Babylonian Talmud

Rodkinson 1918 — source 19, scan section 2

CHAPTER XII. The Doctors of France. Authors of the Tosphoth . 57 CHAPTER XIII. Religious Disputes of All Periods 61 CHAPTER XIV. Reuchlin, Pfefferkorn, and the Talmud in the Six- teenth and Seventeenth Centuries .... 76 CHAPTER XV. Polemics with Mussulmans and the Disputes with the Frankists 99 CONTENTS. ix CHAPTER XVI. FAGS The Persecutions of the Seventeenth Century, the Head OF Whom was Johann Andreas Eisenmenger . . 104 CHAPTER XVn. The Polemics and the Attacks Upon the Talmud in the Nineteenth Century 106 CHAPTER XVin. The Affair of Rholing-Block 109 CHAPTER XIX. Exilarchs ; the Talmud at the Stake and Its Develop- ment AT the Present Time 115 APPENDIX A. Nos. 1 TO 18 Contains Eighteen Explanatory Notes to THE Text . . . . . . . . . .121 No. 19 Contains an Extract of the Conclusion of Our Review to Dr. Kopf's Book, Mentioned in Text . . 125 No. 20 Contains a Translation of a Few Pages of Our Book, " Der Schulchan Aruch und seine Beziehungen zu DEN Juden und Nichtjuden," Concerning the Trial Before the " Landesgerichte," at Munster, Dec. 10, 1S83, About the Accusation of the Talmud and Schulchan Aruch 126 No. 21 Letter of the Theological Seminary . . . 136 No. 22 Jewish Encyclopedia 136 APPENDIX B. Criticism to Chapter VII. (Karaites). The Beliefs of Sadducees, Karaites, and of the Reformed Jews, and ALSO About Resurrection 138 INTRODUCTION. The persecutors of the Talmud during the period ranging from the first century B.C., when it began to take form, to the present day, have varied in their character, objects and actions. In one respect, however, they all agreed, namely, in their general wish to destroy its existence. Careful consideration of its many vicissitudes certainly justifies the assertion that the Talmud is one of the wonders of the world. During the twenty centuries of its existence not one of them has passed without great and powerful enemies vying with each other and exhausting every effort to destroy it ; still it survived in its entirety, and not only has the power of its foes failed to destroy even a single line, but it has not even been able materially to weaken its influ- ence for any length of time. It still dominates the minds of a whole people, who venerate its contents as divine truth, and countless numbers have sacrificed their lives and their posses- sions to save it from perishing. A review of its persecutors, before going into their history would not be amiss. They are the Seleucidae, in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Roman Emperor Nero, Domitian, Hadrian, etc., the Samaritans, the Sadducees, Boethuseans, the followers of Jesus, and all the sects opposed to the Pharisees. Before the development of the Talmud had been completed, when hardly a single section had been arranged systematically and written down, it having been known merely as oral teach- ing in the mouths of the sages, and reconsidered and analyzed constantly by their disciples in the colleges, it was violently at- tacked. But no sooner had the Talmud been completed in Bab- ylonia, and the Saburites had put their seal upon it, so to speak, deciding that nothing was to be added to or substracted from, when Justinian decreed practically its death ; that is to say, what amounted to the same thing, capital punishment to all those who were occupied in its study (550). Then followed the Karaites, in the days of the Gaonim, who seriously threatened a INTRODUCTION. its existence. Time and time again they triumphed over Tal- mudic Rabbis and were near making an end of the Talmud and of them. The Rabbis next encountered the Popes. From the time of Pope Innocent III., the Taknud was burned at the stake in nearly every century from the i ith to the 1 8th, in Italy, France, Germany, Spain, and many other countries, and in the 1 8th, also in Poland by the Frankists, by Bishop Dembovski, where copies were dragged through the streets of the city, tied to horses' tails and then delivered to the executioner to be burned at the stake in Kamenetz, Lemberg, Brody and else- where. In most places, before it was resolved what was to be done with Talmud, the Israelites were forced to dispute with its enemies, and had to pay heavy fines for arriving late to the dispute, as well as for being vanquished in argument, the judges being their enemies. Still what has been the result ? The Tal- mud exists to-day, and not one letter in it is missing. It is true, the persecutions against it are not yet at an end ; accusations and calumnies by its enemies, imder the new name of anti- Semites, are still directed against it, while the government of Russia legislates against and restricts the rights of the nation which adheres to the Talmud. No modem persecutions, how- ever, can seriously endanger its existence, and it would appear that the Talmud will also survive them and continue as long as the sky spans the earth. A desire to know all that has befallen the Talmud and all its vicissitudes since its inception would require the reading of all the scattered passages in countless volumes which have been compiled in various ages, languages, and countries. Its his- tory, however, has never yet been written by a single author. Treaties on the Talmud itself, or on certain subjects contained therein, have briefly related part of its history, each according to the subject and the aim of its theme. Such are the works of Zunz and Gratz, the one dealing with rabbinical literature, and the other writing concerning the history of the Jews. Similarly the historians of the world, relating in detail the occurrences of every century, have briefly made mention of what happened to the Talmud in each century. Even in the year there appeared a pamphlet entitled "Ankliiger und Vertheidiger des Tal- mud" (accusers and defenders), by Dr. B. Kurrein, of Frankfort-on-the-Main, apparently giving the entire history of INTRODUCTION. j the Talmud from its origin to the present time, but it contains only dates (and not even these in full) and not occurrences. No mention is made of Karaites, who persecuted it in the times of the Gaonim, or of the Frankists of the i8th century, of its fate during the 15 th century; the Pfefferkorn and Reuchlin episode is mentioned only in part, and by no means satisfactory to the reader curious about the details, not to speak of the Rohling- Bloch, at the end of the 1 9th century. It is, indeed, a matter of astonishment that hundreds of books have been written about the Talmud by exponents of all sects and in all ages, to say nothing of the extensive modem literature dealing with the Talmud in whole or in part, amounting to thousands of volumes — in particular a work, "Dikduke Sophrim," published in the