The Jewish view is that God is eternal, with "neither beginning nor end", a principle stated in a number of Biblical passages. The rabbis taught a "quite literally ... down-to-earth" view of the eternalness of God: That "God is eternal, but it is not given to man to explore the full meaning of this idea", and so, "one cannot, therefore, expect to find in the rabbinic literature anything like a detailed examination of what is meant by divine eternity". A famous Mishnah statement on attempts to "pierce the veil" is this: "Whoever reflects on four things it were better for him that he had not come into the world: "what is above? what is beneath? what is before? and what is after?"