With unexampled assiduity did they seek after or in- vent obscurities and ambiguities, which continually fur- nished pretexts for new expositions and illustrations, the art of clouding texts in themselves clear having proved ever less difficult than that of elucidating pas- sages the words or the sense of which might be really involved in obscurity.
"Hence comment after comment, spun ns fine As bloated spiders draw the flimsy line !"
The two main schools where this casuistic treatment of the Mishnic text was exercised were that at Tiberias, in Palestine, and that at Sora (q. v.), in Rabylonia, whither Abba Areka, called "Rab" (q. v.), a pupil of R. Judah, had brought the Mishna. In these and other schools (as Nahardea, Sipporis, Pumbaditha [q. v.], and Jabne or Jamnia), the thread of casuistry was twisted over and over again, and the matter of traditions of the law thus took greater and greater dimensions. Abandoning
the Scripture text, to illustrate and to explain which the doctors and wise men of the schools had hitherto la- bored, successive generations of Geimirki now devoted their whole attention to the exposition of the text of the Mishna; and the industry and cavillation were such that expositions, illustrations, and commentaries multi- ])lied with amazing rapidity and to so portentous a degree that they eventually swelled into a monstrous chaotic mass, which was dignified by the name of Gemara, X"i'C5 (supplement or complement), and this, to- gether with the jMishna, was called "Talmud." Not- withstanding the uncertain paternity of this incongru- ous body of opinions, there were not wanting those who gave a preference to the Gemara over the Mishna, and even over the " written law." It was said by some that the " written law" was like water, the INIishna like wine, and the Gemara like hippocras, or spiced wine. The "words of the scribes," said those supporters of the Ge- mara, are lovely above the "words of the law," for the " words of the law" are weu/hty and liyht, but the " words of the scribes" are all weighty.
It was by R. Jochanan, rector of the Academy of Ti- berias, that the minor chaos of comments and faceti» began to be collected ; and these, being added to the Mishna, were termed the Palestinian Talmud, or Tal- mud Jerushulmi. i. e. .Jerusalem Talmud. This Talmud, which was completed at Tiberias about A.D. 3.i0, only contains four orders, viz., Zeraim, Moed, Nashim, and Nezikin, together with the treatise Niddah and some oth- er fragmentary portions. From the schools of Babylo- nia, also, a similar collection was in after-times made; but, as, upon the desolation of Palestine, the study of the law was chiefly prosecuted in Babylon, the colleges there were far more numerous, and far more ingenious and prolific were the imaginations of the Babylonian professors. To collect and methodize all the disputa- tions, interpretations, elucidations, commentaries, and conceits of the Babylonian Gemarici was consequently a labor neither of one man nor of a single age. The first attempt was made (A.D. 367) by K. Ashe, elected at the age of fourteen to be rector of the school of Sora (q. v. ), a teacher described as eminently pious and learned. R. Ashe labored during sixty years upon the rank, unwieldy work, and, after arranging thirty- five books, died in 427, leaving the completion to his suc- cessors. For 100 years longer did rabbi after rabbi, with undiminished zeal, successively continue this un- profitable application, until at length, after the lapse of 123 years (about A.D. 550), rabbi Abina, the sixth in succession to Ashe, gave the finishing stroke to this second Talmud. Denominated, from the name of the province in- which it was first compiled, the Bahijlonian Talmud, this second Talmud is as unmanageable to the student on account of its style and composition as on account of its prodigious bulk. Composed in a dialect neither Chaldaic nor Hebrew, but a barbarous commixt- ure of both of these and of other dialects, jumbled to- gether in defiance of all the rules of composition or of grammar, it affords a secoml specimen of a Babylonian confusion of languages,
"It was a pni'ti-colored dress Of patched and piebald langnnges, Which made some think, when it did gabble, They'd heard thiee laborers of Babel, Or Cerbeni." himself pronounce A leash of languages at once."
Abounding, moreover, in fantastic trifles and Rabbinical reveries, it must appear almost incredible that any sane man could exhibit such acumen and such ardor in the invention of those unintelligible comments, in those nice scrupulosities, and those ludicrous cliimeras which the rabbins have solemnly published to the world, and of which we will speak further on.
II. Form and Style. — In general, the Gemara takes the shape of scholastic discussions, more or less prolonged, on the consecutive portions of the Mishna. On a cur- sorv view, it is true, these discussions have the air of a
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desultory and confiised wrangle: but, when studied more cart'f'ully, they resolve themselves into a system gov- erned by a methodology of its own. " Non vero sterilis in Mislinicam commentarius Gemara est ; qnie illius tan- tum modo verba explicet. Sed prolixas in eam insd- Inil (lispufafiones, qurestiones proponendas et ad eas re- spondondo dubia movendo, eaque solvendo, excipiendo et replicando" {Wiihner, A ntiqq. I/ebr.i.S'Sd).
The language of the Talmud is partly Hebrew and partly Aramaic. The best Hebrew of the work is in the text of the Mishna, that in the Gemara being largely de- based with exotic words of various tongues, such as Latin, Greek, Arabic,Coptic,and Persian (comp.A. liriill, Fremd- sprachliche Redensarten in den Talmuden und Midrashim [Leips. 18G9]), barbarous spelling, and uncouth gram- matical, or rather ungrammatical, forms. The same remark will apply to the Aramaic portions, which, in general, are those containing popular narrative, or leg- endary illustration, while the law princiiiles and the discussions relating to them are embodied in Hebrew. Many forms of the Talmudic dialect are so peculiar as to render a grammar adapted to the work itself greatly to be desired. Ordinary Hebrew grammar will not take a man through a page of it. See Rabbinical Dia- lect.