impulsive,
and set forth in mythical personification, not in deliberate
metaphysics. The Torah to the rabbis was the embodiment of the Wisdom
which the writer of Proverbs had glorified, and it takes its
prerogatives. God gazes upon the Torah before He creates the
world.[313] The Torah, though the chief, is not, however, the only
object of rabbinic idealism. God and His name, it is said, alone
existed before the world was created,[314] and in a Talmud legend
relating the birth of man, the ideal power is identified with Truth,
which, like the Logos, is pictured as God's own seal.

"From Heaven to Earth, from Earth once more to Heaven
Shall Truth, with constant interchange, alight
And soar again, an everlasting link
Between the world and Sky."

(Translation of Emma Lazarus.)[315]

Correspondingly, Philo identifies the Logos with the name of God and
with Truth.

Of another piece of Talmudic idealism we catch a trace in Maimonides'
"Guide of the Perplexed,"[316] where he says that the rabbis explained
the designation of God, [Hebrew: lrubb b'rbot] [rendered in the authorized
version, "He who rideth on the heavens" (Ps. lxviii. 4)], to mean that
He dwelt in the highest sphere of heaven amid the eternal ideas of
Justice and Virtue, as it is said: "Justice and Righteousness are the
base of Thy throne" (Ps. lxxxix. 15). These fancies and
interpretations indicate that in Palestine as well as in Alexandria an
idealistic theology and a religious metaphysics were developing at
this period, though in the East it was more imaginative, more Hebraic,
more in the spirit of the old prophets.

The more serious metaphysical and theological speculation of the
rabbis was embodied in the doctrine of the "Creation," and the
"Chariot," [Hebrew: m'sha br'shit] and [Hebrew: m'sha mrkba], which in
form were commentaries on the early chapters of Genesis and the visions
of Ezekiel. They were reserved for the wisest and most learned, for the
rabbis had always a fear of introducing the student to philosophy until
his knowledge of the law was well established. They held, with Plato, that
metaphysical speculation must be the crown of knowledge, and if treated as
its foundation, before the necessary discipline had been obtained, it
would produce all sorts of wild ideas. Judaism for them was primarily
not a philosophical doctrine but a system of life. The Hellenistic
school was so far false to their standpoint that it laid stress for
the