The working of these and other laws governing the evolution of
sacred literature is very clearly seen in the great rabbinical
schools which flourished at Jerusalem, Tiberias, and elsewhere,
after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, and
especially as we approach the time of Christ. These schools
developed a subtlety in the study of the Old Testament which seems
almost preternatural. The resultant system was mainly a jugglery
with words, phrases, and numbers, which finally became a "sacred
science," with various recognised departments, in which
interpretation was carried on sometimes by attaching a numerical
value to letters; sometimes by interchange of letters from
differently arranged alphabets; sometimes by the making of new
texts out of the initial letters of the old; and with
ever-increasing subtlety.
Such efforts as these culminated fitly in the rabbinical declaration
that each passage in the law has seventy distinct meanings, and that
God himself gives three hours every day to their study.
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