Professor Toy's work, Judaism and Christianity, gives an admirable conspectus of the results of the modern critical school in their bearing on the genesis of Christianity. The author takes various important doctrines of Christianity, traces them back to their origin in Israelitism, pursues their course through their various phases in Judaism, until they reach their final development in the teaching of Jesus and His disciples, which, in the author's judgment, is the consummation of that which the prophets and their successors had to give to the world. Laying so much stress as Professor Toy does on the saying, “By their fruits shall ye know them,” he ought also, perhaps, to have told us what, in the course of time, has become of these several doctrines. For when, for instance, with regard to the doctrine of original sin, he remarks that “in certain systems of Christian theology the human race is involved in the condemnation of the first man” (p. 185, n. 1); or that, in the New Testament, “the demand for a mediating power between God and humanity is pushed to the farthest point which thought can occupy consistently with the maintenance of the absoluteness of the one Supreme Deity” (p. 121), he is rather evading a difficulty than answering it. Such elaboration would, however, have been outside [pg 234] the scope of Professor Toy's book, which claims only to be a sketch of the progress of thought from the Old Testament to the New. For his own solution of the indicated difficulty, Toy, to judge from his liberal standpoint, would probably refer us to Dr. Hatch's Hibbert lectures; the issue of such an appeal must, I imagine, remain for long doubtful and disputed.
A delightful characteristic of Toy's book is its transparent clearness and sobriety, which will make it interesting reading, even to those who are acquainted with the writer's authorities in their original sources. Almost entirely new, as well as most suggestive, is the justice which Toy does to the law in recognising it as a factor for good in the history of religion. In this point Toy is not only up to his date, but beyond it. It is true that even the Pharisees have made some advance in the estimation of the liberal school. They are no longer condemned en masse as so many hypocrites. It is even admitted that there were a few honest men among them, such as Rabban Gamaliel, the teacher of Paul, or R. Akiba, the patriot of Bethar. We are now too polite to be personal. But with regard to the law, on the other hand, there is at present a markedly opposite tendency. The general idea seems to be that, as the doctrine of the resurrection of Christ must be loosely interpreted in a spiritual sense, it must logically have been preceded by a universal spiritual death, and the germs of the disease which brought this death about are to be sought for in the law. Hence the strained efforts to discover in the law the source of all religious evil,—cant, hypocrisy, formalism, externalism, transcendentalism, and as many “isms” more, of bad reputation.
[pg 235]It was probably with this current representation of the law in view that Toy, when speaking of the Levitical legislation, and of its fixing “men's minds on ceremonial details which, in some cases, it put into the same category and on the same level with moral duties,” asks the question: “Would there not thence result a dimming of the moral sense and a confusion of moral distinctions? The ethical attitude of a man who could regard a failure in the routine of sacrifice as not less blameworthy than an act of theft cannot be called a lofty one” (p. 186). The answer which he gives is more favourable than such a leading question would induce us to expect. He tells us that, “in point of fact, the result was different” (ibid). “The Levitical law is not to be looked on as a mere extension and organisation of the ritual.... Its ritual was, in great part, the organised expression of the consciousness of sin” (p. 226). Of the law in general Toy says that it had “larger consequences than its mere details would suggest,” for it “cultivated the moral sense of the people into results above its mechanical prescriptions,” and “it developed the sense of sin, as Paul points out” (Gal. iii. 19), “and therewith a freer feeling, which brought the soul into more immediate contact with God” (p. 227); whilst in another place he reminds us “that much of the law is moral, and that no one could fail to see a spiritual significance beneath its letter” (p. 245), and he even admits that “the great legal schools which grew up in the second century, if we may judge by the sayings of the teachers which have come down to us, did not fail to discriminate between the outward and the inward, the ceremonial and the moral” (p. 186).
These and similar passages will suffice to show that [pg 236] Toy's estimate of the law is a very different one from that of Smend and his school. However, it must not be supposed that he is not on the look-out for the germs of the disease. He must find these germs somewhere, or else the progress, which his book is intended to illustrate, would be difficult to detect. And thus he repeats the old accusations, though not without modification.
Professor Toy's objections may, perhaps, be summed up in the passage in which he represents the Jewish law as “an attempt to define all the beliefs and acts of life” (p. 239), or as “the embodiment of devotion to a fixed rule of belief and conduct” (p. 237). Toy does not entirely condemn this system, and even speaks of it as a “lofty attempt” (p. 239); but, on the whole, he considers that it must have resulted in bad theology, as well as in doubtful conduct. Without following Professor Toy over the whole area of his investigations, which would require a volume for itself, I will only take the opportunity of making a few general remarks upon the nature and character of this legal system, which seems to hold the key to the spiritual history of Judaism.
First, as to its theology, Toy's description of the law as an attempt to define all the beliefs of life—an assertion which is also made by Schürer—is not wholly accurate. For such an attempt was never made by Judaism. The few dogmas which Judaism possesses, such as the Existence of God, Providence, Reward, and Punishment—without which no revealed religion is conceivable—can hardly be called a creed in the modern sense of the term, which implies something external and foreign to man's own knowledge, and received only in deference to the weight of authority. To the Jew of the Christian era, [pg 237] these simpler dogmas were so self-evident that it would have cost him the greatest effort not to believe them. Hence the fact that, whilst there have come down to us so many controverted points between the Sadducees and Pharisees with regard to certain juristic and ritual questions, we know of only one of an essentially dogmatic character, viz. the dispute concerning the Resurrection.
