was an eminent member of the class of soferim , professional scholars. The Universal Aspect of the Torah as Divine Wisdom The Torah had, however, yet another aspect. For Judaism, while in history and in actuality a national religion, the religion of one of the smaller peoples of the earth, was in idea and in destiny universal. As there is but one true God, one revelation of His character and will, so in the future all mankind shall acknowledge the sovereignty of God, the malkut shammaim , embrace the true religion, and live in accordance with its precepts. The revelation of religion, the Torah, is universal. A significant expression of this idea is the identification of Torah with Wisdom. It is the peculiar wisdom of Israel. Moses says of the statutes and ordinances which by God's command he delivered to the people: "Observe therefore and do them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, that when they hear all these statutes shall say, surely this great nation is a wise and under standing people" (Deut. 4.6). But it is this because Torah is divine wisdom, or to put it in the way the rabbis conceived it, the Wisdom that speaks in the eighth chapter of Proverbs is the Torah. The identification is a commonplace in the rabbinical literature, and l many passages of Scripture referring to wisdom are interpreted in this sense; it appears in Sifre as a universally accepted truth. We can,