THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS

BY

LOUIS GINZBERG

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN MANUSCRIPT BY

HENRIETTA SZOLD

VOLUME I

BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS FROM THE CREATION TO JACOB

PREFACE

Was sich nie und nirgends hat begeben, das allein veraltet nie.

The term Rabbinic was applied to the Jewish Literature of post-Biblical times
by those who conceived the Judaism of the later epoch to be something different
from the Judaism of the Bible, something actually opposed to it. Such observers
held that the Jewish nation ceased to exist with the moment when its political
independence was destroyed. For them the Judaism of the later epoch has been a
Judaism of the Synagogue, the spokesmen of which have been the scholars, the Rabbis.
And what this phase of Judaism brought forth has been considered by them to be
the product of the schools rather than the product of practical, pulsating life.
Poetic phantasmagoria, frequently the vaporings of morbid visionaries, is the
material out of which these scholars construct the theologic system of the Rabbis,
and fairy tales, the spontaneous creations of the people, which take the form
of sacred legend in Jewish literature, are denominated the Scriptural exegesis
of the Rabbis, and condemned incontinently as nugae rabbinorum.

As the name of a man clings to him, so men cling to names. For the primitive
savage the name is part of the essence of a person or thing, and even in the more
advanced stages of culture, judgments are not always formed in agreement with
facts as they are, but rather according to the names by which they are called.
The current estimate of Rabbinic Literature is a case in point. With the label
Rabbinic later ages inherited from former ages a certain distorted view of the
literature so designated. To this day, and even among scholars that approach its
investigation with unprejudiced minds, the opinion prevails that it is purely
a learned product. And yet the truth is that the most prominent feature of Rabbinic
Literature is its popular character.

The school and the home are not mutually opposed to each other in the conception
of the Jews. They study in their homes, and they live in their schools. Likewise
there is no distinct class of scholars among them, a class that withdraws itself
from participation in the affairs of practical life. Even in the domain of the
Halakah, the Rabbis were not so much occupied with theoretic principles of law
as with the concrete phenomena of daily existence. These they sought to grasp
and shape. And what is true of the Halakah is true with greater emphasis of the
Haggadah, which is popular in the double sense of appealing to the people and
being produced in the main by the people. To speak of the Haggadah of the Tannaim
and Amoraim is as far from fact as to speak of the legends of Shakespeare and
Scott. The ancient authors and their modern brethren of the guild alike elaborate
legendary material which they found at hand.

It has been held by some that the Haggadah contains no popular legends, that
it is wholly a factitious, academic product. A cursory glance at the pseudepigraphic
literature of the Jews, which is older than the Haggadah literature by several
centuries, shows how untenable this view is. That the one literature should have
drawn from the other is precluded by historical facts. At a very early time the
Synagogue disavowed the pseudepigraphic literature, which was the favorite reading
matter of the sectaries and the Christians. Nevertheless the inner relation between
them is of the closest kind. The only essential difference is that the Midrashic
form prevails in the Haggadah, and the parenetic or apocalyptic form in the pseudepigrapha.
The common element must therefore depart from the Midrash on the one hand and
from parenesis on the other.

Folklore, fairy tales, legends, and all forms of story telling akin to these
are comprehended, in the terminology of the post-Biblical literature of the Jews,
under the inclusive description Haggadah, a name that can be explained by a circumlocution,
but cannot be translated. Whatever it is applied to is thereby characterized first
as being derived from the Holy Scriptures, and then as being of the nature of
a story. And, in point of fact, this dualism sums up the distinguishing features
of Jewish Legend. More than eighteen centuries ago the Jewish historian Josephus
observed that “though we be deprived of our wealth, of our cities, or of the other
advantages we have, our law continues immortal.” The word he meant to use was
not law, but Torah, only he could not find an equivalent for it in Greek. A singer
of the Synagogue a thousand years after Josephus, who expressed his sentiments
in Hebrew, uttered the same thought: “The Holy City and all her daughter cities
are violated, they lie in ruins, despoiled of their ornaments, their splendor
darkened from sight. Naught is left to us save one eternal treasure alone–the
Holy Torah.” The sadder the life of the Jewish people, the more it felt the need
of taking refuge in its past. The Scripture, or, to use the Jewish term, the Torah,
was the only remnant of its former national independence, and the Torah was the
magic means of making a sordid actuality recede before a glorious memory. To the
Scripture was assigned the task of supplying nourishment to the mind as well as
the soul, to the intellect as well as the imagination, and the result is the Halakah
and the Haggadah.