It is thus difficult to imagine to what Professor Toy can be alluding when he speaks of the “interest they (the Jews) threw into the discussion and determination of minutiæ of faith” (p. 241). Discussions upon minutiæ of faith are only to be read in the works of the later schoolmen (as Saadiah, Maimonides and their followers), in which such subtle problems as Creatio ex nihilo, the origin of evil, predestination, free will and similar subjects are examined; but this period is very distant from that with which Toy is concerned. The older schools and the so-called houses of Shammai and Hillel, most of whose members were the contemporaries of the Apostles, show very little predilection for such minutiæ. Their discussions and differences of opinion about ritual matters are very numerous, scattered as they are over the whole of the ancient Rabbinic literature, but I can only remember two of a metaphysical character, or touching upon the minutiæ of faith. The one, dealing with the efficacy of certain sacrifices, discusses whether it only extends to the remission of the pending punishment for sins, or also includes their purification and washing away; the other considers the question whether it would not have been better for man not to have been created.198 But this latter controversy, which is said to have lasted for two years and a half, by no means led to any big metaphysical or [pg 238] theological system, but only to the practical advice that, as we have been created, we ought to be watchful over our conduct. It is, indeed, a noteworthy feature of Judaism that theological speculations have never resulted in the formulation of any imposing or universal doctrine, but usually in divers ceremonial practices. To give one illustration: according to Professor Toy (p. 210) the conclusion which the author of 1 Tim. ii. 11-14 draws from the fact that woman was the immediate agent of the introduction of sin was the subordination of her sex. The Rabbis also noticed the same fact, and in their less abstract language speak of woman as having brought death and grief into the world; but the conclusion which they drew was that since woman had extinguished the “light of the world,” she ought to atone for it by lighting the candles for the Sabbath.199 Nor is Toy quite correct when he maintains that the conception of the Memra as Creator and Lord, etc., and as “representative of the immediate divine activity,” did not keep its hold on Jewish thought, having been discarded in the later literature (p. 104). For the Shechinah of the Talmud, the Metatron200 of the Gaonic-mystical literature, the Active Intelligence of the philosophical schools, as well as the Ten Sephiroth201 (Emanations) of the Cabbalists, all owe their existence to the same theosophic scruples and subtleties in which the Logos of Philo and the Memra202 of the Targums originated. Thus, they always kept—though under various forms—their hold on the Jewish mind. Judaism was always broad enough to accommodate itself to these formulæ, which for the one may mean the most holy mysteries, and for the other empty and meaningless catchwords. The objection—in fact, the active opposition—of the Synagogue began when [pg 239] these possible or impossible explanations of the universe tended to transgress the bounds of abstract speculation, and, passing over into real concrete beings, to be worshipped as such. An instance from comparatively modern times might be found in one of the vagaries of the followers of the Pseudo-Messiah, Shabbethai Tsebi. For many generations the controversy had raged among the Cabbalists, whether the first of the above-mentioned Ten Emanations (called by some Original Adam, by others, Crown203) is to be considered as a part of the Deity or as something separate, and so to speak, having a reality in itself. The danger of establishing a Being near the Deity, having an existence of its own and invested with divine attributes, could not have escaped the thoughtful, and there are indeed some indications to this effect. The Synagogue as such, however, remained during the whole controversy strictly neutral, and allowed these theosophists to fight in the air as much as they liked. But the moment that the sect of Shabbethai Tsebi identified the incarnate Original Adam with their leader, and worshipped him as a sort of God-Messiah, the Synagogue at once took up a hostile attitude against those who separated God from His world, and, declaring Shabbethai Tsebi and his followers to be apostates, excluded them from Judaism for ever.
Nor can it be proved that legalism or nomism has ever tended to suppress the spiritual side of religion, either in respect of consciousness of sin, or of individual love and devotion. With an equal logic quite the opposite might be argued. Professor Toy tells us himself that it is no “accident that along with this more definite expression of ethical-religious law we find the first traces of a more [pg 240] spiritual conception of righteousness in the ‘new heart’ of Jeremiah and Ezekiel” (p. 235), whilst in another passage we read that “a turning point is marked by the Deuteronomist Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who announce the principles of individual responsibility and inwardness of obedience” (p. 184). Now, two things are certain; first, that Ezekiel urges the necessity of the new heart as well as of individual responsibility more keenly than any of his predecessors; secondly, that in Ezekiel the legalistic tendency is more evident than in Deuteronomy and Jeremiah. The logical conclusion would thus be that the higher ideals of religion are not only not inconsistent with legalism, but are the very outcome of it, and the so-called Priestly Code, by the very fact of its markedly legalistic tendency, should be considered as a step in the right direction. The latter assertion sounds like a paradox, but it will seem less so when the prevailing characteristic of this portion of the Pentateuch, as given even by Kuenen, who is by no means a champion of the Law, is borne in mind. “The centre of gravity,” according to the great Dutch critic, “lies for the priestly author elsewhere than for the prophet; it lies in man's attitude, not towards his fellow-men, but towards God; not in his social, but in his personal life” (Hibbert Lectures, p. 161). It is here that we seem to strike the keynote of the Weltanschauung of the Priestly Legislation. In it man is more than a social being. He has also an individual life of his own, his joys and sorrows, his historical claims, his traditions of the past, and his hopes for the future—and all these have to be brought under the influence of religion, and to become sanctified through their relation to God. Hence, the work of the Priestly narrator and legislator opens with a cosmogony of his [pg 241] own, in which we find the grand theological idea of man being created in the Divine image; hence, too, his religious conception of the history of the nation and the control claimed by him over all the details of human life, which became with him so many opportunities for the worship of God. To him, God is not a mere figurehead; He not only reigns, but governs. Everywhere,—in the temple, in the judge's seat, in the family, in the farm, and in the market-place,—His presence is felt in enforcing the laws bearing His imprimatur, “I am the Lord thy God.” By thus diffusing religion over the whole domain of human life—not confining it to the social institutions which are represented only by a few personages, such as the king, the princes, the priests, the judges or elders—they made it the common good of the whole people, and the feeling of personal responsibility for this good became much deeper than before. Thus it came to pass that whilst, during the first temple, the apostasy of kings and aristocracy involved the entire people, so that the words “And he (the king) did evil in the sight of the Lord,” embrace the whole nation, during the second temple it was no longer of much consequence which side the political leaders took. Both during the Hellenistic persecutions, as well as afterwards in the struggles of some Maccabean kings with the Pharisees, the bulk of the people showed that they considered religion as their own personal affair, not to be regulated by the conscience of either priest or prince. It is true that this success may be largely ascribed to such contemporary religious factors as the Synagogue with its minimum of form, the Scribes with their activity as teachers, and the Psalmists with their divine enthusiasm; but the very circumstance that [pg 242] these factors arose and flourished under the influence of the Priestly Code would suffice to prove that its tendency was not so sacerdotal as some writers would have us believe. Jewish tradition indeed attributes the composition of the daily public prayers, as well as of others for private worship, to the very men whom modern biblical criticism holds responsible for the introduction of the Priestly Code. Now this fact may perhaps be disputed, but there is little doubt that the age in which these prayers were composed was one of flourishing legalism. Nor is there any proof that the synagogues and their ritual were in opposition to the temple. From the few documents belonging to this period, it is clear that there was no opposition to the legalistic spirit by which the Priestly Code was actuated. This would prove that legalism meant something more than tithes and sacrifices for the benefit of the priests.
