stinctive interpretation and application of the
law,--what may be called sectarian _halakah_.

Neither part is complete; the manuscript is mutilated and defective at the
end, there is apparently a gap between the first and second parts, and it
may be questioned whether the original beginning of the work is preserved.
The lack of methodical arrangement in the contents leads Dr. Schechter to
surmise that what we have in our hands is only a compilation of extracts
from a larger work, put together with little regard for completeness or
order. An orderly disposition, according to our notions of order, is not,
however, so constant a characteristic of Jewish literature as to make this
inference very convincing.

Manuscript A was evidently written by a negligent scribe, perhaps after a
poor or badly preserved copy; B, which represents a somewhat different
recension of the work, exhibits, so far as it goes, a superior text. When
it is added that both manuscripts are in many places defaced or torn, it
may be imagined that the decipherment and interpretation present serious
difficulties, and that, after all the pains which Dr. Schechter has spent
upon the task, many uncertainties remain. Facsimiles of a page of each
manuscript are given; but in view of the condition of the text a
photographic reproduction of the whole is indispensable.

The legal part of the book, so far as the text is fairly well preserved,
is not exceptionally difficult; the rules are in general clearly defined,
and if in the peculiar institutions of the sect there are many things we
do not fully understand, this is due more to the brevity with which its
organization is described and to the mutilation of the text than to lack
of clearness in the description itself. The attempt to make out something
of the history and relations of the sect from the first part of the book
is, on the other hand, beset by many difficulties. What history is found
there is not told for the sake of history, but used to point admonitions
or emphasize warnings; and, after the manner of the apocalyptic
literature, historical persons and events are referred to in roundabout
phrases which envelop them in an affected mystery. Even when such
references are to chapters of the national history with which we are
moderately well acquainted, as in the Assumption of Moses, c. 5, ff., for
example, they may be to us baffling enigmas; much more when they have to
do, as is in large part the case in ou