From these returns, which, it may be assumed, are neither much in excess nor much short of the actual amount, the total number of professing Jews at the present time appears to be somewhat less than seven millions—the very number which, so far as it is possible to determine, was that of the Jewish people when the Lord became incarnate upon earth. Can any man realize this astonishing fact, and yet doubt the living miracle which the history of the Jews presents? ‘How many generations of mankind Have risen and fallen asleep, Yet it remains the same!’ FOOTNOTES: [230] 2 Sam. xxiv. 9. [231] 1 Chron. xxi. 5. [232] Adam Clarke. [233] 1 Kings xii. 21. [234] 2 Chron. xiii. 3. [235] Joseph., _Ant._ xi. 3, § 10. [236] Ezra ii. 64; Nehem. vii. 66. [237] Joseph., _Bell. Jud._ vi. 9, § 3. [238] Tac. _Hist._ v. 13. [239] This is the most probable explanation of the smallness of his estimate of the numbers in the city during the siege. The ordinary population would probably be about the amount he gives. [240] Joseph., _Bell. Jud._ iii. 3, § 2. [241] Diodor. Sic. xl. _Eclog._ 1. [242] Strabo xvi. 2, § 28. [243] Tacitus, _Hist._ v. 8. [244] Dion Cass. lxix. 14. Dion makes the astonishing assertion that Adrian destroyed nearly 1000 towns κῶμαι ὀνομαστοτόται in Palestine, besides fortresses. [245] Philo, _Legat. ad Gaium_, § 36. [246] The increase of population is said by those who have made the subject their study, to be 1/227 annually, or according to others, 1/223. [247] This is probably too low an estimate. In a census taken in 1808, there were 80,000 Jews in France; and there has been nothing to check their increase. Their number is more probably 100,000. _APPENDIX II._ THE TALMUDS. The word Talmud has several meanings, which are most nearly rendered by ‘study,’ or ‘learning.’ There are two books so called—the Jerusalem and the Babylonian. Each of these is made up of two parts—the Mishna, or repetition,—it being, as it were, a reissue of the Mosaic law,—and the Gemara, or complement, the critical expansion of the Mishna. The Mishna of both Talmuds is the same, the Gemaras different: that of the Babylonian being the larger as well as the more diversified. They are encyclopædias of the Jewish knowledge of their day, and deal with civil and criminal, as well as moral and religious questions, law, science, metaphysics, history, and general literature.