Nor is it true that the legal tendency aimed at narrowing the mind of the nation, turning all its thoughts into the one direction of the law. Apart from the fact that the Torah contained other elements besides its legalism, the prophets were not forgotten, but were read and interpreted from a very early age. It was under the predominance of the Law that the Wisdom literature was composed, which is by no means narrow or one-sided, but is even supposed by some critics to contain many foreign elements. In the book of Job, the great problems of man's existence are treated with a depth and grandeur never equalled before or since. This book alone ought partly to compensate the modern school for the disappearance of prophecy, which is usually brought as a charge against the Law. Then, too, the Psalms, placed by the same school in the post-exilic [pg 243] period, are nothing but another aspect of prophecy, with this difference, perhaps, that in the Prophets God speaks to man, while in the Psalms it is man who establishes the same communion by speaking to God. There is no reason why the critical school, with its broad conception of inspiration, and with its insistence that prophecy does not mean prediction, should so strongly emphasise this difference. If “it is no longer as in the days of Amos, when the Lord Yahveh did nothing without revealing his counsel to his servants the prophets,” there is in the days of the Psalmists nothing in man's heart, no element in his longings and meditations and aspirations, which was not revealed to God. Nay, it would seem that at times the Psalmist hardly ever desires the revelation of God's secrets. Let future events be what they may, he is content, for he is with God. After all his trials, he exclaims, “And yet I am continually with thee; thou hast taken hold of my right hand. According to thy purpose wilt thou lead me, and afterwards receive me with glory. Whom have I (to care for) in heaven? and possessing thee, I have pleasure in nothing upon earth. Though my flesh and my heart should have wasted away, God would for ever be the rock of my heart and my portion” (Ps. lxxiii. 23-26). How an age producing a literature containing passages like these—of which Wellhausen in his Abriss (p. 95) justly remarks, that we are not worthy even to repeat them—can be considered by the modern school as wanting in intimate relation to God and inferior to that of the prophets is indeed a puzzle.
Now a few words as to the actual life under the Law. Here, again, there is a fresh puzzle. On the one side, we hear the opinions of so many learned professors, proclaiming [pg 244] ex cathedrâ, that the Law was a most terrible burden, and the life under it the most unbearable slavery, deadening body and soul. On the other side we have the testimony of a literature extending over about twenty-five centuries, and including all sorts and conditions of men, scholars, poets, mystics, lawyers, casuists, schoolmen, tradesmen, workmen, women, simpletons, who all, from the author of the 119th Psalm to the last pre-Mendelssohnian writer—with a small exception which does not even deserve the name of a vanishing minority—give unanimous evidence in favour of this Law, and of the bliss and happiness of living and dying under it,—and this, the testimony of people who were actually living under the Law, not merely theorising upon it, and who experienced it in all its difficulties and inconveniences. The Sabbath will give a fair example. The law of the Sabbath is one of those institutions the strict observance of which was already the object of attack in early New Testament times. Nevertheless, the doctrine proclaimed in one of the Gospels—that the son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath—was also current among the Rabbis. They, too, taught that the Sabbath had been delivered into the hand of man (to break, if necessary), and not man delivered over to the Sabbath.204 And they even laid down the axiom that a scholar who lived in a town, where among the Jewish population there could be the least possibility of doubt as to whether the Sabbath might be broken for the benefit of a dangerously sick person, was to be despised as a man neglecting his duty; for, as Maimonides points out, the laws of the Torah are not meant as an infliction upon mankind, “but as mercy, loving-kindness, and peace.”205
The attacks upon the Jewish Sabbath have not abated [pg 245] with the lapse of time. The day is still described by almost every Christian writer on the subject in the most gloomy colours, and long lists are given of minute and easily transgressed observances connected with it, which, instead of a day of rest, would make it to be a day of sorrow and anxiety, almost worse than the Scotch Sunday as depicted by continental writers. But it so happens that we have the prayer of R. Zadok, a younger contemporary of the Apostles, which runs thus: “Through the love with which Thou, O Lord our God, lovest Thy people Israel, and the mercy which Thou hast shown to the children of Thy covenant, Thou hast given unto us in love this great and holy Seventh Day.”206 And another Rabbi, who probably flourished in the first half of the second century, expresses himself (with allusion to Exod. xxxi. 13: Verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep ... that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you)—“The Holy One, blessed be He, said unto Moses, I have a good gift in my treasures, and Sabbath is its name, which I wish to present to Israel. Go and bring to them the good tidings.”207 The form again of the Blessing over the Sanctification-cup208—a ceremony known long before the destruction of the Second Temple—runs: “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, who hast sanctified us by Thy commandments, and hast taken pleasure in us, and in love and grace hast given us Thy holy Sabbath as an inheritance.” All these Rabbis evidently regarded the Sabbath as a gift from heaven, an expression of the infinite mercy and grace of God which He manifested to His beloved children.
