their countrymen than that of Akiba. extolling his immense learning,-his knowledge of seventy lanThey are never weary in guages, the eagerness of his late-taken up and long-protracted studies, or the incalculable number of his disciples; but even these topics of praise are not sufficient. His genealogy is carefully traced to Sisera, the Canaanite general of King Jabin; and his wife is said to have been the widow of a Roman nobleman of high rank. We are told that a whole volume would not be sufficient for a detail of his merits, and, in fact, personal anecdotes of him have been handed down which would enable a biographer to draw up a life of Akiba more resembling a memoir of modern times than an account of a rabbi of the first century, whose existence is hardly known to any but scholars occupied in the study of an obscure literature. Long after his death, they pointed out with affectionate regret his tomb, by the Lake Tiberias, where they tell us he was buried, with twenty-four thousand of his disciples at his feet. and learning have procured him pardon for having acknowHis courage, patriotic enthusiasm ledged a false Messiah; and Maimonides, strange. to say, founds on this very error an argument to prove that the Messiah is not yet come. He is universally acknowledged as the most learned of the rabbis, though the works attributed to him badly support that fame; and as with Barchochoba perished the last of the Jewish generals, so with Akiba expired the last of the great oral doctors. At the death of Rabbi Akiba,' says the Mishna, the glory of the law perished.' He died about A.D. 135; soon after the taking of Bitter. The later rabbis fondly remark, that on the very day of Akiba's death, Rabbi Jehudah, whose labours were destined to supply the want of oral teachers, was born. He is styled either Hanassi, i. e. the prince, from his literary and political rank among his countrymen; or Hakadosh, i. c. the holy, from the sanctity of his life, of which some rather whimsical stories are told. flourished in the reigns of Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, and This learned man Commodus, with all of whom, we are informed, he enjoyed the highest favour. We may doubt, however, what we are told in En Israel, that the first of these princes submitted to the rite of circumcision at his hands. disciples were falling off, dangers and difficulties impending, and 'He seeing,' says Maimonides, 'that the kingdom of Satan spreading all over the world, and obtaining greater strength, (Maimonides probably alludes to the spread of Christianity, which, in the tranquil reigns of the Antonines, was making rapid progress,) while the people of Israel were driven to the ends of the earth, made a collection of traditions fit for public dissemination, in order that they might not fall into oblivion.' It is evident that the chief motive which actuated him in making his collection, was his feeling of the utter hopelessness of the Jewish cause. He saw the Roman empire in undisputed plenitude of universal power, and if he lived in the courts of its emperors, he had ample means of convincing himself that no efforts unaided by miracles, of which there was but little chance, could shake the force which they wielded. Under these circumstances, he could look forward to nothing but an indefinite prolongation of the captivity, and was of course anxious that the traditions, which his people regarded with as much reverence as the Scriptures themselves, should not be lost, as there was every probability they would be, if entrusted to the oral keeping of the dispersed teachers of an oppressed and dwindling people. It was no time then to recollect the strong injunction that existed, to forbid that things delivered by word of mouth should be committed to writing.' The traditions must either be written, or, in all probability, perish; and 'The loss of a limb,' as Mr. Hurwitz expresses it, (p. 46,) is preferable to the destruction of the whole body.' The Hebrew scholar has reason to be thankful to Jehudah for not observing this precept, of which it is much easier to appreciate than to admire the purpose. The accuracy, industry, and talent which he brought to his work are highly praised by his countrymen. He spent many years in collecting materials for it from all the rabbis of the nation whereever dispersed, and published it, according to the general computation, in A. D. 190, the 11th year of the Emperor Commodus. He styled it the MISHNA, a word which has been differently interpreted, but which is generally allowed to signify the secondary law; the Greeks interpret it dɛUTEρwois, as if it bore the same relation to the scriptures which Deuteronomy does to the other books