Hellenistic Judaism

“ Yet the Hellenistic-Jewish literature is colored throughout by an apologetic purpose. Whether the work is a professedly historical or ethical or philosophical treatise, the idea is always present of representing Judaism as a sublime and a humanitarian doctrine, and of refuting the calumnies of the Greek scribes. Thus, besides his elaborate apology prepared for the Roman Emperor, Philo had written a popular presentation of Judaism in the form of a Life of Moses, with appended treatises on Humanity and Nobility, which was but a thinly-veiled work of apologetics. ”

“ The elements in Christianity which derive from what Jews called "the Gôyim" or "nations" beyond the pale, seem to be far deeper and more numerous than those which come unchanged from Judaism. Even the Sabbath had to be changed, and the birthday of Jesus conformed to that of the Sun. Judaism contributed a strong, though not quite successful, resistance to polytheism, and a purification of sexual morality. It provided perhaps a general antiseptic, which was often needed by the passionate gropings of Hellenistic religion, in the stage which I call the Failure of Nerve. ”

“ He develops, too, the humanitarian aspect of Judaism in the manner of the Hellenistic school. "And for our duty at the sacrifices, we ought in the first place to pray for the common welfare of all and after that for ourselves, for we were made for fellowship, one with another, and he who prefers the common good before his own is above all dear to God." He points to the excellence of the Jewish conception of marriage, another commonplace of the Hellenistic apologist, as we know from the Sibylline oracles ”

“ The practical teachers of Israel looked with suspicion upon the subtleties of the different Greek philosophical schools. On the other hand, the homely, domestic joys of the average Jew and his intense devotion to the service of the temple and to the faith of his fathers seemed contemptible to those familiar with the brilliant, voluptuous life of the Hellenic cities. Hellenism protested against the narrowness, barrenness, and intolerance of Judaism; Judaism protested against the godlessness and immorality of Hellenism. ”

“ In the broad perspective of history it is clear that both Hellenism and Judaism were essential to the upbuilding and broadening of the human character and ideals. Hellenism in its nobler form brought what Judaism lacked, and Judaism was fitted to correct the evils and fatal weaknesses of Hellenism. ”

“ Contrariwise, many Hebrew Cabbalists, filling high places in the Synagogue, found in these theosophic hallucinations a proof of the divine origin of Christianity and openly embraced it. But apart from mysticism, the genius of the Renaissance overstepped the iron circle of Judaism. The charm of Hellenism which had in old times attracted the Jews of Alexandria, once more prevailed against the Hebrew hatred of Gentile culture. Jewish youths gladly attended the Italian universities ”

“ What we are pleased to call religion now-a-days is for the most part Hellenized Judaism; and, not un-frequently, the Hellenic element carries with it a mighty remnant of old-world paganism and a great infusion of the worst and weakest products of Greek scientific speculation; while fragments of Persian and Babylonian—or rather Accadian—mythology burden the Judaic contribution to the common stock. The antagonism of Science is not to Religion, but to the heathen survivals and the bad philosophy under which Religion herself is wellnigh crushed. ”

“ Jewish influence may be said to have begun to exercise itself upon general culture when Judaism and Hellenism met for the first time. The result of the meeting was the new product, Judæo-Hellenic literature. Greek civilization was attractive to Jews. The new ideas were popularized for all strata of the people to imbibe. Shortly before the old pagan world crumbled, Hellenism enjoyed a beautiful, unexpected revival in Alexandria. There, strange to say, Judaism, in its home antagonistic to Hellenism, had filled and allied itself with the Greek spirit. ”

“ Judaism represented the life and faith of a peasant people, while Hellenism was born in the city. Wherever Hellenism went, it found expression in civic life. The heathen races of Palestine, the Phoenicians and Philistines on the coast, and the east-Jordan peoples readily welcomed the superior civilization of the conquerors. It appealed powerfully to their intellectual, social, and aesthetic sense, and, in the debased form that it assumed in the East, to their passions. Even the Samaritans readily accepted it; and the city of Samaria was settled by a colony of Macedonian soldiers. ”

“ These differences between the two theories of life showed themselves in the brusque opposition in character and customs that made the Greeks and the Jews absolute antipodes in many spheres of life. It cannot be denied that in matters of the intellect, especially in the field of philosophy and science, not to mention art, it might have been greatly to the advantage of the Jews to become disciples of the Greeks. Nor is there any doubt that the brighter aspects of Hellenism would make an admirable complement to Judaism. ”

“ He is the incorruptible spirit in all things, just and yet merciful, the lover of men. The book also places side by side with the Jewish teachings regarding men's duties to God and their fellow-men the Greek virtues of moderation, good sense, justice, and courage or fortitude. It also teaches that, like God, each of his children should be a lover of men. Thus the book unites most effectively that which is best in the thought of Judaism and Hellenism and is an earnest of that still nobler union that was later realized in the thought and teachings of Christianity. ”

“ Like the Bible prophets, these Jewish Sibylline writers, warned those who followed false views and bad lives, and promised salvation to those who accepted the law of the God of Israel. They popularized the teachings of the Mosaic law and so generalized it as to present it as a religion for [138] mankind. These writings exerted a salutary influence on many followers of Greek thought.
The Hellenists went so far as to try to prove from Jewish Scriptures many of the loftier ideas of Greek philosophy. In this way Judaism was represented as anticipating the highest knowledge of the time. ”

“ The one class was the Hebrews; that is to say, the Jews of Palestine, speaking Hebrew or rather Armenian, reading the Bible in the Hebrew text; the other class was "Hellenists," that is to say, Jews speaking Greek, and reading the Bible in Greek. These last were further subdivided into two classes, the one being of Jewish blood, the other being proselytes, that is to say, people of non-Israelitish origin, allied in divers degrees to Judaism. These Hellenists, who almost all came from Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, or Cyrene, lived at Jerusalem in distinct quarters. ”

