Pfeiffer, file 2 (unverified)
HELLENISM\1/
The centuries going from the rule of Alexander the Great (336-323 B.C.) to that of Octavian Augustus (27 B.C.-A.D. 14) are commonly called the Hellenistic period. The culture of this period, since Droysen gave vogue to the term, is incorrectly called “Hellenism”2 (properly, classical Greek
1 The brilliant book of Paul
Wendland, Die hellenistisc mische Kultur in ihrm Beziehungen zu
Judentum und
Christentum (Handbuch zum Neum Testament, Vol. I, Part 11).
2The word
"Hellenism" occurs in ancient literature (hellenim6s), meaning the
correct use of the Greek language and, in II Macc.
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culture), thus avoiding the correct-but dreadful-word "Hellenisticism." in view of the fact that art, science, literature, and philosophy in the early centuries of the Roman Empire were essentially Hellenistic (even Rome's greatest creation, jurisprudence, did not escape Greek influence), we may be allowed in this chapter to call the culture from 300 B.C. to A.D. 200 "Hellenism."
1. Historical Sketch
Philip II, king of
Macedon (356-336 B.C.), defeated the
Greek states at Cbaeronea (338) and settled the perennial "Balkan
Problem'
by forcing them, with the exception of
When Alexander died in 323, his empire fell apart.
After the battle of Ipsus (301), Ptolemy I added Coele-Syria to
The conquests of Alexander and the rule of his successors
are less significant politically than culturally in the history of
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charged with the diffusion of Greek civilization3, which even their military success per se confirmed as superior. Alexander, who bad been a pupil of Aristotle (384-322), attached to his general staff Greek scholars and scientists, mostly trained by Aristotle: geographers, called Bematists or surveyors (Baeton, Diogenes, Amyntas), Whose observations were utilized by Dicaearchus; botanists, notably Theophrastus, whose geography and physiology of plants laid the foundations of scientific botany; historians, both professional (Callisthenes) and amateur (Nearchus described his sea voyage from India; Androsthenes reported his exploration of the Persian Gulf; Ptolemy and Aristobulus reported military campaigns); etbriographers, zoologists, mineralogists, bydrographers, and others. Unfortunately this mass of important scientific material, with the exception of the botanical works of Theophrastus, has been lost, althougb much of it was preserved indirectly and partially in the works of later Hellenistic and Roman scientists.
It is primarily in the scientific field that the Greeks
surpassed all other ancient nations. Egypt, Babylonia, and, at a
much
later date, China had in very early times reacbed a relatively high
level of
civilization, but, owing perhaps to the brilliance of the initial
achievement,
they soon became fixed and crystallized, never fulfilling their early
promises:
the Egyptian art of 2800 B.C. is superior to that of 280 B.c. Their
achievements are primarily in the field of plastic arts, practical
devices, and
measures contributing to human comfort. But in the intellectual
field
there is little to be said: no great literature (aside from
It was thus inevitable that the civilization of
3 In modem times this
education of the "natives" is quaintly called "the white man's
burden," although it usually proves to be quite lucrative. The
Bantu
in equstorial and
4 As early as 380 B.c., Isocrates could say that as a result of the spread of Athenian culture, "the name 'Hellene' now no longer means racial origin, but Indicates spiritual character, mentality; and those called 'Hellenes' are not so much blood relations as those who partake of our education" (Panegyric 50).
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wisdom of the East
(notably in
On the other hand, it was inevitable that the peoples of
5 On the cities founded by Alexander and his successors see K. J. Beloch, Geschichte, 2nd ed., Vol. 4, Pt. 1, pp. 251-262. Some of these new Hellenistic cities are mentioned in the New Testament.
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An observer in 200 B.C. would never have doubted the permanence of Hellenism in Western Asia; but a century later the signs of its decay were obvious: it was on the defensive against the Oriental reaction. The rejection of Hellenism in Judea through the victories of Judas Maccabeus was the dramatic forerunner of a general trend which eventually wiped out all traces of Greek culture in Western Asia and Egypt-aside from some archaeological ruins. Like the Philistines before and the Crusaders later, the Macedonians were eventually absorbed in Western Asia, following a striking initial success. Livy (38, 17) already observed this assimilation with the natives when he wrote: "The Macedonians who have colonies at Alexandria in Egypt, at Selencia and Babylon, and at other places scattered over the world, have degenerated into Syrians, Parthians, and Egyptians.”
While the
Romanization of the West was thorough and
bequeathed to modern times the languages derived from vulgar Latin (the
Romance
languages still spoken in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Rumania, and
parts of
Switzerland) and the solid unity of the Roman Church before the
Reformation,
the Hellenization of the Near East was only superficial: the Greek
language,
spoken chiefly in the cities, did not survive the triumph of the old
languages
(Aramaic or Syriac, Persian, the languages of Asia Minor, Coptic) and
later of
Arabic; and the Greek Church could not prevent the rise of national
churches
using Coptic, Ethiopic, Syriac, Armenian, and Georgian in their
liturgies-not
to speak of the growth of Zoroastrianism and the irresistible spread of
Islam. The decline of the Seleucid dynasty, which began with
Antiocbus IV
Epiphanes (175-163), the rise of the Parthian Empire (founded by
Mithridates I
[171-138]), and the Roman conquests (following the victory over
Antiocbus III
the Great at Magnesia in 190 B.c.) mark the beginning of Hellenism's
decadence:
when the Romans burned Seleucia to the ground in A.D. 164, they
extinguished
the torch of Greek culture cast of the Euphrates. After the rise
of
Christianity, only the study of Greek philosophy, especially the works
of Plato
and (notably in the
2. General Charact
It remains now to
characterize the Hellenistic culture, the
vicissitudes of which have been briefly sketched. The
far-reaching
changes in the civilization of
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abiding creations of
the genius of Kant, Goethe, Beethoven,
and others, came to an end with the final convulsion marked by the
works of
Nietzsche and Wagner. After 1870 the mental energy of
The Greek classical
culture, Teaching its apex at
The immediate effect of the end of the polis, the independent Greek city-state, and the rise of great kingdoms and empires through the conquests of Alexander was paradoxically to give to human life both a cosmopolitan and an individualistic aspect.
Even though, as has
been noted, Hellenism did not take root
in the Near East as deeply as Romanism in the West, the conquests of
Alexander
did contribute to the education of the "barbarians," to the spread of
the Greek language (in the form called koin,6 Ididlektos], or common
[speech]),
and thus, to some extent, to the obliteration of the distinction
between Greek
and "barbarians ' " inasmuch as they attained the same cultural level
(cf. Aristotle's remark in 348, reported by josephus, Against
Apion I:22,
§§176-182). Besides this creation of a common culture and
language over a
wide area, Alexander's empire tended to break down more and more the
separate
nationalities of
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empire per se pointed in the direction of a new conception which in theory bad been partially developed before Alexander, the oikoumene (the inhabited earth), the unity of the human race (genus humanum, Cicero, De finibus 111, 67), humanity or "One World" (Wendell Wfllkie), in which there is "neither Greek nor Jew ... barbarian, Scythian, bond, nor free" (Col. 3:11), in which, as Cicero said (De finibus III, 63) referring to Cbrysippus, a man on account of the mere fact that be is a man will not appear to be an alien in the presence of another man. In this period the Stoics had some vague notion of "the parliament of man, the federation of the world" (Tennyson), for they conceived a uniform law applied to all men and according to which, as if according to a common light, all are ruled (Plutarch, De Alexandii Magni fortune 1, 8). So, at least in principle, the nationalism of the polis and of the small kingdom tended to be absorbed in the universalism of the world empires How the barrier between Greeks and "barbarians" tended to be obliterated may be seen in the following contrast: Aristotle (fragment 658, edit. Rose) advised Alexander to practice "hegemony" (leadership) with the Greeks but "despotism- with the barbarians, caring, for the first as for friends and relatives, but utilizing the latter like plants or animals. A century later, however, Eratosthenes (in Strabo 1, pp. 66-67; cf. Cicero, De republics I, 58), rejecting this division into masters and servants, taught that one should judge and distinguish men according to virtue and wickedness alone-a classification unrelated to the distinction of races.
This notion of mankind as a whole and the establishment of a world empire naturally implied, for Alexander, a common culture for aU mena culture basically Hellenic but enriched vath Oriental contributions. As in the case of paint, the vaster the surface over which a culture is spread, the thinner the veneer will be. Leveling is always downward, to the standards of the masses. A general, average, Hellenistic culture was thus developed; national differences tended to disappear; Greek dialects were losing their identities in the koine-the common international speech chiefly based on Attic, in which the Septuagint and the New Testament were written; local juristic practices and principles tended to be merged into laws for all nations; education, morals, commerce and industry, and even religion were losing some of their parochial characteristics and coalesced into average forms; and the noblest creation of the age, Stoic philosophy, taught that the world was one and the individual (whatever his race and rank)-was supreme-tbus giving
6 "If what philosophers say of the kinship of God and men be true, what remains for men to do but as Socrates did: never, when asked one's country to answer, 'I m an Athenian or a Corinthian,' but 'I am a citizen of the world'“(Epictetus,Discourses I: 9,1).
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philosophical expression to the new cosmopolitan and individualistic spirit. As U. von Wilamowitz-Moeflendorff aptly said, "The Stoa sets out solely from the single person and culminates in the wise man for whom individualization is essential. This is diametrically the opposite of the old Hellenic principle which sets out from the community: the ideal conception of Plato is a community, that of Zeno is an individual."
The rise of individualism runs parallel to that of internationalism. Diogenes calls himself kosmopolites (world citizen): the whole world becomes the fatherland of the sage,7 who would have approved John Wesley's dictum: "The world is my parish." On the contrary, in the Greek polis of earlier days patriotism was purely local and the interests of the city-state were supreme. The citizen devoted the best of his thought and energy to the conduct of public affairs, his life unfolded within his commonwealth's limits, outside of which he was an alien merely tolerated and without a voice in the administration of the state. As a public servant responsible for the welfare of his city, which depended to a great extent on the decisions reached by the assembly, the citizen left his private affairs largely in the hands of the women and the slaves of his family (like the fortunate husband in Prov. 31:10-31). With the decadence of the polis even before the time of Alexander- due in part to its inability to administer a vast territory, to the rise of political parties more concerned with selfish interests than with the public welfare, and to the bitter strife between Greek cities-and with its final absorption within the kingdom of Philip, the empire of Alexander, and at last within the Roman Empire, participation in the government was precluded to all but a few citizens. The result was a greater concern with private affairs, a greater interest in the home-which gave to womanhood a new importance and dignity-a desire for a successful professional or business career far from the native town, in one of the metropolitan centers of culture or at court, if not in the Hellenistic cities of Asia, which was then the America of the Greeks. The social instinct now found expression in labor unions or craftsmen's guilds, religious and charitable associations, clubs. Individualism and realism are characteristic of Hellenistic art; it excelled in portraits which are true to life.
A good index of this trend from public to private affairs
is the Athenian comedy. Aristophanes (d. ca. 380 B.C.) satirized
on the
stage public figures and political movements which displeased his
conservative
attitude. A century later Menander (@-291 B.C.) was instead the
precursor of Moliere in presenting wittily or commiseratingly human
foibles and
domestic troubles, and in depicting standard types of persons such as
the
misanthrope, the libertine, the rniser, the coquette. Menander's
contemporary,
the botanist Theophrastus (d. ca. 287), in his characters
7 Cf. Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, Vol. 4, Pt. I, p. 404.
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sketched
such types as the flatterer, the grumbler, etc.; cf. C. N.
Greenough and
J. M. French, A Bibliography of the Theophrastan Character in
English.
The great political upheavals of the times brought to the fore great personalities of leaders, men of iron will, definite purpose, prompt decision, utter ruthlessness, dazzling daring. Such men were the first two Ptolemies, Seleucus I, Antioebus 111, Cassander, Antigonus Cyclops, Demetrius Poliorcetes, Herod the Great, and others. By their side, or alone, are the women who, through intrigue, crime, flirtation, and keenness of mind, gain immense political influence or power: Berenice, Cleopatra the Great, some Seleucid queens, Herodias, and others. While the masses worship the emperor and call him soter (savior), men of letters are devoting themselves to a new genre, biography (the books on Alexander; Nicholas of Damascus, whose biography of Herod was abundantly excerpted by josephus; Plutarch). In its manifold variety and emotional complexity, in the contrasts between pomp and simplicity, sentimentalism and selfishness, puritanism and licentiousness, romanticism and realism, education and propaganda, science and superstition, Hellenistic life is strangely modern, we almost could say "American- even though the world was then empty of machines and full of slaves.8 This new cosmopolitan and individualistic mentality permeated literature, science, philosophy, and religion; thus it radically modified them and laid the foundation of Roman culture, from which our own has eventually descended.9
3.. Hellenistic Literature
The decline of the classical literature of the age of Pericles had begun before Alexander. A new spirit which was to prevail in Hellenism, is
8 Cf. U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, in Die Griechische und Lateinische Litffatur and Sprache (Kultur der Gegenwart, Part 1, Division VIII), pp. 92 f. Berlin and Leipzig 1905. P. Wendland, Hellenistisch-romische Kultur, pp. 19-24. W. W. Tam, Hellenistic Civilization, pp. 3 f.
9 Cosmopolitan and individualistic tendencies prevail likewise in public administration, social and economic matters, painting and sculpture-subjects which lie outside the scope of the present summary; see for them the works cited at the beginning of this chapter.
10 In addition to the general
works cited at the beginning of this chapter, see the brilliant summary
of U.
von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff in Die Griechische und Lateinische
Literatur und
Sprache (Kultur der Gegenwart 1, viii), pp. 81-197 (for Latin
literature see F.
Leo, ibid., pp. 316-373). For details, see: F. Susemihl,
Geschichte der
griechischm Litteratur in der Alexandrineneit, 2 vols.
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apparent in Euripides (d. ca.407), in contrast with Aeschylus (d. 456) and Sophocles (d. 406 at the age of ninety); and in Aristotle (d. 322), in contrast with Plato (d. 347). Euripides begins to bring drama down to earth, to the level of everyday problems and emotions. In his accurate character drawing, psychological analysis of passion, sense for dramatic conflict in human life, concern with stage effects and audience reaction, Euripides is a precursor not only of the Hellenistic theater, but of the modem one as well-Dotably in making of love the chief topic in some of his plays. Aristotle, on the other hand, inaugurated a new era by forsaking the brilliant metaphysical and abstract speculations of Plato for research in the humanities and the natural sciences. Aristotles own classroom lecture notes (hypomnemata) were jotted down with little attention to literary form and were later worked over by him and by his pupils into books for publication, which, being intended chiefly as manuals for information, lacked rhetorical art. And yet, as in the case of some modern functional constructions (like suspension bridges), such writings stressing content rather than form have an artistic appeal of their own. In fact such learned works are probably the best products of Hellenistic literature, in which the finest writings are seldom within the realm of belles-lettres.
The rationalism of Aristotle, which had been foreshadowed by the Sophists, and the realism of Euripides eventually had a corrosive effect on Athenian classical poetry, as on Platonic mysticism. The latter, in various admixtures with Orphism and Oriental religions, sank to the level of the credulous masses until it was rescued for philosophy by Posidonius. Poetry had been nourished since Homer by religion and mythology: now traditional religion is in flux, and myths have become fairy tales for children (unless they be interpreted allegorically as vehicles of the deepest truths). This agnostic attitude, together with the humanization of mythical beings in Euripides, robbed ancient myths of their romantic halo and thus dried up the types of poetry nourished by mythical lore: epics, tragedies, and hymns were no longer inspired by faith, their breath of life, and thus became artificial, mere empty shells, skillfully adorned whitened sepulchers. The Alexandrian poetry that had a spark of life found its inspiration outside of mythology in the actual world of men and nature.
The Cretan Rhianus (ca. 260 i3.c.), author of a Heraclaeid and of local sagas in verse (notably on the second Messenian war), Antagoras of Rhodes (about 300-260), and particular Apollonius of Rhodes (ca. 270 B.c.), author of the Argmwutica, wrote epics in Homeric style, but modernized in the manner of novels by means of love interest, adventures, and details drawn from life. But Callimachus had probably such long epics in mind when be said that "a big book is a big evil." Vergil of
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In the third century the seven authors known as the Pleiad (a name revived by Pierre de Ronsard [d. 15851 in La Pleiade), strove to revive classical tragedy but failed dismally, although they found imitators among Alexandrian Jews. A monologue-drama, written by Lycophron, the Alexandra (dealing with Cassandra), and a few fragments are all that survives from the Pleiad.
Other poetic genres showed more vitality-in spite of the fact that their verses proceeded from the pens of erudite scholars and were intended for the intelligentsia. The elegy, which later flourished in Roman literature, was revived in the Hellenistic period by Philetas of Cos (d. ca. 280), Hermesianax (ca. 290), Euphorion (ca. 230), and others. Asclepiades of Samos (ca. 290), composed songs and erotic epigrams: his topics ranged from 'wine, women, and song" to the sadness of man's lot. In his day, his imitators were Hedylus of Athens and Poseidippus of Alexandria. Leonidas of Tarentum (ca. 280) composed more elaborate epigrams, which influenced Phoenician and Syrian poets of the period 130-60 D.C.: Meleager and Philodemus of Cadara in Transjordania (whose erotic epigrams have been compared to the Song of Songs), and Antipatros of Sidon.11
The two masters of Hellenistic poetry are Theocritus of Syracuse (ca. 280-260) and Callirnachus of Cyrene (ca. 280-245), the first more inspired as a poet, the second more celebrated (Quintilian calls him elegiae princess) and a far greater scholar. Theocritus, the greatest of bucolic poets, composed graceful-if sophisticated-idyls (imitated, but not surpassed, by Vergil in his Eclogues), in which the descriptions of nature's charms and of rustic festivals make us forget that the shepherds of Theocritus are really cultivated gentlemen wearing a rustic disguise. Callimaebus composed hvmns, epigrams, and notably elegies and idyls (like his Hekale); his chief work (Aitia) is a collection of ancient local
11 The Greek Anthropology( Anthologia
Palatina),
preserved in a single mauscriptof the Palatine Library in
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legends relating the origin of customs and the founding of Greek cities. Ovid (d. ca. A.D. 17), his greatest successor, recognized that his poetic technique surpassed his inspiration (ingenia non valet, arte valet).
Hellenistic poetry displays not only great erudition, as in
Callimachus, but also scientific knowledge. The best known
astronomical
poem is the Phain6mena of Aratus of Soli in Cil. cia (d. eq.
245). Paul
probably quoted the verse "M him we live, and move, and have our
being" (Acts
Folk literature flourished by the side of this
sophisticated, erudite, and rhetorical poetry: little of it, except the
new
comedy (Meander, 341291 B.C.), was spontaneous and natural. On a
lower
level than the Attic new comedy, the comic burlesques of tragedy
(phlyakes),
presented by grotesquely costumed actors, sent southern Italian and
Sicilian
audiences into peals of laughter. Through the medium of the
Campanian
Atellanae -ribald farces transplanted to
[extra space]
Apart from scientific, scholarly, and philosophical works, the prose literature of the Hellenistic period comprises primarily history and fiction, which are not always sharply separated, for historical works (since Herodotus) included legends and fanciful tales, while novels were sometimes built around historical characters. Jewish literature of this period, both Palestinian and Alexandrian, displays the same disregard of a sharp demarcation between fact and fancy. Honestly historical are the books
12 The three mimes of Theocritus are: The Sorceresses (Idyl II), The Loves of
Cynisca (Idyl XIV), and The Syracusan Women at the Festival of Adonis (Idyl XV).
105
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of
Ptolemy I on Alexander and the naval report of Nearchus on the voyage
down the
Apart from the life of Alexander and the history of Roman conquests, Hellenistic historians disclosed a keen interest in the history of Oriental nations:14 the Jews (I Maccabees in Greek, Jason of Cyrene and II
13The Histories of Polvbius were continued by Posidonius of Apamea (or Of Rhodes, 135-51 B.C.) who was far better as a Stoic philosopher than as a hisiorian.
14 The fragmentary surviving
texts of these historians are edited with a Latin translation in C. and
T.
Muller, Fragmenta historicorum graecorum, Vols. 1-4.
