egrees there grew up out of this study a science of wide scope,
whose beginnings are hidden in the last book of the Bible, in the word
_Midrash_, translated by "story" in the Authorized Version. Its true
meaning is indicated by that of its root, _darash_, to study, to
expound. Four different methods of explaining the sacred Scriptures were
current: the first aimed to reach the simple understanding of words as
they stood; the second availed itself of suggestions offered by
apparently superfluous letters and signs in the text to arrive at its
meaning; the third was "a homiletic application of that which had been
to that which was and would be, of prophetical and historical dicta to
the actual condition of things"; and the fourth devoted itself to
theosophic mysteries--but all led to a common goal.

In the course of the centuries the development of the Midrash, or study
of the Law, lay along the two strongly marked lines of Halacha, the
explanation and formulating of laws, and Haggada, their poetical
illustration and ethical application. These are the two spheres within
which the intellectual life of Judaism revolved, and these the two
elements, the legal and the aesthetic, making up the Talmud.

The two Midrashic systems emphasize respectively the rule of law and the
sway of liberty: Halacha is law incarnate; Haggada, liberty regulated by
law and bearing the impress of morality. Halacha stands for the rigid
authority of the Law, for the absolute importance of theory--the law and
theory which the Haggada illustrates by public opinion and the dicta of
common-sense morality. The Halacha embraces the statutes enjoined by
oral tradition, which was the unwritten commentary of the ages on the
written Law, along with the discussions of the academies of Palestine
and Babylonia, resulting in the final formulating of the Halachic
ordinances. The Haggada, while also starting from the word of the Bible,
only plays with it, explaining it by sagas and legends, by tales and
poems, allegories, ethical reflections, and historical reminiscences.
For it, the Bible was not only the supreme law, from whose behests there
was no appeal, but also "a golden nail upon which" the Haggada "hung its
gorgeous tapestries," so that the Bible word was the introduction,
refrain, text, and subject of the poetical glosses of the Talmud. It was
the province of the Halacha to build, upon the foundation of biblical
law, a legal superstructure capable of resisti