The Christians of Antioch were not inferior to their brethren of Alexandria in fanaticism. They once begged the emperor not to remove the bones and relics of their martyr Ignatius, as they afforded their city as great a protection as strong walls. They also, on their side, avenged the deed of the Jews of Imnestar, by forcibly dispossessing their Jewish fellow-citizens of their synagogues. It is a remarkable phenomenon that the prefects and rulers of the provinces for the most part expressed themselves in favor of the Jews against the clergy. The Syrian prefect notified the emperor of this robbery of the synagogues, and must have painted this act of injustice in very vivid colors, for he thereby moved Theodosius II, steeped as he was in monkish bigotry, to issue an injunction to the inhabitants of Antioch, ordering them to restore the synagogues to their owners. But this decision was denounced by Simon Stylites, who led a life of extreme asceticism in a sort of stable not far from Antioch. From the height of his column he had renounced the world and its ways, but his hatred of the Jews was sufficient, nevertheless, to cause him to interpose in temporal matters. Hardly had he heard of Theodosius' command relative to the restoration of the stolen synagogues, than he addressed an insulting letter to the emperor, informing him that he acknowledged God alone, and no one else, as master and emperor, and demanded the withdrawal of the edict. Theodosius hardly stood in need of such intimidation; he revoked his command, and even removed the Syrian prefect, who had raised his voice in favor of the Jews (423).
The bigotry of Theodosius II operated also on Honorius, Emperor of the West, and by their absurd laws both of them placed the Jews in that exceptional position in which the newly-formed German states found them. The Jews were no longer allowed to hold any public offices, or to fill any military posts such as they had formerly been permitted to occupy. All that now remained open to them were the doubtful honors of the municipal offices; but not content with having deprived them of their position of equality, Theodosius restricted the free employment of their property for religious purposes, as if the fortunes of the Jews belonged to the emperor. After the extinction of the patriarchal house the Jewish communities had not discontinued their practice of forwarding the taxes of the Patriarch; they were handed over to the primates, who most probably employed them in supporting the schools. Suddenly there appeared an imperial decree directing the primates to deliver up to the imperial treasury such sums as had already been received for the Patriarch's taxes, and commanding that for the future they should be collected by imperial officials after exact computation of their amount, and even that the moneys received from the Western empire should be handed over to the treasury (May 30, 429). New Rome had inherited all the knavery and covetousness of Ancient Rome. In the same manner as the heathen emperor Vespasian had appropriated the Temple dues, so now did this Christian emperor seize upon the taxes of the Patriarch, thus adding to the injury of the robbery an insult to the conscience, for that which had been voluntarily offered out of piety was now imposed as a compulsory tax for the benefit of foreign interests.
In spite of the affliction which fell to the lot of Judaism in the Eastern empire, and more especially in Judæa, whereby the study of the Talmud was retarded, the spirit of investigation had not become quite extinct in Judæa. The reigning distress offered no scope for the profundities of the Halacha, but furthered the study of the cheerful Agada, which, diving deep into the joyful and gloomy situations of past ages, poured the balm of consolation on fretted and desperate spirits, and lulled them with the magic of hope. The more clear-sighted were fully conscious of this decay of serious studies, and expressed their discontent. Notwithstanding the prevailing injustice of the times, a lively interest in the Hebrew language and in the knowledge of the Bible was still felt in Palestine. It is indisputable that this interest in the language was greatly heightened by the controversies which were sustained with Christians, and to such a pitch was it excited at this period, that by its help Christianity arrived at an understanding of the primitive text of the Bible. Tiberias was the home and the model of this branch of knowledge; Lydda is the only other town which is mentioned beside it. Hieronymus (Jerome, 331–420), called by the Church the Holy, the founder of a nunnery in Bethlehem, being actuated, like Origen, by a thirst for knowledge, was at pains to become acquainted with the Bible in its original form, and for this reason went in quest of Jewish teachers, such as Bar-Chanina and others in these cities. Under their guidance, Hieronymus' acquirements were by no means small, for he succeeded in expressing himself freely in Hebrew. From this circumstance it may fairly be concluded that the knowledge of the holy tongue and of the Bible was more assiduously cultivated in Judæa than has generally been assumed. Bar-Chanina was obliged, however, to avoid publicity, and to go in secret to Hieronymus' cell, there to instruct him, for by reason of the hostile use to which the Christians turned their knowledge of the Hebrew language, it had latterly been forbidden to the Jews to teach them. Hieronymus not only learnt the pronunciation of Hebrew and the literal meaning of the Bible, but was afforded a more profound insight into the interconnection of the text by the aid of tradition. He succeeded so well in catching the form of the Agadic exposition, that at times he was able to carry it over with taste and ingenuity into the sphere of Christianity.
