Moses is regarded not only as the greatest religious guide of Israel,
but also as its first national leader; he is "the wisest (If the wise,
the father of the prophets," as well as " king in Jeshiurun, when the
heads of the people and the tribes of Israel gathered together."
hence his unique position in Jewish legend, neither Abraham, the
friend of God, nor Solomon, the wisest of all men, nor Elijah, the
helper in time of need. can lay claim to such a position.

Great religious and national institutions like the Sabbath, the
sanctuary, and many other " commandments of God revealed to
Moses " stand in a special relation to his life and work. The
sanctification of the Sabbath became quite a living thing to him
through the miracle of the Manna, and the first sanctuary was
actually erected by Moses. The life of Moses ceased, therefore, to
be a thing of the past and became closely interwoven with the
every-day life of the nation.

The most natural way for the popular mind to connect existing
conditions with the past is the symbolic method. The present
volume contains, therefore, a number of symbolic explanations of
certain laws, as, for instance, the symbolical significance of the
Tabernacle, which, properly speaking, do not belong to the domain
of legend. The life of Moses, as conceived by Jewish legend,
would, however, have been in complete if the lines between
Legend and Symbolism had been kept too strictly. With this
exception the arrangement and presentation of the material in the
third volume is the same as that in the two preceding ones.

LOUIS G1NZBERG.
NEW YORK, March 2, 1911