knowledge; and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.” (Isaiah v. 11-13.) And so Moses commands the parents that should they have a son “a glutton and a drunkard,” to bring him to justice, and to have him stoned. (Deut. xxi. 20.) The Talmud, then, manifestly contradicts the Old Testament; it therefore cannot speak truth when it narrates that God wrought a miracle in order to save a drunkard and a murderer from that punishment, which He had himself commanded to be visited upon either of these crimes. The story of the miracle is therefore a palpable falsehood, contradictory to the law of Moses, and derogatory to the honour of God. How, then, can the Talmud be of God? If you attempt to distinguish, as some do, between the Talmud and the oral law, and say that though the Talmud contains the oral law, yet it is not all inspired, then we ask, how can you rely upon the testimony of a witness convicted of wilful, gross, and flagrant falsehood? If you do not believe in the above miracle of the drunken Rabba, you denounce it as a liar. If it lie, then, upon this solemn occasion in relating a miracle, in handing down the law of God, how can you depend upon it at all? If it does not scruple to forge miracles, what warrant have you for believing that it does not forge laws also? But suppose, which is far more probable, that Rabbi Zira, when killed by Rabba, had not come to life again, would Rabba, in the eye of the modern Jewish law, be considered as a murderer, and guilty of death, or as an innocent person, who might safely be permitted to go at large, and pursue his usual avocations? This is a question well deserving an answer from some of your learned men, and naturally suggested by some principles asserted and implied in the following decisions of the oral law:— קריאת המגלה בזנה מצות עשה מדברי סופרים , והדברים ידועים שהיא תקנת הנביאים , והכל חייבים בקריאתה , אנשים ונשים וגרים ועבדים משוחררים , ומחנכין את הקטנים לקריאתה , ואפילו כהנים בעבודמן מבטלין עבודתן ובאין לשמוע מקרא מגלה , וכן מבטלין תלמוד תורה לשמוע מקרא מגלה , קל וחומר לשאר מצוות של תורה שכולן נדחין מפני מקרא מגלה , ואין לך דבר שנדחה מקרא מגלה מפניו חוץ ממה מצוה שאין לו קוברים שהפוגע בו קוברו תחלה ואחר כך קורא ׃