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Maccabees, Flavius josephus), the Egyptians (Hecataeus of Abdera, ca. 290 B.c.; Manetho, ca. 270 B.C.; Plutarch's On Isis and Osiris, ca. A.D. 100), the Babylonians and Assyrians (Berossus, ca. 280; the famous cbronological canon of reigns by Claudius Ptolemy, second century of our era; Abydenus, early in our era), the Pboenicians (Menander, second century B.C.; Dios; Pbilostratus; in the first century of our era Philo Byblius, translated the Pboonician myfliology of Sanchuniathon); the Indians (Megasthenes).
Out of such national histories were the universal histories compfled. The most important for us is the Historical Library (BibliotukO historike') of Diodorus Siculus (ca. 25 B.c.). Only books 1-5 (mythic beginnings) and 11-20 (480-302 B.C.), of the forty books of Diodorus, bave survived more or less intact, but abundant fragments of the rest (notably those from the last ten books, preserved by Pbotius) are known. His method is annalistic. Tbe first part describes the mytbical history of non-Hellenic nations (1-3) and of the Greeks (4-6); the second deals with the bistory from the fall of Troy to the death of Alexander the Great (7-17); and the third part comes down to Caesar's Gallic war in 60 B.C. (18-40). The work is merely a vast collection of extracts strung on a thin thread of original narrative, but it is invaluable for us, baving preserved fragments of earlier historians wbich otherwise would be lost; thus it bridges the gap between Xenophon and Polybius.
Much larger is the work in 144 volumes entitled Histories, written by Nicbolas of Damascus, the confidential secretary of Herod the Great (37-4 B.C.), in ten years (ca. 15-6 B.c.). Fragments of the first seven books (coming down to Cyrus) are preserved. Nicbolas is the main source of josepbus for the biography of Herod in books 15-17 of the Antiquities, and his sole source in War 1, 18-33. Nicbolas had written a detailed biography of Herod (Josephus, Antiquities 16:7, 1), but we do not know whether it was the final part of his Histori--s or a separate work.15
The third universal bistory was written in Latin, tbough
based on Greek sources, by the Gaul Pompeius Trogus in the latter part
of the
reign of Augustus.(31 B.C.-A.D. 14) and was entitled Philippic
Histories.
We bave only an ecbo of it in the miserable epitome prepared by
junianus justinus
in the second or third century-a wretched opus which enjoyed great
popularity
among the Cburch Fathers. The Prologi (or table of contents) give
us a
better idea of the scope of the original work.
15 Cf - H. St. John
Thackeray, fosephus: The Man and the Historian, pp. 40 f., 65-67.
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The title is taken from the Philippica of Theopompus (a Macedonian history). Books 1-6 deal with the Near East to the Persian Wars; books 7-12 with Macedonian history (7-9 to the death of Philip, 10-12 to the death of Alexander); books 12-40 come down to Augustus; two appendixes close the work: books 41-42 deal with the Pardiians, and books 42-44 with the founding of Rome, and with the Gauls and Iberians. One of the main sources of Trogus seems to have been the book On King& by his earlier contemporary Timagenes.
The best known world chronicles (Chronographiai) are those of Eratosthenes of Cyrene (ca. 230-200 B.C.), ApoUodorus of Athens (ca. 150-100 B.C.), and Sosibius Lakon (second century B.C.?), Castor of ]Rhodes (ca. 50 B.C.), Dionysius of Halicarnassus (d. ca. 7 B.C.), Thallus (middle of the first century of our era?),16 and others down to the Christian chronographers Sextus Julius Africanus (ca. 225) and Eusebius of Caesarea (d. ca. 340), whose world chronicles were utilized by their ByzaDtine successors.17
Biographies and
autobiographies are characteristic of the
Hellenistic age. The earliest autobiography (or "confessions")
known is the "apology' of Hattushil III, king of the Hittites (ca.
1281-1260 B.C.), if we disregard the self-laudatory grave inscriptions
of the
Egyptian monarchs of the Middle Kingdom in the first half of the second
millennium B.C. Nehemiah's memoirs, contained in his book, are
something
unique in the fifth century B.C. In the Hellenistic period Pyrrhus,
I'tolemy
VII Euergetes 11, and Aratos of Sykion (271-213), wrote their
autobiographies. In the Roman period such memoirs were written in
Greek
(Nicholas of Damascus, Flavius josephus) and in Latin (Scaurus and
Sulla; cf.
the Cornmentarii of Julius Caesar). Collections of biographies
begin
with Clearchus of Soli (ca. 300), Antigonus of Carystus (d. ca. 220
B.C.), who
wrote on the Athenian philosophers of the third century B.C., and with
Satyrus
of Alexandria (ca. 220), a biographer of statesmen, poets, and
philosophers.
Out of the mass of uncritical and semifictional biographies written in
There is accordingly no hard and fast demarcation between
these historical and biographical writings and fiction-particularly
historical
fiction, such as the Cryopaedia, (education of Cyrus) by
Xenophon. And
16 Horace A. I g, Tr, ("Thallus: The Samaritan?" [HTR 34 (1941) 111-1191), has shown that there is no valid evidence proving that Thallus was a Samaritan.
17 See the standard work of
H. Gelzer, Sextus Julim Afrkanus and die bywnt. Chrmographie.
Vol.
I (on the chronography of Africanw),
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who can tell whether
one of the numerous Lives of Alexander
is romanticized history or historical fiction? As a matter of
fact Alexander
became the hero of one of the most widespread sagas ever written: the
folk
tale, like the hero, conquered the world! The innumerable forms
of the
Alexander sagas in Latin, Greek, French, English, German, Spanish,
Danish,
Swedish, Icelandic, Flemish, and Czech literatures down to Boccaccio's
Decameron, ultimately go back to the story written by andria in the
second
century Greek and its Byzantine reinspired the varied and interend of
the
third century A.D.; Historia de Proeliis, tenth century),
Armenian,(seventh
century), Pahlavi (Persian, ca. sixth century), Syriac (translated
from the
Pahlavi, seventh century), Arabic (translated from the Syriac, ca.
750-850),
Sabidic-Coptic (eighth century; see 0. von Lemm, Der Alexanderroman der
Kopten.
Hellenistic fiction, in accordance with a
trend begun in Aramanic literature during the proceeding Persian
period, became
a sea into which poured motifs and plots out of the various
Oriental and
Western cultures, from the
18 The standard edition of the Greek text is:
W. Kroll,
HistAlexandri M (pudo-CaUisthenes). Vol. 1: Recensio
vetusta.
Berlin., 1926. A German criticaly reconstructed text is given by
A.
Ausfeld, Der griechische Alexanderroman, edited by W. Kroll.
19 For Eropean medieval Alexander romances see
P.
Meyer, Alemndre le grand dans la litterature francaise au moyen age. 2
vols.,
20 See: K. Ker6nyi, Die eriechisch-orientalische Romanliteratur in religiongeschitlicher Beleuchtung (1927Y. C. H. Becker, -Dw Erbe der Antike im Orient end okzit (1931). Miss R. S6der, Die apokryphm Apostelgeschichten und die romanhafte Literatur der Antike (1932). G. E. von Grunebaum, "Greek Fom Elements in the Arabian Nights" (JAOS 62 [19421 277-292; cf. 64 [19441 62 f ., n. 7).
[[109]]
wisdom of Ahikar.21
The earliest version known is an
Aramaic text circulating in the
in a sense the novel
(as distinguished from the short
story, which is much earlier) is a creation of the Hellenistic
period.22 Two
separate strains combined to create the full-length novel: love_ and
adventure.
Love poetry was ancient in Greek literature and flourished in new forms
after
Alexander; love became the prevailing topic in the New Comedy (although
sentimental outpourings are not frequent in it); now romantic love
tales relate
the joys and sorrows, longings and disappointments of fictitious lovers
of
present times or of long ago (such as Hero and Leander, Jason and
Medea,
Pyramus and Thisbe, and others; see in particular Ovid's
Heroides). The
tale of adventures in distant fabulous countries also appears early in
Greek
literature, beginning with Homer's Odyssey; the Gilgamesh Epic
furnishes an
ancient Babylonian example of such descriptions of marvels and wonders
witnessed in imaginary lands. The Sicilian Euhemerus (ca. 275)23
in his
Sacred History- philosophical roman a these-relates that on the
(imaginary)
island of Panchaea in the Indian Ocean he found an inscription
describing the
activities of Greek gods (Uranus, Cronus, Zeus) when they were still
rulers or
conquerors, before they were worshiped as gods by their grateful
subjects. This
attempt to rationalize mythology, tracing religion to ancestor worship
or the
cult of the dead, was not new, but gained wide popularity through
Eubernerus;
it suggested to the author of
21 For biographical references see the chapter on Tobit.
22 The Standard work is Edwin Rohde, Der
griechische
Roman und seine Vorlaufer, 3rd ed/ Liepzig, 1914. See also B.
Lovagnini, Le
origini
23 Cr. T. S. Brown, "Euheineros and the Historians" (HTR 39 [1946] 259-274).
[[110]]
dom of Solomon (
4. Hellenistic Science
Such imaginary
voyages to the lands "of
make-believe" were inspired by the actual explorations by land and sea
which, as we have seen, began with the far-reaching conquests of
Alexander the
Great. Besides the exact measurements of road distances traversed
by
Alexander, which the Bematists preserved for later geographers, other
voyages
of exploration supplied important inforrnation.25 Nearchus at the
orders of
Alexander sailed down the
24 The fantastic tales about Baron Karl F. H.
von
Miincbhausen ( 1720-1797) were written by R. E. Raspe, anonymous author
of
Baron Munchamen's Naffative of his Marvelous Travels and Campaigns in
25 On the geographical knowledge of the
Hellenistic period, see in particular, H. Berger, Geschicte der
wissenschaftlichen Erdkunde der Griechen. Four parts,
[[111]]
of
Such firsthand observations of lands and seas bitherto unknown to the Greeks not only contributed to create that cosmopolitan feeling and the global notion of the oikounw'ni (whole inhabited earth), hut also furnisbed scientific geographers with needed information. Dicaearchus, a pupil of Aristotle (d. 322 iB.c.), proceeded to measure the size of the earth, the spheric sbape of wmch had been discovered before him, and reached results wbich occasionally were almost correct; on his map be divided the oikoumene into a northern and a southern half, separated by the Mediterranean Sea and the Himalayas, and proved that mountains and valleys were insignificant irregularities on the surface of an earth which was much larger than had been previously surmised.
These and other
geographic researches, such as the book on
harbors and coastlines by Timostbenes of Rhodes under Ptolemy II, and
the books
of Cleon of Syracuse, Nymphodorus, Lycus of Rhegium, and Timaeus,
enabled
Eratosthenes of Cyrene, the head of the Alexandrian library under
Ptolemy III
(246-221), to calculate anew the size and circumference of the earth
(24,662
miles; in reality, 24,857; see A. Diller in Isis 40 [1949] 6-9), and to
surmise
that one should reach India by sailing westward from Spain-the error of
Columbus. Discovery of a
The conquests of Alexander furthered astronomical studies in two respects: by the new calculations of the size of the terrestrial globe, already noted, and by providing information about the Babylonian
[[112]]
observations of the
heavenly bodies.26 The theory of
Eudoxus of Cnidus (early fourth century), improved by Callippus (fourth
century), did Dot explain the movements of the planets; and the
relative sizes
of earth, sun, and rnoon were being constantly revised. Eudoxus
bad
reckoned that the diameter of the sun was nine times that of the moon,
and that
the sun was therefore nine times as far from the earth as the moon, but
Pheidias of Syracuse at the beginning of the third century figured the
ratio twelve
to one, the great Aristarchus of Samos (in the time of Ptolemy 11,
285-246)
adopted the ratio of eighteen or twenty to one, and Archimedes of
Syracuse, son
of Pheidias (d. 212 B.C.), that of thirty to one. Aristarchus_
recognizing thus that the sun must be much greater than the earth
(between six
to eight times larger in diameter and about ically concluded that the
earth
sun-the epoch-making disis famous. Aristarchus even the earth
that the
cuffs universe was merely like the center of a circle. But the
times were
not ripe for these brflliadt conjectures: Archimedes refused to accept
them,
and Cleanthes, who succeeded Zeno as the head of the Stoics, accused
Aristarchus of ungodliness. Even astronomers like Conon of
Samos, active
in
Mathematical
studies27 made possible this progress in
astronomy.
26 On Hellenistic mtmnomy,
see T. Heath, Arwarchw of
27 Geminw, a pupil of Posidonius, wrote a comprehensive history of ancient mathematics.
[[113]]
(stoicheia) which remained the standard textbook of geometry ahnost to the twentieth century. Archimedes of Syracuse, who is said to have shouted, "Eurekaf' (I have discovered [it]) in his bath when he determined that a body immersed in a fluid loses in weight an amount equal to that of the fluid displaced, fixed more exactly the ratio of diameter to circumference of a circle, found that a hemisphere has two-thirds the volume of a cylinder of the same circumference and height, and founded the theory of the spiral. The work of Archimedes and of Conon of Samos on conic sections was surpassed by the outstanding work (peli ko'n6n) of Apollonius of Perga (third century), which marked the ultimate achievement of antiquity on the subject. Apollonius likewise arrived at a more accurate ratio of the diameter to the circumference than Archimedes had obtained and he was possibly the discoverer of trigonometry, unless this honor belongs to Hipparchus (ca. 130 B.c.) The latter is usually regarded as the discoverer of the precession of the equinoxes (although some historians attribute it to the Babylonian Kidinnu [Greek, Kidenas] of Sippar, third century); he calculated the sun's mass as 1,880 times that of the earth, and its distance 1,245 earth diameters from it; Posidonius (ca. 80 B.c.) said 6,545. In reality the sun's volume is 1,300,000 times that of the earth; and while the diameter of the earth is less than 8,000 miles, its average distance from the sun is 92,900,000 miles: in both cases Hipparcbus figured about one-tendi of the ratios discovered by modern astronomers.
Archimedes invented mechanical devices such as endless screws, and Ctesibius of Alexandria soon after him invented catapults and other machines operated through air pressure, as also a water clock. On these foundations Philo of Byzantium composed his standard treatise on mechanics.
In the field of natural sciences, the outstanding work was done by Theophrastus (d. ca. 287), a pupil of Aristotle. His History of Plants, res nting the information on exotic plants which the campaigns of Alexander had made known to the Greeks, and his Theoretical Botany, dealing with plant physiology, laid the foundation of the science. His pupil Strato of Lampsacus, and the latter's pupil Lycon (ca. 270-226), who headed the Peripatetic school in succession after Theopbrastus, carried on zoological researches, but with these men biological sciences, which bad hardly advanced beyond the work of Aristotle, ceased to be cultivated except for practical or medical purposes.
Hippocrates (d. ca.
377) was called the "Father of
Medicine" and the 'Hippocratic Oatb," still administered to
physicians, is ascribed to him. In the early third century
[[114]]
A.D.), the author of
a great scientific encyclopedia of
which only the eight books on medicine are extant (Proemium, 1, 4;
cf.
Tertullian, De aniiw 10, cf. 25), even vivisections on criminals,
anatomy and
physiology made notable progress. Herophflus of Chalcedon (ca.
300), a
pupil of Praxagoras of Cos, discovered the nerves and their functions,
recognized that the arteries contained blood (not air) and that their
pulsations originated in the heart: thus he almost determined the
circulation
of the blood, the discovery of which made William Harvey (1578-1657)
famous. Erasistratus of Iulis in Ceos, his younger contemporary,
distinguished more accurately motor and sensory nerves, performed
serious
operations, studied the digestive process, but went back to the theory
that
arteries carried air except in certain diseases when blood entered
them.
These two outstanding physicians continued the traditions of the
Hippocratic
5. Hellenistic Scholarship
The achievements of
Hellenistic scholars are no less
epoch-making than those of the scientists whose work has just been
sketched. The vast amount of writing in the fields of history and
biography has been mentioned in speaking of Hellenistic
literature. Here
a word should be added about works on the history of arts, sciences,
and
literature. The school deserves the credit of initiating such
studies,
following the example of its founder. Aristotle (d. 322) had
collected
material for a history of Attic drama; he laid the foundations of
science as
well as of learning in the following ages, and Dante rightly called him
"il maestro di color che sanno" (Inferno IV, 133) or the teacher of
the learned ('the professors professor," as a modern journalist would
say). Doris of Samos (ca. 300), a pupil of Aristotle's pupil
Theophrastus, wrote the first history of painting and sculpture, and
was
followed by other historians of art: Xenocrates of Athens (ca.
280-260),
Antigonus of Carysttis (ca. 230), Adeus of
Mytilene
adcl Callixenus of Rhodes (late third century). Pupils of
Aristotle wrote
histories of science: Meno a history of medicine, Eudemus of ]
[[115]]
phrastus a systematic history of natural sciences. A colleague of Aristotle, Aristoxenus of Tarentum (ca. 330), not only Wrote a brilliant work on and rhythm which is still extant,28 but through his the history of philosophy, canCarystus for the period after DioEenes Laertius (third century A.D.) are our chief source of information (together with the works aphies of the great dramatists. presumably Chamaeleon of Heraclea Pontica (ca. 280), a pupil of Theophrastus' the author of a history of Greek poetry from Homer ' Aristop hanes (d. ca. 380 B.C.). He was probably inspired by his lea countryman, Heraclides (d.after 330j, a pupil of Plato and a rival of Aristotle, who wrote extensively on scientific subjects as also on the history of music and literature. In his Life of Greece Dicaearchus presented a history of culture; he also wrote a book on the poet Alcaeus (ca. 600). The last work of the Peri patetic school in the- field of literary history was the comprehensive treatise, after the manner of Chamaeleon, prepared by Hieronymus of Rhodes (ca. 250).
The preparation of
critically edited texts of the Greek
classics and of commentaries on them bad begun before Alexander, but
reached
such a degree of accuracy and thoroughness in the Hellenistic period
that, as
in the case of mathematics and physical sciences, it became the
standard in
medieval and modern times. The first critical edition of the
Homeric
poems was prepared by Antirnachus of Colophon about 400 B.c.; after
Aristotle
himself had apparently edited a Homeric text for his pupil Alexander,
such
critical studies were pursued in his school by Dichaearcbus and
Chamaeleon,
and particularly by Praxiphanes of Mytilene, a . pupil of
Theophrastus.
He proved that the exorclium of Hesiod's Work and Days was spurious,
while his
pupil, the poet Aratus of Soli (author of the Phaenomena) edited the
Odyssey. s
of
28 Cf. W. R. Amld, in old Testament ,d
semitic
studies in Meory ot William R. Harper, Vol. 1, pp. 167-204.
[[116]]
Zenodotus also initiated the immense work of cataloguing the Library of the Museum. He was assisted by two able scholars, Alexander of Pleuron and Lycophron of Rhegium, who classified the tragedies and comedies, respectively. The work of cataloguing the library was finally completed by the great poet Callimacbus, who probably succeeded Zenodotus as librarian: his monumental catalogue (Ptnakes, Tablets) in 120 papyrus scrolls was a literary bistory giving biographies and bibliograpbies of the authors represented in the library. A number of pupfls of CaUimachus became eminent scholars, but his successor as librarian was the great scientist Eratosthenes (see above), who wrote a great work on Attic comedy.
Thus during the two centuries from 300 to 100 B.c.
Alexandrian scholars, through critical texts, philological and
historical
commentaries, and learned research, not only made the Greek classics
available
and comprehensible, but laid the foundation of critical and exegetical
methods,
soon adopted in Alexandria by Jews like PbiIo, and Christians like
Origen, in
their study of the Bible, and eventually blossoming in the research
technique
of modern times.
Dictionaries and grammars also grew out of the Alexandrian
literary researches. The Stoic philosopher Chrysippus (d. ca. 204
B.C.)
raised an important philological problem: does analogy or anomaly
contribute
most to linguistic development? Dictionaries were prepared at
6. Hellenistic Philosophy29
29 The chief general somces me, Diogenes
Laertius,
Lives of the Philosophers (de claromm philosophomm vitis, libri decem),
dating
from the third mntury of ow era, and the philosophical works of Cimro
(d. 43
B.c.) and Plutarch (d. ca. A.D. 120).The
standard work, even
though antiquated in occasional details, is still Eduard Zeller, Die
Philosophic der Criechen i ihrff geschichtlichm Entwickelung, 3 vols.,
Tiibingen, 1844-52; 5th ed., 5 vols., 1892-1909; in English: E. Zeller,
Stoics,
Epicureans, and Sceptics, 1880; History of Greek Ph lowphy.