The Jews were several centuries ahead of their Christian contemporaries as regards judging and distinguishing between authentic canonical writings and spurious apocryphal collections. The Council of Nice, which had thought to unite parties by means of authoritative decisions, had decided the dispute as to the holy character of doubtful writings, and had incorporated several apocryphal books in the canon. The Jews with whom Hieronymus held conferences on matters exegetical, offered such sound remarks on the worthlessness of several portions of the Apocrypha that even at this day, when knowledge has made such immense strides, they must be acknowledged as correct. Among others, a Jewish teacher of the Law ridiculed the additions to Habakkuk, according to which an angel transported the prophet by the hair from Judæa to Chaldæa. He demanded where in the Old Testament could be found a counterpart to this story of one of the holy prophets, possessed of a body subject to the power of gravity, traversing so immense a distance in a moment. In spite of the unpropitious state of the times, the Jews of Palestine were not afflicted with that want of judgment which in naïve faith accepts without discrimination as holy anything that is put forward as such; they had not extinguished the light of discernment in the temple of their faith. This power of judgment was a result of the study of the Halacha, which afforded a counterpoise to the incapacity of discrimination which is a consequence of credulity. Thus even in its old age Judæa fostered the Hebrew tongue, which it had given to its sons as an indissoluble bond of union in foreign countries. The use of the holy language in prayer, lecture, and study constituted the intellectual unity of the Jewish nation.
Christianity had caught up a few rays of the setting sun of Judæa, and treasured them up in the Church as a light from heaven. The knowledge of Hebrew, which Hieronymus had acquired from Jewish teachers, and by means of which he had been enabled to produce a Latin translation (Vulgata) of the Bible, deviating from the distorted Septuagint and approaching more nearly to the Hebrew text, sufficed for more than a thousand years, and was extended and amended with the renaissance of learning at the commencement of modern times. But with every step forward that Christianity took, it increased the gap which divided it from Judaism, and the eloquence of many centuries was required before recognition was again obtained for the fact that Christianity had had its origin in Judaism. To such an extent had blood-relationship been obliterated by religious zeal, that even Hieronymus, who had sat at the feet of Jewish masters, and had found "the Hebrew truth" in the Old Testament, was unable to free himself from the deep-rooted hatred of the Jews. His enemies having reproached him with heresy on account of his Jewish studies, he convinced them of his orthodoxy by his hatred of the Jews. "If it is requisite to despise the individuals and the nation, so do I abhor the Jews with an inexpressible hate." In this he was not alone, for his opinions were shared by a younger contemporary, Augustine, the Father of the Church. This profession of faith concerning the hatred of the Jews was not the private opinion of an individual author, but an oracle for the whole of Christendom, which readily accepted the writings of the Fathers of the Church, who were revered as saints. In later times this profession of faith armed kings and populace, crusaders and herdsmen, against the Jews, invented instruments for their torture, and constructed funeral pyres for burning them.
It is remarkable that in spite of their repression on the part of the state, the Jews living in Cæsarea, the residence of the Governor, joined in the fashionable folly of the stadium. There existed among them charioteers, horse-racers, jockeys, and parties supporting the green or the blue, as at Rome, Ravenna, Constantinople, and Antioch. But as in those times every act in life bore the stamp of the confessional, religious disputes also became mixed up with the struggles of the partisans of the various colors. The victory or the defeat of a Jewish, Samaritan, or Christian charioteer was at the same time the occasion of an attack by his co-religionists upon their opponents.
In Babylonia, where up till now the Jews had enjoyed quiet and independence but seldom disturbed, troubles and persecutions also began to increase. It was for this reason that a dearth of prominent personages began to make itself felt. Creative power declined, and made way for the tendency to reproduce and establish what had already been produced. The Jewish history of this country moved within a narrow circle; the principals of the schools succeeded one another, taught, and died, and it was only by the appearance of persecutions that a sad variety was imparted to its course. Of Ashi's six successors at the Academy of Sora (427–456), not one accomplished anything worthy of remark.
Some small importance was possessed, however, by Ashi's son, Mar, who also bore the name Tabyome. He happened to be at Machuza at the time when he heard the news of the occurrence of a vacancy at the head of the Soranian Metibta. He hurried off to Sora, and arrived there just in the nick of time, for the members of the academy were assembled for the election. Delegates were sent to confer with him on the choice of Acha of Diphta, and were detained by him, as were also others who were sent after them, until they were ten in number; whereupon he delivered a lecture, and was hailed as Resh-Metibta by all the members present (455). Acha was exceedingly hurt by this slight, and applied to his own case the following saying, "He who is unlucky, can never attain to luck."
