But of the fact of the change there was no doubt. For the old Hebrew
seers were men dealing with the loftiest and deepest laws: the Rabbis
were shallow pedants. The old Hebrew seers were righteous and virtuous
men: the Rabbis became, in due time, some of the worst and wickedest
men who ever trod this earth.

Thus they too had their share in that downward career of pedantry which
we have seen characterise the whole past Alexandrine age. They, like
Zenodotus and Aristarchus, were commentators, grammarians, sectarian
disputers: they were not thinkers or actors. Their inspired books were
to them no more the words of living human beings who had sought for the
Absolute Wisdom, and found it after many sins and doubts and sorrows.
The human writers became in their eyes the puppets and mouthpieces of
some magical influence, not the disciples of a living and loving person.
The book itself was, in their belief, not in any true sense inspired,
but magically dictated--by what power they cared not to define. His
character was unimportant to them, provided He had inspired no nation
but their own. But, thought they, if the words were dictated, each of
them must have some mysterious value. And if each word had a mysterious
value, why not each letter? And how could they set limits to that
mysterious value? Might not these words, even rearrangements of the
letters of them, be useful in protecting them against the sorceries of
the heathen, in driving away those evil spirits, or evoking those good
spirits, who, though seldom mentioned in their early records, had after
their return from Babylon begun to form an important part of their
unseen world? For as they had lost faith in the One Preserver of their
race, they had filled up the void by a ponderous demonology of
innumerable preservers. This process of thought was not confined to
Alexandria. Dr. Layard, in his last book on Nineveh, gives some curious
instances of its prevalence among them at an earlier period, well worth