opposition to the Classical feeling — with which these precious manuscripts were cared for, their ornamentation by every means known to the young Magian art, and the appearance again and again of new scripts which, in the eyes of their users, alone possessed the power of capturing the truth sent down.
But such a Koran is by its very nature unconditionally right, and therefore unalterable and incapable of improvement.[1] There arose, in consequence, the habit of secret interpretations meant to bring the text into harmony with the convictions of the time. A masterpiece of this kind is Justinian's Digests, but the same applies not only to every book of the Bible, but also (we need not doubt) to the Gathas of the Avesta and even to the then current manuscripts of Plato, Aristotle, and other authorities of the Pagan theology. More important still is the assumption, traceable in every Magian religion, of a secret revelation, or a secret meaning of the Scriptures, preserved not by being written down, but in the memory of adepts and propagated orally. According to Jewish notions, Moses received at Sinai not only the written, but also a secret oral Torah,[2] which it was forbidden to commit to writing. "God foresaw," says the Talmud, "that one day a time would come when the Heathen would possess themselves of the Torah and would say to Israel: 'We, too, are sons of God.' Then will the Lord say: 'Only he who knows my secrets is my son.' And what are the secrets of God? The oral teachings."[3] The Talmud, then, in the form in which it is generally accessible, contains only a part of the religious material, and it is the same with Christian texts of the early period. It has often been observed[4] that Mark speaks of the Visitation and of the Resurrection only in hints, and that John only touches upon the doctrine of the Paraclete and omits the institution of the Lord's Supper entirely. The initiates understood what was meant, and the unbeliever ought not to know it. Later there was a whole "secret discipline" which bound Christians to observe silence in the presence of unbelievers concerning the baptismal confession and other matters. With the Chaldeans, Neopythagoreans, Cynics, Gnostics, and especially the sects from Jewish to Islamic, this tendency went to such lengths that the greater part of their secret doctrines is unknown to us. Concerning the Word thus preserved only in the minds there was a consensus of silence, the more so as each believer was certain that the other "knew." We ourselves, as it is upon the most important things that we are most emphatic and forthright, run the risk of misinterpreting Magian doctrines through taking the part that was expressed for the whole that existed, and the profane literal meaning of words for their real significance. Gothic Christianity had no secrets and hence it doubly mistrusted the Talmud, which it rightly regarded as being only the foreground of Jewish doctrine.
