S
CHRISTIANITY IN TALMUD
regulation. They were under no mistake as to what
it all meant ; and the heroism which has marked the
Jewish people through all the tragic history of
eighteen Christian centuries has found its divine in-
spiration in the Torah as the Rabbis interpreted it.
To them it was the word of God, in all its fulness
and depth ; and no Jew who thoroughly entered into
the spirit of the Rabbinical conception of religious
life ever felt the Torah a burden, or himself bound
as by galling fetters. Paul doubtless spoke out of
the depths of his own experience ; but
he does not
represent the mind of the great leaders of Rabbinism.
And the system of thought and practice which bears
that name is unfairly judged if it is condemned on the
witness of its most determined enemies. Judged on
its own merits, and by the lives and words of its own
exponents and defenders, it is a consistent and logical
endeavour to work out a complete guide to the living
of a perfect life, and whatever verdict may be passed
upon that endeavour, the right word is not failure.
The foundation, then, of Rabbinism is the precept,
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart and all thy soul and all thy might.
The
method is tradition. This is indicated by the names
which the Rabbis themselves gave to the mass of
religious precept which they taught, viz., Massoreth
(micn ), and less frequently Qabbala.i The same fact
' Massoreth, or Massorah, from '100 to hand over, deliver ; more fully,
O'?PTJl
'n,
irapaaoois rmv
wpeQSurEpwr
(Mark vii.
5).
Qabbala, from
$¹p
to
receive, cp. Mark, ib.
4,
3 xapixa$ov scpare"w, which they have received
to hold.
The term Massorah is also used in a special sense to designate the
apparatus criticus devised by the Jewish Grammarians for the fixing of the text
of Scripture. The term Qabbala likewise has
a specialised meaning when
used to denote the system of Theosophy or secret doctrine, set forth in the
books ' Jetzirah' and 'Zohar.'
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