...the rise of Judaism as a religion of the book seems to have stopped quite suddenly, more or less with the birth of Christianity. For the rabbis, orality seems to have provided a protection against the dangers of dissemination. ...the very holiness of the Torah which stood in a category of its own might have inhibited them from producing other books-as if there could be only one single book in their religious tradition. ...Augustine would still be able to call the Jews both librarii nostri (our scribes),9 and custodes librorum nostrorum (keepers of our books).10 Thus, during the pogrom organized in 418 by the Christians on the Jewish community of Minorca, the arsonists took great care to save the sacred books of the Jews. ...this was a culture based almost exclusively upon one book, or one set of books, the Bible, the revealed Scripture, as Douglas Burton-Christie has shown so well.25 From being extensive, reading became intensive, as it were.26 In this sense, one can argue for some similitude between the attitude of the monks and that of the Rabbis.