ckered a career, so curious a fate, as the Talmud has had. The
name is simple enough, it glides glibly from the tongue, yet how
difficult to explain its import to the uninitiated! From the Dominican
Henricus Seynensis, who took "Talmud" to be the name of a rabbi--he
introduces a quotation with _Ut narrat rabbinus Talmud_, "As Rabbi
Talmud relates"--down to the church historians and university professors
of our day, the oddest misconceptions on the nature of the Talmud have
prevailed even among learned men. It is not astonishing, then, that the
general reader has no notion of what it is.

Only within recent years the Talmud has been made the subject of
scientific study, and now it is consulted by philologists, cited by
jurists, drawn upon by historians, the general public is beginning to be
interested in it, and of late the old Talmud has repeatedly been
summoned to appear in courts of law to give evidence. Under these
circumstances it is natural to ask, What is the Talmud? Futile to seek
an answer by comparing this gigantic monument of the human intellect
with any other book; it is _sui generis_. In the form in which it issued
from the Jewish academies of Babylonia and Palestine, it is a great
national work, a scientific document of first importance, the archives
of ten centuries, in which are preserved the thoughts and opinions, the
views and verdicts, the errors, transgressions, hopes, disappointments,
customs, ideals, convictions, and sorrows of Israel--a work produced by
the zeal and patience of thirty generations, laboring with a self-denial
unparalleled in the history of literature. A work of this character
assuredly deserves to be known. Unfortunately, the path to its
understanding is blocked by peculiar linguistic and historical
difficulties. Above all, explanations by comparison must be avoided. It
has been likened to a legal code, to a journal, to the transactions of
learned bodies; but these comparisons are both inadequate and
misleading. To make it approximately clear a lengthy explanation must be
entered upon, for, in truth, the Talmud, like the Bible, is a world in
miniature, embracing every possible phase of life.

The origin of the Talmud was simultaneous with Israel's return from the
Babylonian exile, during which a wonderful change had taken place in the
captive people. An idolatrous, rebellious nation had turned into a pious
congregation of the Lord, possessed with zeal for the study of the Law.
By d