And the gift was, as already said, a good gift. Thus the Rabbis paraphrase the words in the Scripture “See, [pg 246] for that the Lord hath given you the Sabbath” (Exod. xvi. 29): God said unto Israel behold the gem I gave you, My children I gave you the Sabbath for your good. Sanctify or honour the Sabbath by choice meals, beautiful garments; delight your soul with pleasure and I will reward you (for this very pleasure); as it is said: “And if thou wilt call the Sabbath a delight and the holy of the Lord honourable (that is honouring the Sabbath in this way) ... then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord” (Is. lviii. 13, 14).209
The delight of the Sabbath was keenly felt. Israel fell in love with the Sabbath, and in the hyperbolic language of the Agadah the Sabbath is personified as the “Bride of Israel,” whilst others called it “Queen Sabbath,”210 and they are actually jealous of a certain class of semi-proselytes who, as it seems, were willing to observe the Sabbath, but declined to submit to the covenant of Abraham. The Gentile Sabbath-keepers—who, like all the nations of the world, envy Israel their Sabbath—the Rabbis considered as shameless intruders deserving punishment.211 No, it was Israel's own Queen or Bride Sabbath whose appearance in all her heavenly glory they were impatiently awaiting. Thus we are told of R. Judah b. Ilai that when the eve of the Sabbath came “he made his ablutions, wrapped himself up in his white linen with fringed borders looking like an angel of the Lord of Hosts,” thus prepared for the solemn reception of Queen Sabbath. Another Rabbi used to put on his best clothes, and arise and invite the Sabbath with the words: “Come in Bride, come in.”212 What the Bride brought was peace and bliss. Nay, man is provided with a super soul for the Sabbath, enabling him to bear both the spiritual and the material delights of the day with [pg 247] dignity and solemnity.213 The very light (or expression) of man's face is different on Sabbath, testifying to his inward peace and rest. And when man has recited his prayers (on the eve of the Sabbath) and thus borne testimony to God's creation of the world and to the glory of the Sabbath, there appear the two angels who accompany him, lay their hands on his head and impart to him their blessing with the words: “And thine iniquity is taken away and thy sin purged” (Is. vi. 7).214 For nothing is allowed to disturb the peace of the Sabbath; not even “the sorrows of sin,” though the Sabbath had such a solemn effect on people that even the worldly man would not utter an untruth on the Day of the Lord. Hence it was not only forbidden to pray on Sabbath for one's own (material) needs, but everything in the liturgy of a mournful character (as for instance the confession of sin, supplication for pardon) was carefully avoided. It was with difficulty, as the Rabbis say, that they made an exception in the case of condoling with people who had suffered loss through the death of near relatives. There is no room for morbid sentiment on Sabbath, for the blessing of the Lord maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow with it (Prov. x. 22).215 The burden of the Sabbath prayers is for peace, rest, sanctification, and joy (through salvation) and praise of God for this ineffable bliss of the Sabbath.
Such was the Sabbath of the old Rabbis and the same spirit continued through all ages. The Sabbath was and is still celebrated by the people who did and do observe it, in hundreds of hymns, which would fill volumes, as a day of rest and joy, of pleasure and delight, a day in which man enjoys some foretaste of the pure [pg 248] bliss and happiness which are stored up for the righteous in the world to come. Somebody, either the learned professors, or the millions of the Jewish people, must be under an illusion. Which it is I leave to the reader to decide.
It is also an illusion to speak of the burden which a scrupulous care to observe six hundred and thirteen commandments must have laid upon the Jew. Even a superficial analysis will discover that in the time of Christ many of these commandments were already obsolete (as for instance those relating to the tabernacle and to the conquest of Palestine), while others concerned only certain classes, as the priests, the judges, the soldiers, the Nazirites, or the representatives of the community, or even only one or two individuals among the whole population, as the King and the High-Priest. Others, again, provided for contingencies which could occur only to a few, as for instance the laws concerning divorce or levirate marriages, whilst many—such as those concerning idolatry, and incest, and the sacrifice of children to Moloch—could scarcely have been considered as a practical prohibition by the pre-Christian Jew; just as little as we can speak of Englishmen as lying under the burden of a law preventing them from burning widows or marrying their grandmothers, though such acts would certainly be considered as crimes. Thus it will be found by a careful enumeration that barely a hundred laws remain which really concerned the life of the bulk of the people. If we remember that even these include such laws as belief in the unity of God, the necessity of loving and fearing Him, and of sanctifying His name, of loving one's neighbour and the stranger, of providing [pg 249] for the poor, exhorting the sinner, honouring one's parents and many more of a similar character, it will hardly be said that the ceremonial side of the people's religion was not well balanced by a fair amount of spiritual and social elements. Besides, it would seem that the line between the ceremonial and the spiritual is too often only arbitrarily drawn. With many commandments it is rather a matter of opinion whether they should be relegated to the one category or the other.
Thus, the wearing of Tephillin216 or phylacteries has, on the one hand, been continually condemned as a meaningless superstition, and a pretext for formalism and hypocrisy. But, on the other hand, Maimonides, who can in no way be suspected of superstition or mysticism, described their importance in the following words: “Great is the holiness of the Tephillin; for as long as they are on the arm and head of man he is humble and God-fearing, and feels no attraction for frivolity or idle things, nor has he any evil thoughts, but will turn his heart to the words of truth and righteousness.” The view which R. Johanan, a Palestinian teacher of the third century, took of the fulfilment of the Law, will probably be found more rational than that of many a rationalist of to-day. Upon the basis of the last verse in Hosea, “The ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them, but the transgressors shall fall therein,” he explains that while one man, for instance, eats his paschal lamb with the purpose of doing the will of God who commanded it, and thereby does an act of righteousness, another thinks only of satisfying his appetite by the lamb, so that his eating it (by the very fact that he professes at the same time to perform a religious [pg 250] rite) becomes a stumbling-block for him.217 Thus all the laws by virtue of their divine authority—and in this there was in the first century no difference of opinion between Jews and Christians—have their spiritual side, and to neglect them implies, at least from the individual's own point of view, a moral offence.
The legalistic attitude may be summarily described as an attempt to live in accordance with the will of God, caring less for what God is than for what He wants us to be. But, nevertheless, on the whole this life never degenerated into religious formalism. Apart from the fact that during the second temple there grew up laws, and even beliefs, which show a decided tendency towards progress and development, there were also ceremonies which were popular with the masses, and others which were neglected. Men were not, therefore, the mere soulless slaves of the Law; personal sympathies and dislikes also played a part in their religion. Nor were all the laws actually put upon the same level. With a happy inconsistency men always spoke of heavier and slighter sins, and by the latter—excepting, perhaps, the profanation of the Sabbath—they mostly understood ceremonial transgressions. The statement made by Professor Toy (p. 243), on the authority of James (ii. 10), that “the principle was established that he who offended in one point was guilty of all,” is hardly correct; for the passage seems rather to be laying down a principle, or arguing that logically the law ought to be looked upon as a whole, than stating a fact. The fact was that people did not consider the whole law as of equal importance, but made a difference between laws and laws, and even spoke of certain commandments, such as those of charity and kindness, as outweighing all the rest of the [pg 251] Torah. It was in conformity with this spirit that in times of great persecution the leaders of the people had no compunction in reducing the whole Law to the three prohibitions of idolatry, of incest, and of bloodshed. Only these three were considered of sufficient importance that men should rather become martyrs than transgress them.
