Atlantis Online
March 29, 2024, 01:47:20 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Secrets of ocean birth laid bare 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5191384.stm#graphic
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

The Wisdom of Israel

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 7   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: The Wisdom of Israel  (Read 1135 times)
0 Members and 39 Guests are viewing this topic.
Tashiel
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 114



« on: March 20, 2010, 06:02:58 pm »

The Wisdom of Israel
by Edwin Collins
[1910]


Report Spam   Logged

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Tashiel
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 114



« Reply #1 on: March 20, 2010, 06:03:33 pm »

This is a short anthology of passages from the Jewish wisdom literature of the Talmud and Midrash, part of the Wisdom of the East series. Unlike some similar compilations, Collins documents where possible the source of his quotations. He also apparently translated from the originals rather than reusing existing English renderings.
Report Spam   Logged
Tashiel
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 114



« Reply #2 on: March 21, 2010, 04:28:11 am »

Wisdom of the East Series
Edited by
L. CRANMER-BYNG
Dr S. A. KAPADIA.

THE WISDOM OF ISRAEL

WISDOM OF THE EAST
THE WISDOM OF ISRAEL
BEING EXTRACTS FROM THE BABYLONIAN TALMUD AND MIDRASH RABBOTH
TRANSLATED FROM THE ARAMAIC AND HEBREW, WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY EDWIN COLLINS
HOLLIER HEBREW SCHOLAR,
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON



SECOND IMPRESSION
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
[1910]
Report Spam   Logged
Tashiel
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 114



« Reply #3 on: March 21, 2010, 04:29:12 am »

Report Spam   Logged
Tashiel
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 114



« Reply #4 on: March 21, 2010, 04:30:27 am »

Report Spam   Logged
Tashiel
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 114



« Reply #5 on: March 21, 2010, 04:31:37 am »

CONTENTS

 
   

PAGE

Introduction
   

9

Why God Permits Idolatry
   

17

The Lamp that Goes Out when its Light is Done, and the Figs that are Gathered in their due Season
   

18

The Labourers in the Vineyard
   

20

The Likeness of a Palm-Tree
   

21

The Tutor and the Naughty Princeling
   

23

Those Nearest
   

23

The Heritage of the Unborn Prince
   

23

The Traveller and the Tree in the Desert
   

26

Better Feed the Poor than Entertain the Angels
   

28

The Sand, and the Furnace that Purifies
   

28

The Stars are not envious!
   

29

The King talks with all His Servants, Small and Great
   

29

The Pavilion of the King's Daughter
   

31

The Greedy Prince: The Vine is not Watered with Wine
   

32

The Potter and his Wares: the Trials of the Righteous
   

33

The Education of the Prince
   

34

The Induction Robe of the Elder
   

35

p. 5
   

 

 
   

PAGE

The King and the Weary Travellers: The Righteous know what is in Store
   

36

Equality of all before God: and the Parable of a Princess Attacked by Robbers
   

37

The Father and His Son: The Bath and the Ocean
   

40

The Tutor who Corrupted the King's Son
   

41

The After-Life, and the Banquet of the King
   

42

Many Mansions in the Life to Come
   

44

The Labourers in the Garden
   

45

The Old Man and the Acorn
   

47

The Wise and the Foolish Guests at the King's Feast
   

47

The Briar Rose that Saved the Trees
   

50

The Two Pilots
   

51

R. Judah as Prototype of the Ancient Mariner
   

52

The Likeness of the King
   

53

Revelations of Mercy and of Punishment
   

53

The Citizen Married to the King's Daughter
   

54

The Father's Voice
   

55

The Parable of the Two Ships
   

55

The Child who Questioned though Carried by his Father
   

56

The King's Son without Rations
   

57

The Poor Woman's Mite
   

58

He Who Reproacheth the Poor Insults his Maker
   

58

The Voiceless Deeps that Praise the Lord: The Parable of the Mutes who Praised The King
Report Spam   Logged
Tashiel
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 114



« Reply #6 on: March 21, 2010, 04:35:07 am »

p. 6 p. 7 p. 8
EDITORIAL NOTE

THE object of the Editors of this series is a very definite one. They desire above all things that, in their humble way, these books shall be the ambassadors of good-will and understanding between East and West—the old world of Thought and the new of Action. In this endeavour, and in their own sphere, they are but followers of the highest example in the land. They are confident that a deeper knowledge of the great ideals and lofty philosophy of Oriental thought may help to a revival of that true spirit of Charity which neither despises nor fears the nations of another creed and colour.

