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Article JEWISH LAW AND LEGEND. ← Page 2 of 3 Article JEWISH LAW AND LEGEND. Page 2 of 3 →
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Jewish Law And Legend.
the Trinity Literary Institute , on " Jewish Law and Legend , " in the Queen ' s Rooms . The chair was occupied by the Rev . Principal Fairhairn , who briefly introduced the lecturer . Mr . Deutsch said he desired to speak of the development and the work of the most important
representative of that branch of the family of nations which was comprised under the name of Shemites . By common consent , the Assyrians , Chaldeans , Babylonians , Syrians , Phcouieians , Arabs , and Ethiopians were all called Shemites . It was to them that oui ; spiritual conception of the Deity was due .
Pantheism in the Greek sense was utterly unknown to the Shemites . Nature to them was nothing but that which had been begotten and was ruled absolutely by the one great Power , and only in the more or less abstract conception of this one Power were found what differences there did exist in the Semitic creeds .
As all the personal characteristics of the Semitic race appeared in their fullest and strongest intensity in the Hebrew branch , so it was in that branch alone that the monotheistic idea had come to full and clear consciousness . Abraham at first , in contemplating the sun , might have said , " Thus must be God ; " and in gazing at the moon ancl stars he might have said , " This must be God , and these his servants and
messengers . " But at length , on seeing all these again pale before the return of day , he might say , " Neither you nor you are God , but there is One above who has created both . " Mr . Deutsch went on to trace the descendants of Abraham into Egypt from a pastoral existence to a life of slavery , and remarked that in Egypt at that period the unitof the God
supreme y - head was taught to the initiated , while ' the unitiated were , by a cloud of mystery and ceremony and symbol , kept from seeing it . With regard to the history of the chosen people after their deliverance from bondage , he said that in the desert they developed , in spite ol all tokens and visionsall terrors ancl promises
, , their very worst slave qualities . Accordingly , that generation , for which the air of liberty was too keen , was doomed . Their bones lay bleaching in the desert , and a young , wild , valiant race , hardened ancl inured to danger and independence , went forth , and , with the partial conquest of the Land of Promise , commenced
a stirring and heroic age—an age of high and romantic episode . With . Samuel a new phase was entered on , the salient points of which were , first , the exaltation of the priestly order and the spread of education , ancl , finally , the building up of a kingdom in spite of the warning laid down in the fundamental code . The form of government , as laid down in the Pentateuch
was that ol a theoeratical republic , or rather number of republics—over them all being the invisible ruler , Jehovah , represented visibl y by the priests . With the settlement of the nation into a properly-regulated commonwealth , one looked lor the growth among them of the arts and sciences , but the result was far from satisfactory . He did not think thev invented
or even developed to any considerable extent any single branch . Their weaving , their mining , their knowledge of perfumes , their art of engraving precious stones , had most probably grown on foreign soil , ancl when the time came that Solomon built his temple they whose fathers made bricks for strangers had to send for the Phoenicians to erect their sanctuary . One occupation alone , the tilling of the soil , seemed to
Jewish Law And Legend.
