criticism of the Church; but not content with expunging the heretical
and the inferentially heretical, the censor at times went even so far as
to erase sentiments particularly lofty, in order that the Talmud should
not have the credit of expounding noble doctrine, nor the Jew the
advantage of studying it.
But the latest stage of its persecution belongs to more modern days,
when inquisitions were out of date and monkish claws were cut. The
traducer would spitefully engage the services of some renegade Jew, to
gather from the Talmud all portions and passages that might seem
grotesque and ridiculous, so that the world might form an unfavorable
impression of the Talmud and of the people who treasure it. This has
been done with so much success that up till very recently the Gentile
world, including the Christian clergy, knew of the Talmud only through
these unfortunate perversions and caricatures. Imagine the citation of a
chapter from _Leviticus_ and one from _Chronicles_, of some vindictive
passages in the _Psalms_, of a few skeptical bits in _Ecclesiastes_ and
_Job_, and one or two of the barbaric stories in _Judges_, to be offered
to the world as a fair picture of the Bible, and you will understand the
sort of treatment the Talmud has received from the world at large and
the kind of estimate it has been given opportunity to form.
What is the value of the Talmud for the Jew? Certainly its greatest
value was rendered in the Middle Ages, when literature was scant and
copies of the few books in existence were rarer. When the Jew was shut
out of the world's pleasure and the world's culture and barred up in
Ghetto slums, then it was that the Talmud became his recreation and his
consolation, feeding his mind and his faith. In this way it not only
became in the Middle Ages a picture of the Jew, but largely formed his
character. It made him a keen dialectician, tempered with a thoughtful
and poetic touch. It fostered his patience and his humor and kept vivid
his ideals. It linked him with the Orient, while living in the Occident
and made him a bridge between the old and the new.
To the world at large it has great value archæologically. Here are
preserved ancient laws, glint lights on past history, forgotten forms in
the classic tongues, and pictures of old civilization. No one criticism
can cover the whole work. It is so many-sided. It includes so many
different standards of worth and value. If we take it as a whole, it is
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