Chapters on Jewish Literature/Chapter 1
CHAPTERS ON
JEWISH LITERATURE
CHAPTER I
The “Vineyard” at Jamnia
The story of Jewish literature, after the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem in the year 70 of the Christian era, centres round the city of Jamnia. Jamnia, or Jabneh, lay near the sea, beautifully situated on the slopes of a gentle hill in the low-lands, about twenty-eight miles from the capital. When Vespasian was advancing to the siege of Jerusalem, he occupied Jammia, and thither the Jewish Synhedrion, or Great Council, transferred itself when Jerusalem fell. A college existed there already, but Jamnia then became the head-quarters of Jewish learning, and retained that position till the year 135. At that date the learned circle moved further north, to Galilee, and, besides the famous school at Lydda in Judea, others were founded in Tiberias, Usha, and Sepphoris.
The real founder of the College at Jamnia was Jochanan the son of Zakkai, called “the father of wisdom.” Like the Greek philosophers who taught their pupils in the gardens of the “Academy” at Athens, the Rabbis may have lectured to their students in a “Vineyard” at Jamnia. Possibly the term “Vineyard” was only a metaphor applied to the meeting-place of the Wise at Jamnia, but, at all events, the result of these pleasant intellectual gatherings was the Rabbinical literature. Jochanan himself was a typical Rabbi. For a great part of his life he followed a mercantile pursuit, and earned his bread By manual labor. His originality as a teacher lay in his perception that Judaism could survive the loss of its national centre. He felt that “charity and the love of men may replace the sacrifices.” He would have preferred his brethren to submit to Rome, and his political foresight was justified when the war of independence closed in disaster. As Graetz has well said, like Jeremiah Jochanan wept over the desolation of Zion, but like Zerubbabel he created a new sanctuary, Jochanan’s new sanctuary was the school.
In the “Vineyard” at Jamnia, the Jewish tradition was the subject of much animated inquiry. The religious, ethical, and practical literature of the past was sited and treasured, and fresh additions were made. But not much was written, for until the close of the second century the new literature of the Jews was oral. The Bible was written down, and read from scrolls, but the Rabbinical literature was committed to memory piecemeal, and handed down from teacher to pupil. Notes were perhaps taken in writing, but even when the Oral Literature was collected, and arranged as a book, it is believed by many authorities that the book so compiled remained for a considerable period an oral and not a written book.
This book was called the Mishnah (from the verb shana, “to repeat” or “to learn”). The Mishnah was not the work of one man or of one age. So long was it in growing, that its birth dates from long before the destruction of the Temple. But the men most closely associated with the compilation of the Mishnah were the Tannaim (from the root tana, which has the same meaning as shana). There were about one hundred and twenty of these Tannaim between the years 70 and 200 C. E., and they may be conveniently arranged in four generations. From each generation one typical representative will here be selected.
The Tannaim
First Generation, 70 to 100 C. E.
Jochanan, the son of Zakkai
Second Generation, 100 to 130 C. E.
Akiba
Third Generation, 130 to 160 C. E.
Meir
Fourth Generation, 160 to 200 C. E.
Judah the Prince
The Tannaim were the possessors of what was perhaps the greatest principle that dominated a literature until the close of the eighteenth century. They maintained that literature and life were co-extensive. It was said of Jochanan, the son of Zakkai, that he never walked a single step without thinking of God. Learning the Torah, that is, the Law, the authorized Word of God, and its Prophetical and Rabbinical developments, was man's supreme duty. “If thou hast learned much Torah, ascribe not any merit to thyself, for therefor wast thou created.” Man was created to learn; literature was the aim of life. We have already seen what kind of literature. Jochanan once said to his five favorite disciples: “Go forth and consider which is the good way to which a man should cleave.” He received various answers, but he most approved of this response: “A good heart is the way.” Literature is life if it be a heart-literature—this may be regarded as the final justification of the union effected in the Mishnah between learning and righteousness.
Akiba, who may be taken to represent the second generation of Tannaim, differed in character from Jochanan. Jochanan had been a member of the peace party in the years 66 to 70; Akiba was a patriot, and took a personal part in the later struggle against Rome, which was organized by the heroic Bar Cochba in the years 131 to 135. Akiba set his face against frivolity, and pronounced silence a fence about wisdom. But his disposition was resolute rather than severe. Of him the most romantic of love stories is told. He was a herdsman, and fell in love with his master's daughter, who endured poverty as his devoted wife, and was glorified in her husband's fame. But whatever contrast there may have been in the two characters, Akiba, like Jochanan, believed that a literature was worthless unless it expressed itself in the life of the scholar. He and his school held in low esteem the man who, though learned, led an evil life, but they took as their ideal the man whose moral excellence was more conspicuous than his learning. As R. Eleazar, the son of Azariah, said: “He whose knowledge is in excess of his good deeds is like a tree whose branches are many and its roots scanty: the wind comes, uproots, and overturns it. But he whose good deeds are more than his knowledge is like a tree with few branches but many roots, so that if all the winds in the world come and blow upon it, it remains firm in its place.” Man, according to Akiba, is master of his own destiny; he needs God’s grace to triumph over evil, yet the triumph depends on his own efforts: “Everything is seen, yet freedom of choice is given: the world is judged by grace, yet all is according to the work.” The Torah, the literature of Israel, was to Akiba “a desirable instrument,” a means to life.
Among the distinctions of Akiba's school must be named the first literal translation of the Bible into Greek. This work was done towards the close of the second century by Aquila, a proselyte, who was inspired by Akiba’s teaching. Aquila’s version was inferior to the Alexandrian Greek version, called the Septuagint, in graces of style, but was superior in accuracy. Aquila followed the Hebrew text word by word. This translator is identical with Onkelos, to whom in later centuries the Aramaic translation (Targum Onkelos) of the Pentateuch was ascribed. Aramaic versions of the Bible were made at a very early period, and the Targum Onkelos may contain ancient elements, but in its present form it is not earlier than the fifth century.
Meir, whom we take as representative of the third generation of Tannaim, was filled with the widest sympathies. In his conception of truth, everything that men can know belonged to the Torah. Not that the Torah superseded or absorbed all other knowledge, but that the Torah needed, for its right study, all the aids which science and secular information could supply. In this way Jewish literature was to some extent saved from the danger of becoming a merely religious exercise, and in later centuries, when the mass of Jews were disposed to despise and even discourage scientific and philosophical culture, a minority was always prepared to resist this tendency and, on the ground of the views of some of the Tannaim like Meir, claimed the right to study what we should now term secular sciences. The width of Meir's sympathies may be seen in his tolerant conduct towards his friend Elisha, the son of Abuya. When the latter forsook Judaism, Meir remained true to Elisha. He devoted himself to the effort to win back his old friend, and, though he failed, he never ceased to love him. Again, Meir was famed for his knowledge of fables, in antiquity a branch of the wisdom of all the Eastern world. Meir's large-mindedness was matched by his large-heartedness, and in his wife Beruriah he possessed a companion whose tender sympathies and fine toleration matched his own.
The fourth generation of Tannaim is overshadowed by the fame of Judah the Prince, Rabbi, as he was simply called. He lived from 150 to 210, and with his name is associated the compilation of the Mishnah. A man of genial manners, strong intellectual grasp, he was the exemplar also of princely hospitality and of friendship with others than Jews. His intercourse with one of the Antonines was typical of his wide culture. Life was not, in Rabbi Judah’s view, compounded of smaller and larger incidents, but all the affairs of life were parts of the great divine scheme. “Reflect upon three things, and thou wilt not fall into the power of sin: Know what is above thee—a seeing eye and a hearing ear—and all thy deeds are written in a book.”
The Mishnah, which deals with things great and small, with everything that concerns men, is the literary expression of this view of life. Its language is the new-Hebrew, a simple, nervous idiom suited to practical life, but lacking the power and poetry of the Biblical Hebrew. It is a more useful but less polished instrument than the older language. The subject-matter of the Mishnah includes both law and morality, the affairs of the body, of the soul, and of the mind. Business, religion, social duties, ritual, are all dealt with in one and the same code. The fault of this conception is, that by associating things of unequal importance, both the mind and the conscience may become incapable of discriminating the great from the small, the external from the spiritual. Another ill consequence was that, as literature corresponded so closely with life, literature could not correct the faults of life, when life became cramped or stagnant. The modern spirit differs from the ancient chiefly in that literature has now become an independent force, which may freshen and stimulate life. But the older ideal was nevertheless a great one. That man's life is a unity: that his conduct is in all its parts within the sphere of ethics and religion: that his mind and conscience are not independent, but two sides of the same thing: and that therefore his religious, ethical, æsthetic, and intellectual literature is one and indivisible.—this was a noble conception which, with all its weakness, had distinct points of superiority over the modern view.
The Mishnah is divided into six parts, or Orders (Sedarim); each Order into Tractates (Massechtoth); each Tractate into Chapters (Perakim): each Chapter into Paragraphs (each called a Mishnah). The six Orders are as follows:
Zeraim (“Seeds”). Deals with the laws connected with Agriculture, and opens with a Tractate on Prayer (“Blessings”).
Moed (“Festival”). On Festivals.
Nashim (“Women”). On the laws relating to Marriage, etc.
Nezikin (“Damages”). On civil and criminal Law.
Kodashim (“Holy Things”). On Sacrifices, etc.
Telakoth (“Purifications”). On personal and ritual Purity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Mishnah.
- Graetz.—History of the Jews, English translation, Vol. II, chapters 13–17 (character of the Mishnah, end of ch. 17).
- Steinschneider.—Jewish Literature (London, 1857).
- Schiller-Szinessy.—Encyclopedia Britannica (Ninth Edition), Vol. XVI, p. 502.
- De Sola and Raphall.—Eighteen Tractates from the Mishnah (English translation, London).
- C. Taylor.—Sayings of the Jewish Fathers (Cambridge, 1897).
- A. Kohut.—The Ethics of the Fathers (New York, 1885).
- G. Karpeles.—A Sketch of Jewish History (Jewish Publication Society of America, 1895), p. 40.
Aquila.
- F. C. Burkitt.—Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. X. p. 207.