[[117]]
home of the schools
of phflosophy and kept the flame of
pagan thought alive until Justinian (527-565) in 529 closed the
The Hellenistic scbools, of which the most influential was the Stoa, soon departed from the metaphysics of Plato (d. 347) and Aristotle (d. 322), and going back to Socrates (d. 399) stressed the problems of human life, notably the conduct and happiness of the individual. The empire of Alexander and the monarchies into which it divided at his death in 323 created a cosmopolitan and individualistic attitude toward life wbich philosophy could not ignore.
Soon after 323 we
find in
In the field of
phflosophy the famous schools founded by
Plato and Aristotle soon lost ground and importance. The Old
Academy
under the leadership of Speusippus (347-339) and Xenocrates of
Chalcedon (339314)
developed Plato's thought as he bad conceived it in his last years, but
modified it in some points. Their successors (Polemo of Athens
1314-2701,
wbose best pupil was Crantor; and Crates of Athens [270-2641) stressed
ethics
and religion: thus the philosophical system of Plato disintegrated and
decayed.
The
[[118]]
Pitane (d. 241),
followed by Lakydes of Cyrene (d. 216),
completed this dissolution first by a return to Socrates's critique of
superficial opinions, then by a frank adoption of the skepsis of
Pyrrho.
The
The endeavor to overcome the dualism of Plato, which Aristotle had narrowed (but not suppressed) by bringing together in existing objects
[[119]]
Plato's ideas and matter as inseparable form and matter, remained the chief metaphysical problem of Hellenistic philosophy. In Aristotle the dualism appeared chiefly in the contrast between God-pure act, pure form, pure thought, unmoved mover-and the world. Even in the Peripatetic school, as we have seen, Strato rejected Aristotle's dualism in the cosmos, by finding there nature alone without God, and in the soul, by denying the transcendence of reason and asserting the sours unity. Epicureans and Stoics likewise in different ways reached the mw beyond the ttw.
Epicurus of Samos (342-270) was much impressed as a young
man by the atomism of Democritus of Abdera (early fourth centuryB.c.)
and the
ataraxia (impassiveness) of Pyrrho, whose skepticism, however, he
rejected. Epicurus recognized only two disciplines in philosophy:
physics
and ethics. His notions of the physical world are chiefly derived
from
Democritus: nothing exists except atoms moving in empty space.
The atoms
are of different sizes, have weight and form, and are
indestructible.
They move downward in space at different speeds and, due to collisions
between
atoms, they are capable of deviating slightly from the vertical
direction,
making possible the formation of bodies having spontaneous motion-and
even the
freedom of the human will, which is the foundation of ethics.
Since
everything is the result of a combination of atoms, the souls are
dissipated at
death; and popular religions are immoral and false superstitions.
The
gods exist, but live serenely outside of our world, in interstellar
spaces,
unconcerned with terrestrial affairs and needing no worship, although
being
perfect they are worthy of it. In his ethical teaching.Epicurus
followed
the Cyrenaic school, founded by Aristippus (d. ca. 360), according to
which
pleasure (hedone) is the aim of life and virtue is the capacity to
enjoy
pleasure. But Epicurus did not stress, like Aristippus, the
pleasures of
the senses, such as the delights of love and the enjoyment of banquets,
but
rather the lack of pain attained through insight. Insight leads
us to
virtue, which ensures serenity of mind in the midst of misfortune, or
ataraxia
(impassiveness). The great poem of T. Lucretius Carus (d. 55
i3.c.) On
Nature (De rerum nature), one of the masterpieces of world literature,
is the
fullest exposition of the teaching of Epicurus now extant. It
seems
likely that Ecclesiastes, and Wisd. of Sol. 2:1-9, contain more or less
distorted echoes of the hedonism of Epicurus.
After Aristippus, the first hedonist, new tendencies appear in the Cyrenaic school. Hegesias (ca. 300 B.C.) realized that pleasure, which was the aim of man for Aristippus, was unattainable, for life brought more sorrows than joys; he became therefore so pessimistic that he was called he peisithdnatos (the persuader to die), for he taught that deliverance from pain came only in death. Tbeodorus, his contemporary, was less gloomy; he believed that through insight and righteousness one
[[120]]
might attain a
constant happy inood enabling one to enjoy
life. His attack on popular religion, which gained him the
nickname of
"the atheist" (dtheos), made an impression on his pupil Euhemems of
Messene (
The school of the Cynics was founded by Antisthenes of
The Megarian school was founded by Euclides of Megara (d. 374 B.C.). He gave a concrete content to the Eleatic abstract Being-the sole reality according to Parmenides of Elea (ca. 470 B.c.), for 46stin einai (being is)-by identifying it with the Good, under the influence of his teacher Socrates. This sole existing reality is called by various names (God, Reason, Insight, one of the virtues) but it is eternally invariable; likewise there is but a single virtue, namely, knowledge. A later head of the Megarians, Stilpo of Megara (d. ca. 300) combined this teaching with the ethics of the Cynics, and thus had a deep influence on his pupil Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school. Stilpon argued that if the sole existing Being is the Good, the Good must have all the attributes of what really exists; virtue must be the state in which the mind is separated from all pain and all change, and the summum bonum must be complete apathy and autarchy of the soul, its indifference to external goods, as the Cynics taught. However, for the Cynics what is perceived through the senses was the only reality, while for the Megarians it did not exist at all.
A similar moral ideal was presented by the Skeptical school
founded
[[121]]
by
Pyrrho of
The Stoic school was the most successful and the most characteristic school of the Hellenistic and Roman periods: it offered the most acceptable solutions to the metaphysical problem (how to overcome the dualism of Plato and Aristotle) and to the practical problem about the attainment of the peace of mind that most schools of philosophy made the goal of their ethical teaching.
Zeno of Citium in
30 Aristocles, quoted by Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica XIV: 18, 2.
[[122]]
allowed
some gifted Stoics, like Ariston of Chius, Herillus of Chalcedon, and
DioDysius
of Heracleia (
The Stoics defined the sophs'a (wisdom), which is the goal of philosophy, as 'the knowledge for science] of divine and human things and of their causeS";33 and they subdivided it into logic, physics, and ethics,
Logic is the science of language and thought, of words (grammar) and what they mean (concepts, judgments, conclusions): it is the study of 16gos, which means both word and reason (cf. John 1:1), either a
31 The surviving fraaments of the early Stoics
have
been edited in the standard work of Hans von Arnim (J. ab Arnim),
Stoicorum
veterum fragmenta, 3 vols.
32 The basic work on Panaetiw and Posidonius is still Schmekel's Die Philmophie der Mittleren Stoa, mentioned in the preceding footnote.
'3 Refermees to this definition by Plutarch, Cicero, and Seneca are quoted by C. L. W. GriTnm, Kurzgefasstes Exegetisches Handbuch zu den Apokryphen, Vol. 4,
p. 305.
[[123]]
thought in the mind or an expression on the lips. The Stoic teacbing on grammar, on dialectics (discrimination between truth and falsehood), and on epistemology (according to which knowledge is based on sensations tested and directly apprehended, in contrast with imagination and general concepts) need not be considered in detail here, but the notion of 1ogos is basic for us, since it influenced Hellenistic Judaism and Christianity. This 1ogos is a faculty which dumb animals lack: men share it with the gods. It is the capacity to pass from a mass of individual sensations to general concepts and conclusions. The human 1ogos is essentially identical with the cosmic reason molding matter into natural objects; consequently, even though not infallible like the divine 1ogos, human reason can reproduce the thoughts of cosmic reason and thus understand reality.
The 1ogos has brought us to the second branch of pboosophy,
physics (and metaphysics). Plato in the Timaeus portrays the
eternal
immaterial God creating the world and implanting in it a universal
rational
soul (which was made before matter) to rule over it intelligently,
administering
the immutable laws of nature. Aristotle (Metaphysics), instead,
did not
regard the immaterial God as the creator of the world: both God and the
world
existed from eternity and God was merely the cause of motion and of its
laws. The Stoics went a stop further in eliminating the dualism
between
God and the world. God for them is material and existed from
eternity in
the primeval fire, out of which he created the world. In this
world of
ours God functions as the mind or soul of the world, the cosmic logos,
and
reaches out to all parts of the universe through his innumerable
seminal 1ogoi
(1ogoi spernwtikol) or powers (dyna'meis). Thus reality is one,
an
organism in which body and soul are inseparable, for God is immanent in
the
world. The immaterial realities of Plato and Aristotle become
spirit
(pneuma), which is material and, in various degrees of refinement (from
that of
God himself to that in a stone), permeates all matter, which the
Stoics, in
contrast to the atomists, regarded as infinitely divisible. In
this
pantheistic conception, the immanent God is the ultimate cause of all
motion
(without being Aristotle's motionless movens non motus) and of all
phenomena:
this single chain of cause and effect, this necessary relationship of
all
phenomena ultimately originating in God is called heimarmene (fate),
Such a
notion had obvious repercussions on human conduct.
We thus come to the
third field of philosophy,
ethics. The divine primeval fire is not only the determining
cause of all
that exists (fate), but at the same time the cosmic all-knowing reason
and
purposeful mind, the benevolent pr6noia (providence); cf. Wisd.
of Sol.
14:3; 17:2; IV Macc. 9:Z4;
[[124]]
conflict between fate and providence. In the seminal 1ogoi, likewise, determinism and purpose are one, and Cbrysippus could say that whatever happens through fate happens also according to providence. Cleanthes, on the contrary, denied this, saying that what happened through providence aiso happened through fate, but not vice versa. Thus Cleanthes was able to explain the presence of evil in the world as the effect of fate without the influence of providence. Conversely, Cbrysippus, stressing the unity of the cosmos, could not admit that any evfl ever came into the world without the consent of providence. He refused to admit that man's serenity could be disturbed by pbysical pain or other external evil, wbich as a matter of fact was no actual evil. As for moral evil, be proved that it was in harrnony with divine providence by showing that moral good could not exist vatbout moral evil, and was implicit in human freedom of the will. Man, the goal of all creation, could be an image of God only if he were free to live according to reason, thus collaborating with God, or to decline to do so. If man refuses to fulfill this purpose he sinks to the level of animals: from the cosmic point of view this is no more a real evil than the fact that there are plants and animals besides men. Man bas a higher freedom than beasts wben he deliberately chooses to follow the dictates of reason, rather than the compulsions of nature. This goal is fully achieved only by the sage, who becomes as free as God, for whom necessity and freedom are one and the same notion. The soul of man grows out of the soul of animal as the 1ogos or reason develops within the highest part of the soul, the Ugemanik6n (the governing faculty). Only the souis that bave attained wisdom and virtue live on as ghosts-but not forever. The cosmos, as Heraclitus had taught, emerges from fire as a new universal order (diakosmesis) and later returns to the primitive simplicity of the fiery divine substance (ekpyrosis, conflagration), eventually being born anew (palingenesia) and repeating the process through etemity.34 As everything else, the souls of the wise are merged with the divine substance in the process of ekpyrosis, but in the palingenesis the souls are reborn, witbout any memory of their previous existence, bowever. Such are the theoretical foundations of the practical philosophy of the Stoics. In accordance with their times, they regarded happiness as the goal of human life. For Zeno such happiness was logical agreement of our thoughts, and harmony of our feelings, volitions, and actions with our thoughts; Cleanthes changed this harmonious life into the famous “life in harmony with nature” - whatever that may mean. Chrysippus clarified the formula by stating that it meant both life in harmony with human nautre and cosmic nature; fir they are basically the same, “nature”
34 For echoes of this doctrine in Judaism and
Christianity, see
[[125]]
(physis) being taken in a comprehensive sense, including soul and reason. In other words, for Chrysippus harmony with nature meant harmony widi the 1ogos which determides both universal law and moral law: human reason, when fully developed, agrees with divine reason. Thus the human ideal is the full realization of the possibilities of human nature: the attainment of this goal is called virtue. Therefore, life in harmony widi nature means virtuous life and aione brings happiness: virtue is its own reward. But virtue must always be a goal, never the means to another end, otherwise it ceases to be virtue and the supreme good. In practice, everything rnust be subordinated to die attainment of this goal. Things and actions either contribute to life according to the will of God, or hinder it, or finally, doing neither, they are irrelevant. Consequently, what most men regard as good (like wealth, honors, position, health) or as bad (as poverty, disgrace, ruin, pain) are intrinsically indifferent matters: their moral value depends entirely from the use we make of them. They affect only our animal nature, but as reasonable beings we are independent of externals: the wise can say with Dante, (Inferno 2:93), "fiamma desto incendio non m'assale' (the flame of this conflagration does not attack me). Sucb things as are indifferent (adidphora) from the point of view of the supreme goal of life are, however, significant to our animai nature and are therefore to be preferred or to be rejected (proegmena or apoproegmena)-not actually good or bad-by the sage. The same applies to human actions: they are good, bad, or indifferent inasmuch as their influence on right living is positive, negative, or nil. Indifferent actions may be absolutely so or may affect our physical existence: the latter constitute a common zone of conduct between wise and fool, at Ieast in regard to the action per se, without reference to the motive. There are thus the katorthoma (virtuous action), the hamartema (sinful action), and the katukon (proper, correct, legal action). An action in the third category is virtuous wben performed by the wise (all of Whose actions are necessarily virtuous) and sinful when performed by a fool (all he does is sinful).
This absolute contrast between good and evil, theoretically without gradations in virtue and vice, divided mankind, at least in principle, into two classes: the wise and the fools, no less sharply distinguished than the saved and the damned of St. Augustine (d. 430), Calvin (d. 1564), or, for that matter, a good old-fashioned revival meetings' There is no
35 Logically of comse there is only truth and falsehood, right and wrong, with no middle ground. There is "the way of life and the way of death" (jer. 21:8), wisdom and folly (Ecel. 1:17; 2:12; 7:25), the narrow gate and way leading to destruction ( Matt. 7:13 f.); see in general, for Jewish literature, H. L. Strack and P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, Vol. 1, pp. 460-463. Prodicus of Ceos (d. ca. 400 B.c.) gave the earliest and best expositco; of the doctrine of the two ways in his apologue of the choice of Heracles, smmarized by Xenophon (d. ca. 355 B.c.) in Memorabilia 11, 1:21-34.
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gray between black and white: even a fool may make slow progress in wisdom, but he becomes a sage instantly; in other words, a man is one or the other. In practice even Zeno, bowever, admitted a sort of middle class, the prokopton (the one advancing morally and intellectually) and common sense showed that men were either idcurably bad (rare), average (the great mass), progressing, (many), or wise (very few).
The sage, or wise man
(sophos), exemplifies the Stoic
ethical ideal. Epictetus (Discourses IV, 3:9-12) expresses it
thus:
"I am free, I am a friend of God ready to render him wiuing
obedience. Of all else, I may set store by nothing-neither by my
own
body, nor possessions, nor office, nor good report, nor, in a word,
anything
else." The sage must be selfless, passionless, pitiless, serene. He bas achieved autdrkeia
(independence,
self-sufficiency) and apdtheia (impassibility, freedom from
emotions).
Having the first, he cannot be affected by the course of events in the
world
around him; his happiness is entirely an inner state, without
connection with
happenings independent from bis will. By -attaining the second be
has
rooted out from bimself the passionate emotions rebellious against the
1ogos;
he has substituted desire for greediness, caution for fear, joy for
pleasure;
he has banisbed oompassion, which is mourning for another's
misfortune, since
mouming is excluded entirely; he has reached the stage in wbich 'pious
reason
(logos) is the absolute ruler (autodespotos; also autokrator) over the
passions" (IV Macc. 1: 1, the theme of the book; cf. 1: 7, 9, 13 f.,
19,
30; 2:6 f., 10, 24; 6:31; 7:16; 13: 1; 16: 1; 18:2). Freedom from
greediness leads to temperance (sophrosyne,); freedom from fear becomes
couragage (andreia); both of these virtues presuppose the insight and
knowledge
(phronesis, prudence) of right, wroing, and indifferent; and in turn
are
presupposed by justice (dikaiosyne), whicb is the knowledge of what
belongs to
God and every person, and acting acoordingly.16 While the first three
virtues
stress individualism, justice is practiced in human society.
Later
Stoics, beginning presumably with Panaetius, added benevolence to
justice (
36 These four Stoic cardinal
virtues were first detemined by Plato in connection with the four parts
of the
soul. The Stoics modified their meaning slightly; from them they
were
adopted by the Alexandrian Tews (Wisd. of Sol. 8:r IV Macc. 1:2-4, 6;
cf.
5:23-24, where they are harmonized with the Law of Moses and piety
takes the
place of prudence; for Philo, see H. A. Wolfson, Philo, Vol. 2, p. 218,
n. 134;
cf. C. Siegfrfed, Philo vm
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circumstances.
Elsewhere Seneca condemns RoTnan
gladiatorial fights and warlike spirit. The social trend begins
with the
second basic instinct (race preservation; the first is
self-preservation),
which produces devotion to the family. From this we pass to
ever-wider
circles of fellow human beings until we reach all of mankind. The
Mgos
proves that all men are brothers, being children of the same heavenly
Father:
'they are by nature your kinsmen, your brothers, the offspring of God
(Epictetus, Discourses 1, 13:3). All beings endowed with reason
(1ogos),
i.e., all gods and men (but not animals) , are a single society, a
single state
in which reason is law; they have duties toward the other members of
the world
state, piety being their duty toward the gods. All men were
indeed
rnembers of this organism "whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or
free" (I Cor.
If the mental faculty is cornmon to us, then the 1ogos by which we are reasonable beings is common. If this is so, also the 1ogos which commands us what to do and what not to do is common. If this is so, then there is likewise a law in common. If this is so, we are fellow-citizens, and if so we are members
of the sarne community. If this is so the world is, so to say, a single state.
Marcus Aurehus IV, 4
In this world state,
individual states are like houses (or
households) within a city (ibid. 111, 11). This great idea of the
world
state, according to Epictetus (Discourses 1, 9), goes back to Socrates,
who,
when asked to what country he belonged, replied, "I am a citizen of the
world [kosmios, meaninv obviously kosmopolitesl." According to the
Stoics,
in the words of St. Paul, "there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision
nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free" (Col. 3: 11)
for
those who 'put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new
man,
which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him"
(Col. 3:9 f.). Such a cosmopolitan view did riot, however, prevent the
Stoics
from participating ably and actively in the administration of their own
particular countries, and this is one of the reasons for the popularity
of this
school in Rome, where Emperor Marcus Aurelius (VI, 44) could say, 'As
[Marcus
Aurelius] Antoninus my state and fatherland is Rome, but as a man it is
the
world." Whether the world state was suggested to Zeno by Alexander's
empire or not, this great conception furnished a Catostrophical. basis
for the
7. Hellenistic Religion
in the Greek world after Alexander five types of religion attracted adherents: the city cults in honor of the Olympian gods, the personal
[[128]]
striving for alvation in the mystery religions, the beliefs in chance and fate, the teaching of philosophical schools like the Stoa, and the Oriental religions (including Judaism and Christianity).
The traditional worship of the Olympians37 was declining long before Christianity brought it to an end.38 Nothing had contributed more to delineate the individual character of the Olympians, to create a common Greek religion by the side of the local cults, to humanize (and consequently to moralize) the gods than the Homeric poems (tenth to eighth centuries B.c.)-the basis of Greek education and mentality (on which the best study is W. jaeger's Paideia).39 Homer, however, had no influence on the celebration of the local rituals and festivals, and on personal religion.
Before Alexander several trends were at work to undermine the worship of the Olympians. The austere bourgeois morality and the common sense of farmers characteristic of Hesiod (eighth century) contrast sharply with the Homeric world of noble heroes and proud knights, in which the common man appears only once in Tbersites (who is thrashed linto sflence when he speaks his mind in the assembly) aside from faithful old family retainers. In the sixth century a new spirit appears in Greek
37
The standard works on the Olympian gods are the
following. L. F. A. Maury, Histoire des religions de la Grece
antique. 3
vols.
38
on the decline and end of paganism after the birth of
Christianity see especially: V. Scbultw, Geschichte des Untergangs des
griechich-romischen Heidentums. 2 vols.
39 W. Jaeger, Paideim
Translated by G. Highet. Vol. 1.
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religion, about the
same time when new heights were reached
in
So the Hellenistic
period witnessed the twilight of the
Olympian gods, at least in the minds of the cultivated Greeks.
