The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, Consisting of Fourteen Volumes

THE SACRED BOOKS AND EARLY LITERATURE OF THE EAST WITH HISTORICAL SURVEYS OF THE CHIEF WRITINGS OF EACH NATION Translations, Bibliographies, etc., by the following Leading Orientalists: IN AMERICA: MORRIS JASTROW ,LL.D., Professor of Semitic Languages, University of Penn- sylvania; JAMES H. BREASTED, LL.D., Professor of Egyptology, University of Chicago; CHARLES C. TORREY, D.D., Professor of Semitic Languages Yale University; A. V. W. JACKSON, LL.D., Professor of Indo-Iranian, Columbia Uni- versity; CHARLES R. LANMAN, LL.D., Professor of Sanskrit, Harvard University; REV. CHARLES F. AIKEN, S.T.D., Dean of the Faculty of Theology, Catholic University; FRIEDRICH HIRTH, LL.D., Professor of Chinese, Columbia Uni- versity; REV. WILLIAM E. GRIFFIS, D.D., former Professor at the Imperial University, Tokio. IN EUROPE: E. A. W. BUDGE, F.S.A., Director of Egyptology in the British Museum; SIR GASTON MASPERO, D.C.L., Member of the Royal Institute of France; REV. A. H. SAYCE, LL.D., Professor of Comparative Philology, Oxford University; W. FLINDERS-PETRIE, LL.D., Professor of Egyptology, University College, London; STEPHEN LANGDON, Ph.D., Professor of Assyriology, Oxford University; SIR ERNEST SATOW, LL.D., G.C.M.G. British Minister to Japan; H. OLDENBERG, LL.D., Professor of Sanskrit, Kiel University; T. W. RHYS-DAVIDS, LL.D., Librarian of the Royal Asiatic Society; ARMINIUS VAMBÉRY, LL.D., Professor of Oriental Languages, University of Budapest. IN ASIA: SIR M. COOMARA SWAMY, Legislative Council of Ceylon; ROMESH CHUNDER DUTT, C.I.E., Author of the History of Civilization in Ancient India; DARAB D. P. SAN JANA, Educational Society of Bombay; VISCOUNT KENCHO SUYE- MATSU LL.M., Japanese Minister of the Interior; SHEIK FAIZ-ULLAH-BHAI, Head Master of the Schools of Anjuman-i-Islam; RALPH T. GRIFFITH, President Benares College, India; JIVANJI JAMSHEDJI MODI, Fellow of Bombay Uni- versity, Officier de l'Académie Française. Under the editorship of a staff of specialists directed by PROF. CHARLES F. HORNE, PH.D. PARKE, AUSTIN, AND LIPSCOMB, INC. NEW YORK LONDON This Volume is one of a complete set of the Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, consisting of fourteen volumes. In Volume I of the series will be found a cer- tificate as to the limitation of the edition and the registered number of this set. Copyright, 1917, Parke, Austin, and Lipscomb, Inc. THE TOMB OF HIRAM. The ancient tomb near the Phoenician coast, which tradition says contains the remains of Hiram, King of Tyre, the friend of Solomon. © UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD, N.Y. THE SACRED BOOKS AND EARLY LITERATURE OF THE EAST ————— VOLUME IV MEDIEVAL HEBREW ———— THE MIDRASH THE KABBALAH —————— In Translations by DR. W. WYNN WESTCOTT, D.P.H., Magus of the Rosicrucian Society; S. L. MATHERS, M.A.; VERY REV. HERMAN ADLER, LL.D., Presi- dent of Jews' College; ADOLF NEUBAUER, Ph.D., Reader of Rab- binical Literature, Oxford University; REV. SAMUEL RAPAPORT, Rabbi of Cape Colony; DR. MICHAEL FRIEDLANDER, Ph.D.; and other authorities on Hebraic and Kabbalistic lore. With a Brief Bibliography by ADOLPH S. OKO, Librarian of Hebrew Union College. —————— With an Historical Survey and Descriptions by PROF. CHARLES F. HORNE, PH.D. PARKE, AUSTIN, AND LIPSCOMB, INC. NEW YORK LONDON "Let there be light."—GENESIS I, 3. ———— "There never was a false god, nor was there ever really a false religion, unless you call a child a false man."—MAX MÜLLER. CONTENTS OF VOLUME IV —————— MEDIEVAL HEBREW PAGE INTRODUCTION—The Breadth and Persistency of Hebrew Learning .......................................................... 1 I.—THE MIDRASH, or Preserved Tradition ........................... 7 The Tanhuma Midrash (about A.D. 500) ................... 12 Bereshith Rabba ......................................................... 42 Exodus Rabba ............................................................ 69 Leviticus Rabba ......................................................... 90 Numbers Rabba.......................................................... 105 Deuteronomy Rabba .................................................. 121 Ashmedai, the King of Demons................................. 133 II.—THE KABBALAH, or Secret Tradition (from unknown date to A.D. 1305) ...................................................... 145 The Book of Creation, or Sepher Yetzirah .............. 164 The Book of Concealed Mystery, or Sepher Dtzenioutha............................................................ 181 The Greater Holy Assembly....................................... 236 III.—RELIGIOUS POETRY.......................................................... 331 The Poems of Avicebron or Ibn Gabirol (died A.D. 1058)............................................................... 