L. CRANMER-BYNG.
S. A. KAPADIA.

Northbrook Society,
      185 Piccadilly, W.
Report Spam   Logged
Tashiel
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 114



« Reply #7 on: March 21, 2010, 04:36:10 am »

p. 9
INTRODUCTION

THE extracts from the Midrash Rabboth and the Babylonian Talmud, given in this little vol., are not the work of one or two authors, or of one age. They belong rather to the speech and feeling of a whole nation than to its literature, properly so called. At first, impromptu utterances, or composed to be spoken in the course of sermons, popular addresses, the speeches of honoured rabbis at marriage feasts or in the houses of mourners, or in the rabbinic assemblies of Palestine and Babylon, these and thousands of similar parables, fables, legends, and more or less poetic playings of fancy around the facts of life, or round the popular thought and knowledge of their time and place of origin, lived in the mouths of the Jewish people, like the folk-lore and folksongs of other nations, and were orally transmitted from generation to generation for hundreds of years before being included in the compilations where we now find them, and in other works now no longer extant. Their survival, and their place in rabbinic literature, they owe to the fact that

p. 10
Report Spam   Logged
Tashiel
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 114



« Reply #8 on: March 21, 2010, 04:39:12 am »

everything was brought into relation with the Bible or with the traditional laws of Israel; so that they became a part of the Midrash or study of Revelation.

The terms Midrash and Talmud mean this study and interpretation of Scripture, especially of the Mosaic Law, together with its application to the changing conditions—mental and material—of the Jewish people. So widely inclusive and so many-sided was this "Study of the Law," which formed the chief mental activity of the Jewish people from the times of Ezra and Nehemiah until long after the final redaction of the Talmud in the 5th century, that there is hardly a single subject of modern secular study that was not dealt with—at least incidentally; for life, as a whole, was meant to be regulated by the Mosaic Law. Says Zunz in his Gottesdienstliche Vorträge, still the chief authority on the subject:—"Whoever applied himself profitably to, the various branches of Midrash was a jurist, a theologian, a man knowing in the ways of the world, a linguist, an orator—and if nothing was to be neglected, he must have no slight acquaintance with history, natural science, and astronomy." As a matter of course, specialization became necessary. But the oldest subdivision of this "Study of the Law" is twofold:—into (a) Halacha—practical rule of life, judicial decisions, the results and finished products of Midrash; and (b) Agadah—that which is spoken, and placed before the hearer, not as binding and having authority to guide him, either in practical life or in belief, but as presenting a vivid picture of ethical truth, of

p. 11
Report Spam   Logged
Tashiel
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 114



« Reply #9 on: March 21, 2010, 04:39:35 am »

beauty, or of thought, linking the less obvious meanings of Scripture with the newer ideas and with the customs of non-Jewish peoples, and providing for the spiritual or moral needs of the moment.

The Halacha was the transmission of the Mosaic Law in its application to material life; to civil and criminal law, practical hygiene, religious ceremonial, marriage and divorce, practical morality, the daily conduct of individuals and of the nation in every conceivable relation with each other, with the forces of nature, and with other nations of the world. Halacha claimed to be an exact and literal interpretation of the letter and spirit of the law given at Sinai, only modifying its details in so far as traditions dating from Moses and the prophets had provided for such modification, or where, hidden beneath the letter of Scripture, hints could be discovered, showing that its spirit actually demanded such modifications in foreseen changed conditions. Differences of opinion on Halacha must be discussed in the schools that combined the functions of a university and a parliament.
Report Spam   Logged
Tashiel
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 114