New
factors, in addition to the mystical and rationalistic attacks just
mentioned,
contributed to the decay of traditional beliefs. The old
religion was
intimately connected with the po'lis, or city-state, which was
absorbed
into kingdoms and empires after Philip of Macedon (382-336), the father
of
Alexander, conquered
40 K. J. Belocb, Griechische
Geschichte, 2nd ed., Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 434.
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through Euhemerus, who, in his fictional Sacred His-tory, presented Zeus and other gods as human kings, divinized after their death; thus he contributed to the dethronement of the Olympians. Moreover, the allegorical interpretation of Homer, introduced by Theagenes of Rhegium before Plato (cf. J. Tate, in Classical Review 41 [19271 214f.; Classical Quarterly 23 [19291 142-154), stripped the ancient myths of even the semblance of fact: Aristotle dismissed popular beliefs as nothing but fables. Finally, the influence of Egypt and the Near East proved decisive: as early as Herodotus Oriental deities were identified with Greek ones (Melkart of Tyre was called Heracles, Amon was called Zeus, etc.); they were adopted by the Greeks, but no Greek god received more than passing formal worship in Asia and Africa.41 Antiochus IV Epiphanes alone in 168 attempted to force his subjects to worship the Olympian Zeus exclusively, but failed dismally.
While the Homeric
deities were losing their hold on the
faith of the Greeks, their public worship was flourishing: festivals
were
celebrated as splendidly as ever, temples continued to receive votive
gifts,
divine oracles were still requested by the authorities, notably from
Apollo at
As
has been noted, personal religious
feeling and the quest for immortality found little satisfaction in the
national
cult of the Olympians; in
41 On Hellenistic cults in
42 Such divine apparitions explain how Paul
and Bamabas
could be regarded as H@es and Ze@ -by the people and the priesthood of
Lystra
in Lycaonia (Acts
43 On the Greek mystery religions see in
particular:
C.A. Lobeck, Aglaophamus.
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The
mysteries of Demeter at
Dionysus
was originally a fertility god
and in
Orpheus
was a Thracian singer whose lyre
tamed savage men and beasts until the maenads tore him apart.
Orphism,
named after him, not only taught the death and resurrection of
Dionysus, but
also furnished that exact information on life after death of which
echoes come
down to modem times. The body is considered as the tomb of the
soul
(s6ma-sdnw, body-grave; cf. Plato, Gorgias 493a), . man
is the
dream of a shadow' (Pindar, Pythian Odes 8, 95 cf.
Sophocles,
44The earliest form of the Adonis myth is found in the mythological poem from Ras Shmra on Aleyan Baal, translated by Cyrus H. Gordon in The Loves and Wars of Baal and Anat,' Princeton University Press, 1944; see also Julian obemann, Ugaritic Mythology, Yale University Press, 1948.
45Homeric Hymn to Demeter 480 f.
46 The basic study of Greek notions about
heaven and
hell is: A. Dieterieb, Nekyia.
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And next youll see great snakes and savage monsters
in tens of thousands.... Then weltering seas of filth
And ever-rippling dung: and plunged therein,
. Whose has wronged the stranger here on earth,
Or robbed his boylove of the promised pay,
Or swinged his mother, or profanely smitten
His father's check, or sworn an oath foresworn.
But now I've got thee fast.
so close the
The
Shall hem thee in: the bell-houdds of Cocytus
Prowl round thee; whilst the bundred-headed Asp
Shall rive thy heart-strings: the Tartesim Lamprey
Prey 0, thy lungs: and those Tithrasian Gorgons
Mangle and tear thy kidneys, mauling them,
Entrails and all, into one bloody masb.
Aristophanes, Frogs 143-150 and 469-477
(Translated by B. B. Rogers)
Hardly
anything has survived from the
ancient Orphic literature, which -must have been fairly abundant-to
judge from
its echoes in later descriptions of heaven , and bell, such as are
found, aside
from The Frogs of Aristophanes, in Plato (Republic 11, 363,
and at the end
of the work; Gorgia 524 ff.; Phaodo 112 f.), in Plutarch (De
sera numinis
vindicta 566 f.), and in Lucian of Samosata in the second century of
our era (Vera
historia 126 f.). orphic literary remains have been collected, by
0. Kern
(orphicorum fragments.
We do Dot know
whether Orphic ideas of future life
influenced the descriptions of paradise and bell in Judaism before A.D.
200
(see Testament of the Xil Patriarchs, Enoch, Syriac Baruch, IV
Esclras,
Sibviline OracleS;48 cf.
Luke
47 The text of these Orphic texts will be
found in: A.
Olivieri, Lamellae aurae Orphicae. H. Lietzmann’s Kleine
Texte, No.
133. Bonn, 1915; Gilbert Muraay in the appendix to Jane E. Harrison, Prolegomena
to the Study of Greek Religion, 3rd ed., Cambridge 1922. See
especially, I.
M. Linforth, The Arts of Orpheus.
48 For references to heaven and hell in these
Jewish
writings, see:
[[133]]
etc.), but the so-called Apocalypse of Peter 49 (a Christian book dated about A.D. 135) is unquestionably indebted to Orphism (see particularly Dieterich's Nekyia) and introduced precise notions about.heaven and bell into Christianity, where eventually they inspired Dante's masterpiece, The Divine Comedy. Orphism is important also for having stressed the sense of sin and guilt, and for showing a way which, through purifications and right living, led to eternal salvation.50
Before leaving these
two genuinely Hellenic types of
religion (even though some of their elements originated abroad)-the
cult of the
Olympians and the mysteries-it should be noted that the rapid
rise and
fall of kingdoms and rulers after the death of Alexander produced a
sense of
insecurity, a feeling that blind chance (tyche) ruled human affairs and
destinies (cf. Eccl. 3:10-15;
In the whole world, indeed, in all places and at all times, Fortuna [i.e., TychC] alone is invoked and celebrated. She alone is accused, alone she is indicted as guilty, alone she is thought about, alone she is praised, alone she is censured and is reviled: mutable, even deemed by many blind, fickle, capricious, unreliable, variable, and favorable to the Unworthy. To her are debited all expenses and credited all payments; and in the entire reckoning of mortals she alone enters both assets and liabilities. And we are so subject to chance that chance itself takes the place of god, whom she proves to be unreliable.
Pliny, Naturalis Historia II: v, 22
Tyche
became the patron goddess of a
number of Near Eastern Hellenistic cities. Thus
49 See on this book A.
Dieterich, Nekyia, 2nd ed., 1913; M. R. James in JTS 12 (1910-1911); E.
Hennecke, Neutestammtliche Apokryphen, 2nd ed., pp.
314-327.
Tiibingen, 1924. F. Cumont, After Life in Roman
Paganism.
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human events.51 While some Stoics identified God with Heimarmene, Philo of Alexandria criticized them for making "fate and necessity into gods" (see H. A. Wolfson, Philo, Vol. 1, p. 329).
The determinism of the
Stoics had its roots in astrology, a subject on which some of them
(Diogenes of
Seleucia, second century B.c.; Posi-donius of Apamea, Ca. A.D.
100) wrote
books.52 Astrology originated in
51 See the well-documented
back of W. C. Greene, Moira: Fate, Good, and Evil in Greek
Thought.
52 On Greek astrology and
fatalism, see: A. Bouch6-Leclercq, L:astrologie grecque.
53 See E. Pfeiffer,
Studien zum antiken Stemglauben (Stoich@ II).
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stated by the Christian poet Commodianus (third or fourth century) in the question, "If the fates of birth bestow [all], why do you beseech the gods?" Conversely, another Christian, Firinicus Matemus (fourth century) before his conversion to Christianity stressed the omnipotence of fate, but at the same time invoked the gods to help him resist the influence of the stars. The Stoics, however, revered the supreme power of the universe without requesting anything and submitted gladly and unreservedly to the vagaries of destiny no matter how cruel.
The measures of the state (as early as 139 B.c. the astrologers were banished from Rome) and the opposition of the Christian Church, beginningwith Clementof Alexandria (d. ca. 220)54 and culrninatingwith St. Augustine (d. 430) (City of God I ff.; Epistle 246, to Lampadius; etc.), failed to suppress astrology, which is still flourishing in our time and still supplies horoscopes as it did two millennia ago. The same is true of magic, a vast and fascinating subject which still awaits a thorough historian for the Hellenistic-Roman period."
In the philosophical schools of the Hellenistic period every conceivable attitude toward current religions seems to be represented, from ration. alistic unbelief and scorn for the worship, to "fundamentalistic" acceptance of traditional faith and ritual.
The most acute, far-reaching, and thorough attack on religion in all its aspects, from the point of view of rationalistic skepticism, is that of Cameades of Cyrene (d. 129 B.c.), the founder of the New Academy.56 He objected to the familiar argument that religion is universal among men (consensus gentium) by pointing to atheists and, in arguing with the Stoics, gleefully quoted their doctrine about the foolishness of the great majority of men. He points out the absurdity of conceiving the gods in human form and with human passions. He undermines the Stoic combination of pantheism with traditional religion by showing that the allegorical interpretation is false and incapable of making the myths appear rational; and by disproving the identification of divine powers with the Olympian gods through the following sorites, which eliminated the distinction between divine and earthly: if Zeus is god, then also his brother Poseidon; and if so, every sea, every river, every little brook would be a god. By such reasoning be questioned the whole Stoic cosmology
54 Cf. P. Wendland, Die Hellenistisch- Romische Kultur, p. 81.
55 A brief summary, with bibliography, will be found in F. Cumont, The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, ch. 6. See also the articles in the encyclopaedias, particularly Darembourg, Saglio, and Pottier, Dictionnaire des Antiquites; Pauly Wissowa, Realenzyklopadie; W. H. Roscher, Ausfuhrliches Lexicon der greichisechen und romischen Mythologie; J. Hastings, Encylcopaedia of Religion and Ethics.
56 Cf. P. Wendland, Hellenistisch-Romische
Kultur, pp. 62 f. Our chief source is
[[136]]
and theology: the doctrine of the divinity and animation of the cosmos, the divine providence, the right plan and purpose of the world (which in the presence of evil is unbelievable), fatalism, astrology, and divination. And yet this intellectual skepticism did not result in a total rejection of religious practices: the doctrine of probability leaves open the door to beliefs and conduct based on thern.5T
Only the Cynics, of all Hellenistic philosophers, took the final step: opposed, like the Sophists, to all conventions, they mocked, often in a vulgar manner, whatever their contemporaries regarded as holy. To attain the soul's complete freedom and true happiness, they strove to become indifferent to all external circumstances and rejected the refinements of civirmtion, including all good manners and traditional beliefs, from etiquette to worship. And yet they were monotheists, and became popular preachers advocating the simple life in accordance with nature, dedicated to the pursuit of virtue.
The
religious point of view of the
Epicureans is intermediate between the
57 A similar separation of reason and faith may be noted in Ecclesiastes. Rationally he concluded that God was too far and too indifferent to human beings to enter into communion with them, or to change the fixed worse of events for their benefit; and yet he recommended external conformity to traditional rites and mechanical fulfillment of religious obligations (Eccles. 5:1-7 [H. 4:17-5:5]; 7:15-18; 8:2).
58
"According to some, Epicurus in his popular exposition allows the existence of God, but in expounding the real nature of things he does not allow it.” See also Wendland, Hellnistisch-romisch Kultur, p. 61.
[[137]]
his attitude in twelve Greek words, found among some fragments of his work On Nature discovered at Herculaneum.59
There is nothing to fear in God.
There is nothing to feel in death.
What is good is easily procured.
What is bad is easily endured.
In his great poem, De return natura (On Nature), T. Lucretius Carus (d. 55 B.C.) expounded brilliantly the teaching of his master Epicurus on physics, psychology, ethics, and religion. With a passionate zeal-which paradoxically is intensely religious-he denounces religio (which to him means superstition and popular cults) as a great evil for mankind. In considering Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia, he exclaims with a shudder,
Tantum religio potuit swdere mdoruml60
De rerum natura 1, 101 True piety has no more to do with traditional religious rites for Lucretius than for Amos and Isaiah:
Nec pietas ullast velatum saepe t>ideri vertier ad lapidem, atque amnis accedere ad aras, nec procumbere humi pros-tratum et pandere palmas ante deum delubra, nec aras sanguine multo spargere quadrupedum, nec votis nectere vota.61
De return natura V, 1198-1202
For the superstitious fear of the gods Lucretius substituted the light of reason, the freedom of the spirit, and a happiness which is not perturbed by the prospect of the dissolution of the personality at death.
While the traditional worship and belief was attacked in the name of reason and morals,62 various attempts were made to preserve something out of the, wreckage as a basis for the religion of cultivated men.63 While
59 J. C. Orelli, Fragmenta
librorum it et xi De natura.
60 Such crimes was religion able to instigate!"
61 "Nor is it piety at all to be often seen covered with a veil, turning oneself towards a stone, and to come near all altars; nor to prostrate oneself prone to the Lund and stretch out the hands in front of the shrines of the gods; nor to drench with abundant blood of four-legged victims; nor to join vows to vows."
62The most important books on
ancient criticism of Creek religion are fisted later in this book, in
note 22
of the chapter on the Wisdom of Solomon (Part II,
63The reader will immediately think of modem parallel attempts to bring Chrisu -to-date." The Modernistic Movement in Roman Catholicism, some of I'e'aNers were A. F. Loisy (d. 1940), C. Tyrrell (d. 1909), E. Bonaiuti (d. 1947), was brought to an end by the mcychcal Pascendi (1907) of Pope Pius X. Innumerable publications by liberal Protestants have attempted to reconcile Christianity with modern science and philosophy, thus supplying the "intelligentsia" with an acceptable faith: a good recent example is J. S. Bixler's Religion for Free Minds (New York, 1939).
[[138]]
Stoicism primarily provided the educated classes with rational faith and morals, using elements of the traditional cults as much as possible, some other apologetic attempts to salvage somethidg from the shipwreck of the old religion may be mentioned first. It is only superficially that these appear to be radical attacks on religion-such they seemed indeed after the beginning of our era-but in reality they are conservative in tendency.
It was manifestly quite difficult for an intelligent and educated Greek or Roman to revere and worship Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite, Athena, and the other Olympians so superbly depicted by Homer as immortals with human traits. Unless the Homeric gods were to be regarded as characters of fiction, as some thinkers said, they must be something quite different from what Homer says they are. Hellenistic writers suggested that they were in reality men, heavenly bodies, or natural elements which had been deified in dim antiquity.
Hecataeus of Abaera
(ca. 290) in his book on Egypt
(Egyptiakd) 64 identified the ancient Egyptian gods with heavenly
bodies and
elements (eternal gods), or with rulers (divinized mortals), Sun and
moon were
worshiped as Osiris and Isis; similarly for the elerDeDts: the pnetlma
(spirit)
of the world is Zeus, fire is Hephaestus, earth is Demeter, water is
Oceanus,
air is Athena. The gods also appeared in
64 Most of the extant text is published in C. Muller's Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum II, 384-396. Most of Book I of Diodoms Siculus, Historical Library, is -based on Hecataeus.
[[139]]
went to
T'he attempt to make Greek religion rational and sensible not only made of the gods divinized human beings, but also identified them with natural objects and forces (Hecataeus). The divine character of heavenly bodies had been recognized by Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle before Chaldean astrology popularized this notion, which in the Wisdom of Solomon was regarded as the noblest form of paganism: 'But either fire, or wind [pneu'nw], or swift air, or the stars in their courses, or stormy water, or the luminaries of heaven who rule the cosmos, they regarded as gods" (or: "the luminaries of heaven, they regarded as the gods who rule the cosmos") (Wisd. of Sol. 13:2; cf. Philo, De docalogo 12 [M II, 189]). Besides the heavenly bodies, as this passage of Philo sbows, the four natural elements also were divinized and identified witb the gods of popular religion: "For they call the earth Kore, Demeter, Pluto; the sea Poseidon . . . the air Hera, the fire Hephaestus" [and also, "and the sun Apollo, and the moon Artemis"] (Philo, ibid.); cf. the Epistle to Diognetus 8:1 f.65 The worship of the elements (including the heavenly bodies) eventually proved less important in the spiritualization of personal piety than the belief that the gods were divinized mortals who had greatly benefited mankind during their lifetime. The discovery of God in the greatest of men was one of the most profound and significant phases of Hellenistic-Roman religions The noblest and inost momentous application of tills thougbt was the recognition that the
65 The
doctrine of the four elements (earth, water, fire, air) was wentl
propounded by
Empedoeles (ca. 450) and was systematized by Aristotle who added a
fifth
(ether). The elements were regarded as gods by Prodicus of Ceos (5th
cent.) and
with more philosophical reasoning by Xenouates (d. 314). Philo
mentions
the few elements several times (cf. Wolfson, Philo, Vol. 1, pp.
154, 260,
310, 400). The Wisdom of Solomon omits the earth in 13:2 and the
air in
66 The
worship of rulers, unless a mere formality, has its roots in this
notion.
In an attenuated form this practice was continued in the Roman Catholic
canonization of the saints (cf.
[[140]]
sublime words and deeds of Jesus were manifestations of his divinityi That service to mankind lifts man to the realm of the divine was stated clearly by Pliny (Natural History 11: V, 18 and 19); "For a mortal to help a mortai-that is god; and this is the path to eternal glory ... it is an extremely ancient custom, in rendering thanks to well-deserving ones, to include such persons among the deities." And of Jesus we read that 'God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healidg all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with bim' (Acts 10:38).
The noblest and most influential religion for the intellectuals was provided by Stoicism, which was at the same time a system of metaphysics, a way of life, aDd a monotheistic faith practicing the popular cults. The first two aspects have been sketched above, speaking of philosophy; the third one may be summarized bere.
God is the active principle of the universe producing, out of the passive physical elements, the cosmos with all its phenomena. In a rhythmic process comparable to breathing, God produces the cosmos and then allows it to return to chaos, repeating this cycle through eternity, God is not immaterial, but consists of spirit and ether; mentally he is reason (1ogos), fate (heimarmene), providence (pronoia). Immanent in the world like the soul in the body67 (in contrast with the transcendent deity of Plato and Aristotle), God is present and active in every part of the universe: "For in bim we live, and move, and bave our being' (Acts 17:28).68 "For of him, and through bim, and to hirn, are all things" (Rom. 11:36) or, as Marcus Aurelius said, 'Of thee [i.e., Nature] are all things, in thee are all things, to thee are aU things' (Meditations IV, 23): everything originates in God, exists through bim, and returns to him.69 Men, as Epictetus said, are "fragments of God.” None of the Stoics has described more eloquently the Stoic notion of the deity than Cleanthes (third century B.c.) in bis famous Hymn (usually called Hymn toZeus). 70
67 Seneca (Quaestiones Naturales II, 45), for instance, calls God, “riler and guardian of the universe, soul and spirit of the world.”
68 The speech of Paul to the Athenian
philosophers on
the Areopagus, as reported in Acts, contains a good popular exposition
of Stoic
philosophy in Acts 17:24-28; see, for details, E. Norden, Agnostos
Theos:
Untersuchgen zur Formengeschichte religioser Rede, pp. 13-30.
69 For other New Testament and Stoic parallels, see Norden, op. cit., pp. 240-250.
70 The Greektext was published by H. von
Arnim,
Stoicorum veterum fragmneta I, 537. The translation of the initial
invocation
printed here is by J. Adams, The Vitality of Platonism, p.
105.
[[141]]
O God most glorious, called by many a name
Natme's great king, through endless years the same;
Omnipotence, who by thy just decree
Controflest all, hail, Zeus, for unto thee
Beboves thy creatures in all lands to call.
We are thy children, we alone, of all
On earth's broad ways that wander to and fro,
Bearing thine image wheresoe'r we go.
In
such a pantheistic system God was for
all practical purposes identified with Nature and for man 'to
live
according to Nature" meant to be in harmony with God: such is the ideal
of
the sage. Its attainment requires daily self-examination,
constant
self-restraint, unending battle and self-training. Life, as the
early
Christians likewise knew, was a race to be won, a battle to be fought
(11 Tim.
4:7 f.; cf. Phil. 3:12-14; 1 Tim.
God says to you, "Give me a proof, whether you have observed the rules of athletics, eaten what you should, exercised, obeyed the trainer." .
