ers and teachers--began to
devote themselves almost entirely to the studying and copying of the
Bible.

A young lad of those days who became a pupil in the School of the
Scribes at Jerusalem would have to begin by learning the Old Testament
almost by heart. To read an old Hebrew writing correctly was almost
impossible, unless you had heard it read two or three times, and knew
pretty well what was coming. For the ancient Hebrew alphabet consisted
entirely of consonants; there were actually _no_ vowels!

The little dots you see in the specimen of Hebrew given on this page
are called 'vowel-points,' and are a guide to the sound of the word;
but in the old, old days of which we are speaking, these dots had not
been invented. The reader had nothing but consonants before him, and
was obliged to guess the rest.

Just think of it! Suppose we followed this rule in English, and you
came to the word, 'TP,' you would be puzzled indeed to know whether
tap, tip, or top was meant!

But the Jewish scribes had wonderful memories. A teacher would read a
long passage from the Psalms to his pupil, and very soon the lad would
be able to repeat the whole correctly, the consonant words just
refreshing his memory.

[Illustration: THE FIRST LINE OF THE BIBLE IN HEBREW]

This would not always be as difficult as you might suppose. For
instance, you can read this easily enough:

'TH LRD S M SHPHRD SHLL NT WNT.'

Indeed, to this day the Hebrew of the sacred Books in the Jewish
Synagogues is all written without vowel-points.

At this time it was that the Jews became really the 'People of the
Book,' and that a special society was formed to guard and copy the
Bible.

How wonderfully this work was done! Never have the words of any other
book been so lovingly cared for.

We have called the Bible the oldest Book in the world; we have seen
that it tells about nations and people who were almost forgotten before
the days of Abraham. It seems strange, therefore, that the most
ancient copy of the Old Testament Scriptures, written in Hebrew and in
the possession of the Jews to-day, carries us back only to the time of
our Saxon kings.[3]

This is because the Jews' custom is reverently to destroy every copy of
the Books of the Old Testament--that is, of their Bible--as soon as it
becomes worn with use, or blurred with the kisses of its readers.

'This is a living Book,' they say; 'it should look new. God's Word can
never grow old.'