These, then, are some of the illusions and misrepresentations which exist with regard to the Law. There are many others, of which the complete exposure would require a book by itself. Meanwhile, in the absence of such a book to balance and correct the innumerable volumes upon the other side, Professor Toy has done the best he could with existing materials, and produced a meritorious work deserving of wide recognition and approval.
The Hebrew collection in the British Museum forms one of the greatest centres of Jewish thought. It is only surpassed by the treasures which are contained in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The fame of these magnificent collections has spread far and wide. It has penetrated into the remotest countries, and even the Bachurim (alumni) of some obscure place in Poland, who otherwise neither care nor know anything about British civilisation, have a dim notion of the nature of these mines of Jewish learning.
All sorts of legends circulate amongst them about the “millions” of books which belong to the “Queen of England.” They speak mysteriously of an autograph copy of the Book of Proverbs, presented to the Queen of Sheba on the occasion of her visit to Jerusalem, and brought by the English troops as a trophy from their visit to Abyssinia, which is still ruled by the descendants of that famous lady. They also talk of a copy of the Talmud of Jerusalem which once belonged to Titus, afterwards to a Pope, was presented by the latter to a Russian Czar, and taken away from him by the English in the Crimean war; of a manuscript [pg 253] of the book Light is Sown,218 which is so large that no shelf can hold it, and which therefore hangs on iron chains. How they long to have a glance at these precious things! Would not a man get wiser only by looking at the autograph of the wisest of men?
But even the students of Germany and Austria, who are inaccessible to such fables, and by the aid of Zedner's, Steinschneider's, and Neubauer's catalogues have a fair notion of our libraries, cherish the belief that they would gain in scholarship and wisdom by examining these grand collections. How often have I been asked by Jewish students abroad: “Have you really been to the British Museum? Have you really seen this or that rare book or manuscript? Had you not great difficulties in seeing them? Is not the place where these heaps of jewels are treasured up always crowded by students and visitors?”
Yet how little does our English public know of these wonderful things! We are fairly interested in Græco-Roman art. We betray much curiosity about the different Egyptian dynasties. We look with admiration at the cuneiform inscriptions in the Nimrod room. We do not even grudge a glance at the abominable idols of the savage tribes. But as to the productions of Jewish genius,—well, it is best to quote here the words of Heine, who ridiculed this indifference to everything that is Jewish, in the following lines:—
Now Heine goes on to advise his beloved one to study the Hebrew language. It would be indeed the best remedy against this indifference. But this is so radical a cure that one cannot hope that it will be made use of by many. A few remarks in English, trying to give some notion of the Hebrew collection in the British Museum, may, therefore, not be considered altogether superfluous.
The Hebrew collection in the Museum may be divided into two sections: Printed Books, and Manuscripts. The number of the printed books amounted in the year 1867, in which Zedner concluded his catalogue, to 10,100 volumes. Within the last twenty-eight years about 5000 more have been added.
This enormous collection has grown out of very small beginnings. The British Museum was first opened to the public in the year 1759. Amongst the 500,000 volumes which it possessed at that time only a single Jewish work, the editio princeps of the Talmud (Bomberg, Venice, 1520-1523) [pg 255] was to be found on its shelves. According to an article by Zedner in the Hebräische Bibliographie (ii. p. 88), this copy of the Talmud once belonged to Henry VIII. But very soon the Museum was enriched by a small collection of Hebrew books, presented to it by Mr. Solomon da Costa, surnamed Athias, who had emigrated to England from Holland. The translation of the Hebrew letter with which the donor accompanied his present to the Trustees of the Museum was first published in the Gentleman's Magazine, February 1760, and was afterwards republished by the Rev. A. L. Green, in an article in the Jewish Chronicle, 1859. I shall only reproduce here the passage relating to the history of this collection. After expressing his gratitude to the “crowning city, the city of London, in which he dwelt for fifty-four years in ease and quietness and safety,” and telling us that he bequeaths these books to the British nation as a token of his gratitude, Da Costa proceeds to say that they are 180 books, which had been gathered and bound for Charles II., with valuable bindings and marked with the king's own cipher. These books were intended as a present from the London Jewish community to Charles for certain privileges which he had bestowed on them. The sudden death of the king seems to have frustrated the intention of the first donors. The books were scattered, and Da Costa had to collect them again.
Small as this collection is, it is most valuable on account of its including many early editions of Venice, Constantinople, Naples, etc. The original letter of Da Costa, with a full list of the 180 books, is preserved in a MS. in the British Museum (Additional, 4710-11).
Of still greater importance is the Michaelis collection. [pg 256] It consists of 4420 volumes, and was bought by the Trustees of the Museum in 1848. Other successive acquisitions, especially the purchase of a large number of printed books from the Almanzi collection, brought the Museum into possession of one of the most complete and one of the largest Hebrew libraries in the world.
After the foregoing remarks on the quantity of this collection, I shall now attempt to give some idea of its quality. The following table, taken from the Preface of Zedner's Catalogue, shows its manifold contents:—
The reader can see that almost every branch of human thought, religious and secular, is amply represented in this collection. Looking at this table from a geographical point of view, we may perhaps classify the authors in the following way:—France and Germany in the Middle Ages, Poland and the East in modern times, are represented by the fourth, fifth, and sixth classes. The Rabbis of Spain and Italy would probably excel in the last five classes. In the productions of classes eight and nine all the before-mentioned countries would have an equal share. English Judaism, by reason of its large number of occasional prayers and wedding hymns (Zedner, pp. 472, 652), may perhaps be represented in the last class (criticism [pg 257] excluded). We in England are a pious, devotional people, and leave the thinking to others.
