time, but the bent of its activity was determined by the past.

Men craved entertainment in later times as well as in the
earlier, only instead of resorting for its subject-matter to what
happened under their eyes, they drew from the fountain-head of
the past. The events in the ancient history of Israel, which was
not only studied, but lived over again daily, stimulated the
desire to criticize it. The religious reflections upon nature
laid down in the myths of the people, the fairy tales, which have
the sole object of pleasing, and the legends, which are the
people's verdict upon history--all these were welded into one
product. The fancy of the Jewish people was engaged by the past
reflected in the Bible, and all its creations wear a Biblical hue
for this reason. This explains the peculiar form of the Haggadah.

But what is spontaneously brought forth by the people is often
preserved only in the form impressed upon it by the feeling and
the thought of the poet, or by the speculations of the learned.
Also Jewish legends have rarely been transmitted in their
original shape. They have been perpetuated in the form of
Midrash, that is, Scriptural exegesis. The teachers of the
Haggadah, called Rabbanan d'Aggadta in the Talmud, were no
folklorists, from whom a faithful reproduction of legendary
material may be expected. Primarily they were homilists, who used
legends for didactic purposes, and their main object was to
establish a close connection between the Scripture and the
creations of the popular fancy, to give the latter a firm basis
and secure a long term of life for them.

One of the most important tasks of the modern investigation of