BIBLICAL LIBRARIES
libraries, small and great existed in Judea throughout the whole Greek period. There are moreover very good modern Jewish scholars (cf. Klostermann qt. Krauss v. 3 p. 336) who hold, on the ground of many small lines of accumulating evidence, that the synagogue public school system with its implied libraries, also dates back beyond the beginning of this period. The Book of Chronicles e.g. speaks of teachers and "scholars, using for the latter the common word for the later school scholar: the "district" or provincial school of the later school reference is, too, it is said, a word which belongs to the Persian system and must carry the general system back into the Persian period—which it may be said in passing would tend to link the system with the scribal schools of Babylonia and back to the school of Sippara.
However that may be there are these two clues—one to a college, one to an
[166]
