ABSTRACT
WHEN Michel Nicolas was writing seventy-five years ago, scholars had already begun to realize that traditional Judaism had undergone certain changes during the post-exilic period. It was said that these innovations were due to that slow process of natural evolution from within to which the Targums and the Midrash bear witness. The possibility of outside influences was only very grudgingly admitted, and where these could not be wholly denied they were reduced to the level of unconscious suggestions, as indefinable today as they would have been for the Jews whose religion they affected. 1 The most important innovations which were supposed to have penetrated current Judaism—or so-called popular Judaism—by way of the Haggadah, consisted of speculations on the nature of God, on the rôle of good and bad angels, on the future life and its rewards and punishments, and on the messianic expectation.
