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 COMMENTARIES

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COMMENTARIES

thinkers, between natural and revealed religion. The Bible contains not only revealed but also natural religion, free from error and with Divine sanction. Pagan systems may have natural religion highly developed, but with much concomitant error. Though this distinction did not occur to Philo, his exegesis served to tide over the difficulty for the time amongst the Hellenistic Jews, and had great influence on Origen and other Alexandrian Christian writers.

(2) The Targums. — In order to get on the main lines of Jewish interpretation it is necessary to turn to the Holy Land. Farrar, in his "Life of Christ", says that it has been suggested that when Christ visited the Temple, at twelve years of age, there may have been present among the doctors Jonathan ben LTzziel, once thought the author of the Yonathan Targum, and the venerable teachers Hillel and Shammai, the handers-on of the Mishna. The Targums (the most famous of which is that on the Pentateuch erroneously attributed to Onkelos, a misnomer for AquUa, accord- ing to Abrahams) were the only approach to anjrthing like a commentary on the Bible before the time of Christ. They were interpretative translations or paraphrases from Hebrew into Aramaic for the use of the synagogues when, after the Exile, the people had lost the knowledge of Hebrew. It is doubtful whether any of them were committed to writing be- fore the Christian Era. They are important as indi- cating the character of the Hebrew text used, and be- cause they agree with the New Testament in inter- preting certain passages Messianically which later Jews denied to have any Messianic bearing.

(3) The Mishna and Talmuds. — Hillel and Shammai were the last "pair" of several generations of "pairs" of teachers. These pairs were the successors of the early scribes who lived after the Exile. These teach- ers are said to have handed down and expanded the Oral Law, which, according to the uncritical view of many Jews, began with Moses. This Oral Law, whose origin is buried in obscurity, consists of legal and liturgical interpretations and applications of the Pentateuch. As no part of it was written down, it was preserved by constant repetition (Mishna). On the destruction of Jerusalem several rabbis, learned in this Law, settled at Jamnia, near the sea, twenty- eight mUes west of Jerusalem. Jamnia became the head-quarters of Jewish learning until 135. Then schools were opened at Sepphoris and Tiberias to the west of the Sea of Galilee. The rabbis comforted their countrymen by teaching that the study of the Law (Oral as well as Written) took the place of the sacrifices. They devoted their energies to arranging the Unwritten Torah, or Law. One of the most suc- cessful at this was Rabbi Akiba who took part in the revolt of Bar-Kokba, against the Romans, and lost his life (135). The work of systematization was com- pleted and probably committed to writing by the Jewish patriarch at Tiberias, Rabbi Jehudah ha-Nasi "The Prince" (150-210). He was of noble birth, wealthy, learned, and is called by the Jews "Our Mas- ter the Saint" or simply Rabbi par excellence. The compilation made by this Rabbi is the Mishna. It is written in New Hebrew, and consists of six great divi- sions or orders, each division containing, on an aver- age, about ten tractates, each tractate being made up of several chapters. The Mishna may be said to be a compilation of Jewish traditional moral theology, liturgy, law, etc. There were other traditions not embodied in the work of Rabbi, and these are called additional Mishna.

The discussions of later generations of rabbis all centred round the text of the Mishna. Interpreters or "speakers" laboured upon it both in Palestine and Babylonia (until 500), and the results are comprised in the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds. The word Talmud means teaching, doctrine. Each Tal- mud consists of two parts, the Mishna (in Hebrew), in

sixty-three tractates, and an explanation of the same (Gemara), ten or twelve times as long. The explana- tory portion of the Palestinian Talmud is written in Western Aramaic and that of the Babylonian Talmud in Eastern Aramaic, which is closely allied to Syriac or Mandaic. The passages in the Gemara containing additional Mishna are, however, given in New He- brew. Only thirty-nine tractates of the Mishna have Gemara. The Talmud, then, consists of the Mishna (traditions from 450 b. c. till A. d. 200), together with a commentary thereon, Gemara, the latter being composed about a. d. 200-500. Next to the Bible the Babylonian Talmud is the great religious book of orthodox Jews, though the Palestinian Talmud is more highly prized by modern scholars. From the year 500 till the Middle Ages the rabbis (gennim) in Babylonia and elsewhere were engaged in comment- ing on the Talmud and reconciling it with the Bible. A list of such commentaries is given in "The Jewish Encyclopedia ".

(4) The Midrashim. — Simultaneously with the Mishna and Talmud there grew up a number of Midrashim, or commentaries on the Bible. Some of these were legalistic, like the Gemara of the Talmud; but the most important were of an edifying, homi- letic character (Midrash Haggadah). These latter are important for the corroborative light which they throw on the language of the New Testament. The Gospel of St. John is seen to be steeped in early Jewish phraseology, and the words of Ps. cix, "The Lord said to my Lord", etc. are in one place applied to the Messias, as they are in St. Matthew, though Rashi and later Jews deprived them of their Messianic sense by applying them to Abraham.

(5) Karaite Commentators. — When the nature of the Talmud and other such writings is considered, it is not surprising that they produced a violent reaction against Rabbinism even among the Jews themselves. In spite of the few gems of thought scattered through it at long intervals, there is nothing in any literature so entirely uninviting as the Talmud. The oppos- ition to these "traditions of men" finally took shape. Anan ben David, a prominent Babylonian Jew in the eighth century, rejected Rabbinism for the wTitten Old Testament and became the founder of the sect known as Karaites (a word indicating their preference for the written Bible). This schism produced great energy and ability on both sides. The principal Karaite Bible commentators were Mahavendi (ninth century); Abul-Faraj Harun (ninth century), exegete and Hebrew grammarian; Solomon ben Yerucham (tenth centiu-y) ; Sahal-ben Mazliach (d. 950), Hebrew grammarian and lexicographer; Joseph al-Bazir (d. 930) ; Japhet ben Ali, the greatest Karaite commen- tator of the tenth century; and Judah Hadassi (d. 1160).

(6) Middle A^fs.— Saadiah of Fayum (d. 892), the most powerful WTiter against the Karaites, translated the Bible into Arabic and added notes. Besidescorn- mentaries on the Bible, Saadiah wrote a systematic treatise bringing revealed religion into harmony with Greek philosophy. He thus became the forerunner of Maimonides and the Catholic Schoolmen. Solomon ben Isaac, called Rashi (b. 1040) wrote very popular explanations of the Talmud and the Bible. Abraham Ibn Ezra of Toledo (d. 1168) had a good knowledge of Oriental languages and wrote learned commentaries on the Old Testament. He was the first to maintain that Isaias contains the work of two prophets. Moses Maimonides (d. 1204), the greatest Jewish scholar of the Middle Ages, of whom his coreligionists said that "from Moses to Moses there was none like Moses", wrote his " Guide to the Perplexed", whicJi was read by St. Thomas. He was a great admirer of Aristotle, who was to him the representative of natural knowl- edge as the Bible was of the supernatiu-al. There were the two Kimchis, especially David (d. 1235) of