Messiah will overcome
the Serpent."

The Kabbalists believed nothing but what they "received." Their teachers
received from the prophets--the prophets received from angels--David from
the Angel Michael, Moses from Metatron, Isaac from Raphael, Shem from
Yophiel--and the angels themselves from God. The Metatron is the connecting
link between the Divine Spirit and the world of matter. It resembles the
Demiurgos of the Gnostics. It is the mystical expression for the Being
that forms a union between God and nature, or, as the Zohar puts it,
between the "King and the Queen." There were also the Essenes, who
allegorized the Law; the Hellenists, who mixed it up with Greek
philosophy; the Therapeutists, who thought supreme happiness to be
meditation; the political Herodians; the Zealots; and other petty sects
who formed the great mass of the people, and held either with or against
the two great schools. The decisions of both schools are remarkable for
their concise brevity. A phrase suggests many thoughts--a single word
awakes a whole train of reasoning. A German writer has said of the Mishna,
that "it is a firmament of telescopic stars, containing many a cluster of
light, which no unaided eye has ever resolved." Some of its sayings are of
touching beauty. Such are the words of Rabbi Tarphon, "The day is
short--the labor vast;--but the laborers are slothful, though the reward is
great, and the Master of the house presseth for despatch." Some of its
sayings are extravagant--some are loathsome--and some are blasphemous. But
mixed up as they are together, they form an extraordinary monument of
"human industry, human wisdom, and human folly."

The Talmud contains a system of casuistry in reference to the doctrines of
intention and legal uncleanness. It proportions responsibility to the
amount of intention, and thereby hands over tender consciences to the
control of the Rabbis. It proportions legal uncleanness to every degree of
approach to the source, or, as it is called, "the father" of uncleanness;
and this again renders necessary continual appeals to the decision of the
Rabbis.

Predestination and free will are both taught. "Everything is in the hands
of heaven, except the fear of heaven." "All things are ordained of God,
but men's actions are their own." When men wish to sin they are enjoined
to go to a place where they are unknown, and to clothe themselves in black
so as not to dishonor God openly. Hereditary sin was denied