Epictetus, Discourses III, 10:8
Through such discipline the sage strove to attain a state of absolute dependence on God and absolute independence from externals, which for Epictetus was freedom resulting from bondage under God.
Friend, lay hold with a desperate grasp, ere it is too late, on freedom, tranquillity, and greatness of soull Lift your head high, as one escaped from slaveryl Dare to look up to God and say, 'Deal with me henceforth as thou wilt; thou and I are of one mind. I am thine; I refuse nothing that seems good to thee; lead where thou wilt; . . . ."
Epictetus, Discourses II, 16:41
He who realizes that he has God for his rnaker, and father, and kinsman is free from sorrows and fears (Epictetus, Discourses 1, 9:4-7). Consequently, for the sage the religion of forms had no meaning in comparison to the religion of the spirit:71 prayer was not a request for liberation from some evil or for the granting of some good, but merely the endeavor to free the mind from fears and desires (Marcus Aurelius IX, 40), indeed it was the communion of the mind with God; sacrifices, offerings, iinages, temples, divination, magic are in themselves insignificant; personal
71 Zeno, the
founder of the
[[142]]
immortality was replaced with a sense of divine kinship. True worship, according to Seneca (Epistle 95, 47), does not consist in lighting lamps on the sabbaths, since the gods need no light, and men hardly enjoy soot; nor in morning homages or sitting outside the temples; nor in carrying linen and scrapers, and holding juno's mirror. God needs no servants, for he serves mankind and is at hand everywhere for all; the worship of the gods is first of all to believe in the gods, then to recognize their majesty and goodness; whoever imitates the gods has adequately worshiped them.
And yet, even though in theory the Stoics
regarded the whole cura et cerimonia72 of religion (as Cicero
called
it), the whole apparatus of public worship, as futfle and empty forms,
in
practice they strove to discover a reality behind the shadow, a truth
in the
myths, a justification for the traditional faith and practice.
They not
only were aware of the value of religion in human society but found
nourishment
for their religious aspirations in the current worship. They
harmonized
their theology with popular polytheism by identifying the gods with
individual
divine powers emanating from the divine cosmic soul, usually called
Zeus
(Jupiter). Seneca (quoted by Lactantius, Institutions 1:5, 26 f.)
accordingly
distinguishes between the various deities which we worship singly, and
the God
of gods whose ministers they are. Through allegorical
interpretation of
the ancient myths and fanciful etymologies the Stoics succeeded in
combining
the most advanced philosophy and science with the crassest
superstitions.
Zeus (poetic Z6n) is connected with zdn (to live), and its accusative
Dta with
did (by means of, through); Hera is a& (air). Some
gods are
heavenly bodies or natural elements; others, like Athena (reason,
providence),
mental functions. Ares (thoughtlessness) and Aphrodite
(debauchery) are
assailed by Athena (reason); this illustrates the moralizing
interpretation of
Homer; in other interpretations of the Homeric myths the gods were
explained as
forces, elements, or phenomena of nature.
The Stoic teachers did not merely instruct
a small circle of disciples, as Plato and Aristotle did, but, following
the
example of the Cynics (beginning with Diogenes of Sinope, who died in
323 B.C.),
they left the classroom and went out to the market place where they
addressed the masses. Before the beginning of our era the Stoic
preachers
could hardly be distinguished from their Cynic colleagues. These
mendicant philosophers on the open road, like the early Christian
missionaries
later, went about the Graeco-Roman world bringing to the lower classes
a
message of redemption. They taught that external advantages are
worthless
in comparison with virtue, which is the source of peace of mind and
happiness;
the goals of men are insignificant in comparison with the
[[143]]
simple life in accordance with nature. Like modern evangelistic appeals to conversion, these street-corner addresses were intended to kindle the emotions of uneducated masses: they consisted of anecdotes, observations of life, puns, easily remembered maxims, contrasts, sarcastic or impassioned attacks on the sinners, calls to repentance. Such popular addresses in the vigorous (if not vulgar) vernacular gave rise to a body of written literature; Bion of Borysthenes in Sarmatia (ca. 280) out of this material created a new literary genre, the diatribe.73 This written composition is a well-aryanged, dramatic, animated imitation of the 'soapbox" addresses. Of the latter the best example is in Horace, Satires II, 3, a brilliant transcription in bexameters of a Stoic serrnon on the insanity of all those who have not attained Stoic wisdom. Besides being an excellent and almost unique example of a popular Stoic address, this poem is the greatest satire ever written. In reality other satires of Horace, as also the later ones of Persius (d. A.D. 62) and juvenai (d. ca. A.D. 140) have much in common with the diatribe: Horace (Epistles II, 2:60) actually names the diatribes of Bion as his model. Jewish-HelIenistic authors imitated the diatribe in the Wisdom of Solomon and particularly in IV Maccabees, a rhetorical discourse on the Stoic theme that 'devout reason is supreme ruler over the passions."
So
in
73 See in particular P. Wendland, Hellmistisch-Rdmische Rultur, pp. 39-53.
74 See
75 Posidonius influenced the ideas about God and spirit in Vergil's Aeneid (VI, 724 fE.) and Georgics (IV, 218 ff.), as also his ideas about the afterlife in Aeneid VI; similarly Ovid's notions about the Golden Age and cosmology; M. Terentius Varro (d. 27 B.c.) in discussing religion in 16 of the 41 books of his Remm humanarum et divinamm antiquitates likewise discloses the influence of Posidonius (see Augustine, City of God IV, 27; VI, 2 ff.).
76 It may be noted,
incidentally, that certain similarities between Stoicism and
Christianity were
noted in antiquity: it was said that Paul met Seneca in
[[144]]
After Posidonius, however, the Stoics devoted themselves increasingly to the practical aspects of their doctrine instead of theoretical speculations, more to propaganda among the masses than to academic tea6hing and writing. In fact, as in the case of most New Testament writings (notably the Epistles of Paul), the literature to a great extent is merely subservient or supplementary to the oral message: Epictetus (like his teacher Musonius) wrote nothing, but Arrian faithfully recorded his Discottrses (Diatiibai), only about half of which are extant, and made a selection of them in the Manual (Encheiridion). Like the Apostles, the Cynics and Stoics became primarily preachers and pastors, their message became more and more ethical ana religious. They stressed the need of realizing the nature and value of one's soul, of disregarding all external circumstances to pursue virtue, of being bom again (transfigurari; Seneca, Epistles 53, 8; 94, 48; cf. Epistles 6). In detail, the philosophers discussed the duties toward one's country, parents, children; they gave advice concerning marriage relations, clothing, diet, home, old age, friendship, education, and all situations of human life. A more idward and profound religious feeling, a more spiritual kind of prayer (cf. Persius, Satire II, in the forrn of a letter; juvenal, Satire XI a diatribe) were increasingly stressed, together with a sense of the divine calling of the Cynic and Stoic itinerant preacher. To a young pupil eager to devote himself to this spiritual calling Epictetus spoke as follows:
If a man were to undertake so great a task without God, he would be liated by God and his activity would make him a public laughingstock. . . . The philosopher ... must be free from desires and passions ... his soul must be pure.... Death? Let it come when it will, let it smite the whole or a part. Exile? Can any man cast me outside of the world? ... Furthermore the true Cynic must know that he is sent as a messenger (dngelos) from Zeus to men to teach them concemhig good and evil, to show them that they are in error looking for these where they are not to be found and not noticing where they really are....
Epictetus, Discourses III, 22
Noble as was the Cynic-Stoic ideal of a life devoted to the practice of virtue under the guidance of reason, the control of the will, and the
[[145]]
judgment of conscience,77 it did not suffice: it could not be attained without divine aid. "No man is good without God. Can any rise superior to fortune save with God's help?" (Seneca, Epistle 41, 2). Human longing for God, before the rise of Christianity, found satisfaction in mystical philosophies and in the mystery religions.
Mysticism had its roots in Orphism,
Pythagoras, and Plato, in their teaching about the conflict of mind and
matter
in man, and the possible deliverance of the soul from earthly
bondage.
Posidonius gathered together the various philosophical and religious
strains
into a great system of philosophy based on exact sciences and
culminating in
mysticism. He stresses the conflict of body and soul in the moral
sphere
(cf. Paul's 'works of the flesh' and "works of the spirit" in
Gal. 5:16-25). The human soul is a portion of the fiery cosmic
spirit,
descending from heaven to earth to be imprisoned in the body and
polluted by
its passions. Here it yearns for communion with God and full
knowledge,
but they can be attained only through deliverance from the body and
return to
God: 'For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face' (I
Cor.
Another mystical school, combining
Pythagorean mysticism with Platonic philosophy (not without Stoic
influence),
is usually called NeoPythagoreanism because it revered Pythagoras (ca.
530
B.c.) as the perfect sage, in possession of esoteric truth through
divine
revelation. Consequently, whatever doctrines were regarded as
true were
attributed to the ancient founder and his disciples and, since hardly
any
genuine writings had come down from that period, Pythagorean books were
freely
forged. Parallels in other religions, likewise dominated by the
principles of authority, divine revelation, and tradition, will at once
occur
to the reader. The movement appears in
77 The concept of a moral
mnscimee (synapsis, meaning both consciousness and mnscience)
originated
in Hellenism and was, current whence it passed to the Romans (conscientia),
to
Aleandrian Jews (Wisd. 17:11 [Greek 17:10]), Josephus, and some of the
writings
of the New Testament (chiefly Paul's epistles; Acts 23:1; 24:16;
Hebrews; I Peter).
For the literature on the subject, see
78 On the Pythagorean
'numerology' in Philo, see: E. Br6hier, Les idees philosophiques et
religieuses de Philon d’Alexandreia, 2nd ed., pp. 43 f.
[[146]]
In turn the writings of Philo were apparently known to Ammonius surnamed Saccas ("sack bearer,' because he had been a porter), and to his pupils Plotinus (d. A.D. 270), the founder of Neoplatonism, Longinus (d. 273), and Origen (d. ca. 254), the first great Christian tbeologian.79 Plotinus, whose writings were edited by his pupil Porphyry (d. ca. 304), in six Enneads or fifty-four (6x9) treatises, taught that the godbead . cannot be grasped by thought," is ineffable and absolute; it is 'the One (to hen), "the Primal [Being]' (to proton), which 'neither thinks, wffls, or desires." It is beyond existence, above all relations with anything else, without qualities: we cannot say what it is, but only what it is not. And yet it is the cause of all that exists, it is the primary power (pr6to dgnamis), a pure, unconditioned, creative activity. To the objection that if the One produces the many they were contained in it potentially, Plotinus answers that the One does not possess energy distinct from itself, but it is creative energy; the One is perfect and as such possesses the capacity to produce other beings; its very existence automatically produces, just as the sun radiates light without changing in the least. The world is an emanation from the One; it is its shadow, its image seen in a mirror-in other words, an illusion, an unreal and imperfect copy of the One. 'The sensuous life is mere stage-play, all the misery in it is only imagination, all grief a mere deception of the actors." Man's supreme goal is the return of his soul to God, which implies its deliverance from the body, its cleansing (katharsis) from all that separates it from God, and the ecstatic rapture in which the notion of multiplicity disappears and the soul reaches the One, attains the unio mystica. Such a supreme achievement is permanent only for purified souls after death; in this life the experience is brief and rare: Plotinus attained it four times in six years, Porphyry only once in his lifetime.
Neoplatonism was a
rival of Christianity (Porphyry wrote Against
the Christians in fifteen books) and yet it influenced
Christian
mysticism, notably in Augustine, Boethius (d. 524), Pseudo-Dionysius
the Areopagite
(a body of fifth-century writings attributed to Paul's convert named in
Acts
79 The influence of Philo on Christian theologians of the Alexandrian School is obvious but some scholars doubt his influence on pagan philosophers; see, however, H. A. Wolfson, Philo, vol. 11, pp. 158-160.
[[147]]
a thousand years, Greek philosophy reached its sad end, but it had previously passed on the torch to Christianity.80
Besides mystical
philosophies, the foreign mystery cults
offered satisfaction for the widespread longing for commudion with the
deity. A few foreign deities and their worship had gained
admission into
After the death of Alexander (323 B.c.) the increased contacts between East and West tended to fuse the Greek and OrientaI religions-a process
80 A good summary on the
development of philosophy and religion from 100 to references will be
found in:
J. Geffcken, Der Ausgang des griechisch-romischen Heidentums.
When
completed, the following work will be especially valuable, Reallexicon
fur
Antike und Christentum, Sachworterbuch zur Auseinandersetzung des
Christentums
mit der antiken Welt, ed. by Th. Klauser in co-operation with F.J.
Dolger and
H. Lietzmann (both deceased), and particularly with J.H. Waszink and L.
Wenger.
Fasciciles 1-7, columns 1-1120.
81 Paul’s famous reference to “an altar with
the
inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD” (Acts
[[148]]
which scholars cail 'syncretism." Besides the earlier identification of foreign with Greek gods, cult and theology identified Isis with Demeter; Artemis, Apbrodite, Athena, Nemesis, and Tyobe as one; Osiris with Dionysus, Attis, and Adonis; Serapis with Asclepius, Zeus, Pluto, Dionysus; Bendis (a Thracian goddess) with Artemis, Hecate, and Persephone; The Zoroastrian deities Abura-Mazda (Ormazd), Veratbragna, and Anahita, through the spread of Mithraism, became Zeus, Heracles, and Artemis. respectively.82
The cults of foreign
gods in
82 P. Wendland, Die Hellen@ch-rdmische Kultur, p. 79.
83 In addition to the works
listed above, note 43, see the following works on the mysteries,
paticularly in
the Roman period, and their relations to Christianity: G. Boissier, La
fin du
paganisme.
[[149]]
Foreign
deities were officially worshiped
in
Near Eastern deities began to arrive at
Attis was probably introduced into
84 C. Showeman ("Was
Attis at
[[150]]
Adonis
in
The adnual festival of the Cybele-Attis
mysteries was reorganized and officially sanctioned by Claudius (A.D.
41-54). Attis became more prominent than Cybele because he
promised to
bis devotees the salvation of the soul and life after deatb. On
March 15
(designated as Canna intrat, the reed enters) the Canrwphori
(reed-bearers)
carried reeds in procession, allegedly commemorating the finding of
the infant
Attis among the reeds by the river Gallus. On March 22 (called
Arbor
intrat, the tree enters) the Dendrophori (tree-bearers) bore a pine
tree,
adorned with violets and bandaged like a mummy-a symbol of the dead
Attis-to
the temple of Cyl;ele on the Palatine. On March 24 (caued Dies
sanguinis,
day of blood) the mouming for Attis reached its climax.
The ArcMgallus or bigh-priest drew blood from his arms and presented it as an offering. . . . Stirred by the wild barbaric music of clashing cymbals, rumbling drums, droning horns, and screaming flutes, the inferior clergy whirled about in the dance with waggling heads and streaming hair, untfl rapt into a frenzy of excitement and insensible to pain, they gashed their bodies with potsherds or slashed them with knives in order to bespatter the altar and the sacred tree with their flowidg blood.
J. G. Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Vol. 1, p. 268. Srd ed. The Macmillan Company, 1914.
Presumably,
although no evidence is
available for
Aside
from these annual public rites celebrating the death and resur-
[[151]]
rection of Attis, his
cult comprised secret and probably
mystic sacraments by which the novice entered into communion with the
god and
gained the assurance of eternal life. The only rite about which
some
information is available is the baptism of blood, called the
taurobolium.
The earliest reference to it is dated in A.D. 134 at
Egypes contribution to
Graeco-Roman religions was a group of deities closely connected with
Osiris,
i.e.,
then the nobles, and finally the commoners-drew their hope of a happy immortality. 86
The best complete account of the Osiris myth is that of Plutarch (De Iside et Osiride 12-20), which, though late, since Plutarch died about A.D. 120, agrees substantially with the fragmentary ancient Egyptian accounts and therefore may be regarded as reliable. We may summarize
85 Corpus inscriptionum latinarum, Vol. 6, No. 510. The “criobolium” is a sacrafice of a ram in honor of Attis corresponding to the sacrafice of a bull in honor of Cybele in the taurobolium.
86 For Osiris and his cult in ancient
[[152]]
it as follows: The
earth-god Geb (identified with Cronus)
and the skygoddess Nut (identified with Rhea) had four children, the
gods
Osiris and Seth (or Set; Greek, Typhon) and the goddesses Isis and
Nephthys;
Osiris married
In the meantime the chest
containing Osiris had reached the
87 According to Strabo (Geography XVII, 1:23 lp. 8031), Isis buried coffins of Osiris in many places, but hid his corpse carefully so that Seth could not find it ; cf. Didorus Siculus I, 21:5-11.
[[153]]
declared
defeated and recognized Horns as
the new ruler of mankind. whfle Osiris became the king of the
deceased.
For Osiris really died and the members of his family, but their souls
are
alive: that of Osiris is the phoenix bird, that of
The mydi of Osiris was represented as a
'mystery," a "Passion Play' in the time of Sesostris I (1980-1935
B.C.) of the Xllth Dynasty (Middle Kingdom) of
The religion of
Osiris, which before Alexander bad become
so general in Egypt that Herodotus (2:42) could say that Osiris and
Isis were
the nly gods worshiped by all the Egyptians, was preserved in substance
cut
Hellenized in form (the liturgy was in Greek); Osiris had been
ientified witb
Dionysus and Isis with Demeter long before, as Herodotus estifies, and
the
Osiris religion received the character of the Eleusinian nd Dionysiac
mysteries. So these cults spread throughout the Hellenistic nd
Roman
worlds. One important change was the substitution of Serapis or
Sarapis)
for Osiris. The legend telling of the origin of the Serapis -
cult in
88 For classical
sources for the study of Egyptian religion, in addition to Plutarch,
see
Th. Hopfner, Fontes historiae religionis Aegyptiacae, Parts
1-5
(in C. Clemen, ) Fontes historiae religionum ex auctoribus Graecis et
Latinis).
89 This stela was published
with full commentary by H. Schaefer, Die Mysterien des Osiris in
Abydos unter Konig Sesostris III, nach dem Denkstein des
Oberhatzmeisters
I-cher-nofret im Berliner Museum (in K. Seethe's Untermchungen zur
whichte und
Altertumskunde Aegyptem 1V, 2).
90 Tacitus, Histories 4:83 f.; Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 27-29; Athenodorus of Tarus, in C. Muller, Fragmenta historicorum graecorum vol. 3, pp. 487 f.
[[154 ]]
Alexandrian
ambassadors brought back the statue; Tacitus
says that according to rumor the statue of its own accord went on board
the
vessel, which reached
Greeks and Romans were attracted
to the cults of Serapis and Isis, the most refined of all Oriental
cults then
current in the West, as modern Californians are attracted by exotic
Hindu
philosophies and practices such as Vedanta and yoga, or synchretistic
faiths
like theosophy. Both Serapis and Isis were deities wbose
character was
vague and thus capable of unlimited developmedt. Serapis,
accordidg to
Tacitus (Histories 4:84), was identified with four deities:
Aesculapius,
Osiris, Jupiter (Zeus), and Dis pater (Pluto, the ruler of the
underworld). At first, like Osiris and Pluto, be was the lord of
the
depth of the earth and of the dead; then he was invoked in mortal
dangers,
whether through illness or other menacing circumstances, and assumed
the
attributes of Aesculapius, the god of healing; the stories of his
miraculous
deliverances took the piace of Donexistent myths about this god.
Finally
be was equated to Zeus, ut rerum omnium potentem (as baving power over
aII
thidgs); and became a universal god (pantheus), the closest
approach to
monotheism in Graeco-Roman paganism. In an oracle reported by
Macrobius
(fourth-fifth century) in his Saturnalia (I:20, 17),
Serapis
speaks as follows of himself:
The heavenly world is the head, the sea the belly,
The earth is feet for me, the ears lie in the ether,
And the eye is the far-shining bright light of the sun.
91 Assuming that Serapis came from
92 Plutarch (De -Iside 27), on the
authority of
Archemachus the Euboean and of Heracleides Ponticus, identifies
[[155]]
Augustine called it) The
Golden Ass (De asino aureo), composed
probably between A.D. 151 and 157, supplies the best information
available on
Begetter of nature, mistress of all the elements, primal offspring of the ages, supreme deity, queen of the shades of the dead, first of the heavenly beings, uniform manifestation of gods and goddesses, I who by my nod control the luminous summits of the sky, the wholesome breezes of the sea, and the gloomy shades of the underworld: whose unique name, in manifold forms, in diverse ceremonies, in various titles the whole world adores.
