It is pleasing to be able to make this last assertion. The Letter of Aristeas purports to tell the story how the Greek translation of the Pentateuch was made in Alexandria. We are not now concerned with the story itself. But, as we have already seen, it was this Letter which induced De Rossi to write his book. The book, after a short section on the Ferrara earthquake, in which the author collects much Jewish and non-Jewish seismological lore, goes straight to Aristeas. Now, it would be a somewhat unfortunate fact if Jewish criticism began with the acceptance of a forgery, if the father of all our modern scholars (including Zunz himself) had started off with a bad critical mistake. We are spared this anomaly, for though Aristeas may not be as old as it claims (the third century B. C. E.), it is demonstrably older than its assailants made it out to be. De Rossi is far nearer the truth than Graetz. Of course, we do not now turn to De Rossi for our critical nourishment. Though editions of the _Meor ‘Enayim_ continued to appear as late as 1866 (in fact one of the author’s books appeared for the first time in London in 1854), his works are substantially obsolete. For this reason I am not attempting any close account of their contents. But while it is antiquated in this sense, it is a book of the class that can never become unimportant. For let us realize what De Rossi accomplished. In the first place he directed Jewish attention to the Jewish literature preserved or written in Greek. He re-introduced Philo to Jewish notice; not very accurately, it is true, yet he _did_ re-introduce him. Secondly, he showed how much was to be derived from a study of non-Jewish sources. No one, after De Rossi, has for a moment thought it possible to deal with Jewish history entirely from Jewish records. Every available material must be drawn on if we are to construct a sound edifice. It is a just verdict of Graetz’s that De Rossi’s “power of reconstruction was small.” But he showed subsequent generations how to build. De Rossi, finally, was not one who regarded Jewish literature merely as the subject matter for research. He was intensely interested in it for its own sake. He was a poet as well as a historian. And this he shows both by his whole style and outlook as well as by the Hebrew and Italian verses that he wrote. He was, indeed, known both as Azariah and as Bonajuto, the latter being the Italian equivalent. Let us end with this fact: the same man, who inaugurated modern Jewish criticism, added some notable hymns to the synagogue prayer-book. GUARINI AND LUZZATTO