s certainly some
reason to believe that his geometrical ideas entered into the system of
the operative guilds of masons.

The Jewish Cabala[15]

According to Fabre d'Olivet, Moses, who "was learned in all the wisdom
of the Egyptians," drew from the Egyptian Mysteries a part of the oral
tradition which was handed down through the leaders of the
Israelites.[16] That such an oral tradition, distinct from the written
word embodied in the Pentateuch, did descend from Moses and that it was
later committed to writing in the Talmud and the Cabala is the opinion
of many Jewish writers.[17]

The first form of the Talmud, called the Mischna, appeared in about the
second or third century A.D.; a little later a commentary was added
under the name of the Gemara. These two works compose the Jerusalem
Talmud, which was revised in the third to the fifth centry[A]. This
later edition was named the Babylonian Talmud and is the one now in use.

The Talmud relates mainly to the affairs of everyday life--the laws of
buying and selling, of making contracts--also to external religious
observances, on all of which the most meticulous details are given. As a
Jewish writer has expressed it:

... the oddest rabbinical conceits are elaborated through many
volumes with the finest dialectic, and the most absurd questions
are discussed with the highest efforts of intellectual power; for
example, how many white hairs may a red cow have, and yet remain a
_red_ cow; what sort of scabs require this or that purification;
whether a louse or a flea may be killed on the Sabbath--the first
being allowed, while the second is a deadly sin; whether the
slaughter of an animal ought to be executed at the neck or the
tail; whether the high priest put on his shirt or his hose first;
whether the _Jabam_, that is, the brother of a man who died
childless, being required by law to marry the widow, is relieved
from his obligation if he falls off a roof and sticks in the
mire.[18]

But it is in the Cabala, a Hebrew word signifying "reception," that is
to say "a doctrine orally received," that the speculative and
philosophical or rather the theosophical doctrines of Israel are to be
found. These are contained in two books, the _Sepher Yetzirah_ and the
_Zohar_.

The _Sepher Yetzirah_, or Book of the Creation, is described by
Edersheim as "a monologue on the part of Abraham, in which, by the
con