THE Pharisee held the ground when the nation had politically abdicated. The war with Rome had been brought on by the intransigent hotspurs of Galilee and the commune of Jerusalem. John, son of Zakkai, parleyed with the enemy that Jamnia with its House of Study might go unscathed. There the process began which culminated in the gigantic storehouse of legal lore which was to dominate Jewish life and Jewish literature for centuries, commentary being piled upon commentary and code upon code. For in the sum total of Scriptures the Torah was admittedly to be the chief corner-stone, albeit prophecy and wisdom had not lost their appeal; and in moments of relaxation or when addressing their congregations worn out with the strife of the present, the scholars of the wise brought out of the ancient stock many a legend and quaint saying and even apocalyptic vision, transporting the mourners for Zion into the ecstasies of the future redemption. While official Judaism was committed to the dialectics of the Halakah, in the unofficial Haggadah mysticism exercised a potent influence by underground channels, as it were, issuing in later days in Kabbalah and offsetting the rational philosophies borrowed from Hellas. For the time being, however, the dominant note was legistic, Pharisean. The Pharisees had been lifted by the national catastrophe into the leading position. They had previously been a party among many parties, and their Judaism one of the many varieties. The Sadducees, their chief opponents, had a literature of their own: the day upon which their "Book of Decrees" was consigned to destruction was made a legal holiday upon which fasting was prohibited. But even writings which were lightly touched by the Sadduccee spirit were frowned upon: the Siracide was barely tolerated on the outside because he made light of individual immortality, and believed in the eternity of Israel and the Zadokite priesthood. The Pharisees had been on the opposition during the latter period of the Maccabeans: so with partisan ruthlessness they excluded from the canon the writings commemorative of the valorous deeds of those priest-warriors who freed the people from foreign overlordship and restored the Davidic boundaries of the realm. Because the apocalyptic visions inclined to teachings not acceptable to the dominant opinion, they were declared not only heterodox, heretical, but worthy of destruction. Had the stricter view prevailed, the sceptical Preacher--now, to quote Renan, lost in the canon like a volume of Voltaire among the folios of a theological library--would have shared the fate of Sirach and Wisdom and the other writings which Egypt cherished after Palestine had discarded them. And there were mutterings heard even against the Song, that beautiful remnant of the Anacreontic muse of Judæa. It was then that Akiba stepped into the breach and by bold allegory saved that precious piece of what may be called the secular literature of the ancient Hebrews.