The fancy of the people did not die out in the post-Biblical time, but the
bent of its activity was determined by the past.

Men craved entertainment in later times as well as in the earlier, only instead
of resorting for its subject-matter to what happened under their eyes, they drew
from the fountain-head of the past. The events in the ancient history of Israel,
which was not only studied, but lived over again daily, stimulated the desire
to criticize it. The religious reflections upon nature laid down in the myths
of the people, the fairy tales, which have the sole object of pleasing, and the
legends, which are the people’s verdict upon history–all these were welded into
one product. The fancy of the Jewish people was engaged by the past reflected
in the Bible, and all its creations wear a Biblical hue for this reason. This
explains the peculiar form of the Haggadah.

But what is spontaneously brought forth by the people is often preserved only
in the form impressed upon it by the feeling and the thought of the poet, or by
the speculations of the learned. Also Jewish legends have rarely been transmitted
in their original shape. They have been perpetuated in the form of Midrash, that
is, Scriptural exegesis. The teachers of the Haggadah, called Rabbanan d’Aggadta
in the Talmud, were no folklorists, from whom a faithful reproduction of legendary
material may be expected. Primarily they were homilists, who used legends for
didactic purposes, and their main object was to establish a close connection between
the Scripture and the creations of the popular fancy, to give the latter a firm
basis and secure a long term of life for them.

One of the most important tasks of the modern investigation of the Haggadah
is to make a clean separation between the original elements and the later learned
additions. Hardly a beginning has been made in this direction. But as long as
the task of distinguishing them has not been accomplished, it is impossible to
write out the Biblical legends of the Jews without including the supplemental
work of scholars in the products of the popular fancy.

In the present work, “The Legends of the Jews,” I have made the first attempt
to gather from the original sources all Jewish legends, in so far as they refer
to Biblical personages and events, and reproduce them with the greatest attainable
completeness and accuracy. I use the expression Jewish, rather than Rabbinic,
because the sources from which I have levied contributions are not limited to
the Rabbinic literature. As I expect to take occasion elsewhere to enter into
a description of the sources in detail, the following data must suffice for the
present.

The works of the Talmudic Midrashic literature are of the first importance.
Covering the period from the second to the fourteenth century, they contain the
major part of the Jewish legendary material. Akin to this in content if not always
in form is that derived from the Targumim, of which the oldest versions were produced
not earlier than the fourth century, and the most recent not later than the tenth.
The Midrashic literature has been preserved only in fragmentary form. Many Haggadot
not found in our existing collections are quoted by the authors of the Middle
Ages. Accordingly, a not inconsiderable number of the legends here printed are
taken from medieval Bible commentators and homilists. I was fortunate in being
able to avail myself also of fragments of Midrashim of which only manuscript copies
are extant.

The works of the older Kabbalah are likewise treasuries of quotations from
lost Midrashim, and it was among the Kabbalists, and later among the Hasidim,
that new legends arose. The literatures produced in these two circles are therefore
of great importance for the present purpose.

Furthermore, Jewish legends can be culled not from the writings of the Synagogue
alone; they appear also in those of the Church. Certain Jewish works repudiated
by the Synagogue were accepted and mothered by the Church. This is the literature
usually denominated apocryphal-pseudepigraphic. From the point of view of legends,
the apocryphal books are of subordinate importance, while the pseudepigrapha are
of fundamental value. Even quantitatively the latter are an imposing mass. Besides
the Greek writings of the Hellenist Jews, they contain Latin, Syrian, Ethiopic,
Aramean, Arabic, Persian, and Old Slavic products translated directly or indirectly
from Jewish works of Palestinian or Hellenistic origin. The use of these pseudepigrapha
requires great caution. Nearly all of them are embellished with Christian interpolations,
and in some cases the inserted portions have choked the original form so completely
that it is impossible to determine at first sight whether a Jewish or a Christian
legend is under examination. I believe, however, that the pseudepigraphic material
made use of by me is Jewish beyond the cavil of a doubt, and therefore it could
not have been left out of account in a work like the present.

However, in the appreciation of Jewish Legends, it is the Rabbinic writers
that should form the point of departure, and not the pseudepigrapha. The former
represent the main stream of Jewish thought and feeling, the latter only an undercurrent.
If the Synagogue cast out the pseudepigrapha, and the Church adopted them with
a great show of favor, these respective attitudes were not determined arbitrarily
or by chance. The pseudepigrapha originated in circles that harbored the germs
from which Christianity developed later on. The Church could thus appropriate
them as her own with just reason.

In the use of some of the apocryphal and pseudepigraphic writings, I found
it expedient to quote the English translations of them made by others, in so far
as they could be brought into accord with the general style of the book, for which
purpose I permitted myself the liberty of slight verbal changes. In particulars,
I was guided, naturally, by my own conception of the subject, which the Notes
justify in detail.

Besides the pseudepigrapha there are other Jewish sources in Christian garb.
In the rich literature of the Church Fathers many a Jewish legend lies embalmed
which one would seek in vain in Jewish books. It was therefore my special concern
to use the writings of the Fathers to the utmost.

The luxuriant abundance of the material to be presented made it impossible
to give a verbal rendition of each legend. This would have required more than
three times the space at my disposal. I can therefore claim completeness for my
work only as to content. In form it had to suffer curtailment. When several conflicting
versions of the same legend existed, I gave only one in the text, reserving the
other one, or the several others, for the Notes, or, when practicable, they were
fused into one typical legend, the component parts of which are analyzed in the
Notes. In other instances I resorted to the expedient of citing one version in
one place and the others in other appropriate places, in furtherance of my aim,
to give a smooth presentation of the matter, with as few interruptions to the
course of the narrative as possible. For this reason I avoided such transitional
phrases as “Some say,” “It has been maintained,” etc. That my method sometimes
separates things that belong together cannot be considered a grave disadvantage,
as the Index at the end of the work will present a logical rearrangement of the
material for the benefit of the interested student. I also did not hesitate to
treat of the same personage in different chapters, as, for instance, many of the
legends bearing upon Jacob, those connected with the latter years of the Patriarch,
do not appear in the chapter bearing his name, but will be found in the sections
devoted to Joseph, for the reason that once the son steps upon the scene, he becomes
the central figure, to which the life and deeds of the father are subordinated.
Again, in consideration of lack of space the Biblical narratives underlying the
legends had to be omitted–surely not a serious omission in a subject with which
widespread acquaintance may be presupposed as a matter of course.

As a third consequence of the amplitude of the material, it was thought advisable
to divide it into several volumes. The references, the explanations of the sources
used, and the interpretations given, and, especially, numerous emendations of
the text of the Midrashim and the pseudepigrapha, which determined my conception
of the passages so emended, will be found in the last volume, the fourth, which
will contain also an Introduction to the History of Jewish Legends, a number of
Excursuses, and the Index.

As the first three volumes are in the hands of the printer almost in their
entirety, I venture to express the hope that the whole work will appear within
measurable time, the parts following each other at short intervals.

LOUIS GINZBERG.

NEW YORK, March 24, 1909