Yet at first sight it seemed to
lack any definite philosophy and to offer anthropomorphic views of
God. Hence the true interpreter must use the actual words of the sage
as metaphors, following the maxim, "Turn it about and about, because
all is in it, and contemplate it and wax grey over it, for thou canst
have no better rule than this."[118] The principle upon which Philo,
Saadia, Maimonides, and in fact the whole line of Jewish philosophical
exegetes have worked, is that the "words of the law are fruitful and
multiply"; or, as the Bible phrase runs, "The Torah which Moses
commanded unto us is the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob." It
is the separate inheritance of each generation, which each must
cultivate so as to gather therefrom its own fruit.
The Halakah is the outcome of this devotion in one aspect, the
philosophical exegesis in another. In the one case Jewish
jurisprudence and the body of legal tradition, in the other,
philosophical ideas inspired by outer civilization, are attached to
the text of the Bible by ingenious devices of association. The device
is partly a pious fiction, partly a genuine belief; in other words,
the teachers honestly thought that there was respectively a hidden
philosophical meaning in the Bible and an oral tradition,
supplementary to the written law and arising out of it; but on the
other hand they would not have urged that their particular
interpretation alone was portended by the Scriptures.
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