Chapters on Jewish Literature | Page 5

extent saved from the danger of becoming a merely religious exercise,
and in later centuries, when the mass of Jews were disposed to despise
and even discourage scientific and philosophical culture, a minority
was always prepared to resist this tendency and, on the ground of the
views of some of the Tannaim like Meir, claimed the right to study
what we should now term secular sciences. The width of Meir's
sympathies may be seen in his tolerant conduct towards his friend
Elisha, the son of Abuya. When the latter forsook Judaism, Meir

remained true to Elisha. He devoted himself to the effort to win back
his old friend, and, though he failed, he never ceased to love him.
Again, Meir was famed for his knowledge of fables, in antiquity a
branch of the wisdom of all the Eastern world. Meir's large-mindedness
was matched by his large-heartedness, and in his wife Beruriah he
possessed a companion whose tender sympathies and fine toleration
matched his own.
The fourth generation of Tannaim is overshadowed by the fame of
Judah the Prince, Rabbi, as he was simply called. He lived from 150 to
210, and with his name is associated the compilation of the Mishnah. A
man of genial manners, strong intellectual grasp, he was the exemplar
also of princely hospitality and of friendship with others than Jews. His
intercourse with one of the Antonines was typical of his wide culture.
Life was not, in Rabbi Judah's view, compounded of smaller and larger
incidents, but all the affairs of life were parts of the great divine scheme.
"Reflect upon three things, and thou wilt not fall into the power of sin:
Know what is above thee--a seeing eye and a hearing ear--and all thy
deeds are written in a book."
The Mishnah, which deals with things great and small, with everything
that concerns men, is the literary expression of this view of life. Its
language is the new-Hebrew, a simple, nervous idiom suited to
practical life, but lacking the power and poetry of the Biblical Hebrew.
It is a more useful but less polished instrument than the older language.
The subject-matter of the Mishnah includes both law and morality, the
affairs of the body, of the soul, and of the mind. Business, religion,
social duties, ritual, are all dealt with in one and the same code. The
fault of this conception is, that by associating things of unequal
importance, both the mind and the conscience may become incapable
of discriminating the great from the small, the external from the
spiritual. Another ill consequence was that, as literature corresponded
so closely with life, literature could not correct the faults of life, when
life became cramped or stagnant. The modern spirit differs from the
ancient chiefly in that literature has now become an independent force,
which may freshen and stimulate life. But the older ideal was
nevertheless a great one. That man's life is a unity; that his conduct is in

all its parts within the sphere of ethics and religion; that his mind and
conscience are not independent, but two sides of the same thing; and
that therefore his religious, ethical, æsthetic, and intellectual literature
is one and indivisible,--this was a noble conception which, with all its
weakness, had distinct points of superiority over the modern view.
The Mishnah is divided into six parts, or Orders (Sedarim); each Order
into Tractates (Massechtoth); each Tractate into Chapters (Perakim);
each Chapter into Paragraphs (each called a Mishnah). The six Orders
are as follows:
ZERAIM ("Seeds"). Deals with the laws connected with Agriculture,
and opens with a Tractate on Prayer ("Blessings").
MOED ("Festival"). On Festivals.
NASHIM ("Women"). On the laws relating to Marriage, etc.
NEZIKIN ("Damages"). On civil and criminal Law.
KODASHIM ("Holy Things"). On Sacrifices, etc.
TEHAROTH ("Purifications"). On personal and ritual Purity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
THE MISHNAH.
Graetz.--History of the Jews, English translation, Vol. II, chapters
13-17 (character of the Mishnah, end of ch. 17).
Steinschneider.--Jewish Literature (London, 1857), p. 13.
Schiller-Szinessy.--Encyclopedia Britannica (Ninth Edition), Vol. XVI,
p. 502.
De Sola and Raphall.--Eighteen Tractates from the Mishnah (English
translation, London).

C. Taylor.--Sayings of the Jewish Fathers (Cambridge, 1897).
A. Kohut.--The Ethics of the Fathers (New York, 1885).
G. Karpeles.--A Sketch of Jewish History (Jewish Publication Society
of America, 1895), p. 40.
AQUILA.
F.C. Burkitt.--Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. X, p. 207.
CHAPTER II
FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS AND THE JEWISH SIBYL
Great national crises usually produce an historical literature. This is
more likely to happen with the nation that wins in a war than with the
nation that loses. Thus, in the Maccabean period, historical works
dealing with the glorious struggle and its triumphant termination were
written by Jews both in Hebrew and in Greek. After the terrible
misfortune which befell the Jews in the year 70, when Jerusalem sank
before the Roman arms