It cannot even be said that the learned Rabbinical class carried on a philosophic tradition, while the indigent multitude thus discredited their creed. In the period after the fall of Jerusalem, the narrow nationalism which had always ruled there seems to have been even intensified. In the Talmud "the most general representation of the Divine Being is as the chief Rabbi of Heaven; the angelic host being his assessors. The heavenly Sanhedrim takes the opinion of living sages in cases of dispute. Of the twelve hours of the day three are spent by God in study, three in the government of the world (or rather in the exercise of mercy), three in providing food for the world, and three in playing with Leviathan. But since the destruction of Jerusalem all amusements were banished from the courts of heaven, and three hours were employed in the instruction of those who had died in infancy." [393] So little can a nominal monotheism avail, on the basis of a completed Sacred Book, to keep thought sane when freethought is lacking. Finally, Judaism played in the world's thought the great reactionary and obscurantist part by erecting into a dogma the irrational conception that its deity made the universe "out of nothing." At the time of the redaction of the book of Genesis this dogma had not been glimpsed: the Hebrew conception was the Babylonian--that of a pre-existent Chaos put into shape. But gradually, in the interests of monotheism, the anti-scientific doctrine was evolved [394] by way of negative to that of the Gentiles; and where the great line of Ionian thinkers passed on to the modern world the developed conception of an eternal universe, [395] Judaism passed on through Christianity, as well as in its own "philosophy," the contrary dogma, to bar the way of later science. CHAPTER V FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE