xxxi. to, etc. ; the Lament.) which were intended to assist the memory and mark the gradation of ideas ; the substitution of for (Jer. xxv.
26 ; li. 4), 15 for Wit,' (ibid. li. 1), by taking the letters of the alphabet in their reverse order, would have been utterly useless and most unintelli gible had not the people for whom they were in tended been able to read. If we bear in mind that the understanding of the sacred oracles was not the peculiar prerogative of the priestly caste, but was enjoined upon every Israelite, it becomes self-evi dent that the knowledge of reading and writing which, as we have seen, is so inseparable from the understanding of the Scriptures, must have formed a prominent part in the education of children whose sole training was the understanding of the Scrip tures. For the same reason arithmetic must have been taught ; as the days of the week, the months; the festivals, etc., were not designated by proper names, but by numerals. The numbers occurring in the O. T. reach to hundreds of thousands, and we have, moreover, instances of addition (Num. i. 22, etc. ; xxvi. 7, etc.), subtraction (Lev. xxv. 27 ; xxviii. 18 ; Num. iii. 19, 43 with 46), mu/tip/kat/on (Lev. v. 8; xxvii. 16-18 ; Num. iii. 46-5o) and division (Lev. xxv. 27-5o). In fact, every art or science which occurs or is alluded to in the O. T., and upon the understanding of which depended the understanding of the Scriptures, must to some ex tent have formed a part of the strictly religious Jewish education.
We have already seen that the education of the children devolved upon the parents. They were the teachers in ordinary cases. This natural duty must have been a pleasant task, a welcome occu pation, and a pastime to a people who led a rural life, and whose Sabbaths and festivals freed them from labour a sixth part of the year [FESTIVALS]. In these leisure hours the parents who were strictly forbidden to engage in any secular work were in constant contact with their children ; and the many symbols, rites, and ceremonies on those occasions were used by them as so many illustrated narratives of the dealings of God. We need, therefore, not wonder that the name school does not occur in the Bible previous to the Babylonish captivity,* be fore the Jews were entangled in foreign affairs, be fore commercial transactions with other nations and other matters had taken so many of the people away from their homes and deprived their children of their natural teachers.
But though there were no national or elementary schools before the exile, there were cases in which professional teachers had to be resorted to ; when the high position or official duties of the parents rendered parental teaching impossible, or when the parents were in any way incapacitated, when the child's abilities to learn surpassed the father's capabilities to teach, or where the son was preparing himself for a vocation different from that of his father. For such exceptional cases teachers
existed from a very early period. Bating the pro per name Tri, Enoch, which denotes teacher, and occurs already in Gen. iv. 17, and Enoch ii., the son of Jared (Gen. v. 2 I) whom tradition celebrates as the teacher of several sciences [Diouf], we find that Bezaleel and Aholiab were qualified by God as teachers (131i11)11111) in certain ments ; the Psalmist speaks of his having had many teachers cxix. ; both teachers and pupils are mentioned in connection, with the Temple choir (f Chron. xv. 22; xxv. 8), and the prophets who, by virtue of their superior piety, high attainments, large acquaintance with the political affairs of the world, delivered public lectures on the festivals (2 Kings iv. 22, 23) in structed young men who aspired to a better educa tion in order to fit themselves for public service (I Sam. x. 5, to, etc. ; 2 Kings ii. 3, etc. ; iv. 38, etc. ; vi. i, etc.) As for the so-called school of prophets, no such term occurs in the O. T.
2. Education from the return from Babylon to the close of the Talmud.-A new epoch in the education of the Jews began with their return from Babylon. In the captivity, the exiled Jews had to a great extent forgotten their vernacular Hebrew, and they became incompetent to under stand their sacred oracles. Ezra, the restorer of the Law, as he is called, found it therefore neces sary, immediately on their return to Jerusalem, to gather around him those who were skilled in the Law, and with their assistance trained a number of public teachers. The less distinguished of these teachers went into the provincial towns of Judaea, gathered disciples, and formed synagogues ; whilst the more accomplished of them remained in Jeru salem, became members of the Great Synagogue, and collected large numbers of young men, whom they instructed in all things appertaining to the Law, in the prophets, and in the sayings of the sages of old (Ecclus. ii. 9-ii; Mishna, Aboth. i. i). Scrolls were given to children, upon which were written passages of Scripture, such as Shona (i. e., Deut. vi. 4), or the Hallel (i. e., Ps. cxiv.-cxviii., cxxxvi.), the history of the creation to the deluge (Gen. i.-viii. 1), or Lev. i. 18 (comp. Jer. Me gilla, iii. r ; Gittin, 6o, a ; Soferim, v. 9). The course of study pursued in the metropolis was more extensive (Prolog. to Ecclus., and Ecclus. xxxviii. 24, etc. ; xxxix. i, etc.), that of provincial towns more limited, whilst the education of the small and more remote places or villages almost exclusively depended upon what the inhabitants learned when they came up to Jerusalem to cele brate the festivals, and was therefore very insig nificant. Hence the phrase, int--In country people, came to denote the uneducated, the illiter ate; just as paganus, or pagan, a countryman or villager, is for a similar reason used for heathen ; whilst urbanns, urbane, or an inhabitant of a city, denotes an educated man.