148, 342, 484, 582 Present Posture of the Ritual Question Ritual Commissioners' Report . Royal Commissions and their results Sacraments and Sacramental Ordinances Shirley's Church of the Apostolic Age THE ECCLESIASTIC. CURIOSITIES FROM THE TALMUD. "... Credat Judæus Apella, Non ego WE remember to have seen some years since a magazine called "The Retrospective Review," which was established for the purpose of reprinting pamphlets otherwise likely to become obsolete. It was a happy design, and deserved a better fate than that which attended it. We propose in the present article to imitate its plan, and lay before our readers some curious extracts from the Talmud, in a condensed form of translation from the 50th chapter of the Synagoga Judaica of the learned John Buxtorf, 1604. The edition (1680) from which we quote was dedicated to the editor of the Polyglot, Dr. Brian Walton, Bishop of Chester: it has passed through four editions, having been revised, corrected, and carefully edited by John Buxtorf, his son, and John James Buxtorf, his grandson, successively. It deals with the Jewish idea of the Messiah, the signs of the times preceding the Advent, and the state of felicity under His rule. The notion of a double Messiah may be traced up to the sixth century, and, perhaps, higher. In the Rabbinical writings the book Zobar gives the earlier belief of the Jews. "Bonus textuarius bonus theologicus," says the proverb; but Bale truly observes, "Out of the corrupted and depraved Scriptures took the Jews their Talmud, and the Saracens their Alcoran." (Image of both Churches, c. vi. p. 319.) "The Jews," observes Tyndale, "have set up a book of traditions called the Talmud, to destroy the sense of the Scripture, unto which they give faith, and unto the Scripture none at all, be it never so plain, but say it cannot be understood, save by the Talmud." (Answer to Sir T. More, p. 48.) This is an admirable stroke of policy, seeing the Talmud is written in an abstruse, uncouth dialect, full of difficulties, and occupying several thick folio volumes. There is a notice of a Latin VOL. XXIX.-JANUARY, 1867. B translation of the Talmud by Conrad Pellican (Zurich Letters, cciv. p. 431,) but we have never seen it, nor been able to learn of any approach to a similar work, except in some extracts in Schöttgenius, Hora Hebraicæ et Talmudica; Eisenmenger's Judaism Discovered, 1711; and the copious analysis in the Discourses of W. Wootton. There was an intention, upon the part of the late Czar of Russia to countenance a perfect version: but the death of the bold man Chiarini, who undertook the laborious task, frustrated the scheme; he published two preliminary volumes, however, at Paris in 1830. Surenhusius translated the Mishna in six folio volumes, (1698-1703.) Two excellent articles upon the Talmud appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, Nos. 201 and 207 for November, 1832, and for April, 1833. "The Talmuds are at this hour," the writer avers with truth, "the fount from which the immense multitude of Judaism draw all their knowledge of religion. They are the grand obstruction to light and knowledge, the fatal source of that stubborn resistance to sacred truth, and to the severest lessons of national suffering, which even in all the advances of later times keeps the Jew in irremediable darkness and inexorable chains." (Vol. xxxiii. p. 650.) In Massecheth Sopherim we are told that "the Bible is water, the Mishna is wine, but the Gemara is spiced wine." (Ib. xxii. 733.) Without touching on theology or entering into controversy, we shall proceed to lay before our readers some curious, and, we believe, novel features of their creed, which will not be without their value in exhibiting the temper of the Jews, and the credulity and obstinate constancy with which they cling to their glosses and vain traditions. The Jews believe in the coming of a Messiah, and pray GoD in their daily prayers that he may come quickly, and in their days; but they differ and dispute as to his person and the time of his advent. They generally believe that he will be an ordinary man of the people, but far superior to all others in every virtue; that he will marry and have children, who will succeed him in his kingdom. But Holy Scripture describes the Messiah under two characters: sometimes as a mortal, mean, poor, and abject; sometimes as a very great, all-powerful, and exalted personage. They, therefore, have invented two Messiahs: one the suffering Messiah, like the former, mean and poor, the son of Joseph, but a man of energy and a skilful general; the second the conquering monarch, the son of David, the true Messiah and King of Israel, who will go before them into Canaan. After their rejection of the adorable Redeemer, finding that no Messiah came, they distorted an old traditional prophecy of Elias, that after four thousand years from the creation the Advent would occur; and suggested as an addition that "the time was delayed |