It is thus difficult to imagine to what Professor Toy can be alluding when he speaks of the “interest they (the Jews) threw into the discussion and determination of minutiæ of faith” (p. 241). Discussions upon _minutiæ_ of faith are only to be read in the works of the later schoolmen (as Saadiah, Maimonides and their followers), in which such subtle problems as _Creatio ex nihilo_, the origin of evil, predestination, free will and similar subjects are examined; but this period is very distant from that with which Toy is concerned. The older schools and the so‐called houses of Shammai and Hillel, most of whose members were the contemporaries of the Apostles, show very little predilection for such _minutiæ_. Their discussions and differences of opinion about ritual matters are very numerous, scattered as they are over the whole of the ancient Rabbinic literature, but I can only remember two of a metaphysical character, or touching upon the _minutiæ_ of faith. The one, dealing with the efficacy of certain sacrifices, discusses whether it only extends to the remission of the pending punishment for sins, or also includes their purification and washing away; the other considers the question whether it would not have been better for man not to have been created.(198) But this latter controversy, which is said to have lasted for two years and a half, by no means led to any big metaphysical or theological system, but only to the practical advice that, as we have been created, we ought to be watchful over our conduct. It is, indeed, a noteworthy feature of Judaism that theological speculations have never resulted in the formulation of any imposing or universal doctrine, but usually in divers ceremonial practices. To give one illustration: according to Professor Toy (p. 210) the conclusion which the author of 1 Tim. ii. 11‐14 draws from the fact that woman was the immediate agent of the introduction of sin was the subordination of her sex. The Rabbis also noticed the same fact, and in their less abstract language speak of woman as having brought death and grief into the world; but the conclusion which they drew was that since woman had extinguished the “light of the world,” she ought to atone for it by lighting the candles for the Sabbath.(199) Nor is Toy quite correct when he maintains that the conception of the Memra as Creator and Lord, etc., and as “representative of the immediate divine activity,” did not keep its hold on Jewish thought, having been discarded in the later literature (p. 104). For the Shechinah of the Talmud, the _Metatron_(200) of the Gaonic‐mystical literature, the Active Intelligence of the philosophical schools, as well as the Ten Sephiroth(201) (Emanations) of the Cabbalists, all owe their existence to the same theosophic scruples and subtleties in which the Logos of Philo and the Memra(202) of the Targums originated. Thus, they always kept—though under various forms—their hold on the Jewish mind.