stylistic:tone
Historical analysis

The antiquity of the rules can be determined only by the dates of the authorities who quote them; in general, they cannot safely be declared older than the tanna ("repeater") to whom they are first ascribed. It is certain, however, that the seven middot ("measurements", and referring to behavior) of Hillel and the thirteen of Ishmael are earlier than the time of Hillel himself, who was the first to transmit them.

The Talmud gives no information concerning the origin of the middot, although the Geonim ("Sages") regarded them as Sinaitic (Law given to Moses at Sinai).

The middot seem to have been first laid down as abstract rules by the teachers of Hillel, though they were not immediately recognized by all as valid and binding. Different schools interpreted and modified them, restricted or expanded them, in various ways. Rabbi Akiva and rabbi Ishmael and their scholars especially contributed to the development or establishment of these rules. "It must be borne in mind, however, that neither Hillel, Ishmael, nor Eliezer ben Jose sought to give a complete enumeration of the rules of interpretation current in his day, but that they omitted from their collections many rules which were then followed."

Akiva devoted his attention particularly to the grammatical and exegetical rules, while Ishmael developed the logical. The rules laid down by one school were frequently rejected by another because the principles that guided them in their respective formulations were essentially different. According to 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.

Some scholars have observed a similarity between these rabbinic rules of interpretation and the hermeneutics of ancient Hellenistic culture. For example, Saul Lieberman argues that the names of rabbi Ishmael's middot (e. g., kal vahomer, a combination of the archaic form of the word for "straw" and the word for "clay" – "straw and clay", referring to the obvious) are Hebrew translations of Greek terms, although the methods of those middot are not Greek in origin.