MEDAL MADE BY TITUS, THE CONQUEROR OF JERUSALEM. THE WORDS, IVDAEA CAPTA, MEAN 'CAPTIVE JUDEA.' THE WOMAN WEEPING UNDER A PALM-TREE STANDS FOR THE CITY OF JERUSALEM
These explanations, all collected together, are called 'The Talmud.' Now the learned Jews grew so fond of their Talmud, that they declared a man to be a blockhead if he knew only the Scriptures and not the Talmud explanation.
'The law of Moses is like salt, but the Talmud is balmy spice,' they would say.
Yet although they heeded so little the true meaning of God's Book, they guarded its words more and more carefully; and the rules for copying any portion of the holy Books were strict indeed.
'My son,' an old teacher would say to his pupil, 'before you copy a single word you must wash your body all over, and clothe yourself in full Jewish dress, preparing your mind with solemn thoughts. The parchment you write upon must be made from the skins of "clean" animals only—that is clean according to the Law of Moses.
'The ink you write with must be of a pure black, made only from a mixture of soot, charcoal, and honey. Though you know the whole Book of the Law by heart, you must not write a single word from memory, but raise your eyes to your copy, and pronounce the word aloud before trusting it to your pen. Before writing any of the names of God you must wash your pen: before writing His most sacred Name you must wash your whole body. If, after your copy has itself been examined, three corrections have to be made, that copy must be destroyed.'
Not satisfied with all these directions, the master taught his scholar to count the letters of every Book.
One of the letters in Leviticus xi. is the middle letter of all the five Books of Moses, a word in chapter x. is the middle of all the words, and a verse in chapter viii. is the very centre of all the verses. The letter 'A'—that is the Hebrew letter which stands for 'A'—occurs 42,377 times; the letter 'B' 35,218, and so on.
Not only this, but every scribe was required to know from memory exactly how many letters of each kind there should be in his sheet before he began to write. Every sheet of parchment must contain an equal number of lines, and the breadth of each column had to be thirty letters wide.