But what is still more welcome to the student is the fact that all these branches of Jewish learning are represented in the British Museum by the best editions. It would be a rather tedious task to enumerate here all the early editions of which this collection can boast. There is hardly any Hebrew book of importance from the Bible down to the Code of R. Joseph Caro of which the Museum does not possess the first printed edition. There are also many books and editions in the Museum of which no second copy is known to be in existence. An enumeration of these rare books and editions would require long lists, the perusal of which would be rather trying. But I shall say a few words to show the importance of such early editions for the student. They possess, first, the advantage of being free from the misprints which crept in with every fresh republication. The art of editing books in a correct and scientific way is of a very recent date. And even Hebrew literature does not find that support from the public which would enable scholars to edit Jewish books in such a way as Roman and Greek classics are prepared by Oxford and Cambridge students. A new edition of a Hebrew book meant therefore an addition of new mistakes and misprints. And it is only by examining the editiones principes that the scholar finds his way out of these perplexities.
Another advantage is the fact that these early editions escaped the hand of the censor, whose office was not introduced till a comparatively late date. The same advantage is also possessed by the Hebrew books published at Constantinople, Salonica, and other Mohammedan cities. Only [pg 258] Christian countries indulged in the barbarous pleasure of burning and disfiguring Jewish books. It is one of the most touching points in the life of R. David Oppenheim, of Prague, who spent all his life and fortune in collecting Hebrew works, and whose collection now forms one of the greatest ornaments of the Bodleian Library, that he was not allowed by the censor to enjoy the use of his treasures. He had to put them under the protection of Lipman Cohen, his father-in-law in Hanover, many hundreds of miles from his own home. With the exception of the Bible hardly any Jewish books escaped mutilation. In certain Christian countries some books were not allowed to be published at all; of others, again, whole chapters had to be omitted, while of others many passages had to be expunged. The words Roman, Greek, Gentile, were strictly forbidden, and had to be changed into Turks, Arabs, Samaritans, or worshippers of the stars and planets. One can imagine what confusion such stupid alterations caused. Fancy what blunders would have been committed in history if the old chroniclers had been compelled to change the Pope into the Grand Turk or the Shah of Persia, the Christian rulers into as many califs and pashas, or Rome and Athens into Pekin and Mecca!
It may perhaps be interesting to learn that Jews sometimes imitated their bitter enemies in this work of mutilation. Thus in the later editions of the Book of Genealogies by Abraham Zacuto,219 a passage was left out reproducing the evidence given by the widow of Moses de Leon to the effect that the cabbalistic work, the Zohar, was a forgery manufactured by her poor dear husband. Another omission of this kind is to be found in the Code of R. Joseph Caro, mentioned above. Here the earliest editions declare, [pg 259] in the heading of section 605, “a certain religious usage” to be “a custom of folly.” In the republications, the last three words were left out. From such nonsensical omissions and changes only the earliest editions, which are abundant in the Museum, were exempt.
A remarkable feature about the books of this Hebrew collection also is that many of them are provided in the margin with manuscript notes by their former possessors. These often happen to bear very great names in literature. I shall only mention here R. Jacob Emden, Almanzi, Michael, Gerundi, and Heidenheim. Of the works written by R. Jacob Emden, the Museum possesses an almost complete author's copy with abundant corrections, notes, and emendations by the author himself. His works are still very popular among Polish and Russian Jews, especially his Prayer-Book, and his Responses. It would be advisable for publishers in these countries to avail themselves of this copy on the occasion of a new edition. Of Christian scholars I should name here Isaac Casaubon. A rather amusing mistake occurs in Ben-Jacob's Treasure of Books in connection with this name. Among the many valuable copies of Kimchi's grammatical work Perfection,220 possessed by the Museum, there is included one which belonged to Casaubon, and is full of notes by him. The author of the Treasure speaks of a Perfection with notes by Rabbi Yitzchak Kasuban. I was at first at a loss to guess who that Rabbi Casaubon might be. When examining Zedner I found it was no other than the famous Christian scholar, Isaac Casaubon. It is not known that Casaubon's ambition lay in this direction. But when Philo was regarded as a Father of the Church, Ben Gabirol quoted for many centuries as a Mohammedan philosopher, [pg 260] why should not Casaubon obtain for once the dignity of a Rabbi?
After having given the reader some notion of the collection of printed works, I should like now to invite him to accompany me through the Manuscript Department of the Museum. But I am afraid that I shall make a bad guide here; for the Museum is still without a descriptive catalogue of the Hebrew manuscripts, which is the only means of enabling the student to obtain a general view of the number and nature of these works. The manuscript catalogue of Dukes goes only as far as 1856. It was, as we shall soon see, just after this time that the Museum made its largest and, to a certain degree also, its most valuable acquisitions in Hebrew manuscripts. The following remarks must, therefore, not be taken as the result of a systematic study of this collection, which would be quite impossible without the aid of a catalogue. They rest partly on the descriptions given of a certain number of manuscripts in the catalogue by Dukes, but for the greater part on occasional glances at this or that MS.
As to the history of the collection, it has grown out of small beginnings just as that of printed books. The collection of Dr. Sloane, which laid the foundation of the Museum Library, contained only nine Hebrew MSS. Later acquisitions, as the Harleian collection, the Cottonian collection, the Royal collection, and many other smaller collections marked as Additional up to 1854, increased the number of the Hebrew manuscripts to 232. Of much more importance was the Almanzi collection, bought by the trustees of the Museum in 1865, and consisting of 335 MSS. Of succeeding acquisitions I shall mention here only the Yemen MSS., which were brought [pg 261] to this country by the famous Shapira. The number of Hebrew MSS. at the present day is said to exceed one thousand. But we must not forget that many MSS. contain more than one work; in some cases even three or four, so that the number of Hebrew works is far greater still.
I shall now speak of the nature and importance of these MSS. As to their contents they may be easily grouped under the following headings: Biblical MSS., Commentaries (to the Bible) and Super-Commentaries, parts of the Talmud and their Commentaries, Theology, Philosophy and Ethics, Massorah, Grammar and Lexicography, Cabbalah, Poetry, Mathematics, Astronomy, Astrology and Magic, Historical and Polemical Literature, etc. All these branches of theological and secular learning and even of human folly are fairly represented in the collection of Hebrew MSS. in the Museum, though often only by a part or a fragment of a work.
