In the 12th century Moses Maimonides, a Spanish Rabbi, made an
epitome, or digest, of all the laws and institutions of the Talmud.
Such, in brief, is the origin and history of this famed compilation,
which has been aptly described as an extraordinary monument of human
industry, human wisdom, and human folly.
By far the greater portion of the Talmud is devoted to the ceremonial
law, as preserved by oral tradition in the manner above explained; but
it also comprises innumerable sayings or aphorisms of celebrated Rabbis,
together with narratives of the most varied character--legends regarding
Biblical personages, moral tales, fables, parables, and facetious
stories. Of the rabbinical legends, many are extremely puerile and
absurd, and may rank with the extravagant and incredible monkish legends
of mediaeval times; some, however, are characterised by a richness of
humour which one would hardly expect to meet with in such a work; while
not a few of the parables, fables, and tales are strikingly beautiful,
and will favourably compare with the same class of fictions composed by
the ancient sages of Hindustan.
It is a singular circumstance, and significant as well as singular, that
while the Hebrew Talmud was, as Dr. Barclay remarks, "periodically
banned and often publicly burned, from the age of the Emperor Justinian
till the time of Pope Clement VIII," several of the best stories in the
_Gesta Romanorum_, a collection of moral tales (or tales "moralised")
which were read in Christian churches throughout Europe during the
Middle Ages, are derived mediately or immediately from this great
storehouse of rabbinical learning.
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