have been after their heart . It was not before the time of the later kings of Judah that handicrafts began to be developed at all . After the exile it became every man ' s duty to teach his son a trade , in order , as the Talmud had it , to keep him free from sin . With Solomon came the acme of the nation ' s political existenceand the beginning of the end . By and by
, came the two removals of the tribes , with the latter of which—that of the people of Judah—began the emphatically Jewish period , the period not yet ended . The story of the exile remained to be written , and he feared it would not be written for a good while tocome . It was one of the most momentous , most
problematic , of all times . Glimpses were revealed of the state of culture in Persia and Babylon at that period , but only a full explanation of the contemporary literature , if ever it should be explained ., would disclose the whole mystery . The treatment of the Jews during the captivity was so mild , and they seemed so fully to have identified themselves with the
people among whom they dwelt , that when Cyrus gave them their liberty only from 30 , 000 to 50 , 000 returned to their own land . The great bulk of the nation— " purified , as it were , like unto pure flour , " as the Talmud had it—remained scattered over thewide Persian empire , preferring the new homes , in which they enjoyed all the liberty of free-born subjectsand
, had acquired wealth and honours , to the dangers and difficulties of a re-colonisation of their former country . While the smaller number went forth to found on the ruins of Zion , not only the temple but the still grander edifice of the Jewish law and Jewish culture , it was the task of those who remained behind , and who
graduallp diffused themselves over the whole of the then known world , to enter eagerly and intensely into the intellectual life , and to further the progress of civilisation among all the nations with whom their lot was cast . Counting from the destruction of Jerusalem ,. , the Babylonian exile lasted exactly fifty-two years , but its influence had been more lasting and more vital than anv number of centuries before and after , For
to it must be traced some of the most important institutions of the synagogue in its widest sense—nay , the synagogue itself . Not merely did common meetings for prayer and readings from the law and the prophets then begin to be enforced , but the fact of the existence of the law seemed first to have become fully and strikingly clear to the popular mind at that period . In that
same period also those fierce yearnings for a deliverer , an Anointed , a Messiah , one of the highest and most ideal conceptions of humanity , found their most glowing ancl their loudest utterance . Then also it was that the great basis of all further development of Judaism , the oral law , began to spread silently at first—the oral
law which , under the guise of heaping ordinance upon ordinance , in reality , perhaps unconsciously , aimed at the highest mental liberty . The Jews who returned to Canaan rallied yearningly round their new leaders , " who , instead of grasping a power within their 2-each ,. pointed to the one palladium and sign , their
national records which remained saved out of a vastmultitude of writings that had perished . These writingswere then first collected under the auspices of tho ' mem of the so-called "Great Synagogue / ' the Talmud beingwritten with a view to their explanation . The Talmud was intended in the first instance as a public oral translation in the synagogue for the people . Of the Talmud Mr . Deutsch remarked that whatever extraneous ad-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Jewish Law And Legend.
the Trinity Literary Institute , on " Jewish Law and Legend , " in the Queen ' s Rooms . The chair was occupied by the Rev . Principal Fairhairn , who briefly introduced the lecturer . Mr . Deutsch said he desired to speak of the development and the work of the most important
representative of that branch of the family of nations which was comprised under the name of Shemites . By common consent , the Assyrians , Chaldeans , Babylonians , Syrians , Phcouieians , Arabs , and Ethiopians were all called Shemites . It was to them that oui ; spiritual conception of the Deity was due .
Pantheism in the Greek sense was utterly unknown to the Shemites . Nature to them was nothing but that which had been begotten and was ruled absolutely by the one great Power , and only in the more or less abstract conception of this one Power were found what differences there did exist in the Semitic creeds .
As all the personal characteristics of the Semitic race appeared in their fullest and strongest intensity in the Hebrew branch , so it was in that branch alone that the monotheistic idea had come to full and clear consciousness . Abraham at first , in contemplating the sun , might have said , " Thus must be God ; " and in gazing at the moon ancl stars he might have said , " This must be God , and these his servants and
messengers . " But at length , on seeing all these again pale before the return of day , he might say , " Neither you nor you are God , but there is One above who has created both . " Mr . Deutsch went on to trace the descendants of Abraham into Egypt from a pastoral existence to a life of slavery , and remarked that in Egypt at that period the unitof the God
supreme y - head was taught to the initiated , while ' the unitiated were , by a cloud of mystery and ceremony and symbol , kept from seeing it . With regard to the history of the chosen people after their deliverance from bondage , he said that in the desert they developed , in spite ol all tokens and visionsall terrors ancl promises
, , their very worst slave qualities . Accordingly , that generation , for which the air of liberty was too keen , was doomed . Their bones lay bleaching in the desert , and a young , wild , valiant race , hardened ancl inured to danger and independence , went forth , and , with the partial conquest of the Land of Promise , commenced
a stirring and heroic age—an age of high and romantic episode . With . Samuel a new phase was entered on , the salient points of which were , first , the exaltation of the priestly order and the spread of education , ancl , finally , the building up of a kingdom in spite of the warning laid down in the fundamental code . The form of government , as laid down in the Pentateuch
was that ol a theoeratical republic , or rather number of republics—over them all being the invisible ruler , Jehovah , represented visibl y by the priests . With the settlement of the nation into a properly-regulated commonwealth , one looked lor the growth among them of the arts and sciences , but the result was far from satisfactory . He did not think thev invented
or even developed to any considerable extent any single branch . Their weaving , their mining , their knowledge of perfumes , their art of engraving precious stones , had most probably grown on foreign soil , ancl when the time came that Solomon built his temple they whose fathers made bricks for strangers had to send for the Phoenicians to erect their sanctuary . One occupation alone , the tilling of the soil , seemed to
Jewish Law And Legend.