Thus the Babylonian Talmud is to be found only in two MSS. (Harl. 5508 and Add. 25,717) both of them including 11 Tractates, hardly a third part of the whole work. Indeed poor “Rabbinus Talmud” had to go to the auto de fé on so many occasions that one cannot wonder if only disjointed limbs are to be found of him in libraries. The only complete MS. copy which escaped this vandalism is that in the Royal Library in Munich, from which Mr. Rabbinowicz has edited his monumental work, Variae Lectiones of the Talmud.
All other libraries, Oxford included, have to be satisfied with fragments. Still worse, as it is seen, fared the Jerusalem Talmud, and excepting the well-known copy in Leyden from which the Venice edition was prepared, not [pg 262] even fragments of this Talmud are to be found in the majority of libraries. To my knowledge it is only the British Museum which can boast of the Jerusalem Talmud in MS. extending over Order of Seeds and one tractate of Order of Festivals221 (Or. 2122-24) with commentaries of R. Solomon Syrillo, the first few pages of which were edited by Dr. Lehmann of Mayence. The Museum also possesses a great part of the Tosephta extending over 14 Tractates (Add. 27,296). Of Midrashim we find in the Museum two excellent manuscripts of the Genesis Rabbah, one of the Leviticus Rabbah, and one of the Siphra and the Siphré (Add. 27,169 and 16,406), besides two copies of the Midrash Haggadol and other Aagadic collections brought from Yemen. The Midrash by Machir b. Abba Mari to the minor prophets included in the Harleian collection (5704) is unique. Of Liturgies, besides a great number of MSS. representing the most peculiar rites, I shall mention the Machzor222 Vitri (Add. 27,200-1) composed by the disciples of R. Solomon b. Isaac, and forming in itself almost a small library. For, apart from the prayers for festivals and week days which gave it its title, it includes, besides the Sayings of the Fathers with a large commentary, three of the Minor Tractates of the Talmud, many responses by German and French Rabbis, and a whole series of religious hymns by German and Spanish authors, and many other literary pieces. Cabbalah is represented by various valuable writings of the pre-Zoharistic time (see for instance Add. 15,299) and the works of R. Moses de Leon and R. Abraham Abulafia. Of Poetry, I shall point here to the Tarshish of R. Moses Ibn Ezra, the Makames by Judah Al Charisi (Add. 27,122), and the Divan of R. Abraham of Bedres (Add. 27,188). Of works [pg 263] relating to grammar and lexicography, I may refer to a Codex (Add. 27,214) which contains the lexicon of R. Menahem ben Saruk, which is considered as the oldest Hebrew MS. in the Museum, dating from the year 1091. Of historical works, I mention the chronicle of R. Joseph the Priest (Add. 27,122) and the letter of R. Sherira Gaon (Arundel 51), the oldest existing copy of this work (1189), which was edited by Dr. Neubauer in his Mediæval Jewish Chronicles.
These examples will suffice to show the significance of the MSS. collection of this Library. And the student may rest assured that in whatever branch of Jewish thought he is interested, he will always find in the Museum some Hebrew manuscript useful for his purpose.
I ought now to say a few words as to the value of this collection of manuscripts. Now, if the work contained in a MS. has never been edited, as for instance the Machzor Vitri223 and so many others, its value is established by the mere fact of its existence. For those who published MSS. were not always guided by the best literary motives. And while they published and republished many books of which one edition would have been more than enough, many other works of the greatest importance for Jewish literature and history remained in manuscript. As an instance, it will suffice to mention here the Zohar, which has passed through twenty-four editions since the sixteenth century, whilst the earliest Jewish Midrash, the Pessikta de Rab Kahana, had to linger in the libraries till the year 1868, when it was edited by Mr. S. Buber. Thus there are still many pearls of Jewish literature which exist only in MS. Likewise most publishers were careless in their choice of the manuscript from which our editions [pg 264] have been prepared. Almost the whole of Jewish literature will have to be re-edited before a scientific study of it will be possible. But such critical editions can only be obtained by the aid of the MSS. not yet made use of, in which better readings are to be found. From this fact even those MSS. the contents of which have been several times reprinted, as for instance the MSS. of the Midrash Rabbah, gain the greatest literary importance. And the more MSS. the editor of a work has at his disposal, the more certain is he of being able to furnish us with a good text.
But even when the whole of Jewish literature lies before the student in the best of texts, there will still remain a great charm about manuscripts. Printed books, like the great mass of the modern society for which they are prepared, are devoid of any originality. They interest us only as classes, and it is very seldom that they have a story of their own to tell. It is quite different with manuscripts, where the fact of their having been produced by a living being invests them with a certain kind of individuality. This is specially the case with Hebrew MSS., which were not copied by men shut up in cloisters, but by sociable people living in the world and sharing its joys and sorrows. Even women were employed in this art, and I remember to have read in some MS. or catalogue a postscript by the lady copyist, which, if I remember rightly, ran as follows: “I beseech the reader not to judge me very harshly when he finds that mistakes have crept into this work; for when I was engaged in copying it God blessed me with a son, and thus I could not attend to my business properly.”
To be sure, some of these copyists were curious folk. [pg 265] Their mind as well as that of the world around them must have been of a peculiar constitution hardly conceivable to us. Take, for example, Benjamin, the copyist of a certain Machzor in the Museum (Add. 11,639). This Machzor was written in times of bitter persecution. The copyist, who was himself a learned man, alludes in one place to the sufferings which the Jews in a certain French town had to undergo in the year 1276. On one of them, the martyr R. Samson, Benjamin the copyist composed a lamentation written in a most mournful strain. But this lamentation is followed by a wine-song, one of the jolliest and wildest parodies for the feast of Purim.
