THE appellation "people of the book," coined for the Jews by the greatest genius of the Middle Ages, characterizes them in more ways than one. Primarily, it indicates their devotion to the Bible, the Book of books, the most precious gift conferred upon mankind by Israel, and Israel's most conspicuous contribution to civilization—the Holy Scriptures, without which we cannot conceive of a peculiar Jewish people in the past, in the present, or in the future. But the Jews are not "the people of the Holy Book" alone; they are also the people of the book in general. The history of Israel is not a chronicle of the development of political power and greatness; it is the chronicle of a peculiar spiritual development, and the national heroes of Israel are not heroes of the sword, but heroes of the pen. Therefore, the loss of political independence did not destroy Israel as an historical entity.
This original character of Jewish history must be patent to the most superficial observer, though he knows nothing more than the divisions into which it falls. The fixation of the canon, the redaction of the Mishnah, the completion of the Talmud, the appearance of the Moreh Nebukim, these are the events that mark off the epochs of Jewish history, while the recital of the external events consists of nothing but monotonous repetitions of long drawn out martyrologies lacking even typical chapter headings. As regards cruelty and inhumanity, the persecutions inflicted in the
name of the religion of love are in no measure inferior to those inflicted in the name of Hellenic civilization; and the barbarism of the twentieth century cannot lay claim to any refinements in the treatment of the Jews not known and practiced by the dark centuries of medieval days.
In view of the fact that Jewish history i. its essence is the history of a literature and of a culture, it is natural that in many lands its beginning should coincide with the rise of the study of the Talmud in the same lands. Jews lived for more than ten centuries in Europe and Northern Africa, and, aside from regularly recurring persecutions, we hear nothing about their fate and fortunes during the whole of this long period. Toward the end of the tenth century of our era, we are told by an old chronicle, four distinguished Jewish scholars, while on a sea-voyage were taken captive by a Spanish-Moorish admiral. Their subsequent fortunes carried them, the one to Spain, the second to Northern Africa, the third to Egypt, and the fourth, it seems, so far as Narbonne, each of them becoming the founder of Jewish scholarship in his new home. Recent investigations go to show that this report is more or less legendary, but, as in many another case, the legend expresses truth in the form in which it appeals to the imagination of the people. For the fact remains unchallenged, that the establishment of Talmud schools toward the end of the tenth century in Spain, France, and Northern Africa, introduces a new era