t has been
banned, it has been excommunicated, it has been made the subject of
popish bulls; but it was in the sixteenth century that the Benedictine
Monks made a particular determined effort to destroy it. Fortunately
they knew not the times. It was the age of Humanism, the forerunner of
the Reformation, and the Talmud found its ablest defender in the great
Christian humanist, John Reuchlin. He was the one first to tell his
co-religionists, "Do not condemn the Talmud before you understand it.
Burning is no argument. Instead of burning all Jewish literature, it
were better to found chairs in the universities for its exposition." The
cause of liberality and light gained the day, and the printing-press
decided the perpetuation of the Talmud.

In the second stage of its persecution the censor figures. His
Philistine pen passed ruthlessly over everything that seemed to hint at
criticism of the Church; but not content with expunging the heretical
and the inferentially heretical, the censor at times went even so far as
to erase sentiments particularly lofty, in order that the Talmud should
not have the credit of expounding noble doctrine, nor the Jew the
advantage of studying it.

But the latest stage of its persecution belongs to more modern days,
when inquisitions were out of date and monkish claws were cut. The
traducer would spitefully engage the services of some renegade Jew, to
gather from the Talmud all portions and passages that might seem
grotesque and ridiculous, so that the world might form an unfavorable
impression of the Talmud and of the people who treasure it. This has
been done with so much success that up till very recently the Gentile
world, including the Christian clergy, knew of the Talmud only through
these unfortunate perversions and caricatures. Imagine the citation of a
chapter from _Leviticus_ and one from _Chronicles_, of some vindictive
passages in the _Psalms_, of a few skeptical bits in _Ecclesiastes_ and
_Job_, and one or two of the barbaric stories in _Judges_, to be offered
to the world as a fair picture of the Bible, and you will understand the
sort of treatment the Talmud has received from the world at large and
the kind of estimate it has been given opportunity to form.

What is the value of the Talmud for the Jew? Certainly its greatest
value was rendered in the Middle Ages, when literature was scant and
copies of the few books in existence were rarer. When the Jew was shut
out of the wo