were written down[1] and handed on from generation to generation.
This work and study especially connected with the non-legal portions of the Scriptures known as "Haggadah," certainly received a mighty impulse in the times of the Scribes before the Christian era, and reached its highest development in the famous Academies of Palestine and Babylonia which arose after the events of A.D. 70. We may roughly compute this great period of the development of the "Haggadah" as reaching from A.D. 72-100 to A.D. 500 or 550. The creative Haggadic activity may be said to have ceased after this last date.
Although "Haggadic" notices or comments appear not unfrequently in the exclusively legal section of the Pentateuch, they belong more especially to those Scriptures which treat of history, narrative, and teaching—including, of course, the prophetic writings. In the first instance the "Haggadic" Midrash confined itself to the simple exposition of the Scripture text, but it very soon developed into comments of a very varied nature, not unfrequently into homilies inculcating religious truths and moral maxims, into disquisitions on the past and future glories of Israel; roughly speaking, the "Haggadah" on a passage or section of the canonical Scriptures endeavoured, by penetrating beneath the mere literal sense, to arrive at the spirit of the Scripture in question. In the Talmud (Sanhedrim Treatise) it has been well compared to a hammer which awakens the slumbering sparks of a rock.
Legendary additions, of course, form an important part of the Haggadah, but these ancient traditions or legends by no means, as some suppose, constitute the bulk of this vast and wonderful commentary on the canonical or acknowledged Scriptures.
Among the sources where we find this curious Biblical literature which has been a very important link in the Talmud
- ↑ While it is generally acknowledged that the decisions arrived at in connection with the Law of Moses termed "Halachah" were transmitted orally, certainly until the time of R. Judah the Holy, known as Rabbi (end of second century), the "Haggadic" decisions here alluded to were committed to writing at a much earlier date.
