After washing our hands and lighting the lamps, each is invited to sing a hymn before all to God, either taken from holy writ or of his own composition.
So little was the collection considered as a literary work with a definite text that every one assumed a right to abridge or enlarge, to insert ideas of his own, or fresh scriptural quotations; nor were the scribes and translators by any means scrupulous about the names of natural objects, and even the passages from Holy Writ.
The pamphlet is supposed to have been written by Chrysostomus Dudulaeus of Westphalia and printed by one Christoff Crutzer, but as no such author or printer is known at this time - the latter name indeed refers directly to the legend - it has been conjectured that the whole story is a myth invented to support the Protestant contention of a continuous witness to the truth of Holy Writ in the person of this "eternal" Jew; he was to form, in his way, a counterpart to the apostolic tradition of the Catholic Church.
Beside, the editions of Holy Writ are so numerous that he could hardly suppose that two copies would have the same pagination.
His lecture that night was like an exposition of holy writ.