In the same year a persecution of the Jews broke out with unprecedented rigor in the Babylonian countries. It was the commencement of a long series of bloody attacks which the Jews had to suffer at the hands of the last of the neo-Persian kings, and which rendered their position as sad as that of their co-religionists of the Roman Empire. Jezdijird III (440–457), unlike his predecessor of the same name, instituted a religious persecution of the Jews; they were forbidden to celebrate the Sabbath (456). The reason of this sudden change in the conduct of the Persian ruler towards the Jews, who had always been sincerely attached to him, is probably to be found in the fanaticism of the Magi, whose influence over many of the Persian monarchs was not less than that of the spiritual advisers of the eastern emperors over their masters. The Magi of this period appear to have learnt their proselytism and their love of religious persecution from the Christians. Besides this, Christianity had by its proselytism provoked the Magi to resistance. The Manicheans who had compounded Jewish, Christian, and Persian religious ideas into a medley of their own, made accusations of heresy as common in Persia as in the Roman Empire. Jezdijird persecuted both Manicheans and Christians. Sooner or later the light-worship of the Persians was bound to take offense at Judaism, and to place the Jews upon the list of its enemies. The chronicles are silent concerning the conduct of the Jews with regard to the prohibition of the celebration of the Sabbath; conscientious Jews, however, cannot have failed to obtain opportunities of evading it, and for this reason the names of no martyrs have survived this persecution. The constraint was continued about a year, as Jezdijird was killed a short time after; a civil war was carried on by his sons Chodar-Warda and Firuz for the possession of the crown.
Mar bar Ashi was the sole authority of this period; and although all his decisions, with the exception of three, received the force of law, he does not seem to have acquired any special repute in the Soranian Academy. He continued his father's work of completing the Talmudical collection, and included the latter's decisions therein. He and his contemporaries must have felt themselves all the more impelled to complete the work of compilation, as the persecution they had gone through made them feel that the future was precarious. Nothing more is known of Mar bar Ashi's character than a trait of conscientiousness, which stands out in strong contrast with Raba's partiality towards members of his own class. He relates as follows: "When an associate appears before me in court, I refuse to exercise the functions of my office, for I regard him as a near relation, and might involuntarily show partiality in his favor."
After Mar's death the Jews of the Persian Empire were the victims of a fresh persecution under Firuz (Pheroces, 457–484), which was far more terrible than that which had occurred under his father, Jezdijird. This persecution is said to have been occasioned by the desire for vengeance entertained by this monarch, who was swayed by the Magi against the whole Jewish community, because certain of them were said to have killed and flayed two Magi in Ispahan. As a punishment for this deed Firuz put to death half the Jewish population of Ispahan, and had the Jewish children forcibly brought up in the Temple of Horvan as worshipers of fire. The persecution extended also to the communities of Babylonia, and continued for several years, until the death of the tyrant. Mar-Zutra's son, Huna-Mari, Prince of the Captivity, and two teachers of the Law, Amemar bar Mar-Janka and Meshershaya bar Pacod, were thrown into prison, and afterwards executed (469–70). They were the first martyrs on Babylonian soil, and it is a significant fact that a Prince of the Captivity bled for Judaism.
A few years later the persecution was carried to a still wider extent; the schools were closed, assemblies for the purpose of teaching prohibited, the jurisdiction of the Jews abolished, and their children compelled to embrace the religion of the Magi (474).
The city of Sora seems to have been destroyed at this period. Firuz, whose system of persecution puts one in mind of Hadrian, invented a new means of torture, which had not occurred to that emperor, which was to remove the young from under the influence of Judaism, and to bring them up by force in the Persian religion. For this reason he was branded by the Jews of after times, like Hadrian, with the name of "the wicked" (Piruz Reshia). The immediate result of this persecution was the emigration of Jewish colonists, who settled in the south as far as Arabia, and in the east as far as India.
