But the Jewish Christians, also, did not remain content with the simple idea of Jesus as the Messiah. They gradually and unconsciously, like the heathen Christians, adorned him with God-like attributes, and endowed him with miraculous powers. The more the Jewish-Christian conception idealized Jesus, the more it became separated from Judaism, with which it still thought itself at one. There arose mixed sects from among the Ebionites and Hellenites, and one could perceive a gradual descent from the law-abiding Ebionites to the law-despising Antitaktes. The Nazarenes came next to the Ebionites. They also acknowledged the power of the Jewish law in its entirety; but they explained the birth of Jesus in a supernatural manner--from the Virgin and the Holy Ghost--and ascribed to him God-like attributes. Other Jewish Christians went further than the Nazarenes, and gave up the Law, either in part or altogether. After such proceedings, a total breach between Jews and Jewish Christians was inevitable. At length a time arrived when the latter themselves felt that they no longer belonged to the Jewish community, and therefore they entirely withdrew from it. The letter of separation which the Jewish community sent to the parent body is yet in existence. It calls on the Jewish followers of Jesus to separate wholly from their fellow-countrymen. In the Agadic method of that period, the Epistle to the Hebrews sets forth that the crucified Messiah is at the same time the expiatory sacrifice and the atoning priest. It proves from the Law that those sacrifices whose blood was sprinkled in the Holy of Holies, were considered the holiest, and the bodies were burnt outside the Temple. "Therefore"--thus continues the Jewish-Christian monitor--"Jesus, also, that he might sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered without the gate (of Jerusalem). Let us, therefore, go forth unto him without the camp (the Jewish community), bearing his reproach, for we have not here an abiding city (Jerusalem as the symbol of the Jewish religion), but we seek after the city which is to come." When once a decided step had been taken to divide the Nazarenes and the cognate sects from the Jewish community, a deadly hate arose against the Jews and Judaism. Like the heathen Christians, the Nazarenes reviled the Jews and their ways. As the written Law was holy to them also, they directed their shafts against the study of Halachas amongst the Tanaites, who in those days were the very life of Judaism. In Jewish-Christian, as in Jewish circles, men were accustomed to view all events from the point of view of Holy Writ, and to draw counsel from the explanations and references in the prophecies. The Nazarenes, therefore, applied to the Tanaites, whom they called Deuterotes, and more especially to the schools of Hillel and Shammai, a threatening verse of Isaiah (viii. 14): "It shall be a stone of stumbling and the downfall of both the houses of Israel." "By the two houses the prophet