Judaism
Judaism in Babylonia
The Jews themselves were during this period engaged in building up a system of isolation on their own side, but they treated Roman law with greater hospitality than it meted out to them. The Talmud shows the influence of that law in many points, and may justly be compared to it as a monument of codification based on great principles. The Palestinian Talmud was completed in the 4th century, but the better known and more influential version was compiled in Babylonia about 500. (…)
Judaism in Babylonia
The Jews themselves were during this period engaged in building up a system of isolation on their own side, but they treated Roman law with greater hospitality than it meted out to them. The Talmud shows the influence of that law in many points, and may justly be compared to it as a monument of codification based on great principles. The Palestinian Talmud was completed in the 4th century, but the better known and more influential version was compiled in Babylonia about 500. (…)
To Samuel of Nehardea (q.v.) belongs the honour of formulating the principle which made it possible for Jews to live under alien laws. Jeremiah had admonished his exiled brothers: “Seek ye the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the Lord for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace” (Jer. xxix. 7). It was now necessary to go farther, and the rabbis proclaimed a principle which was as influential with the synagogue as “Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” became with the Church. “The law of the government is law” (Baba Qama 113 b.), said Samuel, and ever since it has been a religious duty for the Jews to obey and accommodate themselves as far as possible to the laws of the country in which they are settled or reside. In 259 Odenathus, the Palmyrene adventurer whose memory has been eclipsed by that of his wife Zenobia, laid Nehardea waste for the time being, and in its neighbourhood arose the academy of Pumbedita (Pombeditha) which became a new focus for the intellectual life of Israel in Babylonia. These academies were organized on both scholastic and popular lines; their constitution was democratic. An outstanding feature was the Kallah assemblage twice a year (in Elul at the close of the summer, and in Adar at the end of the winter), when there were gathered together vast numbers of outside students of the most heterogeneous character as regards both age and attainments. Questions received from various quarters were discussed and the final decision of the Kallah was signed by the Resh-Kallah or president of the general assembly, who was only second in rank to the Resh-Metibta, or president of the scholastic sessions. Thus the Babylonian academies combined the functions of specialist law-schools, universities and popular parliaments. They were a unique product of rabbinism; and the authors of the system were also the compilers of its literary expression, the Talmud. (1)
Judaism in Islam
The caliph Omar initiated in the 7th century a code which required Christians and Jews to wear peculiar dress, denied them the right to hold state offices or to possess land, inflicted a poll-tax on them, and while forbidding them to enter mosques, refused them the permission to build new places of worship for themselves. Again and again these ordinances were repeated in subsequent ages, and intolerance for infidels is still a distinct feature of Mahommedan law. But Islam has often shown itself milder in fact than in theory, for its laws were made to be broken. The medieval Jews on the whole lived, under the crescent, a fuller and freer life than was possible to them under the cross. Mahommedan Babylonia (Persia) was the home of the gaonate (see Gaon), the central authority of religious Judaism, whose power transcended that of the secular exilarchate, for it influenced the synagogue far and wide, while the exilarchate was local. The gaonate enjoyed a practical tolerance remarkable when contrasted with the letter of Islamic law. (2)
Resources
Notes and References
- Charles M. Scanlan, The Clergyman’s Hand-book of Law. The Law of Church and Grave (1909), Benziger Brothers, New York, Cincinnati, Chicago
- Encyclpedia Britannica (11th Edition)
- Id.
See Also
- Religion
- Freedom of Religion
- Morality
- Religious Law
- Church
Further Reading
M. H. Danzger, Returning to Tradition (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1989)
H. H. Donin, To Be a Jew (New York: Basic Books, 1972)
É. Durkheim, Suicide (New York, Free Press, 1953 [1897])
É. Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society (New York: Free Press, 1947 [1902])
É. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (New York: Collier, 1961 [1912])
I. Epstein, Judaism (Baltimore: Penguin, 1959)
S. Freud, Moses and Monotheism (New York: Vintage, 1962 [1939])
D. Kaufman, Rachel’s Daughters (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991)
B.A. Kosmin and S. Lachman, One Nation Under God (New York: Harmony, 1993)
K. Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works , vol. 3 (New York: International Publishers, 1975 [1843])
G. F. Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era (New York: Schocken, 1927)
T. Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1949)
A. I. Shiff, The Jewish Day School in America (New York: Jewish Education Committee, 1966)
W. R. Smith, The Religion of the Semites (New York: Meridian, 1959 [1889])
W. Sombart, The Jews and Capitalism (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1951 [1914])
M. Steinberg, Basic Judaism (New York: Harcourt, 1947)
M. Weber, Ancient Judaism (New York: Free Press, 1952 [1921])
M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribner, 1930 [1904-1905, 1920])
M. Weber, The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon, 1963 [1922])
Hierarchical Display of Judaism
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Judaism
Concept of Judaism
See the dictionary definition of Judaism.
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Translation of Judaism
- Spanish: Judaísmo
- French: Judaïsme
- German: Judentum
- Italian: Giudaismo
- Portuguese: Judaísmo
- Polish: Judaizm
Thesaurus of Judaism
Social Questions > Culture and religion > Religion > Judaism
Social Questions > Social framework > Sociocultural group > Religious group > Jew > Judaism
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