The pious instructors of the people felt the need of utilizing and applying to daily life as much as possible these Holy Scriptures, the one treasure that had escaped so many shipwrecks. That a word should have but one meaning, that a phrase should have but one subject, this seemed mean, shabby, inadequate, unworthy the Supreme Wisdom that inspired the Bible. The word of God was perforce more prolific. Each new interpretation of the Biblical text added richness and new value to the precious heritage.... Another very important circumstance, if it did not originate the Midrashic method, at all events tended strongly to bring it into vogue. I speak of the religious life, such as it was among the Israelites, especially in the time of the second Temple. A number of practices, more or less sacred and more or less obligatory, were established in, or after this period, either by rabbinical institution, or by virtue of the oral law or of custom; and these practices, sanctioned by long usage or by highly esteemed authorities, had no apparent basis in the written law. To maintain them and give them solidity in the regard of the people, it was natural to seek to prove by exegesis <I>ad hoc</I> that the Holy Text had imposed or recommended them in advance, if not expressly, at least by hints and allusions.... The application of this method was called forth not only by the religious practices, but also by the ideas and opinions that had been formed or developed in the same period. After the Babylonian Exile the successive influence of the Chaldeans, the Persians, and the Greeks produced among the Jews of Asia as well as among the Jews of Egypt certain theories concerning cosmogony, angels, and the government of the world, which rapidly gained credence, and were generally held to be incontestable. These theories provided a complete apparatus of doctrines so attractive and so enthusiastically accepted even by our teachers, that the people could not resign themselves to the belief that they were not contained in the Bible, or, worse still, that they were contradicted by this store-house of wisdom and truth. But these doctrines - for the most part, at least - are not to be found in the literal text of the Bible, and, as a consequence, the scholars turned to the Midrashic method as the only one calculated to read the desired meaning into the text. Now the general character of Judaism had not changed perceptibly during ten centuries. In the eleventh century the Jews had the same needs as in the first, and the same method of satisfying their needs. They found it quite natural to bring their ideas into agreement with the Bible - or, rather, they did so unconsciously - and to twist the text from its natural meaning, so as to ascribe to the Biblical authors their own ideas and knowledge.