the fourth son of Jacob, and father of the chief of the tribes of the Jews, distinguished by his name, and honoured by giving birth to the Messiah, died 1636 B.C.

Judah Hakkadosh, or the Saint, a rabbi celebrated for his learning and riches, lived in the time of the emperor Antoninus, and was the friend and preceptor of that prince. Leo of Modena, a rabbi of Venice, tells us, that Rabbi Judah, who was very rich, collected about 26 years after the destruction of the temple, in a book which he called the Mifnia, the constitutions and traditions of the Jewish magistrates who preceded him. But as this book was short and obscure, two Babylonian rabbis, Rabbina and Afe, collected all the interpretations, disputes, and additions, that had been made until their time upon the Mifnia, and formed the book called the Babylonish Talmud or Gemara; which is preferable to the Jerusalem Talmud, composed some years before by Rabbi Johanan of Jerusalem. The Mifnia is the text of the Talmud; of which we have a good edition in Hebrew and Latin by Surenhusius, with notes, in 3 vols folio. It were to be wished the fame had been done to the Gemara.

The Kingdom of Judah was of small extent compared with that of the kingdom of Israel; consisting only of two tribes, Benjamin and Judah: its east boundary, the Jordan; the Mediterranean its west, in common with the Danites, if we except some places recovered by the Philistines, and others taken by the kings of Israel; on the south, its limits seem to have been contracted under Hadad of the royal progeny of Edom, (1 Kings xi. 14.)

Tribe of Judah, one of the 12 divisions of Palestine by tribes (Josh. xv.), having Idumea on the south, from the extremity of the Lacus Asphaltites, also the Wilderness of Zin, Cadebarne, and the brook or river of Egypt; on the east, the said lake; on the west the Mediterranean; and on the north, the mouth of the said lake; where it receives the Jordan, Bethfemes, Thinna, quite to Ekron on the sea.