A
Greek bymn, preserved in an inscription
found in Cius in
Zeus is he, the son of Crones, he is the mighty Amon,
The immortal king, and revered as Serapis.
Thee also, blessed goddess and mother, many-named Isis,
Whom heaven brought forth on the glittering waves of the sea,
And who didst bring up darkness as the light for all men;
Thou
who as the oldest bearest the see ter
on
And as divine mistress rulest the earth and the seas,
Thou who viewest everything-much good hast thou given to men. 93
The
worship of Serapis spread all over
93 Other lists of attributes
and titles of Isis will be found in F. Hiller von Gaertringen, Inscriptiones
Cycladum praeter Tenum (inscriptiones Graecae XII: v, 1), No. 14;
and in B.
P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, The Oiyrhynchm Papyri Parts 1-18.
94 The site of the Serapeum of Alexandria has
been
excavated. See, E. Breccia, Les fouilles dans le Serapeum
d’Alexandrie en
1905-1906 (Service des antiquites de l’Egypte. Annales. Vol. 8, pp.
62-76).
[[156 ]]
diplomatic
representatives or occupation
troops. Pausanias about A.D. 170 mentions temples of Serapis,
usually
together with those of Isis, at Athens (1:18, 4), Corinth (2:4, 6),
Messene
(4:32, 6), Sparta (3:14, 5), and other Greek localities (2:34, 10;
3:22, 13;
3:25, 10; 7:21, 13; 9:24, 1). From the
The
Isis apparently gained a foothold in Rome in the time of Sulla (80 B.C.); but the Roman consuls and the Senate in the period 58-48B.c. repeatedly destroyed the altars and shrines of Isis, presumably because members of the Isiac associations (mostly foreigners) bad a part in the tumults stirred up by Clodius at this time.95 Nevertheless the cult survived and flourished soon after, attracting chiefly freedmen and women, and not only wives or courtesans of the demimonde (Juvenal [6, 489] calls Isis
95 Cf. G. La Piana in HTR 20 (1927) 291 f.
[[157]]
a procuress!), but also respected ladies of the aristocracy. Augustus and his prime minister Maecenas repressed the cult; and Tiberius in A.D. 19, when a lady was induced by attendants of the Isis temple to commit immoral acts, threw the image of the goddess into the Tiber, crucified her priests, and deported to Sardinia 4,000 Isiae adherents of military age to fight the brigands there.96 Thus, like Judaism before and Christianity later, the religion of Isis bad its martyrs and confessors!
Beginning with Caligula (A.D. 37-41), however,
the
The
earliest description of the public rites
in the
Of
what use is now your
Tibullus, Elegies 1:3, 23-32
Here
Tibullus describes the daily worship
of Isis; for in contrast with Roman temples, which were opened only
occasionally, the Egyptian temples were opened daily with appropriate
ritual
(matutinas apertiones templi, Apuleius, Metamorphoses XI,
20). Every morning the temple singer awoke
96 Josephus, Antiquities 18:3, 4; Tacitus, Annals 2, 5.
97 Ex-voto paintings depicting deliverences from diseases or dangers can be seen
in Roman Catholic churches in
98 Pharos, an island in the
[[158]]
the
temple was purified by sprinkling
That ritual was
chiefly the concern of the clergy; Tibullus
describes the participation of the devotees. Moreover, these,
aside from
the public worsh P, a personal relation with
In the third place, besides the daily ritual and the
penitential system, the Isiac cult included the great annual
festivals.
The mystery drama celebrated at
In the fourth place, the cult of
[[159]]
Ass (book XI),
vaguely and mysteriously. Lucius
approached the borders of death and walked to the threshold of
Proserpina,
having crossed all the elements, and returned therefrom. He saw
the sun
at midnight, shining with a white light, and came into the presence of
the gods
of the underworld and of the gods of the upper world, so that be could
worship
them close at band. On the morrow be was shown to the crowds on a
high
platform, in front of the image of
Before coming to Mithra a word may be
said about Syrian deities, who played a relatively unimportant role at
Atargatis was the first Syrian deity to be worshiped in Rome, having been introduced by prisoners taken during the war against Antiochus III the Great, in 192-188 B.C. Syrian servants and Syrian merchants practiced the cult soon after in Sicily, Rome, and the harbors of Ostia, Naples, and Puteoli. The name Atargatis is a compound of the names of the goddess 'Atar (Astarte, Ishtar) and the god 'Ate (opportune time); the Greeks shortened Atargatis to Derket6 (English, Dereeto); see Strabo XVI: 4, 27 (p. 785); Pliny, Natural History V:23, 81 Tbe center of her worship was at Heliopolis, west of the Euphrates on the road from Aleppo to Harran: the native name was Mabog (according to Pliny, loc. cit.), pronounced Bambyce by the Greeks (Strobe XV: 2, 27 [C. 7481); the modern name is Membidi. The worship there is described by Lucian,
99 On the Adonis myth in its earliest kno"
Syrian
form, at Ras Sbamra-Ugarit (Northern Phoenicia) in the 14th century
B.C., see
Vivian and Isaac Rosensohn jacobs, "The Myth of Moth and 'Aleyan Ba'ar'
(HTR 38 [1945] 77-109); for the English version of the pertinent
mythological poems, see C. H. Gordon, The Loves and Wars of
Baal and
Anath.
[[160]]
De Dea Syra.100 A
Besides Tanimuz-Adonis of Byblus,
other gods from
100 Doubts have been expressed about Lucian's authorship of this work, but Eduard Meyer and others are probably correct in regarding it as authentic.
[[161]]
alus, or Heliogabalus
(218-222), a priest of the sun-god
Elagabalus (meaning "god of the mountain"?) at Emesa (
The worship of Mithra proved to be one of
the most popular in the
Mithra had long been worshiped
before his popularity attained its peak in the third century of our
era,
declining after
Mithra is first known early in the second millennium B.C. as one of the
gods of
that group of ancient Indo-Europeans who called themselves Aryans
(i.e., Indo-Iranians)
and were the ancestors of the Vedic Indians and the early Iranians:
these
Aryans appeared in
101 The bibliography on
Mithra earlier than 1915 is given in Ida A. Pratt, List of Works
in
the
102 The text of this treatise
in Hittite was found in the excavations at BoghazKent (ancient
Hattushash, the
Hittite capital) in
103 Lines 55-56 of the reverse of this tablet read, ilani (pl) mi-it-ra-as-si-il ilani (pl) u-ru-wa-na-as-si-il ilu in-dar ilani (pl) na-sa-ti-ia-an-na.
[[162]]
It appears from this
inscription that in the early part of
the fourteenth century B.C., if not earlier, the Aryans had two groups
of gods,
the gods of nature and the gods of human society. In the first
group,
Indar (better known as Indra) is the god of storms, shattering the
enemy with
his thunderbolt, and the two Nasatya (later known as the Asvins) on
their war
chariot, helping those in mortal danger, are the Indian Dioscuri
(Castor and
Pollux). Mitra (later Mithra) and Varuna are the gods who embody
the
basic principles of human civilized society. Mithra means
"compace'
in Iranian; Mithra is the guardian of the observance of contracts
between
individuals and covenants between nations. Varuna is invoked in
the
taking of oaths. The two groups were called by the early Aryans
Daevas or
Daivas (Indra and the Nasatyas) and Asuras (Mithra and Varuna),
respectively. Among the Iranians the Daivas were eventually
degraded to
the status of demons, and Varuna disappeared, having probably been
absorbed by
Ahura-Mazda, the supreme god of Zarathustra (Zoroaster), the great
religious
reforiner who probably lived about 650-600 B.C. In the Zend-Avesta, the
holy
book of Zoroastrianisrn which grew about the prophetic teaching of
Zoroaster
(chiefly preserved in the Cathas), Mithra is second only to
Ahura-Mazda
(Lord Wisdom) or Ormazd, and ahnost his equal: "Ahura-Mazda spoke to
Spitama Zarathustra, saying 'Verily, when I created Mithra, the lord of
wide
pastures, 0 Spitama, I created him as worthy of sacrifice, as worthy
of prayer
as myself, Abura-Mazda"' (Avesta, Yasht X, 1). He was then a god
of
light, "the god of celestial light" (E. Benveniste, The
Persian Religion, according to the chief Greek texts, P. 54.
[[163]]
et Osiride 46).
This explains the prominence
of Mithra when the Zoroastrian religion spread to
A sanctuary of Mithra, or Mithraeum,
consisted of a pronaos-, or pilIared vestibule, from which a
stairway
led to the underground cella simulating a cave and therefore called swlaion
(Latin, spelwum), grotto (cf., e.g., Justin Martyr, Dialogue
with
Tryphon 78, 6). These crypts were small, few could hold as
many as
one hundred men (no women were admitted), but usually not more than
fifty could
find room in them. This indicates that they were used for
initiation
rites rather than for regular services. When required, several
Mithraea
were in use (four in
[[164]]
subdued in a cave the bull created by Abura-Mazda; the bull escaped, but was then reluctantly sacrificed by Mithra by order of the sun (whose messenger was the raven). The dying bull brought life to the earth despite the efforts of Ahriman, who sent the scorpion to defeat this purpose. The dog is the friend of Mithra and the serpent probably symboiizes the fertilized earth.
As Jerome reports in his Epistle 107, the initiate (sacratus)
passed through seven degrees corresponding perhaps to the seven
planetary
spheres through which the soul passed on the way to the abode of the
blest:
corax (raven), cryphius (hidden; probably to be read nimphus,
bridegroom, in
accordance with inscriptions found at Dura-Europos), miles (soldier),
leo (lion),
Perses (Persian), heliodromus (courier of the sun), and pater
(father). On occasion, appropriate garments corresponding to
these
designations were worn. Until the third degree (miles) the
neophytes were
called "servants"; beginning with the fourth (leo) they became
"participants," and at their real initiation they took the oath of
secrecy. According to Tertullian (De corona ntilitis 15),
the
miles in the cave, "appropriately in a military camp of darkness,"
was offered a garland with a sword inserted into it as if he were
acting his
martyrdom; after placing it on his bead be removed it to his shoulder
saying
that Mithra was his crown; he was then branded on the forehead with a
redhot
iron. Other rites were baptism by immersion, passage through
flames, and
simulation of death (Porphyry, De antro nympharum 15).
The lee
initiate partook sacramentally of bread and wine: Justin Martyr (First
Apology
66, 4) says that evil demons imitated the eucbarist in the
mysteries of
Mithra.104The chief festival of Mithra was on December 25, the dies
natalis
invicti solis (the birthday of the invincible sun) 105 the day was
sacred
to the sun in other religions, for it marked the rebirth of the sun
after
December 21, the shortest day of the year when the sun seemed to be on
the way
to expire. Special services were held on Sunday, which in English
and
German still has a pagan name, the day of the sun-god, but which
Italian and
French decently Christianized by calling it the Lord's Day ([dies]
dominica:
donwnica, dinwnche).
Christianity, like the mystery religions, spread in the Roman world as a religion of salvation, offering a happy immortality to its faithful. It
104 Tertullim (De praescriptionibus haereticorum 40) says that the devil imitates the divine sacraments in the mysteries of the idols: he baptizes his faithful promising expiation of sins through this bath, marks his soldiers on the forehead, celebrates the oblation of bread, 'introduces "the image of the resurrections [i.e., a mock resurrection], and ransoms the crown under the sword (cf. above, De corona 15).
105 On the origin of Christmas, see R. Kittel,
Die
hellenistiche Mysterienreligion und das Alte Testament, pp.
17-36. BWAT N.F. 7.
[[165]]
also admitted to its
sacraments only the initiates, it also
told of a being who died and was raised from the dead to bring
salvation to
those united mystically with him. The resemblance of
Christianity's rites
to those of Mithraism was noted, as we have seen, by Justin Martyr (d. ca.
165)
and Tertullian (d. ca. 230), who regarded Mithraism as a
devilish
imitation of Christianity. But eventually Christianity, which
differed
from all other cults by refusing in the most absolute manner (like
Judaism) any
participation in pagan rites, triumphed in the Roman and Greek worlds
in spite
of the persecutions, which were particularly severe under Decius
(249251) and
Diocletian (in 303-304). Christ proved himself migbtier than
Caesarl The
Church, however, through its victory enrolled into its ranks multitudes
who
could not forget their pagan practices and beliefs. Graecia
capta
... t)ictorem cepit (Horace, Epistles 2:1, 156; "conquered
[[166]] CHAPTER V
THE JEWS IN THE LANDS OF
THEIR DISPERSION
The
settlement of Judeans
and Israelites in foreign lands, followed in later centuries by the
rise of
flourishing colonies of Jews outside of
The
technical term for the
settlement of Israelites and Jews abroad, beginning with the
deportation by
Tiglath-pileser III in 732 B.C. (11 Kings 15:29),2 is the Greek word
diaspora
(the Dispersion), which occurs in II Macc. 1:27 (in the sense of the
dispersed
Jews) and in Judith 5:19 (in the sense of the land of the Babylonian
Exile).3
Alexandrian Jews even spoke of the Jewish Dispersion as the sending
forth of
colonies, in the Greek manner (Agrippa, in Philo, Embassy to Gains 36
[11, 587
M cf. Against Flaccus 7; On Contemplative Life 3).
In
the second half of the
Hellenistic period and in the early part of the Roman period (ca. 200
13.C.-A.D. 200), with which we are here concerned, the Jews were
scattered
throughout the civilized countries of the Mediterranean world. "Every country will be filled with thee
and every sea," the Sibyl sang ominously in 140 B.C. (Sibyl. 3:271).
Philo
(Against
1 The Phoenicians
and the
Greeks furnish the most familiar ancient parallels.
Long before, Assyrian merchants established
commercial colonies in
2 See
also Tiglath-pileser's fragmentary report in D. D. Luckenbill, Ancient
Records
Of Assyria and Babylonia, Vol. 1, P. 293, §816 (cf. §779).
3 See also,
elsewhere
in the LXX, Deut. 28:25; 30:4; Is. 49:6; Jer. 15:7; 34:17; Ps. 146:2
(Hebr.
147:2); etc. Strangely, diaspora/ never
translates the Hebrew go-la-h, which means both deportation (Jer.
29:16; 48:7;
and elsewhere) and the Exiles in
[[167]]
Placcus
§7 [II, 524 MI)
explained this dispersion not as a punishment, as did the Sibyl, but as
the
result of the immense number of Jews, which no country could contain,
so that
"they dwell in the great majority of the most attractive regions in
So
much has been written by
scholars on the Diaspora that only brief selected lists of publications
can be
given here on the Diaspora in general,4 and on the Jewish settlements
in Egypt,
notably at Alexandria,5 and later in Rome,6 in particular.
In the centuries with which we are
4 "Dispersion" by
H. Guthe (in Encyclopaedia Biblica, Vol. 1, cols. 1106-1117; 1899). "Diaspora" by Th. Reinach (in
Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, pp. 559-574;
Fairly full lists
of Jewish settlements, with references to inscriptions and other
sources, will be found in the sections of the Schu%rer
and Juster books cited above.
5 F. Sta%helin,
Der Antisemitismus des Altertums
in seiner Entstehung und Entwicklung, Basel, 1905.
A. Bludau, Judm und Judenverfolgungen im
aiten
6 A. Bludau, "Die
Juden Roms im ersten christlichen
Jahrhundert" (Katholik 1 [1903] 113-134; 193-229).
M. Radin, The Jews among the Greeks and
Romans.
[[168]]
concerned
here the Jewish
community at
1.
The Jews in
Before the conquests of
Alexander the
Great the most important foreign settlements of Jews were in
But we must resist the
temptation to
indulge here in the fascinating speculations of later date about the
"Lost
Tribes," which have been identified with the Ethiopians, the Scythians,
the Nestorians, the Shindai (holy class) of
7 The
deportations reported
under Shalmaneser V (727-722) in II Kings 17:6; 18-11 (and on the basis
of
these passages in Tob. 1:2, where Enemessar is an error for
Shalmaneser) are
questionable on account of the doubtful historicity and genuineness of
these
texts.
8 Cf. the summary
in The Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. 12, pp. 249-253. New
York, 1906; see also Schu%rer, Geschichte, Vol. 3, p. 10, n. 19;
Encyclopaedia
of Religion and Ethics, Vol. 11, pp. 167f.; H. L. Strack and P.
Billerbeck,
Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud and Midrasch, Vol. 2, pp.
606-608, 682
f.; Vol. 4, pp.903-906.
9 About A.D. 100
this passage was used as a proof text
concerning the ultimate fate of the Ten Tribes.
According to the Mishna (Sanhedrin X, 3 end), Rabbi Akiba quoted
Deut.
29:28 (Hebr. 29:27), "And the Lord... cast them into another land, as
it
is this day," to prove that the Ten Tribes would never return, for
"as this day goes and never returns, so they go never to return." But
Rabbi Eliezer said, "As the day becomes dark and then light again, so
to
the Ten Tribes, for whom darkness has come, light will shine again."
[[169]]
Indians,
and last but not
least, the Irish and the English-to mention but a few.
Twenty-one years after the
fall of
The real Jewish
Diaspora begins in
597. Nebuchadnezzar (according to the
reliable figures given by Jeremiah in Jer. 52:28-30) deported the
following
numbers of men: 3,023 Judeans in 597; 832 inhabitants of
2.
The Jews at
In
contrast with these
Jewish settlements in
10 For the
literature on the
Babylonian Diaspora, see Juster, Les Juifs, Vol. 1, p. 201, n. 1.
[[170]]
earliest
Jewish migration to
Egypt of which we have a sure record occurred in 586 when some Judeans
forced
the prophet Jeremiah to go with them to Tahpanhes in the Nile Delta
(Jer.
43). At least half a century later (if
not actually before 586),11 a Jewish military colony manned the
fortresses at
This
Jewish colony,
flourishing at Elephantine during the fifth century, is of particular
importance as the only settlement of Jews outside of Palestine before
300 B.C.
from which original records and detailed genuine information have come
down to
us.13 Founded as a military garrison for the defense of the southern
border of
Egypt, and consisting primarily of Jewish mercenaries divided into
regiments
(dgln) at the service of the Persian king, this settlement, during a
century of
peace, became more and more a civilian community. These
soldiers had wives and children, bought
and sold houses and lands, added to their salary through commercial
activity,
and engaged in litigation before civil judges; even the women owned
property
and fought civil cases in courts of law.
This
early Jewish settlement
resembles later ones, even though it differs from them in some
important
respects. The most striking difference
is the failure of these Jews-for they were unquestionably Jews and
called themselves
so (yhwdy)-to observe the Law of Moses. Totally disregarding the
Deuteronomic
Code of 621 B.C. (if they knew it at all), they built a temple to
Jehovah (Yhw)
on that remote island on the Nile, in violation of the law of Deut. 12,
and,
worse still, apparently recognized other deities besides the Lord
(notably
Ashim-Bethel, Anath-Bethel, Anath-Yahu, Cherem-Bethel; or Ashim, Anath,
Bethel,
Cherem). Whether the five gates of the
temple were named after these five deities must remain in doubt. A similar transgression of the Law was
denounced
11 According to
the Letter
of Aristeas (§13) Psammetichus (I [663-6091 or, much more probably, II
[593-588, cf. Herodotus
12 Elephantine
Papyri, No.
1, lines 13-14 (in the editions of E. Sachau and A. Ungnad), dated 408
B.C. Text and English translation in A.
Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century, pp. 111-114.
13The literature
on the
Elephantine Papyri is very considerable.
In addition to Cowley's Aramaic Papyri, the standard work in
English
(see the preceding footnote), the reader may find lists of works on the
subject
in Ida A. Pratt, Ancient Egypt, pp. 346-350.
New York Public Library, 1925; and its supplement (Ancient
Egypt,
1925-1941, P. 244.
[[171]]
by
Jeremiah (ch. 44) when be
inveighed against the Judeans in
The
religion of the Jews at
But
apart from the fact that
the Jewish settlement at
The
latent but persistent
hostility between the Jews and the Egyptians at
14 Cf. Yedoniah
and his
companions" (Sachau, and Ungnad, No. 6; Cowley No. 21; dated in 419). Priests apparently formed a substantial part
of the council, for in another papyrus (Sachau 12, Ungnad 11, Cowley
38), which
is undated, the hands of the community are, "Yedoniah, Uriah, and the
priests of the God Yhu"; cf. "Yedoniah and his companions, the
priests who are in Yeb the fortress" (Sachau, and Ungnad, 1; Cowley 30;
dated 408 B.C.), etc.
