It is instructive to compare with the sage’s text two commentaries of his editions. One of them assures us that, no longer persecuted by Pope and Kaiser or Christian community, “with no mark of civic distinction denied the Jews, they will soon become absorbed into the larger Christian communities, surrounded by whom they now dwell in all the countries of Europe; they will finally disappear, and leave only historical records of their existence.” At present, however, Judaism bids fair to rise above and to survive Christianity. In B. Auerbach’s _Leben Spinozas_ we are told that the immediate cause which to Spinoza suggested this “curious persuasion” (the restoration of the Jews) may have been this, that a certain Sabbathai Zewi,[33] who had lately appeared in Greece, caused such a commotion amongst his co-religionists as at one time to make their regeneration and reconstitution into a sovereignty appear not impossible. [33] [Better known under the popular form Cevi.] CHAPTER IV THE JEW AND THE TALMUD The present chapter contains many an assertion which will make the expert Talmudist smile. It will, however, serve one most useful purpose--namely, to show what the Christians and Muslims of the East hold to be the belief of the Hebrew race and the practices of men dwelling within the same walls as themselves. That this hostility to the Eastern Jews is no mere unreasoning prejudice, but is founded in some sort on fact, the following brief survey of the Rabbinical and Talmudic writings will show. A people which has such a vindictive Oral Law is sure to excite the spirit of retaliation, for obviously the Law exists not merely in letter, but in the spirit. In a notorious trial in Damascus within living memory, which roused the anti-Jewish feeling in that city and indeed throughout Syria to a frenzy, certain learned doctors brought into court as evidence a number of manuscripts and printed books. It was remarked that the texts were full of lacunæ. This was explained by the fact that they are so written, since Europe began to read the Rabbinical and Talmudic writings, for the purpose of concealing what might excite odium. The divines supply the omissions by inserting them in writing, or preferably by committing them to memory. Thus they suppress offensive sectarian words, such as Goi (plural Goyím), the wicked, the forgetful of God--that is to say, Gentiles in general, including Christians and Muslims; Miním, or Karaïte Jews; Kuthim, Samaritans; Nakhrím, strangers or infidels, corresponding with the Arabic Káfirin, or the Turkish Giaour; and Ndoyyím, or Mesúmedím, in Arabic Mahrúmín or Murtaddín, the excommunicated. And it is evident that they had good reasons for this prudence; the Seder Adarhout, for instance, enumerates with the object of refuting them many foul crimes attributed to the Jews.