features of a kind of deterministic view of the world: "By your name they shall call you, at the place where you belong they shall see you, what is yours they shall give to you; no man touches that which is destined for his neighbor; and no government infringes even by a hair's breadth upon the time marked for another government". Following Hillel, Akiva had declared the commandment "you shall love thy neighbor like yourself" to be the greatest fundamental commandment of the Jewish doctrine; Ben Azzai, in reference to this, said that a still greater principle was found in the Scriptural verse, "This is the book of the generations of man [Adam]. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God He made him". The commandment to love God with all the soul Ben Azzai explained in the same manner as Akiva: "Love him even to the last breath of the soul!". Several of Ben Azzai's aggadic teachings, having been called forth by those of Akiva, are introduced by the words, "I do not wish to oppose the interpretation of my master, but will only add to his words". Ben Azzai's observations on sacrifices are obviously directed against Gnosticism. In opposition to the Gnostic doctrine that the laws of sacrifice could have originated only with a secondary god (the demiurge, who is merely just, not beneficent), Ben Azzai notes that not any one of the various names of God in Judaism used in connection with the sacrificial laws, but precisely the distinctive name, the Tetragrammaton, in which especially the goodness of God is emphasized, in order that the "minim" (disbelievers) might not have an opportunity to prove their views by the Bible. Ben Azzai's symbolic interpretation of the first word of Lamentations (איכה) is also polemical and probably directed against Pauline Christianity. He holds that the gematria of the letters of this word indicates that the Israelites were not exiled until they had denied the one God (א), the ten commandments (י), the law of circumcision, given to the twentieth generation after Adam (כ), and the five (ה) books of the Torah. Quotes A mitzvah draws in its wake another mitzvah, while a transgression draws in its wake another transgression. Despise no man, nor ignore any matter; for there is not a man that has not his hour, nor is there a thing that has not