memories of the fortunes of the Jewish race after A.D. 70, when the Temple and City were destroyed, and when the heart of Judaism, as it were, ceased to beat, are comparatively little known.
The Fifth Book tells something of that eventful history. It sketches first, very briefly, the last fatal wars of the Jews. Then it tells how directly after the Temple was burnt a remarkable group of Rabbis arose, who, undismayed by what seemed the hopeless ruin of their race, at once proceeded to the reconstruction of Judaism upon totally new foundation stories.
These strange and wonderful scholars gathered together a mass of memories, traditions, and precepts which from the days of Moses had gradually been grouped round the sacred Torah,—the Law of the Lord,—and which had formed the subject-matter of the teaching of the Rabbinic schools of the Holy Law during the five centuries which had elapsed since the Return from the Captivity.
All these memories—traditions—comments, the great scholar Rabbis and their disciples arranged, codified, amplified. This work went on for some three hundred years or more; their labours resulted in the production of the Talmud.
The great object of this marvellous book, or rather collection of books, the Talmud, was the glorification of Israel; but no longer as a separate, a distinct nation, but what was far greater, as a separate People, a People specially beloved of God, for whom a glorious destiny was reserved in a remote future, a destiny which only belonged to the Jews.
In the several sections of this Fifth Book the Talmud is described:—the materials out of which it was composed, the method of the composition, the marvellous power which it exercised upon the sad Remnant of the Jewish people, how it bound them, exiles though they were in many lands, and kept them together,—all this is told at some length.