334 The Poems of Judah Halevi (A.D. 1080-1150) ......... 337 Later Poets ................................................................. 352 IV.—THE BOOK CUSARI, The Story of a Lost Race ............. 359 v vi CONTENTS PAGE V.—THE GREAT HEBREW PHILOSOPHERS ............................. 367 Commentaries of Rabbi Ben Ezra (A.D. 1092- 1167)....................................................................... 371 Advice of Maimonides (1135-1204) ......................... 375 VI.—THE TRAVELS OF BENJAMIN OF TUDELA (A.D. 1160- 1173) ...................................................................... 381 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................... 429 ILLUSTRATIONS IN VOLUME IV ———————— FACING PAGE The Tomb of Hiram........................................................ Frontispiece The Mosque of Abraham ........................................................... 64 Kabbalistic Diagram of the Soul ............................................... 160 An Ancient Synagogue in Palestine........................................... 384 vii SACRED BOOKS AND EARLY LITERATURE —— MEDIEVAL HEBREW ——— INTRODUCTION HOW FROM RELIGION THE HEBREW THOUGHT BRED MYSTERY, PHILOSOPHY, AND POETRY HE Hebrew writings after the fifth century of our pres- T ent era include no such transcendently important religious works as the Bible and the Talmud. Yet the Hebraic race had lost neither their wonderful genius for religious thought, nor their strong instinct for formalism, for the embodiment of religion in a mass of minute rules. Hebrew tradition was still to give to the world two remarkable works bearing upon religion. Neither of these is a single book; each, like the Bible itself, is a collection of many works, brief books carrying the complete thought of many generations. One of these collections is commonly called the "Midrash," and the other the "Kabbalah." To appreciate these two earnest and strange and mystic labors of medieval thinkers, we must realize that from the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans (A.D. 70) there was no longer a Hebrew nation living in its own land. There was only a mournful race, wide-scattered over all the world. At first the chief remaining center of Hebrew thought and teaching was in Babylon, the foster-home from which sprang the main bulk of the Talmud. But after the fifth century A.D. the lands of Babylonia were plunged also into destruction; and more than ever the Jews became hapless wanderers. They were welcomed, indeed, in some lands, because their habits of peace and industry and obedience 2 THE SACRED BOOKS made them profitable servitors; but more often they were met with savage persecution. Hence to the medieval Jew the usual conditions of life were strangely reversed. The peo- ple among whom he dwelt were not his "neighbors," but were strangers and enemies; while his true "neighbors," those who would feel with him and help and value him, dwelt in all the widest distances of the world. Because of this scattered life of the medieval Jews, their literary men were much more apt to write in the language of the land wherein they dwelt than in the very ancient Hebrew, which was known only to their very learned brethren, or in the common Jewish speech, or Aramaic, which had long sup- planted the older Hebrew, even in Jerusalem itself. From the time of Jerusalem's fall, when Josephus, that wise and crafty Hebrew general, wrote his "Wars of the Jews" not in his native tongue but in Latin, so that the Roman con- querors could read it, down to the day when the poet Heine penned his passionate Jewish laments in German, writers of Hebrew birth and spirit have enriched the literature of every language in the world. Only when the thinker had something to say directly to other Jews, something personal or dealing with their religion, would he prob- ably write in Hebrew or Aramaic. Hence the later Hebraic books are almost wholly religious, or, to employ the usual word, "rabbinical." THE MIDRASH To this class belongs the medieval Midrash. The word "Midrash" means "explanation," and so in a sense all Hebraic religious works since the Bible are included in the Midrash. But the name is generally limited to the commentaries, which always remained mere human "explanations," and were never accepted, as was the Talmud, as being in- spired, and hence as forming part of the official and unalter- able religion. The medieval Midrash thus includes a considerable bulk of writings, some of which may be as old as the fifth century A.n., but the fullest and best of which date from the ninth to the thirteenth century. They furnish LITERATURE OF THE EAST 3 us, like the Talmud, with a further mass of homely or poetic details about all the older Biblical characters, and of subtle analysis of Bible doctrines. Some

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