Chapter 23

HEBRAIC LITERATURE

The Bible, a Collection of Epic, Lyric, Elegiac, and Sententious Writings. The Talmud, Book of Ordinances. The Gospels.

THE BIBLE.--The Hebrew race possessed a literature from about 1050 B.C. It embodied in poems the legends which had circulated among the people since the most remote epoch of their existence. It was those poems, gathered later into one collection, which formed what, since approximately the year 400, we call the Bible--that is, the Book of books.

In the Bible there are histories (_Genesis_, _History of the Jews up to Joshua_, the _Book of Joshua_, _Judges_, _Kings_, etc.), then anecdotal episodes (_Ruth_, _Esdras_, _Tobit_, _Judith_, _Esther_), then books of moral philosophy(_Proverbs of Solomon_, _Ecclesiastes_, _Wisdom_, _Ecclesiasticus_), then books of an oratorical and lyrical character (_Psalms of David_ and all the _Prophets_). Finally, a single work, still lyrical but in which there are marked traces of the dramatic type (the _Song of Songs_).

THE TALMUD.--To the works which have been gathered into the Bible, it is necessary to add the Talmud, a collection of commentaries on the civil and religious laws of the Jews, which forms an indispensable supplement to the Bible, to anyone desiring to understand the Hebraic civilisation.

THE GOSPELS.--The Gospels, published in the Greek tongue, have nothing Hebraic except that they were compiled by Jews or by their immediate disciples and that they have preserved something of the manner of writing of the Jews.

BIBLICAL WRITINGS.--The Biblical writings, regarded solely from the literary point of view, form one of the finest monuments of human thought. The sentiment of grandeur and even of infinity in _Genesis_; the profound and simple sensibility as in the _History of Joseph_, _Tobit_, and _Esther_; eloquence and exquisite religious sentiment as in the _Book of Job_ and the _Psalms of David_; ecstatic lyricism, vehement and fiery, accompanied with incredible satiric force as in the _Prophets_; wisdom alike equal to that of the Stoics and of the serious Epicureans as in _Ecclesiastes_ and the _Proverbs_; everywhere marvellous imagination, always concise at least, if not restrained; lyrical sensuality which recalls the most perturbed creations of erotic Greeks and Latins, whilst surpassing them in beauty as in the _Song of Songs_; and throughout there is this grandeur, this simple majesty, this easy and natural sublimity which in the same degree is to be found only occasionally in Homer and which appears to be the privilege of the people who were the first to believe in a single God. That is what makes, almost in a continuous way, the astonishing beauty of the Bible, and which explains how whole nations, of other origin, have made down to our own day, and still continue to make, the Bible their uninterrupted study, and draw from it courage, serenity, exaltation of soul, and a singular ferment of their poetic and literary genius.

As has been the case with many other literary monuments, it is possible, without owning that it is desirable, that the Bible may even survive the numerous and important religions which have been born from it.