Yet journalists and poets were outdone by scholars and novelists in the battle for reform. Lebensohn's didactic drama _Emet we-Emunah_ (_Truth and Faith_, Vilna, 1867, 1870), in which he attempts to reconcile true religion with the teachings of science, was mild compared with _Dos Polische Yingel_ or Shatzkes' radical interpretations of the stories of the rabbis in his _Ha-Mafteah_ (_The Key_, Warsaw, 1866-1869), and both were surpassed by Raphael Kohn's clever little work _Hut ha-Meshullash_ (_The Triple Cord_, Odessa, 1874), in which many prohibited things are ingeniously proved permissible according to the Talmud. But the most outspoken advocate of reform was Abraham Mapu (1808-1867), author of the first realistic novel, or novel of any kind, in Hebrew literature, the _'Ayit Zabua'_ (_The Painted Vulture_). His Rabbi Zadok, the miracle-worker, who exploits superstition for his own aggrandizement; Rabbi Gaddiel, the honest but mistaken henchman of Rabbi Zadok; Ga'al, the parvenu, who seeks to obliterate an unsavory past by fawning upon both; the Shadkan, or marriage-broker, who pretends to be the ambassador of Heaven, to unite men and women on earth,--in these and similar types drawn from life and depicted vividly, Mapu held up to the execration of the world the hypocrites who "do the deeds of Zimri and claim the reward of Phinehas," whose outward piety is often a cloak for inner impurity, and whose ceremonialism is their skin-deep religion. These characters served for many years as weapons in the hands of the combatants enlisted in the army arrayed for "the struggle between light and darkness."