[[172]]
naturally
considered alien
despots.15 As long as the Persians were
able to control
In
411, when the Persian
rule in
3. The Alexandrian Jews
The
dramatic history of the
Jewish colony on Elephantine has been related, even though it is
considerably
earlier than the period studied in this book, because it is the
earliest and
the typical example of the tragic fate of many Jewish settlements
through the
centuries: it marksthe beginning of anti-Semitism.
Several
Jewish settlements
in
15 The
reciprcally friendly
relations between the Achaemenian Persian rulers (538-330 B.C.) and the
Jews
have been described in some detail by B. Meissner in Die
Acha%menidenko%nige
und das Judentum (Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse 1938).
[[173]]
period,"
but by far the
most important is that at
The
question whether the
Jews enjoyed full Alexandrian citizenship or not has been much
discussed by
historians (see the works cited above, in note 5).
Although Josephus (Against Apion 2:4; War
2:18, 7) asserts that when Alexander founded the city he gave the Jews
and
Macedonians equal rights, which later rulers did not curtail, it is now
generally admitted that the Alexandrian Jews constituted a poli/teuma
(corporation, community) within the city, enjoying a position higher
than the
metics (or settlers) but not quite on a par with citizens.18 They did
enjoy
almost a complete equality of rights (at least in the case of the
Jewish upper
classes), and in fact even "isopolity," or the possibility to become
full citizens if they wished-provided, of course, they renounced their
ancestral religion and worshiped the gods of the po/lis, or city-state. Isopolity is attested by Josephus not only
for Alexandria (Josephus, Antiquities 19:5, 2 [§281]; etc.: cf. III
Macc.
2:30), but for Antioch (Josephus, War 7:3, 3; Antiquities 12:3, 1), and
even
for Cyrene (isonami/a, equality of legal rights, see Josephus,
Antiquities 16:
6, 1) where according to Strabo (Josephus, Antiquities 14:7, 2) the
population
was divided into four classes: citizens, peasants, metics, and Jews.
Such
16 The Letter of
Aristeas
(§§12-14, cf. §§15-27 and 35-37), for instance, greatly exaggerates the
figures
when it reports that Ptolemy I, presumably after the battle Of Gaza in
312,
transported to Egypt 100,000 Jews of which 30,000 were drafted into the
army
and settled in various garrisons, while the rest were reduced to
slavery. But
there is no reason to doubt that this story is based on fact, even
though there
is no other confirmation, for Josephus (Against Apion 2:4 [§§44-471 and
An
12:1) draws his information from Pseudo-Aristeas and is therefore not
an
independent witness.
17 It is clear
from this situation of the Jews that they
did not live in an Alexandrian "ghetto," as some historians have
asserted (e.g., K. J. Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p.
265.
2nd ed. Berlin and Leipzig, i925). On
the contrary, the Jews enjoyed in
18 The letter of
Claudius (41-54 A.D.) to the Alexandrines (H. I. Bell,
Jews and Christians in
[[174]]
isopolity
was the subject of
a quarrel between Jews and Gentiles at
In
the earliest reference to
the Jewish poli/teuma in Alexandria (Letter of Aristeas §310) we find
at its
head a council of elders and leaders (archons?), just as the Jewish
poli/teuma
at Berenice in Cyrenaica was governed by a council of nine a/rchontes
(archons,
chief magistrates), according to a Greek inscription probably dating
from 13
B.C. (Corpus Inscript. Graec. 5361; cf.
In
Alexandria, as elsewhere
during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the Jews were not especially
well
liked by their Gentile neighbors.20 The main reason for this
unpopularity was
clearly stated by the Jewish author of the Book of Esther (3:8): they
were a
nation "scattered abroad and dispersed among the people" in the whole
Mediterranean world, "and their laws are diverse from all people;
neither
keep they the king's laws." For the masses, like children occasionally,
dislike and distrust instinctively foreign or different people in their
midst. The Jews kept themselves as much
apart from the Gentiles as possible and tenaciously clung to their own
customs,
fearful, after the attempt of Antiochus
19 A. Segre\
(Jewish Social
Studies 6 [1944] 388 f.) believes that Strabo exaggerates the power of
the ethnarch when he asserts that the ethnarch
governed the Jews, administered justice among them, supervised their
contracts
and their laws as if he were the chief of an independent state (polis). It seems probable, however, that ordinarily
Jews were judged by their own magistrates in their own Courts.
20 See I.
Heinemann in Pauly-Wissowa, Realenzyklopa%die des klassischen
Altertumswissenschaft, new ed. by W. Kroll and K. Mittelhaus,
Supplementary
Vol. 5, cols. 3-43.
[[175]]
Epiphanes
to Hellenize them
forcibly, of losing their national individuality and religious
peculiarity.
During the rule
of the Ptolemies (323-30
B.C.) this dislike for the Jews on the part of the Greeks in
This mutual
dislike grew considerably
after Octavian's conquest of
During the rule of Octavian Augustus (30
B.C.-A.D. 14) and Tiberius (A.D. 14-37) the Romans succeeded in keeping
peace
between the two unfriendly Alexandrian groups.
They even discriminated in favor of the Greeks in order to gain
their
favor, as when Germanicus (the nephew of Tiberius, father of Caligula,
grandfather of Nero) in A.D. 19 distributed grain in Alexandria to the
Greeks,
but not to the Jews (Josephus, Against Apion 2:5 [§631).
Serious disturbances occurred, however, in the
time of Caligula (37-41). A. Avilius
Flaccus had been governor of
21 Before
Caligula's rule,
only Sejanus, who was the close adviser of Tiberius from 19 to 31,
succeeded in
oppressing the Jews (see Schu%rer, Geschichte, Vol. 3, P. 61). The
attitude of
Tiberius after 31 is insufficiently known (cf. Juster, Les Juifs, Vol.
1, p.
224, n. 3).
[[176]]
to
cruel mockery by dressing
up an imbecile as king and addressing him as "Marin" (Aramaic for
"our lord"). Later, fearful of
Caligula's displeasure, the Greeks bit on the diabolical suggestion to
place
statues of the emperor, who demanded divine worship for himself, in
every
synagogue.
Flaccus,
aware of his
insecure position particularly after allowing a friend of the emperor's
to be
insulted by the mobs, could only welcome this "red herring" and in an
edict branded the Jews as "aliens" unwilling to worship the emperor. Thus encouraged, the mobs drove the Jews into
a single one of their quarters, inaugurating thus the indignity of the
ghetto,
and plundered their vacated homes and shops.
A horrible pogrom followed, in which no mercy was shown even to
helpless
women and children. Then the mobs burned
some synagogues and desecrated the rest by placing in them statues of
the
emperor. Flaccus intervened at last-by having 38 members of the Jewish
senate
publicly flogged! Finally, Jewish women were forced to eat swine meat
in the
theater, and were tortured if they refused.
When the tumults came to an end, the Jews found themselves in a
critical
economic situation and may have been prevented from practicing some of
their
religious rites.
Soon
thereafter Flaccus was
exiled, and eventually was executed by order of Caligula.
Persecutions ceased under the new governor,
C. Vitrasius Pollio; but the synagogues remained closed until the death
of
Caligula. In the winter of 38-39 the
Jews sent to Caligula the philosopher Philo at the head of an embassy,
while
Apion led the embassy of the Greeks.
Caligula mocked the Jews and granted them nothing, finally
dismissing
them with the remark that those who could not recognize his divinity
were more
to be pitied than censured.22
Upon
his accession, Claudius
(41-54) issued a decree (preserved by Josephus, Antiquities 19:5, 2). This text, which is extremely favorable to
the Jews, may not have been reproduced verbatim by Josephus. Although it has been regarded by some
scholars as a forgery, it is apparently authentic in substance. Claudius confirmed in it the privileges and
rights of the Jews, previously abrogated by "the madness of Gaius";
thus the Alexandrian "ghetto" was abolished.23 In his unquestionably
genuine letter to the Alexandrines (A.D. 41), published by
22 All these
events are
related by Philo in his two works, Against Flaccus and Embassy to
Gaius; and in
brief by Josephus, Antiquities 18:8, 1 (§§257-259); for later events at
Alexandria, see Josephus, op. cit. 19:5, 2 (§ §278-285); War 2:18, 7 f.
and a
number of papyri (cf. Scb(iru, Geschichte, Vol. 1, pp. 67 f.; Juster,
Les
Juifs, Vol. 1, pp. 125-128), in particular a letter of Claudius to the
Alexandrines (published and translated by H. I. Bell, Jews and
Christians in
Egypt, pp. 23-29; for the other papyri ' see p. 19 f.). For summaries
of the
Alexandrian tumults, see Juster, op. cit., Vol. 2, pp. 182-186, 201; H.
I.
Bell, Juden und Griechm.
23 Philo, Embassy
§§18ff. [II, 563f. MI.
[[177]]
tians),
Claudius refused to
commit himself as to whether Jews or Greeks were responsible for the
recent
riots (or rather the war) soon after his accession, but expresses
unyielding
indignation against whoever caused this renewed outbreak (or, "whoever
will cause another outbreak"), He will not tolerate "this baneful and
obstinate mutual hostility." He exhorts the Alexandrines to be
"forbearing and kindly" toward the Jews' long residents of the city,
not insulting their traditional worship but allowing them "to observe
their customs" as in the time of Augustus; he confirmed the free
practice
of these customs. On the other band, the
Jews must not intrigue for additional prerogatives, nor send two
separate
Jewish embassies (representing opposed Jewish factions), nor strive "in
gymnasiarchic
and cosmetic games" (restricted to the ephebi, youths enjoying full
citizenship). They should enjoy the
prosperity of a city not their own, but refrain from inviting to
Alexandria
Jews from Syria and other parts of Egypt (as reinforcements against the
Alexandrines? cf. Phflo, Embassy §129), lest he take vengeance on them
as men
who bring a general plague upon the whole world (cf., for the language,
Acts
24:5).
Thus
Claudius refers
indirectly to the tumults that began in 38, and directly to an outbreak
early
in his reign, in which the persecuted Jews, emboldened by the death of
Caligula, were the aggressors (cf. Josephus, Antiquities 19:5, 2
[§278]). His letter is fair and impartial,
expressing
good intentions toward both sides, but warning troublemakers of drastic
measures against them. In reality, two
of the chief Greek rabble-rousing demagogues (Isidore and Lampon; cf.
Philo,
Against Flaccus § §4, 15-17) active in stirring the riots in 38, were
condemned
to death by Claudius.
Later,
the patriotic fervor,
the religious ferment characterized by Messianic hopes, the passionate
hatred
of the Romans, and the feverish agitation of the spirits in Palestine,
which
precipitated with tragic fatality the disastrous war of A.D. 66-70,
inevitably
had their repercussions among Alexandrian Jews, whose nervous tension
tended to
magnify minor incidents until they seemed to be national catastrophes.
After
the outbreak of the
great rebellion at
[[178]]
drew
the troops, the
Alexandrian riffraff continued the plundering (Josephus, War
These
drastic measures,
mercilessly bloody as they were, proved effective.
After the Jewish war had ended with the fall
of Masada (April of 73), some Jewish fanatics (Sicarii, or assassins)
fled to
Alexandria and, when the parties of law and order among the Alexandrian
Jews
opposed their insane plans for a rebellion there, they began to murder
the
Jewish leaders. But in the Jewish senate
the Sicarii were accused of causing the ruin of
As
a result of the
destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70, the Temple tax of a third
of a
shekel (Neb. 10:33 f.), raised later to half a shekel or two drachmae
(Ex.
30:11-16), paid to the sanctuary by all male Jews twenty years of age
or older
(cf. Matt. 17:24-27; Misbna Sheqalim entire), was ordered paid by all
Jews
(including women and children) to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in
Rome
(Josephus, War 7:6, 6 [§2181; Dio Cassius 66:7,2; cf. Juster, Les
juifs, Vol.
1, pp. 377-385; 2, pp. 282-286; H. I. Bell, Juden und Griechen, pp.
34-43).
Under
Trajan (98-117), when
the Jews rebelled everywhere in 114-115, the Alexandrian Jews defeated
the
governor, M. Rutilius Rufus, and almost destroyed Alexandria, but they
were
prevented from joining the Jews of Cyrene, so that peace was gradually
restored
at Alexandria (see Juster, Les Juifs, Vol.
II, pp. 185-190; cf. Vol. 1, pp. 126 f.).
Hardly
had Hadrian (117-138)
finished putting down this rebellion when be caused art even bloodier
war,
either by forbidding circumcision or by rebuilding Jerusalem as Aelia
Capitolina and erecting therein a temple to Jupiter Capitolinus. The repercussions of this war of Bar Cocheba
(132-135) in
[[179]]
In the third century before our era Jews
continued to come to
While
in Alexandria the Jews
constituted a poli/teuma, an organized semiautonomous community, in
Rome they
lacked a civic government of their own and, like all new and small
Jewish
settlements, were still organized into synagogue associations, such as
Jews from
abroad estab-lished in Jerusalem: five such synagogues are named in
Acts 6:9,
includ-ing the synagogue of the Libertines (the descendants of the Jews
taken
to Rome as slaves by Pompey and eventually freed [Philo, Embassy to
Gaius §23
[11, 568 MI) built by Theodotus and supplied with a hostel.25
24 From a study
of the Greek
papyri, V. Tcherikover (The Jews in
25 For the
literature on
the inscription of Theodotus, commemorating the opening of the
synagogue and of
the accommodations for Jews from abroad, see M. N. Tod, ]ournal of
Hellenic
Studies 43 [19231 37; 45 f 19251 198.
The present writer published the text and translation of this
inscription in the Methodist Review (
[[180]]
In
Rome and in other
localities where the Jews lacked civic organization the synagogue
tended to
assume community functions quite distinct from strictly religious
matters (as
in medieval Jewish communities).
Both
types of community
organization of the Jews in the Dispersion resemble, at least in form,
the
civic and religious associations of Gentiles living abroad (notably
Phoenician
and Egyptian).26 The poli/teuma is manifestly of Gentile origin and
apparently
goes back to those new settlements established by Alexander, which
lacked the
organization of a Greek po/lis and included several nationalities in
addition
to the Greek (cf. Tarn, Hellenistic Civilization, pp. 129f.). But even
the
synagogue, notably outside of
The
status of the Jews in
the Dispersion gradually thus became unique in the Graeco-Roman world. It is the basic contradiction in Judaism (and
a reason for its vitality) that it regarded itself both as a
nationality-nay,
as a people-and as the worship of the only God in existence, who was
also
Jehovah, the God of Israel. In Gentile
cities the Jews were a colony of settlers who, whether they enjoyed
full
citizenship or not, participated in the life of the town; but at the
same time
they constituted a religious congregation observing with utmost rigor
Jehovah's
revealed Law and strictly refraining from any contact with the
religious life
of the town. Thus, for instance, at
26 See Schu%rer,
Geschichte,
Vol. 3, pp. 96-105. G. La Piana, in HTR
20 (1927) 183-403.
[[181]]
cause
was ably defended by
Nicholas of Damascus in the name of Herod the Great (Josephus,
Antiquities
12:3, 2; 16:2. 3-5). The Romans regularly granted to the Jews, as to
all
nations, full religious freedom (cf. e.g., Josephus, War 6:6, 2); but
local
conflicts were inevitable as long as the ancient notion prevailed that
citizenship could not be severed from the worship of the tutelary
deities of
the po/lis.
In
other respects as well
the situation of the Jews in the Hellenistic world was somewhat
anomalous.
Jewish religious life in Palestine was so systematized by scribes,
Pharisees,
and rabbis that the average Jew was seldom in doubt about what was
right and
wrong-even though the finer points of juristic interpretation were the
object
of learned and subtle discussions in the academies. But abroad, in a
foreign
environment where an alien culture and religion prevailed, the fidelity
of the
Jews to ancestral faith and practices was severely tested. The author
of the
Book of Ecclesiastes, well aware of the pervasive Hellenistic culture,
began to
question the good old Jewish religion in which he had grown up. He was
unable
to justify rationally its basic tenets and even reached some agnostic,
if not
skeptical, conclusions. The Wisdom of Solomon seems to depict (2:1-20)
the deep
impression made on some prosperous Jews in Alexandria by the
theoretical and
practical teaching of Epicurus: thus led astray, blinded by their
wickedness,
they failed to understand the secret purposes of God (2:21 f.) and
ceased to
belong to Jehovah's congregation.
Such
spiritual defections
from the faith of the fathers seldom led to an actual break from the
synagogue,
and even more rarely to an actual apostasy from Judaism-as in the case
of
Tiberius Alexander, nephew of Philo and son of the Jewish alabarch
(Arabarch)
or river-custom inspector in chief (wrongly believed to mean the chief
of the
Jews in Alexandria), who after adopting paganism became governor of
Judea (A.D.
46-48) and later of Egypt.27 In reality the great majority of the Jews
of the
Dispersion fulfilled the ordinances of the Law of Moses to the best of
their
ability, but could not fully escape the influences of the Hellenistic
milieu.
The most obvious, pervasive, and subtle of such influences was the
Greek
language, in the Hellenistic stage of its development (called the
koine-/, or
common [dialect]). It is true that Aramaic was gradually displacing
Hebrew as
the vernacular of the Palestinian
27 For instances
of various
degrees of apostasy, see J. Klausner, >From Jesus to Paul, pp.
25-30. In
[[182]]
Jews,
but after all the two
languages were very closely related and in fact had many words in
common, while
Greek was bound to introduce Western modes of thought alien to Hebrew
and
Aramaic. The overtones of the Hebrew
Yahweh (Jehovah) or Adonai (Lord), and the Greek Ky/rios (Lord), to a
sensitive
ear are totally different, for ky/rios is a common divine term in the
mystery
religions. Even without adducing such
contrasting works as the Palestinian Ecclesiasticus (with its notion of
a miserable
future life in the underworld) and the Wisdom of Solomon (with its
Platonic
doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the rewards or punishments
after
death), it is sufficient to compare the Hebrew Bible with its
translation into
Greek (the Septuagint or LXX) to note bow subtly different, in spite of
a basic
agreement, Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism really are. That the
Hebrew
Bible could not be reproduced intact into Greek was noted two millennia
ago by
the translator of Ecclesiasticus into Greek; in apologizing for the
imperfections of his own rendering he remarked, in the preface to his
translation, that what was originally spoken in Hebrew does not have
the same
force when translated into another language; and that "the Law, the
Prophecies,
and the rest of the books" in Greek are quite different from their form
in
the original language. It was necessary
for the translators to attribute to Greek words shades of meaning
hitherto
unknown in order to render Hebrew ideas alien to the Greeks (e.g.,
dikaiosy/ne-
[righteousness], no/mos [law], do/xa [glory]).
Conversely, current meanings of Greek words inevitably gave to
expressions in the LXX a sense quite at variance with the original.28
The
extent of Hellenistic
culture in the LXX is a matter of dispute, although its presence cannot
be
denied, for the LXX contains reminiscences of Greek poetic literature
in the
Book of Job, mythological terms (Sirens, Titans, Amaltheias keras
[rendering
Keren-happuch in Job 42:14]),29 and other typically Greek words like
'cemetery'
(Jer. 2:23), di/drachmon (Hebr. shekel), and obelo/s (Hebr. gerah). The Greeks appear twice in place of the
Philistines (Is.
mystery cults, and other cultural elements of Hellenism have been
discovered by
some scholars in the pages of the LXX, but their conclusions have not
been
generally ac-
28 See in
general, C. H.
Dodd, The Bible and the Greeks, pp. 3-95.
29 See H. A.
Redpath,
"Mythological Terms in the LXX" (AJT 9 [1905] 34-45); H. St. John
Thackeray, The Septuagint and Jewish Worship (Schweich Lectures for
1920), pp.
51-54.
[[183]]
cepted.30
Moreover, it
should never be forgotten that, after the time of Alexander,
Hellenistic
culture and language were far from unknown even among the Palestinian
rabbis.31
But in conclusion Ralph Marcus (op. cit. p. 244) is fundamentally right
when be
says that "the Greek elements of the LXX are merely superficial and
decorative, while the Jewish elements are deep-lying, central, and
dominant."
