words and the actions of human people. Therefore, those rules were related in coordination with the four independent level of biblical reading, as in the acronym Pardes. Dates of the rules All the hermeneutic rules scattered through the Talmudim and Midrashim have been collected by Malbim in Ayyelet HaShachar, the introduction to his commentary on the Sifra, and have been reckoned at 613, to correspond with the 613 commandments. The antiquity of the rules can be determined only by the dates of the authorities who quote them, meaning that they cannot safely be declared older than the tanna to whom they are first ascribed. It is certain, however, that the seven middot of Hillel and the 13 of Rabbi Ishmael are earlier than the time of Hillel himself, who was the first to transmit them. At all events, he did not invent them, but merely collected them as current in his day, though he possibly amplified them. They were not immediately recognized by all as valid and binding. Different schools interpreted and modified them, restricting or expanding them, in various ways. The Talmud itself gives no information concerning the origin of the middot, although the Geonim regarded them as Sinaitic (הלכה למשה מסיני, "Law given to Moses at Mount Sinai"; comp. Rabbi Samson of Chinon in his Sefer HaKeritot). Rules of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael and their scholars especially contributed to the development or establishment of these rules. Rabbi Akiva devoted his attention particularly to the grammatical and exegetical rules, while Rabbi Ishmael developed the logical. The rules laid down by one school were frequently rejected by another because the principles which guided them in their respective formulations were essentially different. Superfluity in the text According to Rabbi Akiva, the divine language of the Torah is distinguished from the speech of men by the fact that in the former no word or sound is superfluous. He established two principles broadening the scope of the rule of his teacher Nahum Ish Gamzu, who had declared that certain particles, like את, גם and או, were inclusive and certain others, such as אך, רק and מן, were exclusive. These two principles are: אין רבוי אחר רבוי אלא למעט (= "one inclusion added to another is equivalent to an exclusion") לשונות רבויין הן (= "words are amplifications") Hence he interprets the following forms of expression as amplifications: an