The next writer referred to, to prove that the followers of Jesus were a prey to credulity and superstition, is Josephus, in his narrative of the signs which preceded the destruction of Jerusalem. To what extent Josephus embellished these signs may be a question. Most of them have a very heathen aspect, and it is unquestionable that he was much disposed to conciliate his heathen readers. It is sufficient to observe that the pages of the New Testament contain nothing resembling them. But the chief source whence these ineffable puerilities are derived, and charged on the contemporaries of our Lord, and through them on the writers of the New Testament, is the Talmud. Probably there are no writings in existence from which a more monstrous set of absurdities can be collected than from those of the Talmudists. But how does this prove that this mass of nonsense was believed in by the Jewish nation in our Lord’s day? One portion of the Talmud, the Mishna, was composed between A.D. 180 and A.D. 200, or some years after the date assigned by unbelievers to the Fourth Gospel. The lateness of this date is urged by them as conclusive proof that that Gospel does not embody the real traditions of the early followers of Jesus. How then can it be urged with any thing like consistency that the Mishna adequately represents their views respecting the order of nature? But the other portion of the Talmud, the Gemara, was not put forth in a written form prior to A.D. 500. To quote works thus remote in time as proofs of the superstitions of the followers of Jesus, is to adopt a course which if applied generally to history, would reduce it to a tissue of falsehoods. Bishop Jewell was a believer in witchcraft; but it would be absurd if some future writer were to quote the writings of modern spiritualists as a proof that he believed in their doctrines. Nor is it true that the opinions of the masses of a nation are at all adequately represented by those of its learned men, especially when learning, as in the case in question, assumed the most unbounded licence of speculation. In most cases the common sense of the masses who are brought into contact with the hard facts of daily life will preserve them from puerilities, into which learning, which draws exclusively on the imagination, is certain to fall. There is sufficient evidence of the superstition of the masses during the middle ages; but nothing would be more absurd than to quote some monstrous opinions held by the great scholastic writers to prove that they were the current opinions of the vulgar. Yet the principle here adopted is to adduce opinions propounded by learned writers, who lived centuries afterwards, as a proof that they were current among the entire Jewish race at the time of Jesus Christ.