This emigration of the Jews to India is expressly marked as occurring about the time of Firuz's persecution. An otherwise unknown person, Joseph Rabban by name, who is recognizable as a Babylonian by reason of this title, arrived in the year 4250 of the Jewish era (490), with many Jewish families, on the rich and busy coast of Malabar; he must accordingly have started on his journey before this date, and therefore have emigrated under Firuz. Airvi (Eravi), the Brahmin king of Cranganor, welcomed the Jewish strangers, offered them a home in his dominions, and suffered them to live according to their peculiar laws, and to be ruled by their own princes (Mardeliar). The first of these chiefs was their leader Joseph Rabban, upon whom the Indian monarch conferred special rights and princely honors, to be inherited by his descendants. He was allowed, like the Indian princes, to ride upon an elephant, to be preceded by a herald, accompanied by a musical escort of drums and cymbals, and to sit upon a carpet. Joseph Rabban is said to have been followed by a line of seventy-two successors, who ruled over the Indo-Jewish colonists, until quarrels broke out among them. Cranganor was destroyed, many of the Jews lost their lives, and the remainder settled in Mattachery, a league from Cochin, which acquired from this fact the name of Jews'-town. The privileges accorded by Airvi to the Jewish immigrants were engraved in ancient Indian (Tamil) characters, accompanied by an obscure Hebrew translation, on a copper table, which is said to be extant at the present day.
As soon as the terrors of persecution had ceased with Firuz's death, the ancient organization was again restored in Jewish Babylonia; the academies were re-opened, principals appointed, and Sora and Pumbeditha received their last Amoraïc leaders – the former in the person of Rabina, the latter in José. These two principals and their assessors had but one end in view, the completion and termination of the work of compiling the Talmud begun by Ashi. The continual increase of affliction, the diminished interest which probably on that account was extended to study, the uncertainty of the future, all these causes forcibly suggested the completion of the Talmud. Rabina, who held office from 488 to 499, and José, who discharged the duties of principal from 471 to about 520, are expressly mentioned in the old chronicles as "the close of the period of the Amoraïm" (Sof Horaah). There is no doubt, however, that the members of the two academies, whose names have been preserved, also had a part in this work, and that they therefore are to be regarded as the last of the Amoraïm. The most important among them was Achaï bar Huna of Be-Chatim, near Nahardea (died 506), whose decisions and discussions are distinguished by characteristic peculiarities, and bear witness to a clear and sober mind, and to great keenness. Achaï was known and esteemed for these qualities beyond Babylonia. An epistle received by the Babylonian academy from Judæa, which, as far as is historically known, was probably the last addressed by the deserted mother-country to its daughter colony, speaks of him in terms of greatest reverence: "Neglect not Achaï, for he is the light of the eyes of the exiles." Even Huna-Mar, the Prince of the Captivity, must have possessed Talmudical acquirements, for the chronicle, which is by no means favorable to the princes of the Captivity, numbers him among this series of teachers of the Law, and concedes to him the title of Rabbi. His history, with which certain important events are connected, belongs to the following period.
In conjunction with these men, Rabina and José accomplished the completion of the Talmud, that is to say, they sanctioned as a complete whole the collection of all previous transactions and decisions which they had caused to be compiled, and to which no additions or amplifications were henceforward to be made. The definite completion of the Babylonian Talmud (called also the Gemara) occurred in the year of Rabina's death, just at the close of the fifth century (13th Kislev or 2nd December, 499), when the Jews of the Arabian peninsula were sowing the first seeds of a new religion and laying the foundations of a new empire, and when the Gothic and Frankish kingdoms were rising in Europe from the ruins of ancient Rome. The Talmud forms a turning-point in Jewish history, and from this time forward constitutes an essential factor therein.
