Moses also, in his expositions upon the Pentateuch, and most of the Talmudists, have followed the rules of the same art.

Views of Talmudists.

Prominent in the earlier recorded discussions of the centuries concerning the admissibility of the lie, are those of the Jewish Talmudists and of the Christian Fathers.

On the other hand, Hamburger cites Rabbi Ishmael, one of the Talmudists, as teaching that a Jew might transgress even the prohibition of idolatry (and lying is, according to Talmudic teaching, equivalent to idolatry) in order to save his life, provided the act was not done in public.

E. Of the Rabbinists or Talmudists.

The Jewish Talmudists take upon them to determine how God spends his whole time, sometimes playing with Leviathan, sometimes overseeing the world, &c., like Lucian's Jupiter, that spent much of the year in painting butterflies' wings, and seeing who offered sacrifice; telling the hours when it should rain, how much snow should fall in such a place, which way the wind should stand in Greece, which way in Africa.

The second would consist of puerilities and anilities, some impossible, most incredible; and all so silly, so sensual, as to befit a dreaming Talmudist, not a Scriptural Christian.

As a matter of fact the Song of Songs was long held to be so objectionable that the Talmudists did not allow young people to read it before their thirtieth year.

The Cabalists and Talmudists have enveloped it in a host of mystical superstitions, most of which are as absurd as they are incredible, but all of them tending to show the great veneration that has always been paid to it.

The Talmudists had a saying that the threefold repetition of the words "Temple of Jehovah," in the seventh chapter and fourth verse of the book of Jeremiah, was intended to allude to the existence of three temples; and hence in one of their treatises it is said, "Two temples have been destroyed, but the third will endure forever," in which it is manifest that they referred to the temple of the immortal soul in man.

The Hebrew Talmudists, who thought as much of this stone, and had as many legends concerning it as the masonic Talmudists, called it eben shatijah or "Stone of Foundation," because, as they said, it had been laid by Jehovah as the foundation of the world; and hence the apocryphal book of Enoch speaks of the "stone which supports the corners of the earth.

The Hebrew Talmudists, who thought as much of this stone, and had as many legends concerning it as the masonic Talmudists, called it eben shatijah or "Stone of Foundation," because, as they said, it had been laid by Jehovah as the foundation of the world; and hence the apocryphal book of Enoch speaks of the "stone which supports the corners of the earth.

The Arabians have a science called Ism Allah, or the science of the name of God; and the Talmudists and Rabbins have written copiously on the same subject.

The Cabalists and Talmudists enveloped it in a host of superstitions.

The Talmudists make the same allusions to the superiority of the east.