Tractatus de imposturis et ceremoniis Iudaeorum nostri temporis

continues from previous page: In plain sight, it is placed before our eyes, since they seem to themselves sufficiently and more than learned, if they grasp the mysteries of the Talmud the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the explanations of the Shem ha-Mephorash the Ineffable Name of God. Yet these books teem with so many impostures, most putrid lies, and horrible blasphemies that they seem to exceed even human belief. They are surely graphically depicted by Isaiah, who compares them to broken pottery, the fragments of which would be unsuitable for holding water, fire, or anything similar. Hosea agrees with this in chapter 1, when at the command of the Lord, he gives his son, who bears the type of the Israelite people, the name Lo-Ammi not my people. For he says, "He is not my people, nor am I their God." Therefore, that false and vain glory falls away, by which they boast that they are born of Abraham, to whom the Lord deigned to bestow the law, circumcision, and the blessed land flowing with milk and honey. Since they have long since been deprived of these. They bear only some likeness and appearance of Jews, being in reality worse than the Saracens. By what name, you ask, do you think they should finally be distinguished, by what proper and certain word should they be called? Truly, I do not hesitate to call them Talmudists, Cabalists, Mahometists, and finally the paid soldiers of the lies of Satan, more than the vanguard of his army. For they are depicted in these colors by Matthew in chapter 3, John in chapter 8, and the Lord in Revelation 2.

The reason for these names is this: The Hebrew teachers and Rabbis, having infected and corrupted the true and genuine meaning of the sacred books, have invented a special book for themselves, which is called the Talmud the central text of Rabbinic Judaism. It is not easy to say what dire and horrible blasphemies and insults against Christ it contains. For, like the venom of a swollen dragon, they vomit and pour out all the poison of their bitterness in one place against the Lord, and, as rivals of the Alcoran the Quran and the Mahometists, they introduce the observance of so many festivals and ceremonies that they value their own invention far more and greater than the very law of Moses, which they impiously violate in this manner. Therefore, let them be called Talmudists followers of the Talmud, a name transferred from the book to its students, who attribute more faith to traditions produced by the instinct of Satan than to the eternal and inviolable truth of God through Moses, the Prophets, and the Apostles.