into mutual contact in Alexandria, they originated new currents of philosophic speculation. They then joined with the Arabs in the molding of the new faith, Islam, and of the entire Arabian-Spanish civilization. In the Europe of the Middle Ages, the process by which the science of Greece reached the schools of Bologna, Paris, and Oxford can be made clear only by taking account of the part played by Jewish translators and teachers. Scholastic philosophy was also influenced by such great medieval Jewish thinkers as Ibn Gabirol and Maimonides, while the epoch-making thought of Spinoza can be understood only by reference to his Jewish predecessors. In modern times the genius of the Jews has asserted its claim to intellectual leadership through men like Mendelssohn, Heine, Lassalle, and Disraeli. The twofold spirit of Judaism is displayed even through the medium of the Yiddish dialect, that modern representative of the Judeo-German of the Middle Ages. Preserved in this dialect, Jewish legends, customs, and superstitions, all of which still retain the traces of their connection with the various lands wherein the Jews have dwelt, serve to elucidate many an obscure feature of general folk-lore and ethnic superstition.
In the development of the Jewish faith and religious literature the same processes of internal growth and of modification through environment have incessantly gone on. The Bible, that perennial source of all great religious movements in western civilization, has been interpreted by the Jews from their own peculiar point of view; but their traditions on the whole represent the spirit of progress rather than the blind worship of the letter. The Biblical characters as they lived in Jewish traditions differed greatly from the presentation in the Scripture record. These traditions are embodied in the Rabbinical literature, with its corresponding Hellenic counterparts, those numerous Apocrypha which form the connecting links between the Old Testament and the New, between the Bible and the Talmud on the one hand and the patristic literature and the Koran on the other. Drawing upon these traditions, the Jews have gradually formulated their interpretation of the Law and an elaborate system of religious belief—in a word, Jewish theology. So, too, the Jewish system of ethics has numerous points of contact with the ethical and philosophical systems of all other peoples.
The Jews have been important factors in commerce through all the ages; the Egypt of the Ptolemies, the Rome of the emperors, the Babylonia of the Sassanid rulers, and the Europe of Charlemagne felt and acknowledged the gain to commerce wrought by their international connections and affiliations. In all the great marts of European commerce they were pioneers of trade until, with the rise of the great merchant-gilds, they were in some degree ousted from this sphere and confined to lower pursuits. It becomes thus a matter of supreme interest to follow the Jews through all their wanderings, to observe how their religious, social, and philanthropic activities were variously developed wherever they dwelt. To give a faithful record of all this abundant and strenuous activity is the proper purpose of a Jewish encyclopedia.
Hitherto the difficulties in the way of such an adequate and impartial presentation have been insuperable. Deep-rooted prejudices have prevented any sympathetic interest in Judaism on the part of Christian theologians, or in Christianity on the part of the rabbis. These theological antipathies have now abated, and both sides are better prepared to receive the truth. It is only within the last half-century, too, that any serious attempts have been made to render accessible the original sources of Jewish history scattered throughout the libraries of Europe. As regards Jewish literature, the works, produced in many ages and languages, exist in so many instances in manuscript-sources not yet investigated, in archives or in genizot, that Jewish scholars can hardly be said to command a full knowledge of their own literature. The investigation of the sociological conditions and the anthropology of the Jewish people is even now only in its initial stages.