Speaking of this Machzor I should like to remark that it forms one of the greatest ornaments of the Museum. Besides including the whole of the Pentateuch, the above-mentioned Tarshish by R. Moses Ibn Ezra, and many other smaller literary pieces which would require a small volume to describe them properly, this MS. is most richly illuminated, and contains very many illustrations. The subjects of these illustrations are biblical, sometimes also apocryphal, such as—Adam and Eve in Paradise, Noah in the Ark, Abraham meeting the angels, Sarah behind the door listening to the conversation of her husband with his guests, Moses with the rod in his hands dividing the Red Sea, Samson riding on the back of a lion, Solomon on his throne, Daniel in the lion's den, the king Ahasuerus holding out the golden sceptre to Esther, Judith addressing Holofernes, the Leviathan, the mythical bird Bar Yochni, and many other similar subjects. In passing I recommend these illustrations and illuminations to the attention of the artist as the most worthy examples of Jewish ecclesiastical art,—if there is such a thing as a [pg 266] special Jewish art. The artist will find the Museum best suited for this purpose, its collection being considered as the richest of the kind. Besides this Machzor I must also allude to the illuminated Bible (Or. 2226-28) written in Lisbon for R. Judah Alchakin—it is said to be one of the finest specimens of such works—and the illuminated Mishneh Torah of Maimonides, executed for R. Joseph of the famous Yachya family, also thought to be most artistically done. The liturgies for the Passover Eve service will also offer to the artist a rich harvest, especially Codex, Add. 27,210, which the wealthy Lady Rosa Galico presented to her son-in-law on his wedding-day, and Codex, Add. 14,762, even the binding of which is considered as an artistic curiosity.
Leaving now these marvels to the appreciation of the artist, the greatest wonder which suggests itself to us is how the Jews could maintain such a cultured taste in such unhappy times, and get the means of satisfying it. These reflections about the owners present themselves the more strongly to our mind when we meet with one of those old Jewish prayer-books, which in many cases formed the whole religious and literary treasure of the family. In their fly-leaves, in which the births and deaths of successive generations are very often registered, the spiritus familiaris seems to be still haunting the pages. When you turn them over and see the service for Passover Eve, are you not bound to think of the anxiety with which these poor creatures engaged in this ceremony lest they might be attacked suddenly by a fanatic mob? must you not ask how they could bear life under such circumstances? And when you turn a few more pages and arrive at the prayers read for the dead, must you not ask how did they die? [pg 267] Were they perhaps burnt alive ad majorem Dei gloriam, or torn to pieces by a “saintly mob”? Take again the illuminated copies of the Bible and the Mishneh Torah, both of which were finished only a few years before the great expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal, times when the earth already “burnt under their feet, and the heaven was also very unkind to them.” And nevertheless Jews were still, as these MSS. show us, cultivating science and art. Another instance of such a devotion to science in spite of the unfavourable times may be seen from a colophon to Codex Or. 39. It contains the book Nissim, a philosophical treatise on the fundamental teachings of Judaism, together with a philosophical commentary on the Pentateuch by R. Nissim of Marseilles, a contemporary of R. Solomon ben Adereth in the thirteenth century. The Museum copy was written by R. Jacob, the son of David, who also added some annotations to the book. At the end he says: “I have copied this book Nissim for my own use, that I may study in it, I and my children and my grandchildren.... I have finished it to-day, Sunday, the 28th of Ab, 5333 (1573), at Venice, in the year of the expulsion which befell us on account of our sins.” Now, only observe this poor R. Jacob, who has to go through all these horrors, yet is still occupied in copying MSS. for his own pleasure, and in meditating on the most complicated problems of philosophy and religion.
But it is not always stories of this heroic nature that the MSS. tell us. They betray also very much of the instability of human affairs and their weakness. You find in many copies the words that they must not “be sold or given in mortgage.” But scarcely a generation has passed away, and they are already in the possession [pg 268] of a new owner, who writes the same injunction to be broken again by his children in their turn. In Codex 27,122, we find commendatory letters for a worthy poor man, who is so unhappy as to have two grown-up daughters, and not to have the means of supplying them with marriage portions. Indeed, he must have been very poor, not possessing even a book in his house, or else his troubles could not have been so great. For in Codex Harl. 5702, we find the owner saying: “To eternal memory that I have acquired this Third Book of Avicena from the hands of my father-in-law, R. Jekuthiel, as a part of my dowry.”
As a sign of human weakness I give the following two instances. There lies before me a cabbalistic Codex (Add. 27,199), which acquired some notoriety from the fact of its having been copied by the famous grammarian, R. Elijah Levita, for his pupil Cardinal Aegidius. At the end of this MS. we read: “I (Levita) have finished (the copying of) this book on Wednesday, the day of Hoshana Rabba,224 5277 (1516), on which day I have seen my head in the shadow of the moon. Praised be God (for it), for now I am sure not to die in the following year.” These words relate to a well-known superstition, according to which, when a man is going to die in the course of the next year his shadow disappears from him on the preceding Hoshana Rabba. But is it not humiliating to see that the great Levita, who was superior to many prejudices of his time, and taught Christians Hebrew, and who denied the antiquity of the vowels in the Bible, which was considered by the great majority of his contemporaries as a mortal heresy—is it not humiliating to see this enlightened man trembling for his life on this night, and [pg 269] anxiously observing his shadow? Another Codex lies before me (Add. 17,053), containing the Novellæ to three tractates of the Talmud. Its owner must accordingly have been a learned man. But in the fly-leaf of this MS. we read the following words: “Memorandum—Thursday, the 25th of Sivan, 5295 (1535), I have taken an oath in the presence of R. David Ibn Shushan and R. Moses de Castro, etc., not to play (cards) any more.” I might perhaps suggest on this occasion that in our days when all sorts of Judaisms are circulating, a cooking Judaism, a racing Judaism, a muscular Judaism, and so many Judaisms more—it would be interesting to take up also the subject of playing Judaism, and to write its history.
In conclusion I shall mention the colophon to Codex Harl. 5713, which may have some interest for the English reader. It runs: “I have written it in honour of the noble and pious, etc., Humphrey Wanley, the noble Librarian of my Lord Treasurer. May his glory be increased. In the year 5474 (1714) in the holy community of London, under the reign of the noble and happy Queen Anne. May the Lord increase her splendour and glory.” The signature of the copyist is “Aaron the son of Moses, born in the city of Navaschadok in Poland.” By the way, we learn from this signature that the immigration of Polish Jews into this country had already begun in the time of Queen Anne, and perhaps still earlier.
Thus everything in a MS., the arrangement of the matter, the remarks of the owners, the signature of the copyist, sets the reader thinking, and contributes many a side-light to the history of the Jews.