Philo, or men of his school, can be traced in other respects.[9] [8] Basnage, in his _History of the Jews_, translated by Thomas Taylor, Book III., ch. vi., p. 168 (London, 1708), states, "It is agreed by the generality of Jewish and Christian doctors that the Talmud was completed in the 505th year of the Christian Æra." Cf. Serarius, _De Rabbinis_, Lib. I., c. ix., p. 251; Bartolocci, _Bibl. Rabbin._, t. i., p. 488, t. iii., p. 359; Morinus, _Exerc. Bibl._, Lib. II., ex. 6, c. ii. and iii., p. 294. Schaff's _Encyclopædia of Historical Theology_, vol. iii., pp. 2292-96, has a good article on the Talmud, giving a long list of authorities to which reference may be made by any one interested in this subject. [9] Philo is the subject of a very long and learned article by Dr. Edersheim in Smith's _Dict. Christ. Biog._, vol. iv., with which may be compared a shorter article in Schaff's _Encyclopædia of Hist. Theol._, vol. ii. The teaching of Gamaliel was as spiritual, I have said, as rabbinical teaching could have been; but this is not saying very much from the Christian point of view. The schools at Jerusalem in the time of Gamaliel were wholly engaged in studies of the most wearisome, narrow, petty, technical kind. Dr. Farrar has illustrated this subject with a great wealth of learning and examples in the fourth chapter of his _Life of St. Paul_. The Talmud alone shows this, throwing a fearful light upon the denunciations of our Lord as regards the Pharisees, for it devotes a whole treatise to washings of the hands, and another to the proper method of killing fowls. The Pharisaic section of the Jews held, indeed, that there were two hundred and forty-eight commandments and three hundred and sixty-five prohibitions involved in the Jewish Law, all of them equally binding, and all of them so searching that if only one solitary Jew could be found who for one day kept them all and transgressed in no one direction, then the captivity of God's people would cease and the Messiah would appear.[10] [10] These facts throw much light upon our Lord's words in Matt. xv. 1-9 and xxii. 34-40.