Legendy Židů - svazek 1

The legends of the Jews belong indisputably to the treasury of world literature, into which they have entered as "stories you won't find in the Bible" or as "all Jewish legends in a nutshell". Ginzberg excelled in his ability to absorb hundreds of stories and their versions in the original languages, noting the differences that indicate which story is original and which is derivative. This work of Ginzberg's still provides a springboard for the study of biblical legends in general, and the author's conclusions have not been refuted by the later discoveries of the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic Nag Hammadi manuscripts, but have been generally confirmed. For the Czech reader, who has not had the opportunity to get acquainted with them before, they provide a first glimpse into texts that have been shaped over thousands of years and which are closely related to the concept of "oral Torah". The Torah itself (always capitalized) is not only a teaching (doctrine) or the five books of Moses, but is also synonymous with the term Tanakh, the entire Jewish Bible. Moreover, the Torah is not only the Holy Scriptures, closely associated with the Tabernacle, but also a living entity, preceding the creation of man and the world. Its dual character - written and oral - cannot be forgotten. The written form is the outward manifestation of the Torah, the revealed "physical artifact," necessarily accompanied by an inner content, the oral Torah, which was created in parallel with the "material" text. And although the first comprehensive written expression of the oral Torah is not until the rabbinic Mishnah of the early 3rd century CE, this certainly does not mean that the "stories not found in the Bible" are "afterthoughts" of rabbis detached from the ordinary life of the Jewish community. Quite the contrary. Ginzberg's entire work pointed out that both aspects were created synchronously. Without them, the "Torah" would never have been complete. It was only after the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70 (after the so-called "churban"), i.e., after the end of the Second Temple period, that the oral Torah was put into writing. This is summed up in the statement that "the Tanakh is the Temple after the churban": the material Temple disappeared, but it took on a spiritual form that it never lost and can never lose.

Czech edition