Function in Judaism

Function in Judaism.

To gain a comprehensive view of the Talmud it must be considered as a historical factor in Judaism as well as a literary production. In the latter aspect it is unique among the great masterpieces of the literatures of the world. In form a commentary, it became an encyclopedia of Jewish faith and scholarship, comprising whatsoever the greatest representatives of Judaism in Palestine and in Babylon had regarded as objects of study and investigation and of teaching and learning, during the three centuries which elapsed from the conclusion of the Mishnah to the completion of the Talmud itself. When the Mishnah, with the many ancient traditions to which it had given rise since the latter centuries of the Second Temple, was incorporated into the Talmud as its text-book, the Talmud became a record of the entire epoch which was represented by the Jewish schools of Palestine and Babylon, and which served as a stage of transition from the Biblical period to the later aspect of Judaism. Although the Talmud is an academic product and may be characterized in the main as a report (frequently with the accuracy of minutes) of the discussions of the schools, it also sheds a flood of light on the culture of the people outside the academies. The interrelation between the schools and daily life, and the fact that neither teachers nor pupils stood aloof from that life, but took part in it as judges, instructors, and expounders of the Law, caused the Talmud to represent even non-scholastic affairs with an abundance of minute details, and made it an important source for the history of civilization. Since, moreover, the religious law of the Jews dealt with all the circumstances of life, the Talmud discusses the most varied branches of human knowledge—astronomy and medicine, mathematics and law, anatomy and botany—thus furnishing valuable data for the history of science also.

(see image) Page From The Latest Edition of the Jerusalem Talmud, Printed at Piotrkow, 1899-1903.(In the possession of J. D. Eisenstein, New York.)The Talmud, furthermore, is unique from the point of view of literary history as being a product of literature based on oral tradition and yet summarizing the literature of an entire epoch. Aside from it, those to whose united efforts it may be ascribed have left no trace of intellectual activity. Though anonymous itself, the Talmud, like other products of tannaitic and amoraic literature, cites the names of many authors of sayings because it was a universal practise to memorize the name of the author together with the saying. Many of these scholars are credited with only a few sentences or with even but one, while to others are ascribed many hundreds of aphorisms, teachings, questions, and answers; and the representatives of Jewish tradition of those centuries, the Tannaim and the Amoraim, received an abundant compensation for their renunciation of the fame of authorship when tradition preserved their names together with their various expositions, and thus rescued even the least of them from oblivion. The peculiar form of the Talmud is due to the fact that it is composed almost entirely of individual sayings and discussions on them, this circumstance being a result of its origin: the fact that it sought especially to preserve the oral tradition and the transactions of the academies allowed the introduction only of the single sentences which represented the contributions of the teachers and scholars to the discussions. The preservation of the names of the authors of these apothegms, and of those who took part in the discussions, transactions, and disputations renders the Talmud the most important, and in many respects the only, source for the period of which it is the product. The sequence of generations which constitute the framework of the history of the Tannaim and Amoraim may be determined from the allusions contained in the Talmud, from the anecdotes and stories of the academies, and from other valuable literary material, which exhibit the historical conditions, events, and personages of the time, not excepting cases in which the facts have been clothed in the garb of legend or myth. Although it was undertaken with no distinctly literary purpose, it contains, especially in its haggadic portions, many passages which are noteworthy as literature, and which for many centuries were the sole repositories of Jewish poetry.