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 in the year before Christ 1636.

Judah Hakkadosh, or the Saint, a rabbi celebrated for his learning and riches, who 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 twenty-six years after the destruction of the temple, in a book which he called Misnia, the constitutions and traditions of the Jewish magistrates who had preceded him. But as this book was short and obscure, two Babylonian rabbins, Rabina and Asc, collected all the interpretations, disputes, and additions, which had been made upon the Misnia until their time, and formed the book called the Babylonian Talmud or Gemara, which is preferable to the Jerusalem Talmud, composed some years before by Rabbi Johoan of Jerusalem. The Misnia is the text of the Talmud, of which there is a good edition in Hebrew and Latin by Surenhusius, with notes, in three vols. folio. It were to be wished that as much had been done for 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 eastern boundary was the Jordan; on the west it had the Mediterranean in common with the Danites, if we except some places taken by the kings of Israel, which had been recovered by the Philistines and others; on the south its limits seem to have been contracted under Hadad, of the royal family of Edom (1 Kings xi. 14).

Tribe of Judah, one of the twelve divisions of Palestine by tribes (Josh. xv), having Idumea on the south, from the extremity of the Lake Asphaltites, and also the wilderness of Zin, Cadesbarnea, and the brook or river of Egypt;