The most famous Jewish college of these days was at Tiberius, on the shores of the 'Sea of Galilee,' over whose clear depths the Lord Jesus Christ had sailed so often, and beside whose shores He had done so many wonderful deeds of love and mercy. A great and beautiful college it was, with broad terraced gardens, where the students paced to and fro, their whole hearts and souls absorbed in their work. The Temple copy of the Book of the Law was now in the palace of the heathen Emperor in Rome, but many less precious copies were left to them. So all day long they studied and copied the old Hebrew Bible. As we have seen, the Jewish scribes had not been content with taking the Word of God just as it stood; they had begun, even in our Lord's day, to invent explanations of many parts of the old Books which quite altered their true meaning. After the fall of Jerusalem the learned Jews, shut away in their colleges and striving to forget their sorrows, began to write down the Scripture explanations, and to add to them so greatly that it became more difficult to recall the comments on the Bible than it was to remember the Bible itself. [Illustration: MEDAL MADE BY TITUS, THE CONQUEROR OF JERUSALEM. THE WORDS, IVDAEA CAPTA, MEAN 'CAPTIVE JUDEA.' THE WOMAN WEEPING UNDER A PALM-TREE STANDS FOR THE CITY OF JERUSALEM] These explanations, all collected together, are called 'The Talmud.' Now the learned Jews grew so fond of their Talmud, that they declared a man to be a blockhead if he knew only the Scriptures and not the Talmud explanation. 'The law of Moses is like salt, but the Talmud is balmy spice,' they would say. Yet although they heeded so little the true meaning of God's Book, they guarded its _words_ more and more carefully; and the rules for copying any portion of the holy Books were strict indeed. 'My son,' an old teacher would say to his pupil, 'before you copy a single word you must wash your body all over, and clothe yourself in full Jewish dress, preparing your mind with solemn thoughts. The parchment you write upon must be made from the skins of "clean" animals only--that is clean according to the Law of Moses. 'The ink you write with must be of a pure black, made only from a mixture of soot, charcoal, and honey. Though you know the whole Book of the Law by heart, you must not write a single word from memory, but raise your eyes to your copy, and pronounce the word aloud before trusting it to your pen. Before writing any of the names of God you must wash your pen: before writing His most sacred Name you must wash your whole body. If, after your copy has itself been examined, three corrections have to be made, that copy must be destroyed.' Not satisfied with all these directions, the master taught his scholar to count the _letters_ of every Book.