovah. 6 The object of our inquiry is a marvellous patchwork, varied and fantastic as the shifting patterns of the kaleidoscope; and for that reason a somewhat discursive style will be forced upon us, while we give as near an exposition of our text as is consistent with limited space, with modern æsthetics, and with perfect charity for obsolete modes of speech and thought. The question has been asked and brilliantly answered, What is the Talmud?' Our present purpose is to deduce from the past a clue for the future of Judaism. Given the origin and present position of Talmudism, what are to be its final results? Given the direction of its currents, in what state of things will it most probably issue? When the Mishna was first completed, it referred to many subjects that were already overdated to the Jew; at the present day this is very much more the character of the Talmud; in a few years it will be wholly one of antiquarian interest. Its friends themselves are sounding its knell. We propose in the first place to give the history and origin of the Talmud; and subsequently to point out the direction it has hitherto taken. In the night of past ages the people have been led by the Law as by a pillar of glory. In the day of the present they are still guided in their onward march, but it is by a pillar of cloud. The Babylonian Captivity reclaimed the people from their idolatrous inclinations. The theosophy of Zoroaster, which was the religion of the Mage, harmonized to a certain extent with the religious idea of Judaism. Polytheism was held in greater abhorrence by the Persian than had been the case for some generations among the Jews. Purity of life and conduct was held high in honour; truth and integrity were matters of religious necessity; and if fire appeared to be an object of worship, it was only as the purest material representative of the All Glorious. In all this the pious Jew observed a marked distinction as compared with the worship of the stargod Remphan, and Dagon, Chemosh and Moloch, the Baalim and Ashtaroth of their Palestinian neighbours, Isis and the 'latrator Anubis' of earlier Egyptian association. Hence many of the theosophical theories of the Mede and Persian were adopted by the Jews without difficulty; many also of the social institutions of Babylon were Judaized. It was not that the old faith of Judaism was in any sense superseded by newer notions; Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord,' was still the Shema early and late; but various principles and ways of thinking were engrafted during the long years of exile, that after many centuries bore their ripened fruit in the Talmud. The noble Hebrew language, in which the Law had been delivered from Sinai, in which the songs of Zion had been composed, and the prophets had denounced the coming woes, had died out; and the language of the dominant race, by the usual law of conquest, had been hybridized by the vanquished, producing a language as unlike either Hebrew or pure Chaldæan, as the Ashkenaz Hebrew of the modern German Jew, 'kauderwelsch' as it is contemptuously termed, differs from its Shemitic and Teuton progenitors. The very character also of the old Hebrew had been replaced by the square and more symmetrical writing of Assyria, and was no longer held sacred; for thus says the Mishna: The Targum (Chaldee sections) in Ezra and 'Daniel makes the hands unclean. Targum written in Hebrew 'characters, and Hebrew written in Targum (Syriac) characters, 'do not make the hands unclean. In no case do sacred writings 'make unclean, unless the characters be Assyrian (square), 'written on parchment with ink. According to the veneration ' in which the Holy Scriptures are held is their susceptibility of ' uncleanness; books that are of no sanctity can never make ' unclean' (Jadaïm iv. § 5). And the quaint illustrations are added, The bones of an ass are clean; the bones of Jochanan, the High Priest, are unclean: according to veneration is un'cleanness; so that no one may turn the bones of his father or 'mother into spoons.' The names of the Jewish months became Babelized; the mystical lore of the Cabala sprung up, and there is nothing improbable in the supposition that the properties of numbers that furnished out the 'gematria'1 of the Cabbalists, and the numerical theories of Pythagoras, were obtained simultaneously, and variously developed by Greek and Jew at Babylon. The old Italic philosopher may very well have encountered the heads of the Jewish Captivity at Babylon, and obtained from them a pure knowledge of the Deity, whatever may have been the direction that he afterwards gave to the knowledge so gained. The angelology of later Judaism was from the same source; possibly it was a development of primæval truth, but in its later aspect exhibiting as a heavenly hierarchy the principal attributes of the Divine Nature. The seven Archangelar powers are but the seven Amshaspands of the Zoroastrian System. The Gnostic ons are derived from no other source, decreasing in power as they became more remote from Bythus and Sige. So the Talmud says that if the power of Michael is as unity, that of Gabriel is as half, and the Angel of Death as an eighth; unless this last exercises a penal action, when his power is as unity. (Berachoth 4. 