« Reply #10 on: March 21, 2010, 04:40:13 am »

Not so the Agadah. Herein was room, and full liberty, for the freest play of individual thought and fancy. As in Halacha, everything must be referred in some way to the Scripture. But here there was no obligation to interpret the revealed word strictly in accordance with its real meaning. As often as not it is some new light, borne in upon the teacher from his own experience, for which he seeks a reflecting or intensifying medium in the revealed word. As a poet uses natural scenery

p. 12

to illustrate the thoughts or emotions its aspect or his mood suggests, so the Agadists used the texts of the Bible. The Agadata were not the authoritative teachings of the rabbinic schools, but the occasional utterances of individual rabbis and teachers. Remarkable was the freedom with which verses of the Bible were often used to support views in consonance, truly, with the general teaching of the Bible, but not at all contained in the words themselves. The same rabbi would even interpret the same verse in different ways to meet the requirements of the lesson he wished to enforce. No harm was done; for every one knew that this was not peshat—simple literal interpretation—but only drush, or the homiletic use of Scripture.
Report Spam   Logged
Tashiel
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 114



« Reply #11 on: March 21, 2010, 04:40:33 am »

This method of dealing with Scripture flourished exceedingly among the teachers of the last century B.C. and in the succeeding two hundred years, and appreciation of this fact will help materially in the understanding of the New Testament. For instance, when the verse "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn" is interpreted as an admonition to support the preachers of the gospel, and it is added that "Moses took no care for oxen," this is simply an example of drush, and no one need accuse the New Testament writer of wishing to deny that, in peshat, this verse is one of the many strict injunctions to avoid all cruelty to animals—injunctions that form a prominent characteristic of both the Mosaic Law and the Talmud.

But from every point of view the Hagadic writings, from some of which the following

p. 13
Report Spam   Logged
Tashiel
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 114



« Reply #12 on: March 21, 2010, 04:40:56 am »

extracts are translated, should prove of the greatest interest to students of the New Testament, and especially of the parables of Jesus.

Trench writes * as follows:—"The parable, as St Jerome has noted, is among the favourite vehicles for conveying moral truth throughout the East. Our Lord took possession of it; honoured it by making it His own, by using it as the vehicle for the very highest truth of all. But there were parables before the parables which issued from His lips." "There cannot be a doubt that our blessed Lord so spake as that His doctrine, in its outward garb, should commend itself to His countrymen. . . . Thus He appealed to proverbs in common use among them. He quoted the traditionary speeches of their elder rabbis. . . . When He found the theological terms of their schools capable of bearing the burden of the new truth . . . He willingly used them. . . . 'Thy kingdom come' formed already part of this Jewish liturgy. . . . Nor less is it certain that the illustrating of doctrines by the help of parables, or briefer comparisons, was greatly in use among the Jewish teachers, so that it might be said of them, as of Him, that without a parable they spake nothing."
Report Spam   Logged
Tashiel
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 114



« Reply #13 on: March 21, 2010, 04:41:14 am »

Trench quotes several examples of rabbinic parables—among them one dealing, in another way, with the subject of the one I give on pp. 19, 20, "Why the good so often die young." It is answered that God foresees that if they lived they would fall into sin. "To what is this like?

p. 14
Report Spam   Logged
Tashiel
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 114



« Reply #14 on: March 21, 2010, 04:42:08 am »

It is like a king who, walking in his garden, saw some roses, which were yet buds, breathing an ineffable sweetness. He thought, 'If these shed such sweetness while they are yet buds, what will they do when they are fully blown?' After a while the king entered the garden anew, thinking to find the roses now blown, and to delight himself with their fragrance, but . . . he found them pale and withered and yielding no smell. He exclaimed with regret, 'Had I gathered them while yet tender and young, and while they gave forth their sweetness, I might have delighted myself with them, but now I have no pleasure in them.' The next year the king walked in his garden, and finding rosebuds scattering fragrance, he commanded his servants, 'Gather them, that I may enjoy them before they wither as last year they did.'" *
Report Spam   Logged
Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 7   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy