The inquiry is by no means an easy one. For, while it is only necessary to open a volume of the Talmud, or of one of the great Midrashim, to find on almost every page some Haggadic utterance, often indeed a great mass of Haggadah, it is wholly unwarranted to say "this" and "this" is what the Pharisees believed. It may be; and, of course, if it were not in some way acceptable to Pharisaic minds, according to their canons of judgment, it would not be found in their books. But the Haggadah does not carry its meaning on the surface, nor yield it to the hearer or reader who has only a passing glance for it or a careless ear. And thus, what really represents the truth believed, or the good discerned, the element to which the mind assented, and which it gratefully received, is not expressed in the verbal form of the Haggadah, nor in its statements,--extravagant and even impossible as they sometimes are. There was no idea of taking those statements as they stand, as if they were to be accepted as true, and believed as divine revelations. When it is said by a Haggadist that since the creation God has been occupied in making marriages (Ber. R., p. 133^c § 68. 4), that does not represent as it stands what any Pharisee, or the Haggadist himself, really believed about God. As George Eliot truly says of that particular Haggadah, "The levity of the saying lies in the mind of him who hears it"; and, as she might have added, puts a frivolous meaning on it. The Haggadah is full of such things; but the Haggadah is not on that account frivolous or absurd. And when the unwary Christian produces specimens of Haggadah, and says, "See what those Rabbis believed and taught," the foolishness which he illustrates is not that of the Rabbis. To get at the real meaning and serious purpose of Haggadic teaching is one of the difficulties in the inquiry into what the Pharisees believed. In itself it is not a great difficulty, but it needs to be recognised. A further difficulty is presented by the question, how far can the utterance of some individual teacher be taken to represent a generally accepted belief, seeing that there was no requirement of uniformity of belief? To that question a decisive answer is scarcely ever possible, except within wide limits of probability. If a doctrine can be formulated upon some topic of theology, it will represent a _de facto_ consensus of belief, rather than the conscious acceptance of the teaching of any authority; and those who held the belief might still prefer a different statement of it. Everywhere caution is necessary in drawing forth from the Haggadah its real meaning, and in forming conclusions as to the generality of its acceptance.