homiletic with copious use of parable, and legalistic with an eye
to the regulation of conduct. Then came the _Talmud_ in two
recensions, the Palestinian and the Babylonian, the latter completed
about 500 A.D. For some centuries afterwards the Geonim (heads of the
Rabbinical Universities in Persia) continued to analyse and define
the legal prescriptions and ritual of Judaism, adding and changing in
accord with the needs of the day; for Tradition was a living, fluid
thing. Then in the eleventh century Isaac of Fez (Alfasi) formulated
a guide to Talmudic Law, and about a hundred years later (1180)
Maimonides produced his _Strong Hand_, a Code of law and custom
which influenced Jewish life ever after. Other codifications were made;
but finally, in the sixteenth century, Joseph Caro (mystic and legalist)
compiled the _Table Prepared_ (_Shulchan Aruch_), which, with
masterly skill, collected the whole of the traditional law, arranged
it under convenient heads in chapters and paragraphs, and carried down
to our own day the Rabbinic conception of life. Under this Code, with
more or less relaxation, the great bulk of Jews still live. But the
revolt against it, or emancipation from it, is progressing every year,
for the olden Jewish conception of religion and the old Jewish theory
of life are, as hinted above, becoming seriously undermined.

Now in what precedes there has been some intentional ambiguity in
the use of the word Law. Much of the misunderstanding of Judaism has
arisen from this ambiguity. 'Law' is in no adequate sense what the Jews
themselves understood by the nomism of their religion. In modern times
Law and Religion tend more and more to separate, and to speak of Judaism
as Law _eo ipso_ implies a divorce of Judaism from Religion. The
old antithesis between letter and spirit is but a phase of the same
criticism. Law must specify, and the lawyer interprets Acts of Parliament
by their letter; he refuses to be guided by the motives of the Act, he