Hebraic Literature PDF Download

Author: Maurice H. Harris
Publisher: Forgotten Books
ISBN: 9781330149218
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
Excerpt from Hebraic Literature: Translations From the Talmud, Midrashim and Kabbala, With Special Introduction Among the absurd notions as to what the Talmud was, given credence in the Middle Ages, one was that it was a man! The mediæval priest or peasant was perhaps wiser than he knew. Almost, might we say, the Talmud was Man, for it is a record of the doings, the beliefs, the usages, the hopes, the sufferings, the patience, the humor, the mentality, and the morality of the Jewish people for half a millennium. What is the Talmud? There is more than one answer. Ostensibly it is the corpus juris of the Jews from about the first century before the Christian era to about the fourth after it. But we shall see as we proceed that the Talmud was much more than this. The very word «Law» in Hebrew - «Torah» - means more than its translation would imply. The Jew interpreted his whole religion in terms of law. It is his name, in fact, for the Bibles first five books - the Pentateuch. To explain what the Talmud is we must first explain the theory of its growth, more remarkable perhaps than the work itself. What was that theory? The Divine Law was revealed to Moses, not only through the Commands that were found written in the Bible, but also through all the later rules and regulations of postexilic days. These additional laws it was presumed were handed down orally from Moses to Joshua, thence to the Prophets, and later still transmitted to the Scribes, and eventually to the Rabbis. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.