By almost imperceptible degrees the notes and commentaries upon this text grew to formidable proportions, and became a special science, whose technical name, found in the Book of Chronicles (2 xiii. 22 and xxiv. 27), is Midrash, from darash; in Arabic, dars, a lesson. Of the innumerable methods of studying these Holy Writs, the three principal are embodied in the Persian Paradís, the Arabic Firdaus, and the Greek [Greek: Παραδεισος: Paradeisos], written Semitically without vowels PRDS, and the mysterious letters were assumed mneumonically as the initial of a technical word. Thus P (Peshat, the simple rendering of words) recorded the elementary law of Talmudic exegesis, “No verse of Scripture practically admits any sense but the literal sense,”[62] although in a different or familiar signification it may be explained in a host of ways. R (Remiz, the Arabic Ramz, a secret, intimation, insinuation, or suggestion of meaning) illustrates certain letters and signs apparently superfluous and explained only by tradition; in a more general manner, it gave rise to a _memoria technica_ and a stenography resembling the Roman _Notaricon_. Points and notes were added to the margins of manuscripts, and thus was founded the Massorah (tradition), or diplomatic conservation of the text, intended to preserve its purity. D (Derush, illustration) was the familiar application of historical, traditional, anecdotical, allegorical, and prophetical sayings to the actual state of events; it was a sermon aided by ethics, logic, poetry, parable, proverb, apologue, and the vast mass of legendary lore known as the Hagadah (plural Hagadoth), as opposed to the Halakah,[63] or dogmatic part--perhaps it was suggested by the New Testament. Finally, the fourth and last, S (Sod, secret, mystery), included the mystical and esoterical sciences of theosophy, metaphysics, angelology, and a host of supernatural visions, brilliant and fantastic. It borrowed with impartial hand from the magic of Egypt, the myths of Hermes Trismegistos, the works of the Platonists and Neo-Platonists, and the labours of the Christian Gnostics. Few were initiated into “the Creation,” or “the Chariot,” as it was called, alluding to the vision of Ezekiel; yet its attractions were such that at last “Paradise” was confined to this special branch of esoteric science, even as later in Gnosticism it came to signify the Spiritual Christ.