of the Pentateuch. It was immediately diffused with great eagerness among all the Hebrew schools of Palestine, Babylon, &c. and of course soon found commentators. The comments speedily swelled into a bulk far beyond that of the text, and received the title of Gemāra, i. e. the completion. The Mishna and Gemara united form the Talmud, which signifies the doctrinal.' Of Talmuds there are two, the Jerusalem and the Babylonish, so called from the schools which compiled them. The former was collected by Rabbi Jochonan, who was born in 184, and died in 279. The latter was begun by Rabbi Asche, who died in 427, and completed by Rabbi Jose seventy-three years afterwards, viz. A. D. 500. Most of these dates are disputed, and some are inclined to put them later; but the Archbishop of Cashel shows that the Babylonish Talmud must have been composed before 531. * See the notes to a sermon preached by Dr. Laurence before the University of Oxford, p. 24. This is by far the more famous and complete as might be expected, being by three centuries the later of the two. The doctors of Babylon were, besides, of much higher renown, the schools of Palestine being at that time in a state of decadence, while the other flourished till the twelfth century. Yet, as De Rossi truly remarks,* the Jerusalem Talmud deserves to be more valued, as being 'più esente di inezie, e più utile all' illustrazione delle sagre antichità.' Prideaux was also of the same opinion. The style of the Mishna is purer, and far more scriptural than that of either of the Gemaras; that of the Jerusalem being frequently so obscure as to puzzle the most learned, for instance, Lightfoot: and the Babylonish being full of foreign words and barbarous phrases. The Jerusalem Talmud is contained in one folio-the Babylonian in twelve ; and it is impossible to look at the comparatively pure text of the Mishna, surrounded as it is in all directions by so disproportionate a mass of commentary, not always the most valuable, without recollecting the uncleanly, but very descriptive, jest of Rabelais on the glosses in which Accursius has involved the Pandects of Justinian. And yet, with all this bulk, it is incomplete; man of the sections of the Mishna being unaccompanied by any Gemara. If the ritual law of Moses itself abounds in minute ceremonies and observances, evidently ordained for the purpose of making the Hebrew nation more decidedly distinct from all others, it might naturally be expected that the traditions which arose in the long course of time between the promulgation of the law and the completion of the Talmud, should be still more minute in their regulations, and applied to an infinitely greater number of contingencies; and, on examination, such expectations are fully verified. No where does such a code of laws, or casuistical decisions, exist, applied with so much exactness to such a vast number of cases, some highly important, some the most trifling conceivable, rendering the law, as expounded by them, what it was described to be eighteen hundred years ago, when administered by the oral predecessors of the Talmudists, a heavy burthen, and hard to be borne.' Mr. Hurwitz (p. 38, &c.) pleads, that several of the customs and laws in the Talmud are founded on scriptural authority. It may be true-and is true, in the instances which he quotes; but it is impossible to turn over the first ten pages of the Mishna without finding many which have no warrant of scripture or common sense to support them. In practice, they are felt to be annoying enough. Mendelsohn testifies to the fact; and we think it is Mr. Frey who assures us that it takes as hard a course of theological study to become a Jew butcher, (from * Dizionario Storico, vol. 1. p. 171. the the minute regulations as to choosing the beast, sharpening the knife, &c.,) as in most Universities of Europe would qualify for a Doctor of Divinity.-But it must not be imagined that the great rabbinical repository does not contain better things. In spite of its trifling, and of other objections that might be urged against it, few works are better worth the attention of the antiquary, the philologer, the philosophic historian, and the theologian. It presents the most curious picture of the modes of thinking and acting of the most singular people that ever existed, under circumstances altogether unparalleled. In the Talmud, says Buxtorf, an excellent authority in every point of view, 'sunt multa quoque theologica sana, quamvis plurimis inutilibus corticibus, ut Majemon alicubi loquitur, involuta. Sunt in eo multa fida antiquitatis Judaicæ collapse veluti rudera, et vestigia ad convincen posterorum perfidiam, ad illustrandam utriusque Testamenti historiam, ad rectè