have been after their heart . It was not before the time of the later kings of Judah that handicrafts began to be developed at all . After the exile it became every man ' s duty to teach his son a trade , in order , as the Talmud had it , to keep him free from sin . With Solomon came the acme of the nation ' s political existenceand the beginning of the end . By and by
, came the two removals of the tribes , with the latter of which—that of the people of Judah—began the emphatically Jewish period , the period not yet ended . The story of the exile remained to be written , and he feared it would not be written for a good while tocome . It was one of the most momentous , most
problematic , of all times . Glimpses were revealed of the state of culture in Persia and Babylon at that period , but only a full explanation of the contemporary literature , if ever it should be explained ., would disclose the whole mystery . The treatment of the Jews during the captivity was so mild , and they seemed so fully to have identified themselves with the
people among whom they dwelt , that when Cyrus gave them their liberty only from 30 , 000 to 50 , 000 returned to their own land . The great bulk of the nation— " purified , as it were , like unto pure flour , " as the Talmud had it—remained scattered over thewide Persian empire , preferring the new homes , in which they enjoyed all the liberty of free-born subjectsand
, had acquired wealth and honours , to the dangers and difficulties of a re-colonisation of their former country . While the smaller number went forth to found on the ruins of Zion , not only the temple but the still grander edifice of the Jewish law and Jewish culture , it was the task of those who remained behind , and who
graduallp diffused themselves over the whole of the then known world , to enter eagerly and intensely into the intellectual life , and to further the progress of civilisation among all the nations with whom their lot was cast . Counting from the destruction of Jerusalem ,. , the Babylonian exile lasted exactly fifty-two years , but its influence had been more lasting and more vital than anv number of centuries before and after , For
to it must be traced some of the most important institutions of the synagogue in its widest sense—nay , the synagogue itself . Not merely did common meetings for prayer and readings from the law and the prophets then begin to be enforced , but the fact of the existence of the law seemed first to have become fully and strikingly clear to the popular mind at that period . In that
same period also those fierce yearnings for a deliverer , an Anointed , a Messiah , one of the highest and most ideal conceptions of humanity , found their most glowing ancl their loudest utterance . Then also it was that the great basis of all further development of Judaism , the oral law , began to spread silently at first—the oral
law which , under the guise of heaping ordinance upon ordinance , in reality , perhaps unconsciously , aimed at the highest mental liberty . The Jews who returned to Canaan rallied yearningly round their new leaders , " who , instead of grasping a power within their 2-each ,. pointed to the one palladium and sign , their
national records which remained saved out of a vastmultitude of writings that had perished . These writingswere then first collected under the auspices of tho ' mem of the so-called "Great Synagogue / ' the Talmud beingwritten with a view to their explanation . The Talmud was intended in the first instance as a public oral translation in the synagogue for the people . Of the Talmud Mr . Deutsch remarked that whatever extraneous ad-