“ Influence of Heathenism upon Judaism.―This reached its greatest strength in Egypt, the special centre and source of the syncretic tendencies of the age. Forming for itself by means of the adoption of Greek culture and especially of the Platonic philosophy a more universal basis of culture, Jewish Hellenism flourished in Alexandria. After Aristobulus, who wrote Ἐξηγήσεις τῆς Μωυσέως, about B.C. 170, now only found in a fragment of doubtful authority, and the author of the Book of Wisdom, the chief representative of this tendency was the Alexandrian Jew Philo, a contemporary of Christ. ”

“ We have already noted how the Hellenized Jews of Egypt lost their Hebrew, and had to have their Bible translated into Greek.
In the reign of Tiberius Cæsar a great teacher arose out of Judea who was to liberate the intense realization of the righteousness and unchallengeable oneness of God, and of man’s moral obligation to God, which was the strength of orthodox Judaism, from that greedy and exclusive narrowness with which it was so extraordinarily intermingled in the Jewish mind. ”

“ From the period when the Scriptures closed, the affairs of the Jews had to be extracted, for the most part, out of works dealing with the annals of the whole of civilized humanity. With the conquest of Alexander the Great, the Jewish people enter into the Hellenistic world, and begin to command the attention of Hellenistic historians. They are an element in the cosmopolis which was the ideal of the world-conqueror. ”

“ According to its form of manifestation, Judaism is below the Greek spirit. It is not beautiful, but rather grotesque. But in its essence, as the religion of the contradiction between the idea and its existence, it goes beyond nature, which it perceives to be established by an absolute, conscious, and reasonable Will; while the Greek concealed from himself only mythically his dependence on nature, on his mother-earth. The Jews have been preserved in the midst of all other culture by the elastic power of the thought of God as One who was free from the control of nature. ”

“ All these unwritten customs, which lived in the heart of the nation and, as it were, grew with its growth, gained an extraordinary degree of importance from the dangers that Judaism had encountered and the victories that it had achieved. The people had risked, in behalf of these very customs, their property and their life; and the martyrdom that many of the faithful had undergone, and the antagonism they felt towards the renegade and frivolous Hellenists, had much increased the reverence and attachment with which these customs were regarded. ”

“ Whatever triumph Judaism might celebrate by the accession of proselytes, and bright as seemed the dawn of the day predicted by the prophet, when the peoples of the earth would turn their eyes to Zion, and towards the light issuing thence to illumine the human race, yet in their native land, and more especially in Jerusalem, the yoke of the Romans weighed heavily on the Judæans, and became daily more oppressive. ”

“ The result is that the word "Israel" is found nowhere in the book of Proverbs. The teachings there found are both individual and universal and apply to Gentile as well as Jew, to the present as well as the past. The gradual disappearance of the prophets during the latter part of the Persian period, and the fact that the priests ever devoted themselves more and more to the ritual and less to teaching, left a great need in the life of Judaism which called to the front the wise. At the same time the problems of the individual became more and more complex and insistent. ”

“ In the capital city of the hellenized world the Jews constituted one of the most important elements of culture. According to Mommsen, the Jewish colony in Alexandria was not inferior, in point of numbers, to the Jewish population of Jerusalem, the metropolis. Influenced by Greek civilization, the Jews in turn exercised decisive influence upon their heathen surroundings, and introduced a new principle of development into the activity of the cultivated classes. The Greek translation of the Biblical writings formed the connecting link between Judaism and Hellenism. ”

“ We are, of course, dealing with a “spiritualised and intimate Judaism,” a philosophy of life and deity that had, among the dispersed Jews, been permeated by the finer thought and feeling of the Greek spirit. Anyone who doubts the possibility of this must have in mind only the description of Judaism in the pages of the gospels themselves, and take it to be an historical fact that Judaism was in the time of Jesus as fossilised and spiritless as it is described in the gospels. ”

“ When, therefore, we consider the utterly corrupt condition of heathenism, we cannot wonder that Judaism, in spite of all the contempt that was thrown upon it, would attract, by reason of its hoary antiquity and the sublime simplicity of its creed, the significance of its worship, and its Messianic promises, many of the better aspiring heathens, who were no longer satisfied with their sorely degraded forms of religion. ”

“ While Judaism, in its native country was striving to isolate itself, and was seizing upon all sorts of expedients to insure this end, it readily entered into relations, outside of Judea, with other systems of thought, and accepted elements of the classical culture. Instead of the violent opposition which the Palestinian Judaism of the pre-Maccabean period, that is, the period of strife, had offered to Hellenism, the tendency to make mutual concessions, and pave the way for an understanding between the two theories of life, asserted itself in Alexandria. ”

“ Yet no one argues that because Hellenism is still necessary, Hellenes are also necessary. Who contends that for carrying on Greek culture you need Greeks? On the contrary, it was the case of Greece that gave rise to the profound observation that just as a man must die to live, so peoples must die that men may live through them. Renan, who, among the moderns, gave fullest value to this truth, included Judaea with Greece in the generalisation. Certainly as a nation, whether temporarily or irrevocably, Judaea perished no less than Athens, that a new world might be born. ”

“ The Jews of Eastern Asia maintained a closer connection and spiritual affinity with the exclusive Palestinian Rabbinism, and the heathen element, which here penetrated into their religious conceptions, became, chiefly through the Talmud, the common property of post-Christian Judaism. But heathenism also, contemptible as Judaism appeared to it, was susceptible to Jewish influences, impressed by the deeper religious contents of Judaism, and though only sporadic, instances of such influence were by no means rare. ”