The composition of these notes, which included every phenomenon of the text, as well as a vast number of interesting statistical facts bearing on the text, went on for well-nigh a thousand years, and eventually they amounted to an enormous bulk of material. It became in time absolutely impossible to write down anything approaching to the whole of the Massorah in any single MS. Hence, whenever a new copy of the Scriptures was ordered by an individual or a community, the Massoretic scribes were in the habit of transcribing only so much of the Massorah as they deemed of especial importance and interest, or as much of the Massorah as they considered a fair equivalent for the price paid for the MS. Thus it has come about that there is no single MS. of the Old Testament which contains the whole or anything approximating to the whole Massorah. The present scholarly editor of the Massorah (Dr. Ginsberg) has some seventy-two ancient MSS. of the Old Testament collected in the British Museum, from which he is gathering the different Massoretic notes for the monumental work on which he is engaged. The mass of material put together by successive generations of scribes is so enormous that much of it has been even gathered into separate treatises; it having been found in old time simply impossible to find space for it in any codex, although all manner of abbreviations and signs to compress the notes into a smaller compass have been devised by the ancient scribes. * * * * * Such was the Massorah, that marvellous and unique apparatus devised by the Rabbis for the preservation of the ancient text of the Scriptures. A brief sketch showing the estimation in which these Scriptures, or at all events the Law proper, the Pentateuch, was held by the great Rabbinical schools, is indispensable to this little study on the Talmud. VI CONCLUDING MEMORANDA THE TALMUDICAL VIEW OF THE INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURE We read in the Mishnah such statements as the following: “He who asserts that the Torah is not from heaven has no part in the world to come.” (Sanhedrim, x. 7.) As time went on this view of inspiration was held with increasing strictness. At first the commands of “the Law” were all that was signified in such a saying as the one just quoted, but gradually the whole Pentateuch was included in this assertion of the direct Divine authority; in the Mishnah we read startling sayings, such as we have already given, viz.: “He who says that Moses wrote even one word of his own knowledge is a denier and despiser of the Word of God.” (Sanhedrim, 99.) Even the last verses of Deuteronomy which tell of the death of Moses were affirmed to have been written by Moses himself,--having been dictated to him by Divine revelation. The only point in dispute was whether the whole Torah was given to Moses by God complete at once, or handed to him by volumes. (Gittin 60_a_.)