these follies form only a small item in the vast mass of allegories, parables, and
the like, that compose the Haggadah. And, besides, they are partly ill-chosen,
partly ill-translated, and partly did not even belong to the Talmud, but to some
recent Jewish story books. Herder—to name the most famous critic of the
“Poetry of Peoples”—has spoken most eulogistically of what he saw of the
genuine specimens. And, indeed, “not only is the entire world of pious biblical
legend which Islam has said and sung in its many tongues to the delight of the
wise and simple for twelve centuries, now to be found either in embryo or fully
developed in the Haggadah, but much that is familiar among ourselves in the
circles of mediæval sagas, in Dante, in Boccaccio, in Cervantes, in Milton, in
Bunyan, has consciously or unconsciously flowed out of this wondrous realm,
the Haggadah. That much of it is overstrained, even according to Eastern
notions, we do not deny. But,” argues Mr. Deutsch, “there are feeble passages
even in Homer and Shakespeare.” To this it may be replied, that in Homer and
Shakespeare such passages are rare, and do not form the bulk of their writings;
and, moreover, that for the Iliad or for Hamlet we do not claim the position of
authority which is claimed for the Talmud.
Let us glance briefly at the cosmogony of the Talmud. It assumes that the
universe has been developed by means of a series of cataclysms; that world was
destroyed after world, until GOD made “this world, and saw that it was very
good.” It assumes also that the kosmos was wrought out of some original
substance, itself created by GOD. “One or three things were before this world,—
Water, Fire, and Wind; Water begat the darkness, Fire begat light, and Wind
begat the spirit of Wisdom.”
“The how of the creation was not mere matter of speculation. The co-operation
of angels, whose existence was warranted by Scripture, and a whole hierarchy of
whom had been built up under Persian influences, was distinctly denied. In a
discussion about the day of their creation, it is agreed on all hands that there
were no angels at first, lest men might say, ‘Michael spanned out the firmament
on the south, and Gabriel to the north.’” There is a distinct foreshadowing of the
Gnostic Demiurgos—that antique link between the Divine Spirit and the world
of matter—to be found in the Talmud. What with Plato were the Ideas, with
Philo the Logos, with the Kabbalists the “World of Aziluth,” what the Gnostics
called more emphatically the wisdom (σοφία), or power (δύναμις), and Plotinus
the νοῦς, that the Talmudical authors call Metation. There is a good deal, in the
post-captivity Talmud, about the Angels, borrowed from the Persian. The
Archangels or Angelic princes are seven in number, and their Hebrew names and