Known as the Early Journal Content, this set of works include research articles, news, letters, and other writings published in more than 200 of the oldest leading academic journals. The works date from the mid--seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. We encourage people to read and share the Early Journal Content openly and to tell others that this resource exists. People may post this content online or redistribute in any way for non--commercial purposes. Read more about Early Journal

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... ntent at http://about.jstor.org/participate--jstor/individuals/early-journal--content. JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary source objects. JSTOR helps people discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching platform, and preserves this content for future generations. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not--for--profit organization that also includes Ithaka S+R and Portico. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW THE TALMUD IN HISTORY. THESE are days when from buried mound and hidden rock the distant past is steadily revealing its secrets, and the history of once powerful, but now extinct, nations is successfully deciphered. The cultured lands of our time are interested in the quest, and send their scholars to speed research. Thus Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Persia, are reconstructed from the library and the museum of antiquities. While the literature of nations that have passed away is again read and studied with an ease that grows with every fresh discovery, one old book remains as mysterious and indecipherable as the sphinx, although subjected for over a thousand years to the merciless assaults of foes and rapt adoration of worshippers. One by one the sacred books of the East are brought to the attention of the cultured of every creed, and interpreted by modern scholarship. This book-this series of volumes rather, the date of whose authorship and composition extends over seven hundred years-the Talmud preserves its remoteness and maintains its air of solitude. It defies the critic, it baffles the investigator, it allures, yet eludes, the student. Its age, its language, its contents, its atmosphere, its character, render useless the ordinary tools of literary analysis and interpretation; and its mountains of dialectic and discussion are practically insurmountable., Here and there, it is true, the process of decipherment has begun. A few trusty explorers have been at work, and many a gem has been brought to light, with outlines of dim, subterranean palaces of thought. But although the study of the Talmud as a modern discipline, and its elucidation in the