sojourn in Babylon is mentioned as a reason why the Shekhinah could not rest upon a certain Rabbi.] that the Babylonians were stupid, proud, and poor ('they ate bread upon bread'), [3 Pes. 34 b; Men. 52 a; Sanh. 24 a; Bets. 16 a, apud Neubauer, Geog. du Talmud, p. 323. In Keth. 75 a, they are styled the 'silly Babylonians.' See also Jer. Pes. 32 a.] even they had to acknowledge that, 'when the Law had fallen into oblivion, it was restored by Ezra of Babylon; when it was a second time forgotten, Hillel the Babylonian came and recovered it; and when yet a third time it fell into oblivion, Rabbi Chija came from Babylon and gave it back once more.' [4 Sukk. 20 a. R. Chija, one of the teachers of the second century, is among the most.celebrated Rabbinical authorities, around whose memory legend has thrown a special halo.] Such then was that Hebrew dispersion which, from the first, constituted Such then was that Hebrew dispersion which, from the first, constituted really the chief part and the strength of the Jewish nation, and with which its religious future was also to lie. For it is one of those strangely significant, almost symbolical, facts in history, that after the destruction of Jerusalem the spiritual supremacy of Palestine passed to Babylonia, and that Rabbinical Judaism, under the stress of political adversity, voluntarily transferred itself to the seats of Israel's ancient dispersion, as if to ratify by its own act what the judgment of God had formerly executed. But long before that time the Babylonian 'dispersion' had already stretched out its hands in every direction. Northwards, it had spread through Armenia, the Caucasus, and to the shores of the Black Sea, and through Media to those of the Caspian. Southwards, it had extended to the Persian Gulf and through the vast extent of Arabia, although Arabia Felix and the land of the Homerites may have received their first Jewish colonies from the opposite shores of Ethiopia.