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TALMUD. The mystical philosophy of the Jewish Rabbins is contained in the Talmud, which is a collection of books divided into two parts, the Mishna, which contains the record of the oral law, first committed to writing in the second or third century, and the Gemara, or commentaries on it. In the Talmud much will be found of great interest to the masonic student.
For morals are a personal affair; in the war of righteousness every man fights for his own hand; all the six hundred precepts of the Mishna cannot shake my private judgment; my magistracy of myself is an indefeasible charge, and my decisions absolute for the time and case. The moralist is not a judge of appeal, but an advocate who pleads at my tribunal.
Such was my preceptor in the French and Italian tongues. 'Exul sacerdos; vone banished priest. I came into England twenty-five year ago, "my dear." Monsieur Dante Condemned musket Sporting Sweet rivulet The Earl's Home The pool The sonorous voice What dost thou read? Man of peace Zohar and Mishna Money-changers.
The Biblical text had been twisted and turned ever since the days of Philo, and of the Mishna and Talmud and Midrash, in the interest of various schools and sects. Motives speculative, religious, theological, legal and ethical were at the basis of Biblical interpretation throughout its long history of two millennia and more the end is not yet and Gersonides was swimming with the current.
It was applied in the Old Testament to the high-priest, and it is habitually used in this sense in the Mishna. It was also used of Saul, of David, and of some of the other kings, but always with some defining phrase attached to it, generally speaking "the anointed of Jehovah." Without definition it is not found until the Christian period.
And as the Midrash says: 'As a scarlet ribbon becometh a black horse, so poverty becometh the daughter of Jacob. The world stands on the Torah, not on gold; as it is written: 'Better is the Law of Thy mouth to me than thousands of gold or silver. He is greater than I, for he studies the law for nothing like the fathers of the Mishna while I am paid a salary."
I left this wonder-worker's house exalted and edified, though all I remember now of the discourse was the novel interpretation of the passage in the Mishna: "Let the honor of thy neighbor be as dear to thee as thine own." "Thine own," said Baer, "means the honor thou doest to thyself; to take pleasure in the which were ridiculous.
The Jewish religion is a concrete, unbroken mass of laws. The Jew is bounded on the east by law; on the north by law; on the west by law; on the south by law. There are set rules and laws that govern his getting up, his going to bed, his eating, drinking, sleeping, and praying. There is no phase of human relationship that is not covered by the Mishna and Gemara.
Concerning the canonicity of two books, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs or Canticles, the opinions of the rabbis continued to differ until the close of the first Christian century. From the Mishna we learn that the school of Shammai accepted Ecclesiastes, while that of Hillel rejected it.
Here the Mishna and the Gemara were written. And here, to-day, two-thirds of the five thousand inhabitants are Jews, many of them living on the charity of their kindred in Europe, and spending their time in the study of the Talmud while they wait for the Messiah who shall restore the kingdom to Israel.
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