explicandos ritus, leges, consuetudines populi Ebræi prisci plurimum conducentia. Sunt in eo multa Juridica, Medica, Physica, Ethica, Politica, Astronomica, et aliarum scientiarum præclara documenta, quæ istius gentis et temporis historiam mirificè commendant. Sunt in eo illustria ex antiquitate proverbia, insignes sententiæ, acuta apophthegmata, scitè prudenterque dicta innumera, quæ leviorem, vel meliorem, vel sapientiorem reddere possunt, et ceu rutilantes gemmæ non minùs Ebræam linguam exornant, quàm omnes Latii et Græciæ flosculi suas linguas condecorant. Sunt in eo vocum myriades quæ vel voces in Scripturæ Sacræ usu raras illustrant et nativè explicant, vel totius linguæ Ebrææ et Chaldææ usum insigniter complent et perficiunt, qui alioquin in defectu maximo mutilus et mancus jaceret: sunt denique in eo quamplurima ad infinita Novi Testamenti loca quoad voces, phrases, et historiam insigniter illustranda maximum momentum habentia.' Abating the praise bestowed on the gems of Talmudic eloquence as brought into opposition with the flosculi of Greek and Roman literature, a point on which we should hardly consult the worthy lexicographer, nothing can be more just than the above panegyric. It is a fair mean between the overstrained encomiums of the rabbis themselves, and the bitter contempt or hatred which it has been the lot of the Talmud to meet with from many Christian critics, both learned and illiterate. Both praise and dispraise have been stretched to the highest; but among Christians, the fortune of the Talmud has generally been adverse. Even so early as the Pandects, the devrEpwoɛis are marked with legal displeasure; in Novella 146, Eam Scripturam quæ secunda editio (in Greek, dEUTEρwois) dicitur interdicimus omnimodo, utpote sacris non conjunctam libris, neque desuper traditam de prophetis, sed inventionem institutam virorum ex solâ loquentium loquentium terrâ et divinum in ipsis habentium nihil.' In later times, the popes persecuted these books with unrelenting hostility. Gregory IX., in 1230, and Innocent IV., in 1244, condemned them to be burnt. Their example was followed by the anti-pope Benedict XIII., who fulminated a bull against them in 1415, from Valencia. He accuses the Talmud of being the chief cause that the Jews are so blinded as not to be converted to Christianity; attributes its composition to sons of Satan, and orders it to be committed to the flames. In 1554, Pope Julius III. ordered a general burning throughout the Italian cities: but as few copies were destroyed on this occasion, in consequence of the Jews secreting them, and carrying them principally to Cremona, where their people were very numerous at that time, Pius V., in 1559, sent Sixtus Senensis to seize them; and, according to his own account, he succeeded so well as to burn 12,000 copies of the Talmud, no less than 144,000 volumes. We may be allowed to doubt the exactness of this number; but there is no doubt that he very zealously performed the honourable business allotted to him. In 1593, Clement VIII. renewed the order for the burning, directing that all Talmudic and Cabalistic books should be delivered up to the ordinaries of the places in which they should be found, or to the inquisitors of heretical pravity, by them to be committed to the flames. We copy these facts from Bartoloccius, vol. iii. p. 731-747, who mentions them with high praise and much gratification. Mr. Charles Butler, in his Hora Biblicæ, panegyrizes the popes for their great general kindness to the Jews let him lend his ear to the narrative of Bartoloccius. Hinc (that is, from a desire of saving the souls of the Jews) eorumdem Pontificum jussu tot amara pharmaca Judæis propinata, ut tanquam in caveam primò fuerint inclusi in septum (in Ghettum); eorum synagogis omnibus demolitis, unicâ tantum reservatâ ; deinde bonis omnibus stabilibus spoliati; signo in capite eorum tamquam in Cain fratris occisore imposito, ne interficeret eos omnis homo. (How kind and considerate!) Nullius generis mercaturæ iis permissæ nisi tantùm stracciariæ, et cenciariæ, hoc est, veteranorum vestium, ex misericordiâ (misericordia!) tolerata. Et alia id genus multa ut per ea incommoda ad fidem Christianam suscipiendam hortarentur.'-vol. iii. p. 748. This is extracted from no anti-catholic writer, but from a most learned Cistercian. He adds, that not content with these winning ways, the popes had recourse to the method of compelling the Jews to listen to the sermons of friars appointed at certain seasons to convince them of their errors-a custom which, we believe, still continues at Rome: it certainly lasted till the French revolution. The conduct of the Jews, it appears, was not the most reverent at these |