The Talmud. By Joseph Barclay, LL.D. (John Murray.)—When the. late
Emmanuel Deutsch wrote his famous article on the Talmud, he dealt with a subject about which most educated people had but the very vaguest ideas. He naturally presented in a favourable light the great literary work of his nation, and in a measure succeeded in rehabilitating it. Its value was for a time as much exaggerated as it had been before unduly depreciated. Since then a reaction has taken place. We do not sea that Mr. Barclay has been other than fair in his treatment of the subject. On the whole, indeed, his view is unfavourable. "Speaking generally," ho says of the Talmud in his preface, " it has proved injurious to those who have submitted to its authority, and bowed to the dictum that 'the Bible is like water, the Mishna is like wine, and the Gemara is like spiced wine.' " It is very true that the New Testament has been very much obscured by the work of its interpreters, and that technical theology, whether of the Calvin- ist or the Sacerdotal school, stands very far away from the New Testament. But there is nothing in the history or present condition of Christianity as regards the Scriptures quite like the position of the Talmud. This position, with its practical results, Dr. Barclay has examined with much care. A long residence in the East and great study gave him the op- portunity of doing so. He does not, on the one hand, pick out its weak- nesses for comment, nor does he so dress it up by judicious omissions that the whole appears other than it is. He gives us eighteen " Mishna Treatises," and in an appendix notes on some special subjects, such as "Modern Judaism," " The Jewish Feasts," " The Sanhedrim," Sc.
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