=6. The Literary Influence of the Schools.=――The literary influence was the most lasting of all, for the Talmud was its outcome. ‘Moses commanded unto us a law.’ From the very first, the ‘Law’ had to be explained and applied. The unwritten record of the numberless instances in which it had been so explained and applied, from the time of Moses unto that of Ezra, had become by this date an enormous traditional store. There had come to be a commentary and a precedent attaching to every phrase and almost to every word in the Pentateuch. The comments on the Law dated from its giving, on Sinai. Take, as an instance, the command, ‘Ye shall dwell in booths.’ It looks at first simple enough. But questions would soon arise. Did the ‘ye’ mean men, women, and children? did the ‘dwell’ include sleeping and eating? of what sort and material were the ‘booths’ to be? All such points were endless subjects for commentary, and were practically settled by custom. Commentary by this time had grown to an unmanageable bulk, and custom, in dispersion, had grown somewhat uncertain and unsettled. Whilst the Temple stood, and the people dwelt in their own land, wise and educated men were always at hand to expound the Law, and there was no need for all the shifting wealth of tradition to be stored, as it were, in one bank. But when the schools were scattered, and might at any time be closed, the fear grew that the currency, so to speak, might be debased, and perhaps some valuable bits of it altogether lost. A resolve was gradually formed to make the oral Law into a written one, and to turn the traditions of seventeen centuries into an authoritative code. In one sense it was a pity, for wise men, who obtained a knowledge of the Law of Moses with its traditional interpretation through _vivâ voce_ instruction, were better able to get at the true spirit of the Law and of the tradition than those who had to rely on the dead letter of books. Once written down, misunderstandings might creep in, and what had been useful as a guiding rein might be twisted by awkward hands into a yoke or a halter. There was a danger even of very earnest folks receiving this new written law with so much enthusiasm that they would count it as a second revelation, and hold it equal with the Law itself. But few things are unmixed good or unmixed evil. In most matters there is a balance to be struck, and here it was certainly better to risk some drawbacks from making the oral Law into a written one, than to face the grave chance of its being by degrees forgotten altogether. To Hillel, 30 years B.C., had first occurred the idea of collecting and sifting the enormous traditional store; and, about the year 200, Jehudah the Prince, or Jehudah the Holy, as he is often called, the seventh president of the Sanhedrin in succession from Hillel, seriously began the work of compilation. It was no light work. Rills from the ‘fount of living waters’ which first flowed at Sinai had run into two