channels――Halacha, rule; and Hagada, legend――the one an arguing and legal sort of commentary on the Law, the other a chatty and poetic and discursive one. Jehudah ha-Nasi gathered up all the vast store of Halacha; the traditions and interpretations of the wilderness, the decisions of the judges, the constitutional customs under the kings, the earnest communings of the exile, the vivid expoundings of Ezra, and the later commentaries and discussions in the schools. Jehudah ha-Nasi classified all this accumulation of Halacha, and by the year 200, he had arranged it all, under six different headings, into some five hundred chapters. Rabbi Jehudah’s compilation became known as the Mishnah, from the root שָׁנָה, to learn by heart, as contrasted with Mikra――which stood for Bible-reading, from קָרָא, to read from a book. The Mishnah contains nearly four thousand rules, under the six heads of Seeds, Festivals, Women, Civil and Criminal law, Sacrificial laws, and laws of Cleanliness. To this code, later on, was added the Gemara, which is a sort of complement and commentary to the Mishnah, and includes the store of Hagada. Mishnah and Gemara together form the Talmud. And as the Talmud literature grew, which was a literature more or less intended for the learned, and was the result of learned discussions in the schools, there grew up also a system of popular lectures, and Biblical expositions and sermons for the people. These discourses were given in the synagogues, and formed the basis of the Midrashim literature (Midrash, from דָּרַשׁ, to expound). The language of the Talmud is partly Rabbinical Hebrew, partly Aramaic. There are two Talmuds in existence, the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud. The Babylonian one is the more perfect and authoritative, and was completed by a certain learned Rabbi Ashi, about the year 500. Long before that date the Palestine schools, one after the other, had to be closed, and the Palestinian scholars had mostly emigrated to Babylon. CHAPTER XV. CHRISTIANITY A STATE RELIGION.