378 INTEGRITY AND PURITY OF THE HEBREW AND GREEK TEXT,
loss by them that he began not his letter to the senate in the wonted manner, E/ avroi zai o'l rraTdsg u/aSi' uyiahiTi, £u av 'i-/or sju xai ra ffrpa- Ti-j/jjaTa uyiaho/u^sv he could not assure them that it was well with him and his army.
By this second desolation they were [brought] very low, made weak and contemptible, and driven into obscurity all the world over. In this state they wandered up and down for some season in all manner of uncertainty. They had not only lost the place of their solemn wor- ship, seeing it was wholly defiled, the- name of Jerusalem changed into ^lia, and themselves forbid to look towards it upon pain of death,^ but also, being now unspeakably diminished in their number, all hope of contriving themselves into any condition of observing their old rites and worship was utterly lost.^
Here they sat down amazed for a season, being at their wits' end, as was threatened to them in the curse. But they will not rest so. Considering, therefore, that their old religion could not be continued without a Jerusalem and a temple, they began a nefai'ious attempt against God, equal to that of the old world in building Babel, even to set up a new religion, that might abide with them wherever they were, and give them countenance in their infidelity and opposition to the gospel unto the utmost. The head of this new apostasy was one R. Judah, whom we may not unfitly call the Mohammed of the Jews. They term him Hannasi, the "prince;" and Hakkadosh, the "holy." The whole story of him and his companions, as re- ported by the Jews, is well collected by Joseph de Voysin, Observat. in Prooem. ad Pugi. Fidei. p. 26, 27. The sum of the whole concern- ing this work is laid down by Maimonides in his prsefatio in Seder Zeraiim, p. 36, 37 of the edition of Mr Pococke; wherein also a sufficient account is given of the whole Mishna, with the names of the Rabbins either implied in it or occasionally mentioned. This man, about the year of Christ 190 or 200, when the temple had now lain waste almost three times as long as it did in the Babylonish captivity, being countenanced, as some of themselves report,^ by An- toninus Pius, compiled the Jewish Koran, or the Mishna, as a rule
^ Euscb. Hist. lib. iv. cap. vi. ; Orosius. lib. vii. cap. xiii. ; Hieron.Com. in Zach. cap. xi. Vid Tzemach. David, et Hotting. Hist. Ecclesi. Nov. Testam.
* " Dispersi, palabundi et cceli et soli sui extorres, vagantur per orbem sine homine, sine Deo, rege, quibus nee advenarum jure terram patriam saltern vestigio salutate conceditur." — Tertull. Apol.
8 " Post base processu temporis ventum est ad Eabbinu Hakkadosh, cui pax, qiii fuit seculi sui phoenix, etc. Ille legem in Israele confirmavit seutentiis, dictis, et dif- ferentiis ore traditis a Mose, usque ad tempora sua collectis, cum et ipse esset ex lis qui ore tradita referebant. Collectis igitur sententiis et dictis istis, manum admovit componendse Mishnce, quae omnium qute in lege scripta sunt prseceptorum explica- tionem contiuei'et, partim traditionibus a Mose (cui pax), ore acceptis, partim conse- quentiis argumentatione elicitis," etc. — Vid. R. Maimon. praefat. in Seder Zeraiim, edit. Poc. p. 36-38.
ORIGIN OF THE HEBREW POINTS. 379
of their worship and ways for the future. Only, whereas Mohammed afterward pretended to have received his figments by revelation (though, indeed, he had many of his abominations from the Talmud), this man pleaded the receiving of his by tradition, — the two main engines that have been set up against the word of God. Out of such Pharisaical traditions as were indeed preserved amongst them, and such observances as they had learned and taken up from apostate Christians, as Aquila and others, with such figments as were invented by himself and his predecessors since the time of their being pub- licly rejected and cursed by God, this man compiled the nViti'D ")2D, — which is the text of their Talmud, and the foundation of their pre- sent religion, — under the name of the old oral law. That sundry Christian ceremonies and institutions, vilely corrupted, were taken up by the Jews of those days, many of them being apostates, as were also some of Mohammed's assistants in compiling of the Koran, I shall, God assisting, elsewhere endeavour to evince and manifest. That any gospel observances were taken from the Jews, as being in practice amongst them before their institution by Christy will appear in the issue to be a bold and groundless fancy.
The foundation mentioned being laid in a collection of traditions and new invention of abominations, under the name of old traditions, by this Kabbi, the following Talmuds are an improvement of the same attempt of setting up a religion under the curse and against the mind and will of God, that, being rejected by him, and left "with- out king, Avithout prince, without sacrifice, without image, without an ephod, and without teraphim," any kind of worship, true or false, they might have something to give them countenance in their un- belief The Talmud of Jerusalem, so called (for it is the product of many comments on the Mishna in the city of Tiberias, where R. Judah lived) because it was compiled in the land of Canaan, whose metropolis was Jerusalem, was published about the year of Christ 230 : so it is commonly received, though I find Dr Lightfoot of late, on supposition of finding in it the name of Diocletian the emperor, to give it a later date ; but I confess I see no just ground for the al- teration of his judgment from what he delivered in another treatise before. The Doclet mentioned by the Rabbins was beaten by the children of R. Judah Princeps, as himself observes, who lived in the days of one of the Antoninuses, a hundred years before Diocletian, Neither was ever Diocletian in a low condition in the east, being a Sarmatian born, and living in the western parts; only he went with Numerianus in that expedition into Persia, wherein he was made emperor at his return. But this is nothing to my purpose. See Lightfoot, Chorograph. cap. Ixxxi. p. ] 44. The Babylonian Talmud, so called because compiled in the land of Babylon, in the cities of