DEDICATION.

...[pre]sumption regarding my own resources and abilities, which I know and feel to be very small. Instead, it was a certain destiny of Divine Providence—whose laws I have obeyed almost against my will and not without a certain resistance and hesitation—that brought this offspring original: "hunc foetum"; a common metaphor for a newborn book or intellectual work into the light. Since my younger years (I mention a fact not unknown to you), I was affected by a no small desire for making progress in Hebrew Literature Literis Hebræis: The study of the Hebrew language, its grammar, and the vast body of Jewish scholarly writing, the profession of which I was meant to adorn. With no less pleasure than effort, I turned over the works that the leading men in this science—drawing from the rites and ceremonies of the Hebrew nation—had produced with great diligence to illuminate the sacred practices of Christians. At last, my gaze remained fixed on the SYNAGOGUE, specifically its Form of Government and Administration of Sacred Rites, as it has been described elsewhere—though with many an error—by Lightfoot John Lightfoot (1602–1675), an English clergyman and scholar who was a pioneer in using Rabbinic literature to provide context for the New Testament.

I then began to compare these descriptions with what I encountered on the same subject in the works of Grotius, Selden, Petit, Cappell, and Burman A list of the greatest legal and theological minds of the 17th century, including Hugo Grotius and John Selden, who applied "oriental" or Hebrew scholarship to European law and theology. The latter, Frans Burman, was a most learned man who deserved highly of the Church and followed in their footsteps; at that time, his Nine Disputations on Synagogues existed, which were later published among his own Academic Exercises. To these, I added the few things I had gathered myself to illustrate that same material from the Codex Sopherim Massekhet Soferim: A minor tractate of the Talmud detailing the rules for scribes and the public reading of the Torah, the Kol Bo An anonymous 13th-century Hebrew legal compendium, and the definitions of Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, as they were arranged by Rabbi Karo Referring to the Shulchan Aruch, the most authoritative code of Jewish law, compiled by Joseph Karo based on the earlier work of Jacob ben Asher...