Page:Ginzburg - The Legends of the Jews - Volume 7.djvu/14

 Moses and Israel, Moses and the Torah, and so on. Quite often it was found expedient to arrange the items in alphabetical sequence, e. g., God, abode of, attributes of; under attributes, are listed the various attributes—eternity to vengeance—and then the article continues with “back of”, “blessing of”, etc.

It was impossible to adhere to any one of these methods in all cases, and in many instances the various methods were combined into one. For example, under Angels many items were listed alphabetically, e. g., Angel of the abysses, Angel of the Arabot, etc. Another group relating to the characteristics of angels were put together, e. g., Angels, appearance of, beauty of, etc. Various items pertaining to the relation of the angels to biblical characters, e. g., Angels and Aaron, etc., were arranged alphabetically. In this particular heading I merged Angel and Angels for reasons of expediency, whereas throughout the Index I always separated the singular from the plural.

Under the heading Proverbs and Sayings, pp. 390-393, I cited the proverbs in full and listed them in alphabetical order according to the principal word of each sentence, e. g., accuser, anger, etc.

The Index of Passages lists all the passages unless otherwise indicated. It was found inadvisable to cite all the references to the Talmud and Midrash because of their great number, and accordingly only those passages which are explained in the notes are cited.

In the Index of Hebrew and Aramaic phrases, the verbs are mostly arranged according to roots.

In general I was guided by the language of the author for the headings in the Index. For example, under Shekinah, I listed separately Shekinah, glory of, light of, radiance of, and splendor of, which represent the Hebrew זיו השכינה. In some cases I made a choice between competing terms.