but absolutely unlawful, to commit these ancient and carefully-preserved traditions to writing; but after the second destruction of Jerusalem, under Hadrian, when the Jewish people were scattered over the world, the system of oral transmission of these traditions from generation to generation became impracticable, and, to prevent their being lost, they were formed into a permanent record about A.D. 190, by Rabbi Jehudah the Holy, who called his work Mishna, or the Secondary Laws.  About a hundred years later a commentary on it was written by Rabbi Jochonan, called Gemara, or the Completion, and these two works joined together are known as the (Jerusalem) Talmud, or Directory.  But this commentary being written in an obscure style, and omitting many traditions known farther east, another was begun by Rabbi Asche, who died A.D. 427, and completed by his disciples and followers about the year 500, which together with the Mishna formed the Babylonian Talmud.  Both versions were first printed at Venice in the 16th century—­the Jerusalem Talmud, in one folio volume, about the year 1523; and the Babylonian Talmud, in twelve folio volumes, 1520-30.  In the 12th century Moses Maimonides, a Spanish Rabbi, made an epitome, or digest, of all the laws and institutions of the Talmud.  Such, in brief, is the origin and history of this famed compilation, which has been aptly described as an extraordinary monument of human industry, human wisdom, and human folly.

By far the greater portion of the Talmud is devoted to the ceremonial law, as preserved by oral tradition in the manner above explained; but it also comprises innumerable sayings or aphorisms of celebrated Rabbis, together with narratives of the most varied character—­legends regarding Biblical personages, moral tales, fables, parables, and facetious stories.  Of the rabbinical legends, many are extremely puerile and absurd, and may rank with the extravagant and incredible monkish legends of mediaeval times; some, however, are characterised by a richness of humour which one would hardly expect to meet with in such a work; while not a few of the parables, fables, and tales are strikingly beautiful, and will favourably compare with the same class of fictions composed by the ancient sages of Hindustan.

It is a singular circumstance, and significant as well as singular, that while the Hebrew Talmud was, as Dr. Barclay remarks, “periodically banned and often publicly burned, from the age of the Emperor Justinian till the time of Pope Clement VIII,” several of the best stories in the Gesta Romanorum, a collection of moral tales (or tales “moralised”) which were read in Christian churches throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, are derived mediately or immediately from this great storehouse of rabbinical learning.[55]