Nor did his doctrine show any direct adaptation made from Greek philosophy. The verse quoted from the Thais of Menander, that occurs in his writings,[10.22] is one of those versified proverbs which were familiar to the public, and could easily have been quoted by one who had not read the original. Two other quotations--one from Epimenides, the other from Aratus--which appear under his name,[10.23] although it is not certain that he used them, may also be explained as having been borrowed at second-hand.[10.24] The literary training of Paul was almost exclusively Jewish,[10.25] and it is in the Talmud rather than in the Greek classics that the analogies of his ideas must be sought. A few general ideas of wide-spread philosophy, which one could learn without opening a single book of the philosophers,[10.26] alone reached him. His manner of reasoning was very curious. He certainly knew nothing of the peripatetic logic. His syllogism was not at all that of Aristotle; but on the contrary his dialectics greatly resembled those of the Talmud. Paul, as a general thing, was influenced by words rather than by ideas. When a word took possession of his mind it suggested a train of thought singularly irrelevant to the subject in question. His transitions were sudden, his developments interrupted, his conclusions frequently suspended. Never was a writer more unequal. One may seek in vain throughout the realm of literature for a phenomenon as _bizarre_ as that of a sublime passage like the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians by the side of feeble arguments, laborious repetitions, and fastidious subtleties.