The Talmud

Tryon Edwards, ïu Kcribner's Montfily, says: The Jews, Protestants and Romanists all agree in receiving as canonical the books' of Old Testament. But as the Boinanists woulil add to these tlie apocryphal books, so the Jews insist on adding their oral IffiW. They say Üiat when tlio written law was given to Moses, inscribed on tivo tables of stone, God also gave another and verbal law explanatory of the flrst, wliicll he was commanded 'not to commit to writing, btlt to deliver down by oral tradition. When Moses camc down from the Mount, they teil ns that he flrst repeated this orallaw to Aaron and his sons, and then to the seventy, and finally to all the people, each of whom was obliged to repeat it in his hearing, to insure its correct remenibrance. Jnst before his death, they say, he spent a month and six days in repeating it to them again; and then, they assert, he committed it in a special manner to Joshua, through whom it was imparted to Phineas, and so on tlirough the long line of propliets, and afterward of teachers, down to the time of Judah the Holy, who lived in the second centnry, by whom it was committed to writíílg lebt it should be lost. This work, consisting of six books, is the famons Mishna of tlie Jews, whieh, with its Gemara, or commentaries, constitutes their celebrated Talmud, in which is comprehended all their leamiug and much of their religión as a people. The whole work is held by them in far hia-her esteem than the Bible, so mueh so, that they say the Bible is water but fchc Talmud! is wine; and tliey even declare that lic ytho fttodiet the Bible when he might read the Talmud does but waste Iris tintó ; and that to sin aguinst the bitter is far worso than to sin against the former. Bo implicit is thoir confidence in this oral law that it i almost nseless to reason with a Jew out of the Old Testami'iit; for he is ever ready with an ans-wer f rom the Talmud, with the authority of which he is flillj atisfied.