Exegesis of this sort is not the characteristic of any single circle, people or century; unscientific methods of biblical interpretation have prevailed from Philo's treatment of the Pentateuch to modern apologetic interpretations of Genesis, ch. i.[5] The Kabbalah itself is but an extreme and remarkable development of certain forms of thought which had never been absent from Judaism; it is bound up with earlier tendencies to mysticism, with man's inherent striving to enter into communion with the Deity. To seek its sources would be futile. The Pythagorean theory of numbers, Neoplatonic ideas of emanation, the Logos, the personified Wisdom, Gnosticism--these and many other features combine to show the antiquity of tendencies which, clad in other shapes, are already found in the old pre-Christian Oriental religions.[6] In its more mature form the Kabbalah belongs to the period when medieval Christian mysticism was beginning to manifest itself (viz. in Eckhart, towards end of 13th century); it is an age which also produced the rationalism of Maimonides (q.v.). Although some of its foremost exponents were famous Talmudists, it was a protest against excessive intellectualism and Aristotelian scholasticism. It laid stress, not on external authority, as did the Jewish law, but on individual experience and inward meditation. "The mystics accorded the first place to prayer, which was considered as a mystical progress towards God, demanding a state of ecstasy."[7] As a result, some of the finest specimens of Jewish devotional literature and some of the best types of Jewish individual character have been Kabbalist.[8] On the other hand, the Kabbalah has been condemned, and nowhere more strongly than among the Jews themselves. Jewish orthodoxy found itself attacked by the more revolutionary aspects of mysticism and its tendencies to alter established customs. While the medieval scholasticism denied the possibility of knowing anything unattainable by reason, the spirit of the Kabbalah held that the Deity could be realized, and it sought to bridge the gulf. Thus it encouraged an unrestrained emotionalism, rank superstition, an unhealthy asceticism, and the employment of artificial means to induce the ecstatic state. That this brought moral laxity was a stronger reason for condemning the Kabbalah, and the evil effects of nervous degeneration find a more recent illustration in the mysticism of the Chasidim (_Hasidim_, "saints"), a Jewish sect in eastern Europe which started from a movement in the 18th century against the exaggerated casuistry of contemporary rabbis, and combined much that was spiritual and beautiful with extreme emotionalism and degradation.[9] The appearance of the Kabbalah and of other forms of mysticism in Judaism may seem contrary to ordinary and narrow conceptions of orthodox Jewish legalism. Its interest lies, not in its doctrines, which have often been absurdly over-estimated