This mania of distinction also led to banterings and quarrels among the little Jewish academies or literary societies, thus dividing them into va rious sects or parties.
The most violent of these schisms were those which broke out between the Pharisees and Sad ducees. The Pharisees soon obtained, it is true, the mastery over their opponents, but they them selves were also split into many parties by the disputes between the school of the celebrated teacher Hillel, and that of Sham/tat, the former advocating the right of the traditional law even in opposition to that of Moses, while the latter (like Christ) attached but little weight to tradi tions whenever they were found to clash with the Mosaical law. These disputes between the various schools of the Jewish doctors at the close of that period, were often carried not only to gross personalities, but even to bodily assaults, and murder (Tr. Sabbath and Shcbuoth); and it had at last become a proverb 'that even Elijah the Tishbite would not be able to reconcile the ad herents of Hillcl and Slzamnzai; What the one party permitted the other was sure to prohibit, and vice versa. The school of Hillel, however,
had from an early period always numbered a vast majority in its favor, so that the modern Jewish Rabbis arc uniformly guided by the opinion of that school in their decisions.
Now, as the Talmud contains (with the excep tion of a few genuine kcinalia from the treasures of the early periods, which are now and then found in the heavy volumes of useless researches) for the most part only the opinions and disputes of those schools concerning the traditional laws, glossed over with cabalistic subtilties and sophis tical speculations, it is very natural that but little of real interest is to be found in it.
Nevertheless, some remnants of the researches of the 'Assemblies of the Wise' from the -earlier periods have also descended to us in the Book of Wisdom, and in the collections of the son of Sirach, showing us those colleges in their dig nified and more pure aspect.