“Ne credant se ex Talmude multum in antiquitatibus Hebraicis profecturos. Nam ubi Judæi, post destructionem templi, inter se adhuc disputant, quomodo hæc vel illa res suscipienda fuerit, quam tuto horum decisioni credas, qui te multo quam antea incertiorem relinquunt.” Schöttgen. Hor. Heb. ii. 804. The descriptions given by travellers of the present manners of the people of Palestine, Syria, and Arabia, have furnished another and less fallacious means of completing the picture of Jewish life. Allied to the children of Israel, according to the testimony of Scripture and their own traditions, by a common origin, and experiencing little change from age to age, these nations still present the strongest conformity with the manners described in the Bible; nor has any thing contributed more to its illustration, than the use which modern critics have made of oriental voyages and travels. The Arab Sheikh, among his flocks and herds, recalls the very image of patriarchal times; allowing for the change which religion has made, the mourning and the festivity, the diet, dress, and habitation, of the present natives of these regions, will be found nearly what they were two thousand years ago. It is true, that we advance a step further, when, from the present state of the east, we describe what it was at this distant period, than when we merely illustrate scriptural allusions from modern oriental manners: but among the various descriptions which might be given, _that_ will be nearest to the truth which is most accordant with the known usages of eastern nations; and though this presumption can never amount to a positive proof of its accuracy, the reader is not misled, provided he is informed on what he relies. The author has also occasionally attributed some of the practices of the modern Jews to their ancestors of the Asmonean period; and, perhaps, the singular inflexibility which characterises the manners not less than the faith of this people, may justify him in so doing.