ishable
distinction. The peasant dwelling on inaccessible mountain-heights, next
to the record of Abraham's shepherd life, inscribes the main events of
his own career, the anniversary dates sacred to his family. The young
count among their first impressions that of "the brown folio," and more
vividly than all else remember

"The maidens fair and true,
The sages and the heroes bold,
Whose tale by seers inspired
In our Book of books is told.

The simple life and faith
Of patriarchs of ancient day
Like angels hover near,
And guard, and lead them on the way."[3]

Above all, a whole nation has for centuries been living with, and only
by virtue of, this book. Surely this is abundant testimony to the
undying value of the great work, in which the simplest shepherd tales
and the naivest legends, profound moral saws and magnificent images, the
ideals of a Messianic future and the purest, the most humane conception
of life, alternate with sublime descriptions of nature and the sweet
strains of love-poems, with national songs breathing hope, or trembling
with anguish, and with the dull tones of despairing pessimism and the
divinely inspired hymns of an exalted theodicy--all blending to form
what the reverential love of men has named the Book of books.

It was natural that a book of this kind should become the basis of a
great literature. Whatever was produced in later times had to submit to
be judged by its exalted standard. It became the rule of conduct, the
prophetic mirror reflecting the future work of a nation whose fate was
inextricably bound up with its own. It is not known how and when the
biblical scriptures were welded into one book, a holy canon, but it is
probably correct to assume that it was done by the _Soferim_, the
Scribes, between 200 and 150 B.C.E. At all events, it is certain that
the three divisions of the Bible--the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the
miscellaneous writings--were contained in the Greek version, the
Septuagint, so called from the seventy or seventy-two Alexandrians
supposed to have done the work of translation under Ptolemy
Philadelphus.

The Greek translation of the Bible marks the beginning of the second
period of Jewish literature, the Judaeo-Hellenic. Hebrew ceased to be the
language of the people; it was thenceforth used only by scholars and in
divine worship. Jewish for the first time met Greek intellect. Shem and
Japheth embraced fraternally.