ger in Egypt. The list included historical works carrying on the
story of the people's fortunes beyond Alexander the Great; novelistic
tales like that of the heroic Judith luring the enemy of her people to
destruction, or that exquisite tale of Jewish family life as
exemplified by the pious Israelite captive Tobit; books like the wise
sayings of Jesus, son of Sirach, the Wisdom of Solomon, or the Psalms
of Solomon, all modelled after patterns in the canon; midrashic
expositions of the law, like the Little Genesis; apocalyptic visions
going by the name of Enoch and the Twelve Patriarchs and Moses and
Isaiah and Esdras, whose prototype may be sought in the canonical
Daniel. Over and above the three parts which the Synagogue accepted
there were a fourth and fifth; but by an act of exclusion the canon
was concentrated upon the three and the others were cast overboard.
The canon was the creation of the Pharisaic doctors, who drew a line
at a point of their own choosing, and decreed that writings "from that
time onward" did not defile the hands.

_The Making of the Canon by the Pharisees_

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