6.) The demonology of the Talmud was also derived from the 'doleful creatures,' the owls, and satyrs, and dragons,' that were the foreordained inhabitants of doomed Babylon (Isa. xiii. 21, 22). Four worthy Rabbis, comparing notes (Berachoth 6. a.), declare that the stoutest heart would quail if we could see the legions of evil spirits that beset our path. Each human being has a thousand on his right hand and ten thousand on his left. It is through them that crowds become stifling, the knees totter, the feet stumble, and Rabbis' garments wear into holes. But they do not terrify us without 6 1 As an instance of arithmetical gematria the word Torah may be taken. The numerical value of the Hebrew letters ''''n is 613, a number made up of the 248 positive and 365 negative precepts contained in the Law. The human body, according to Jewish physiology, is formed of 248 component parts. The negative precepts tally with the days of the year. In the same way the eighteen Prayers or Blessings of daily use are referred to the eighteen dorsal vertebræ, which should be reverently curved in the act of prayer. [Berachoth, f. 28. b. Gem.] Is this anything else than memoria technica' for the anatomical student? giving a remedy; they teach how we may detect their presence, and drag them to the light of day. 'Spread fine ashes round your bed, and in the morning they will be covered with marks as of cocks' feet. To make imps visible, take the afterbirth of a black cat, whose dam and grandam were first-born black cats, dry by the fire, and powder it; no demon will escape the eye that is touched with this powder. Keep the powder carefully in an iron tube, sealed with an iron signet, or the imps will steal it. The experiment is not without its risks.' Necromancy marches in many a ghastly legend hand in hand with demonology. The following is adduced in proof of an intermediate state of consciousness after death. It is worthy of Lucian : 'A pious Israelite in time of famine gave a piece of money to a beggar on New Year's Eve; his wife was enraged with him for his extravagance, and to escape her fury he passed the night in the cemetery. Here he overheard the talk of two female spirits, tenants of contiguous graves; one proposed to her neighbour a walk by night, to hear, "from behind the veil," what should be the fortune of the world in the ensuing year. "My dear," said the other, "here I must abide, for I am buried in nothing better than rush matting.' The speaker went forth, and on her return showed that the first crops should be cut off by mildew, the second duly won. The listener returned to his home and profited by what he had heard. Next New Year's Eve he returned again to the cemetery, where the same grim scene was repeated, and with a like profitable result to the listener. But his wife got the secret of his success from him, how it was that their crops succeeded when all others failed, and in a moment of ill-temper cast in her neighbour's teeth the rush-mat burial of the daughter. The man returned to the cemetery at the end of the year, but this time there was no further mention of "nothing to wear," for the walker declared that there were so many ears to hear friendly talk, that she did not care for her part to set idle tongues going, and she should lie still. Truly therefore the dead can think.'—Berachoth, f. 18. 6. These importations from the land of the winged cymbal' are as straws thrown up, but they indicate the deep current that was sweeping along beneath. The people had passed from Jordan to the Euphrates very much the same as Joshua had led them into the land of promise; but in three generations greater changes had been wrought in their nationality than had been effected by twelve times that number in the antecedent period, and new features were developed, the germ of which we seek in vain in the Law and the Prophets. The truly great spirits raised up by Providence to lead the people back to the land of their inheritance stamped upon them a character that has almost seemed indelible. The work was vast, but thoroughly done. A deep reverence for the Law was made the foundation. The consecration of the whole people individually and collectively to God was the superstructure. A minute interpenetration of their whole daily, religious and domestic, life by the principles of the Law was the object aimed at by Ezra and Nehemiah, Haggai and Zechariah and Malachi; an ardent love for the Law as |