To maintain them and give them solidity in the
regard of the people, it was natural to seek to prove by
exegesis
ad hoc that the Holy Text had imposed or
recommended them in advance, if not expressly, at least by
hints and allusions.... The application of this method was
called forth not only by the religious practices, but also by
the ideas and opinions that had been formed or developed in
the same period. After the Babylonian Exile the successive
influence of the Chaldeans, the Persians, and the Greeks
produced among the Jews of Asia as well as among the Jews of
Egypt certain theories concerning cosmogony, angels, and the
government of the world, which rapidly gained credence, and
were generally held to be incontestable. These theories
provided a complete apparatus of doctrines so attractive and
so enthusiastically accepted even by our teachers, that the
people could not resign themselves to the belief that they
were not contained in the Bible, or, worse still, that they
were contradicted by this store-house of wisdom and truth. But
these doctrines - for the most part, at least - are not to be
found in the literal text of the Bible, and, as a consequence,
the scholars turned to the Midrashic method as the only one
calculated to read the desired meaning into the text.
Now the general character of Judaism had not changed perceptibly
during ten centuries.
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