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to shew against us upon this subject, and we may expect deliverance from the afflictions we 'have laboured under, and may reasonably hope ' to live in peace.

'Written at Jareslow in presence of the rabbies, ' in the year of the world 5391.'

Meyer proceeds to state, that all the copies of the old editions were carefully concealed, and the new editions were printed according to the directions of this circular letter. The detection of. the omissions, and the consequent preference discovered by learned Christians for the old copies, furnished an opportunity for a masterpiece of rabbinical fraud. 'At length when the Chris'tians were observed to be more desirous of obtaining the former Cracow edition than the latter, the Jews thought of a scheme to deceive them, and to gain a great deal of money by it. They printed a number of copies on old paper ' and from an old type, resembling the paper ' and type of the former edition; and put the 'former date and the same binding. The Chris'tians believed the Jews, and purchased them readily at a great price: but there was no more 'to be found in them than in any of the new 'editions.'*

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The passages which Meyer asserts to have been omitted, appear to have contained the same accounts which have also been exhibited in a separate book, under the title of Toldoth Yeshu, purporting

* Meyer. Vera Generat. Immanuel. Hebr. et Latin. Amst. 1723. p. 72-75. Jewish Repos. vol. ii. p. 89, 90.

to be a history of the birth, life, and death of Jesus of Nazareth; of which a brief summary will be given in another part of this work.-A writer in the Jewish Repository* asserts, that ' a great number of these passages may be traced in a copy of the Talmud, deposited by the 'learned Selden in the Bodleian library, at Oxford, and in which an attempt has been made to 'obliterate them with ink.' By whom these obliterations were made or attempted, seems to be a matter of uncertainty. A learned Frenchman gives the following account, but without stating whence he derived it. In the public library at 'Oxford there is a copy of the Babylonian Talmud, printed at Venice in ten volumes folio, which belonged to Selden. This copy had been revised, 'conformably to the orders of the Inquisition, by a Capuchin, who has obliterated all the passages relating to the Messiah, the Virgin Mary, the Apostles and the Evangelists, and all the places 'that mention the Roman empire, which the Tal'mud calls The Kingdom of Impiety, or The Impious Kingdom. These obliterated passages

are wholly illegible: the ink has penetrated the paper, so that it is not possible even to read the words on the opposite page.' +

*Vol. iii. p. 3.

+ Michael de la Roche, Memoires Britan. tom. xiv. p. 492, apud Schoetgen. Horæ Heb. et Talmud. tom. ii. p. 840.

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CHAPTER V.

The Cabbala:-the Term explained:-Two Kinds, Theoretical and Practical:-The latter a mere System of magical Superstition.-The Theoretical Cabbala subdivided into two Species,-Symbolical and Literal.— Some Account of each.-Different Opinions of the Value and Use of the Cabbala.

It has

ONE of the principal branches of Modern Judaism, and that which its professors extol as the sublimest of all sciences, is the Cabbala. This word is of Hebrew origin, being derived from a root which signifies to receive. sometimes been used in a large sense, as comprehending all the explications, maxims, and ceremonies, which the Jews have received from their fathers; but is oftener employed in a more limited acceptation, to designate a species of theology and philosophy, very different from the civil and criminal, ritual and ecclesiastical traditions, which form the principal contents of the Mishna. The term Cabbala is generally applied to those mystical interpretations of the scripture, and metaphysical speculations concerning the Deity and other beings, which are found in many Jewish authors, and which are said to have been handed down by a secret tradition from the earliest ages.

To dignify the Cabbala with the sanction of high

* Buxtorf. Lex. Chald. Talm. & Rabb. col. 1453. Raym. Mart. Pug. Fid. p. 71. 709. Menasseh Ben Israel Conciliator, p. 169. Impress. A. D. 1643. Brucker. Hist. Crit. Philos. tom. ii. p. 832. 917.

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antiquity, it has been pretended that Moses was on mount Sinai for three several periods, of forty days each; that during the first period he received the Written Law, that during the second he was instructed in the Mishna, and that the last forty days were spent in the study of the Cabbala.* Spurious writings have been produced under the most venerable names. The apocryphal writer who assumes the character of Ezra, says: And my mouth was opened, and shut no more. The 'Most High gave understanding unto the five men, 'that they wrote the high things of the night, which they understood not. But in the night

they did eat bread; but I spake by day, and held 'not my tongue by night. In forty days they ' wrote two hundred and four books. And when 'the forty days were fulfilled, the Most High spake, saying, The first that thou hast written, publish ' openly, that the worthy and unworthy may read. But keep the last seventy, that thou mayest give them to the wise among thy people. For in ' them is the vein of understanding, and the foun'tain of wisdom, and the river of knowledge.'+ These seventy books have been supposed to contain a copious exposition of the Cabbalistic system; the vein of understanding being an ineffable theology concerning the supersubstantial Deity; the fountain of wisdom, an exact metaphysic concerning intelligible and angelic forms; and the river of knowledge, a very clear philosophy respecting natural things. Volumes have been

Menass. Conciliat. p. 170.

+ Book ii. c. 14. v. 41-47.

exhibited as some of this number, and represented as the genuine productions of Ezra, the inspired scribe; but without a shadow of evidence, either external or internal, to support such pretensions, or to redeem them from the censure of being contemptible forgeries of modern times.* With equal disregard of truth, and with superior effrontery, the Jews have attributed one Cabbalistic book to the patriarch Abraham; and another to Adam himself, or to an angel, called Rasiel, from whom they affirm that Adam received it.†

But dismissing these fictions, we find no Cabbalistic writings but what are evidently posterior to the destruction of the second temple. The most celebrated of them are the Sepher Jetsira, or Book of the Creation, and Sepher Zohar, or Book of Splendour. The former is the book which some Jews have ascribed to the patriarch Abraham; but others, with greater appearance of truth, attribute it to Akiba, a famous rabbi, who lost his life in the cause of Barchocheba, a false Messiah, in the reign of the Roman emperor Adrian. The author of the Zohar is said to have been a disciple of Akiba, Simeon Ben Jochai, whom the Jews consider as the prince of the Cabbalists, and to whose authority, in every point in which he is not contradicted by the Talmud, they render an implicit submission. Some learned men have doubted whether these books came from the hands of these rabbies, or

* Wolf. Bib. Heb, vol. i. p. 942. vol. ii. p. 1196. Leusden. Philol. Heb. Dis. xxvi. s. 15.

+ Bartoloc. Bib. Rab. tom. i. p. 15-80. Wolf. Bib. Heb. vol. i. p. 23. 111. Schoetgen. Horæ Heb. tom. ii. p. 44.