Again, if a Jew who had become Levitically defiled, required imersion, it is difficult to suppose that a heathen would have been admittd to all the services of the Sanctuary without a similar purification. But we have also positive testimony (which the objections of Winer, Keil, and Leyrer, in my opinion do not invalidate), that the baptism of proselytes existed in the time of Hillel and Shammai. For, whereas the school of Shammai is said to have allowed a proselyte who was circumcised on the eve of the Passover, to partake after baptism of the Passover, [6439] the school of Hillel forbade it. This controversy must be regarded as providing that at that time (previous to Christ) the baptism of proselytes was customary [6440] (Pes. viii. 8, Eduy. v. 2).
(See vol. i. Book III. ch. i. p. 306.)
WITHOUT here entering on a discussion of the doctrine of Angels and devils as presented in Holy Scripture, the Apocrypha, and the Pseudepigrapha, it will be admitted that considerable progression may be marked as we advance from even the latest Canonical to Apocryphal, and again from these to the Pseudepigraphic Writings. The same remark applies even more strongly to a comparison of the later with Rabbinic literature. There we have comparitively little of the Bibical in its purity. But, added to it, we now find much that is the outcome of Eastern or of prurient imagination, of national conceit, of ignorant superstition, and of foreign, especailly Persian, elements. In this latter respect it is true - not, indeed, as regards the doctrine of good and evil Angels, but much of its Rabbinic elaboration - that the names of the Angels (and of the months) were brought form Babylon (Jer. Rosh. haSh. 56 d; Ber. r. 48), and with the names,' not a few of the notions regarding them. At the same time, it would be unjust to deny that mush of the symbolism which it is evidently intended to convey is s singularly beautiful.