The Talmud must not be regarded as an ordinary work, composed of twelve volumes; it possesses absolutely no similarity to any other literary production, but forms, without any figure of speech, a world of its own, which must be judged by its peculiar laws. It is extremely difficult to give any sketch of its character because of the absence of all common standards and analogies. The most talented could, therefore, hardly hope to succeed in this task, even though he had penetrated deeply into its nature, and become intimately acquainted with its peculiarities. It might, perhaps, be compared with the literature of the Fathers of the Church, which sprang up about the same time; but on closer examination even this comparison fails to satisfy the student. It is, however, of less consequence what the Talmud is in itself, than what was its influence on history, that is to say, on the successive generations whose education it chiefly controlled. Many judgments have been passed on the Talmud at various times and on the most opposite grounds. It has been condemned, and its funeral pyre has been ignited, because only its unfavorable side has been considered, and no regard has been paid to its merits, which, however, can be rendered apparent only by a complete survey of the whole of Jewish history. It cannot be denied, however, that the Babylonian Talmud is marred by certain blemishes, such as necessarily appear in every intellectual production which pursues a single course with inflexible consistency and exclusive one-sidedness. These faults may be classed under four heads. The Talmud contains much that is immaterial and frivolous, of which it treats with great gravity and seriousness; it further reflects the various superstitious practices and views of its Persian birthplace, which presume the efficacy of demoniacal medicines, of magic, incantations, miraculous cures, and interpretations of dreams, and are thus in opposition to the spirit of Judaism. It also contains isolated instances of uncharitable judgments and decrees against the members of other nations and religions, and finally it favors an incorrect exposition of the Scriptures, accepting, as it does, tasteless misinterpretations. The whole Talmud has been made responsible for these defects, and has been condemned as a collection of trifles, a well of immorality and falsehood. No consideration has been paid to the fact that it is not the work of any one author, who must answer for every word of it, or if it be, that that author is the entire Jewish nation. More than six centuries lie petrified in the Talmud as the fullest evidence of life, clothed each in its peculiar dress and possessing its own form of thought and expression: a sort of literary Herculaneum and Pompeii, unmarred by that artificial imitation which transfers a gigantic picture on a reduced scale to a narrow canvas. Small wonder, then, that if in this world the sublime and the common, the great and the small, the grave and the ridiculous, the altar and the ashes, the Jewish and the heathenish, be discovered side by side. The expressions of ill-will, which are seized upon with such avidity by the enemies of the Jews, were often nothing but the utterance of momentary ill-humor, which escaped from the teacher, and were caught up and embodied in the Talmud by over-zealous disciples, unwilling to lose a single word let fall by the revered sages. They are amply counterbalanced, however, by the doctrines of benevolence and love of all men without distinction of race or religion, which are also preserved in the Talmud. As a counterpoise to the wild superstitions, there are severe warnings against superstitious heathen practices, to which a separate section is devoted.
The Babylonian Talmud is especially distinguished from the Jerusalem or Palestine Talmud by the flights of thought, the penetration of mind, the flashes of genius, which rise and vanish again. An infinite fulness of thought and of thought-exciting material is laid up in the mine of the Talmud, not, however, in the shape of a finished theme which one can grasp at a glance, but in all its original freshness of conception. The Talmud introduces us into the laboratory of thought, and in it may be traced the progress of ideas, from their earliest agitation to the giddy height of incomprehensibility to which at times they attain. It was for this reason that the Babylonian rather than the Jerusalem Talmud became the fundamental possession of the Jewish race, its life's breath, its very soul. It was a family history for succeeding generations, in which they felt themselves at home, in which they lived and moved, the thinker in the world of thought, the dreamer in glorious ideal pictures. For more than a thousand years the external world, nature and mankind, powers and events, were for the Jewish nation insignificant, non-essential, a mere phantom; the only true reality was the Talmud. A new truth in their eyes only received the stamp of veracity and freedom from doubt when it appeared to be foreseen and sanctioned by the Talmud. Even the knowledge of the Bible, the more ancient history of their race, the words of fire and balm of their prophets, the soul outpourings of their Psalmists, were only known to them through and in the light of the Talmud. But as Judaism, ever since its foundation, has based itself on the experiences of actual life, so that the Talmud was obliged to concern itself with concrete phenomena, with the things of this world; so it follows that there could not arise that dream-life, that disdain of the world, that hatred of realities, which in the Middle Ages gave birth to and sanctified the hermit life of the monks and nuns. It is true that the intellectual tendency prevailing in the Babylonian Talmud, aided by climatic influences and other accidental circumstances, degenerated not infrequently into subtilty and scholasticism; for no historical phenomenon exists without an unfavorable side. But even this abuse contributed to bring about clear conceptions, and rendered possible the movement toward science. The Babylonian Amoraïm created that dialectic, close-reasoning, Jewish spirit, which in the darkest days preserved the dispersed nation from stagnation and stupidity. It was the ether which protected them from corruption, the ever-moving force which overcame indolence and the blunting of the mental powers, the eternal spring which kept the mind ever bright and active. In a word, the Talmud was the educator of the Jewish nation; and this education can by no means have been a bad one, since, in spite of the disturbing influence of isolation, degradation and systematic demoralization, it fostered in the Jewish people a degree of morality which even their enemies cannot deny them. The Talmud preserved and promoted the religious and moral life of Judaism; it held out a banner to the communities scattered in all corners of the earth, and protected them from schism and sectarian divisions; it acquainted subsequent generations with the history of their nation; finally, it produced a deep intellectual life which preserved the enslaved and proscribed from stagnation, and which lit for them the torch of science. How the Talmud made its way into the consciousness of the Jewish people, how it became known and accessible to distant communities, and how it became a stumbling-block to the enemies of Judaism, will be told in subsequent pages.