for the first time in six Sedarim, or orders. This Hillel lived in the times of Jesus of Nazareth, and some say was the master from whom the Holy Child received His knowledge of the two Laws-the written and oral. The work of Hillel was formally completed, and the famous Traditional Law (the Law upon the Lip) committed to writing by Rabbi Jehuda the Holy, some 160 years after the resurrection of our Lord. This public committal to writing, A.D. 191, was no doubt owing to the despairing state of the Jewish people.* Jerusalem had been destroyed for more than a century, and the utter defeat of Barkochba threatened. the complete dismemberment of the Jewish nation as a separate race an anticipation which, however, as subsequent events have shown, was not verified. This compilation of Rabbi Jehudah the Holy, put forth in A.D. 191, was known as the Mishna, or "repetition of the Law." An unbroken chain of Jewish tradition thus links the Mishna of Rabbi Jehudah, A.D. 191, with the oral Law delivered to Moses on Sinai. This Mishna too, much as we now possess it in the Talmud, was doubtless known to, and studied by, Jesus of Nazareth. Rabbi Jehudah's work (the Mishna) is the basis of both the Talmuds (the Babylonian and Jerusalem). Around its text gradually was formed a body of notes, comments, and discussions of the most renowned Jewish teachers. This body of comments, &c., became known as the Gemara, or complement, from Gamar, to complete. In Palestine, Rabbi Yochanan ben Eliezer, head of the School * There was evidently a growing fear among the leading spirits of the nation that the day was not far distant when the great schools of the Rabbis would be destroyed, and the memory of the ancient Tradition, so deeply venerated, would perish. of Tiberias, arranged the Gemara, or complement of comments, round the Mishna of Rabbi Jehudah, about the end of the fourth century. This great compilation has ever since been known as the Palestinian or Jerusalem Talmud. (The word Talmud, difficult to English, signifies "study," étude.) It is derived from 5, to teach. In the far East, a still more comprehensive Gemara was formed round the same Mishna in the famous Jewish school of Sora. Rabbi Ashi bar Simai, one of the presidents of this great school, is said to have been the original compiler. Rabbi Yossi, one of his successors, finally completed this important work about A.D. 500. Their compilation has ever since been known as the Babylonian Talmud (Talmud Babli). It is this Babylonian Talmud, as the most important of the two Talmuds, which has been translated in this work on Genesis." (The Babylonian Talmud is about four times the length of the Palestinian.) The Jewish account thus gives to the Mishna division of the Talmud an authority scarcely inferior to that possessed by the books which are, by Christians as well as Jews, received as inspired. It traces much of the Tradition contained in the Talmud—at ! ́st in the Mishna portion-through a chain of authorities to Moses on Mount Sinai. There the great lawgiver is said to have received this second Law from the Eternal Himself. The true theory of the origins of this most curious and interesting compilation, while declining to accept the Jewish teaching respecting its Divine inspiration, still accepts the Jewish belief in its extreme antiquity. There were in the days of Moses doubtless current among the people many traditions-family chronicles, details and his. tories, long or short, concerning their ancestors. Many of these were oral traditions, handed down from father to son, through a long course of generations. A few, perhaps, were preserved, in writing, and were treasured up as a precious possession by certain families. Moses, in compiling his earlier records, was we believe inspired by the Spirit of God to make his selection was directed how to choose the true and to set aside the doubtful and the false, as well as those records, written and oral, which were unnecessary for the education of the people of the future. It is very probable that some of these "unused" materials were the basis of this ancient Tradition. Again, laws explanatory of the Mosaic enactments, in greater or less number, must have been in circulation from even the days of the Desert wanderings. A third basis of the primitive Tradition no doubt exists in the early decisions and comments of the Council of the Elders of Israel and of the judges who succeeded them after the death of Moses and Joshua. These early judgments and judicial comments were no doubt treasured up in later days with peculiar care, and were used as guides and indications of the mind of the Fathers who had lived in or near the times of the great lawgiver Moses. It is probable that comparatively early in the history of the Chosen People, Tradition and the unwritten Law assumed an authoritative position, and that a school of interpreters existed as far back as the days of King Solomon, which maintained that the Law of the without the aid of Tradition. 5, 6 seem as though the wise progress of this school of error. is pure. . . . add thou not unto His words, lest He reprove thee, and thou be found a liar." Lord could not be understood The cxix. Psalm, the date of which is uncertain, but which was probably written after the reign of Solomon, is a weighty testimony in favour of the law of the Lord, and is at the same time a powerful though an indirect protest against the traditions which were growing up alongside the inspired law and weakening its power among the people. Such were probably the beginnings of the "traditional sayings" of the Hebrew race, which eventually crystallized into the Mishna. The Mishna was, as years went on, enlarged by the supplementary comments and sayings of the Gemara, which in the case of the larger and more important Babylonian Talmud was not finally closed much before the year 500 of the Christian era. But although the original materials-which form the basis of the Mishna, and perhaps even of some of the thoughts which eventually appeared in the Gemara-belong to an earlier period, still the Talmud, Mishna, and even much of the Gemara, in the form we now possess it, really is the production of the age which intervened between the Captivity and the birth of Christ-a period of some 500 years. "An age of reflexion followed an age of inspiration. The guidance of the prophets had followed the close of the theocracy, and in turn the prophets were replaced by doctors (Sophrim). Schools of learning methodized the study of the law. The scribe and the lawyer succeeded to the authority of the priest, and in the words of the Talmud, 'The crown of learning was nobler than that of empire' . . . . The anxious and excessive zeal which led men to limit and overlay the freedom of daily conduct by religious observances, tended to invest a select body of teachers with almost absolute power; thus the Scribes soon rose above the priests, and with these tradition supplied the place of literature."-CANON WESTCOTT, Introduction to Study of the Gospel, ch. i. During the five centuries which elapsed between the Captivity and the birth of Jesus Christ, the remnant of the old Covenant People was under the dominion, first, for some 200 years, of Persia; then of Greek rulers for 150 years; then for a century they were practically independent under the Hasmonean Princes. But this brief gleam of independence was soon overshadowed by the advancing Roman power, and for the fifty years which preceded our Lord's birth they were subject to Rome. In this period, which included 400 years of servitude, with 100 years of precarious independence, the old Traditions were carefully gathered together, were gradually amplified, commented upon, and made the code and the guide. which directed and moulded the life of the people. Full of zeal, animated with a strange wild life, the Jewish nation was denied -owing to the circumstances of their peculiar subject position for most of that time-the natural vent for popular spirit and zeal -national progress at home and abroad. They devoted all their zeal, their energies and thoughts, to the study of their precious Divine law-which they felt that alone among the peoples of the earth they possessed-of the sacred law, which they looked upon as the source of their former grandeur and prosperityas the pledge of the sure realization of their splendid hopes for the future. it Now the written (Mosaic) Law was complete-to nothing could be added or substituted. But the oral Law -the sacred Tradition-offered an inexhaustible subject for development and amplification; and this, during a large portion of this same 500 years, was the central object of attention to the Jewish people. Among the Jews a curious and unique study may be said to have taken the place usually occupied in a nation by the arts of peace and war; but it was a study which advanced neither pure religion, true learning, nor national prosperity. When our Lord refers to the tradition of the Elders, |