a class of doctors among the modern Jews, who weakened the authority of the Talmud by their doubts and conjectures. They were sometimes termed Opinionists. It is said that rabbi Josi was the founder of the sect about twenty-four years before the Talmud was finished. He had some celebrated successors who became heads of the academies of Sora and Pumbaditha. But as these two famous academies were shut up by order of the king of Persia, the sect of the Sabureans became extinct about seventy-four years after its establishment.