As
in the case of the
Septuagint, so for the culture of the Alexandrian Jews in general,
Hellenism is
merely the garb of Judaism. The
differences between Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism are chiefly a
matter of
emphasis-even when the authors of the Wisdom of Solomon and IV
Maccabees, and
especially Philo, adopted some of the tenets of Greek philosophy. Jews, unless they renounced the ancestral
religion, never adopted the spirit of Hellenism; despite appearances,
they
merely accepted forms. We should not
give too much importance to traces of seeming paganism among Diaspora
Jews, as
when two Jews at the
And
yet, in spite of
appearances, the Jews in the Dispersion were true to the Law of Moses
and only
superficially Hellenists. Rare indeed
was the Jew who, like the one who conversed learnedly with Aristotle in
30 A good summary
of the
problem of "Jewish and Greek Elements in the Septuagint," with
numerous bibliographical references, has been published by Ralph Mucus
in the
Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume, pp. 227-245 (New York, American Academy
for
Jewish Research, 1945).
31 See S. Krauss,
Griechische und Lateinische
Lehnwo%rter im Talmud, u.s.w. 2 vols.
Berhn, 1898-1899;
32 For other
examples
of Jewish contacts with pagan religions, see J. Klausner, From Jesus to
Paul,
p. 26. For M. Friedla%nder's defense of this liberalism in the Diaspora
and
it's influence on Christianity, see ibid., p. 28, n. 71.
33 Josephus,
Against
Apion I: 22 (176-182); cf. E. Silberschlag in JBL (1933) 66-77.
[[184]]
of
the Jews living
"among the Gentiles" (
That
the Law was the
decisive factor in the life of Jews in the Dispersion there is no doubt
whatsoever. Even such philosophically
minded Hellenistic
Jews as the author of the Letter of Aristeas and Philo, who attempted
to
rationalize some of those prescriptions of Moses which puzzled the
Gentiles by
using freely the allegorical interpretation, kept the Law punctiliously
themselves and denounced the Jews who violated its literal import
(Philo called
them "sons of Cain"). The
sarcastic remarks of Roman writers such as Horace, Juvenal, and Tacitus
indicate
clearly that what mostly impressed the Gentiles about the Jews was
their
observance of the following prescriptions: circumcision, Sabbath rest,
and
avoidance of swine meat.34 These rites, together with monotheism,
imageless
worship, and ethical conduct, were indeed the essential characteristics
of the
Jewish religion in the Diaspora. The
It
is precisely in the
matter of the observance of the Law that we note one of the most
significant
differences between Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism.
In
34 See, e.g.,
Horace,
Satires I, 9:68-72; Persius, Satires 5:179-184; Juvenal, Satires 6:160;
14:96-106; Tacitus, Histories V, 3-5.
Cf. Schu%rer, Geschichte, Vol. 3, pp. 150-173; Th.
Reinach, Textes d'auteurs grecs et romains
relatifs au Judaisme,
[[185]]
specific
rules of
conduct. Until it was finally codified
and published in the Mishna by Rabbi
The
situation was obviously
different in the Diaspora, where the Jews were a minority in the midst
of
cities having a Hellenistic civilization.
Here the best the Jews could do was to remain faithful ancestral
customs
and obedient to the Law revealed to Moses; a juristic development such
as was
incessantly carried on at least until about A.D. 450 in
Although
there is thus no
indication of independent jurisprudence among the Hellenistic Jews, we
know
that they took special pains to observe the Law of Moses individually
and
collectively, to the best of their ability.
The laws of the Gentiles among whom they lived, even when some
local
institutions and practices were adopted, remained alien and
external-even when
they could not be disregarded. Whenever possible, the Jews not only
fulfilled
the religious ordinances of Moses, but had their own courts of law,
which
decided the cases (as at
35 After its
codification,
the Mishna was subjected to the interpretations and juristic
discussions
recorded in the Jerusalem Talmud.
[[186]]
fathers."
Indeed, they
even had a slight acquaintance with the growing unwritten law
formulated by
Palestinian jurists (see S. Belkin, Philo and the Oral Law.
The
second basic feature of
Dispora Judaism, noted by Paul after the knowledge of the Law, is the
boast
about God, about monotheism (Rom.
36 Cf. R. H.
Pfeiffer in JBL
43 (1924) 229-240; G.F. Moore, Judaism, Vol. 1, pp. 362-364; L.
Wallach, in
HUCA 19 [1946] 389-404.
[[187]]
had
crushed Jewish
secular...independence" (L. Wallach, op. cit. P.
401).
The Alexandrian Jewish polemic against heathenism influenced not
only
rabbinic writings, but even more the early Christian apologies.37
The
third characteristic
mentioned by Paul is the knowledge of God's will and the approval of
the most
excellent things (Rom.
All
in all, whether
influenced by Greek philosophy or not, the moral ideal, as Paul
recognized, was
a noble one. This needs to be stressed
for, under the influence of the attacks of Jesus against the hypocrisy
of some
Pharisees and Paul's disparagement of "legalism," some Christians
tend to cast aspersions on the Jewish ethics of our period. Thus, for instance,
37
P. Wendland, Die Hellenistisch-Ro%mische
Kultur (Handbuch zum Neuen Testament 1, 2), pp. 150-160.
Tu%bingen, 1907. Cf. Wallach, op.
cit. pp. 401-403.
38 In every
system, as time goes on, the secondary comes to be regarded as primary
and the
primary as secondary; the most exalted idea has associated with it
disciples
who distort and transform it" [Joseph Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth. Translated H. Danby.
[[188]]
ethical
and religious
systems, the moral prescriptions are always far above the practice of
even the
best; this discrepancy between lofty goals and sordid conduct is by no
means
confined to Judaism. The contrast between the ideals of Judaism and the
wickedness of some Jews, so pointedly and dramatically brought out in
Wisd. of
Sol. 1-5 and Rom.
Love
ye, therefore, one
another from the heart; and if a man sin against thee, cast forth the
poison of
hatred and speak peaceably to him, and in thy soul hold not guile; and
if he
confesses and repents, forgive himŠAnd if he be shameless, and persist
in his
wrong-doing, even so forgive him from the heart and leave to God the
avenging.Testament of Gad 6:3, 7; cf.Matt.
Love
the Lord through all
your life, and one mother with a true heart.Testament of Dan
5:3(similarly
Test. of Issachar 5:2; 7:6);cf. Matt. 22:37, 39.
And
if any one seeketh to do
evil unto you, do well unto him, and ye shall be redeemed of the Lord
from all
evil.Testammt of Joseph 18:2; cf.Luke
The
fourth and last virtue
of Diaspora Jews mentioned by Paul is their missionary zeal (Rom.
39 On Jewish
missionary work
and on the proselytes, see: A. Bertholet, Die Stellung der Israeliten
und der
Juden zu den Fremden (
[[189]]
heathen
animated some
Pharisees in the first century of our era: "For ye compass sea and land
to
make one proselyte" (Matt.
The
numerical increase of
the Jews during the last three centuries B.C. is due, in part, to the
influx of
proselytes. In the time of Nehemiah (444
B.C.) the total number of Jews was considerably less than one million
(probably
little more than half a million), while in the first century of our era
the
Jews of the Dispersion probably numbered about two millions, while
those in
Palestine are estimated to have been at least one million (Juster's
figure of
five millions is incredible).40
When
Paul said of Israel
that it regarded itself as "a light of them which are in darkness"
(Rom. 2:19), he appropriately echoed the Second Isaiah, the first
explicit
advocate of the conversion of the heathen (about 540 B.C.), when he
wrote,
"I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles" (Is. 49:6; cf.
Enoch 48:4; Luke 2:42; Acts 13:47).
These words (according to Justin, Dialogue with Tryphon 199 f.)
were
understood to mean that
41 G.F. Moore
(Judaim, Vol.
1, P. 231) says that its date "probably falls at a relatively advanced
time in the Persian period. "
[[190]]
to
Josephus (Antiquities
The
Hellenistic period,
after 300 B.C., was especially favorable to the spread of Judaism in
the
Mediterranean world. The Jews were then
establishing colonies in all important civilized communities and thus,
outside
of
During
the Hellenistic and
Roman periods, Gentiles ran the whole gamut from highest admiration to
most
extreme contempt in their attitudes toward the Jews.
In a general way it appears that Judaism
attracted particularly the lower classes (as did Christianity at the
beginning)
and women, but was often ridiculed and denounced by people of high
education,
breeding, and wealth. There are, of
course, men of letters, scientists, and philosophers (like
Theophrastus,
Clearchus of Soli, Strabo, Varro, and others) whose favorable opinions
reflect
those of the illiterate, humble people; while on the contrary mobs at
Alexandria and elsewhere in their insane fury pillaged and slaughtered
the
Jews. But, on the whole, the references
to the Jews in classical literatures (collected by Th. Reinacb, Textes
d'auteurs grecs et romains; cf. Schu%rer, Geschichte, Vol. 3, pp.
150-173;
Juster, Les Juifs, Vol. 1, pp. 31-34, 4548, note) are decidedly
unfriendly and
express disdain rather than hatred.
In
a measure Gentile writers
merely reciprocated Jewish contempt for heathenism.
In the ancient world the Jews alone claimed
that theirs was the only true religion and that eventually it would
conquer the
world. By setting themselves apart from all other
nations as the chosen people
42 That such
compulsory
conversions were only "skin-deep" was well known (the Idumean Herod
was called a "half-Jew"). Several varieties of converts for purely
worldly motives are enumerated in the Jerusalem Talmud (Qiddushin 65b):
"love proselytes" (for the sake of marriage), proselytes for a place
at the king's table or similar to Solomon's servants (for advancement
in the
bureaucracy or in high society), "lion proselytes" (out of fear, like
the Babylonian colonists in Samaria: II Kings 17:24-28), converts
because of a
dream understood as a divine order to become Jews, and the proselytes
of the
days of Mordecai and Esther (Esth. 8:17), compelled by terror of
slaughter.
[[191]]
of
the only God in
existence, and by ridiculing Gentile religions as a foolish worship of
wooden
and stone idols, as some Jews bad done since the days of Second Isaiah
(Is.
40-55) and Cyrus the Great, they invited pagan resentment both as a
people and
as a religious community.
The criticisms against the Jewish nation and
religion, which were later repeated by Christians and were used in part
by
pagans against Christians, are conveniently listed, with references, by
Juster
(Les Juifs, Vol. 1, pp. 45-48) in a long footnote (see also Schu%rer,
Geschichte, VoI. 3, pp. 150-173; Th.
Reinach, Textes, pp. Viii_XXii).43 The Jews, according to pagan
slander,
are mutually loyal and merciful to the highest degree, but hate all
others;44
they are a useless nation; a nation of slaves; a seditious, cruel,
obstinate,
daring, cowardly, prolific, sensual, degenerate, dirty, leprous,
exclusive,
dangerous, and contemptible people. The
Jewish religion (barbara superstitio Cicero) is characterized by sad
and cold
ritual; worship of angels, of a donkey, of heaven and clouds; human
sacrifice;
contempt for images; circumcision; Sabbath idleness; eating of
unleavened
bread; abstention from pork and other foods; the Jews are atheists,
enemies of
the gods, disrespectful toward the emperor, hated by the gods, and
sacrilegious.
Despite such abusive
attacks, most fully
summarized by Tacitus (Histories V, 1-13), Judaism had a strong appeal
for many
Gentiles, first of all because of the universalistic tendencies of
Judaism and
secondly because of similar trends in Hellenism.
In its essence Judaism was of
course not
merely a universal monotheistic religion, teaching noble ethics and
salvation
for all the faithful (whatever their race), but also a revealed
religion,
demanding strict observance of all its prescriptions, exclusive
devotion, and
rigorous separation from polluting contacts with heathenism in all its
forms. In the Diaspora, however, in
opening its gates to the Gentiles, Judaism stressed its points of
contact with
the noblest Hellenistic teachings rather than its national
exclusiveness. No one could seriously
object to the basic
doctrines of monotheism, moral conduct, God's judgment, and eternal
salvation;
no one could take offense at the denunciation of polytheism, idolatry,
and
wickedness.41
43 The latest
treatment of
the subject is in the essay of R. Mucus which appeared in Essays on
Antisemitism, edited by K. S. Pinson (Jewish Social Studies
Publications, No.
2).
44 Apud eos fides
obstinata, misericordia in promptu; sed adversus omnes hostile odium
(Tacitus,
Histories V, 5). Juvenal (Satires XIV, 103f.) says even that they will
show the
right way only to a fellow believer, and will lead only a circumcised
man to
the spring which is looked for. This separateness of the Jews (Greek,
amixi/a),
which accomplished the survival of Judaism, is amply attested in Jewish
writings (Jub. 22:16-22; Dan. 1:8-16; 30:7-17; Tob. 1:10f; etc.).
45 Paul's
indictment of heathenism in Rom.
[[192]]
And so the Jews met the Gentiles halfway. The latter were attracted to Judaism first as
a philosophy and later as one of the Oriental mystery cults offering
eternal
life. Judaism is called a philosophy by
Hellenistic and Roman writers (beginning with Aristotle, according to
Clearchus
of Soli), as well as by Jewish and Christian apologists (see the
references in
Juster, Les Juifs, Vol. 1, p. 243, n. 2).
The synagogue worship, consisting mainly of a scriptural reading
and an
address, appeared to the Gentiles as a meeting of teachers and pupils
of a
foreign philosophical school. Nor was the synagogue radically different
from
some Greek schools in asserting that its textbook was inspired, in
singing the
praises of the deity, and in observing peculiar prescriptions in regard
to
food, dress, and purifications.
Moreover, Jewish teachings about the character and activity of
the sole
Creator and about ethical conduct were not only familiar in some
Hellenistic
philosophies, but were occasionally mentioned without disapproval by
ancient
writers, such as Hecataeus of Abdera,46 Strabo (XVI: 2, 35, paraphrased
earlier
in this chapter), who on the basis of a Jewish source (Schu%rer) or of
Posidonius and a Jewish apology (Th. Reinach) presented Moses as a
Stoic
pantheist, Varro (116-27 ]3.C.)47 and, surprisingly, even the
implacable
Tacitus.48
No less erroneous than the notion
that
Judaism was a philosophy is the notion that it was a mystery cult; yet
under
both aspects it drew adherents to itself. Both points of view are
suggested in
the Wisdom of Solomon-which to some extent is a missionary tract-where
Judaism
is identified with sophi/a (wisdom) and secures to its true adherents
the
immortality of the spirit. In contrast
with wisdom in Palestinian writings (such as Ecclesiasticus), sophi/a
in the
Wisdom of Solomon is decidedly tinged with Platonic and Stoic
doctrines, and
the book's teaching on the immortality of the soul is the opposite of
the
Pharisaic doctrine of the resurrection of the body which Greek
philosophers
regarded as absurd (cf. Acts 17:32). IV
Maccabees
(cf. Philo, De congressu 14 [1, 531 MI) defines sophi/a as the Stoics
did:
"The knowledge of things divine and
46 "[Moses] made
no
image of the gods at all, since he did not believe that the deity had a
human
figure" (preserved by Diodorus 40, 3, in Photius; the text is printed
in
C. Mu%ller, Fragmenta historicorum graecorum II, 392; Th. Reinach,
Textes, P.
16).
47 In one of his
41 books of Human and Divine Antiquities, Varro "says
also that the ancient Romans during more than 170 years worshiped the
gods
without images. 'If this custom had
continued, he says, the gods would be honored in a purer fashion.' To
support
his opinion he adduces, among others, the example of the Jews. He does
not
hesitate to conclude this passage saying that the first men who raised
among
nations statues to the gods removed from their countrymen a terror, but
added
an error" (Augustine, The City of God IV:31, 2).
48 "The Jews
conceive
merely mentally the one and only deity.
They regard as wicked those who fashion with perishable
materials, in
human figures this God. He is supreme and eternal, neither imitable nor
perishable. They therefore allow no images in their cities, and much
less in
the temples" (Tacitus, Histories V, 5).
[[193]]
human,
and of their
causes" (
Maccabees contains also the Jewish definition of sophi/a: "The culture
acquired under the Law, through which we learn with due reverence the
things of
God and for our worldly profit the things of man" (
That
one could easily
mistake Judaism for an Oriental mystery49 may be seen from the
characteristics
that made these cults popular, as listed by F. Cumont in ch. 2 of his
standard
book, Les religions orientales dans le paganisme romain (Paris, 1906;
4th ed.,
1929). These cults undertook to restore to the soul its lost purity,
either
through ritual washings which should remove sin (cf. the Jewish baptism
for the
proselytes) or through privations and suffering (cf. the fast,
afflicting one's
soul, and confession of sins on the Day of Atonement).
Their priests became (like the rabbis)
pastors, advising the members of their flock, individually, teaching
them the
abstentions and duties required to restore and retain their right
relations
with the deity. The holiness attained
through such rites and ascetic practices was the condition of eternal
bliss
after death-a liberation from the slavery of the spirit to the body;
this was
the one ray of hope for the masses, whose wretched state on earth
seemed beyond
cure. Nay, the whole world seemed to
have become so corrupted that its end was near (cf. the Jewish
apocalypses). These cults thus offered
more beauty in their rites, more truth in their teachings, nobler
ideals in
their ethical principles, more comfort in their glance on the invisible
world
of eternal bliss, than the traditional religions, which bad a national,
public
character. The Oriental mysteries raised
the spirit, gave to conduct an ideal goal, appealed to the deepest
feelings of
the individual, and called him to a new, a spiritual, life.
In
this general religious
awakening, which marks a new era in the development of religion,
Judaism played
an important role in setting the stage for the triumph of Christianity. It was in harmony with the general trend
toward monotheism and with the general longing for purification from
sinfulness
and for eternal bliss; and it could satisfy the religious aspirations
of the
nobler spirits better than the mystery cults.
That it failed to attain the missionary success of some of these
and did
49 Such a
misconception is
attested in Rome in 139 B.C., when the praetor peregrinus Cn. Cornelius
Hispalus forced the Jews to return to Palestine because "they had tried
to
corrupt the Roman customs through the worship of Jupiter Sabazius
[error for
Yahweh Seba-o-th, the Lord of Hosts]" (Valerius Maximus; cf. Schu%rer,
Geschichte Vol. 3, P. 58; Th. Reinach,
Textes, P. 259).
[[194]]
not
become the religion of
Europe instead of Christianity is due primarily to those obstacles to
the
conversion of the Gentiles which Paul recognized and removed;
circumcision, the
ritual and ceremonial prescriptions of the Law of Moses, and
particularly the
national character of Judaism, which required that its converts become
citizens
of Israel and renounce (at least in theory) their previous allegiance. For the proselyte was naturalized into the
Jewish nation,50 not initiated into a mystery cult, like that of
Mithra, in
which nationality played no role; by becoming heir of the scriptural
promises
which God had made to Israel, he was denationalized and forbidden to
participate as formerly in ruler worship, and in civic rites and
festivals. As members of a nation, the
Jews were granted in Roman law special exemptions and unique religious
privileges. Juster (Les Juifs, Vol. 2, pp. 19 f.) rightly stresses the
point
that both before and after A.D. 70 the Jews were regarded in Roman law
as a
nation, not as members of a licit religion; the Jewish privileges were
conceded
only to converts naturalized into the nation; and so the law more and
more
strove to prevent Gentiles from becoming proselytes or, in other words,
members
of the Jewish nation (which, of course, cannot be distinguished from
the Jewish
Church). And, as Paul recognized (Rom.
9:4), the Jewish religious prerogatives ("the adoption, and the glory,
and
the covenants, and the giving of the Law, and the service of God, and
the
promises") belong to the nation, to the "Israelites"-but not to
the uncircumcised (Eph. 2:llf.). Thus the ancients were wrong in
regarding
Judaism merely as a philosophy or as an Oriental cult, but these
misconceptions
served to make Judaism attractive to many Gentiles.
Some of these converts
remained mere
adherents, sympathizers, "fellow travelers," who did not take the
final step by becoming proselytes. These
people on the outside fringe of Judaism have been erroneously called
"semiproselytes" or "proselytes of the gate."51 Their real
name in ancient writings is "fearers of God," meaning devout,
God-fearing persons, who worship and revere God.52 From Josephus (War
7:3, 3)
and the Book of Acts we get the impression that these Jewish
sympathizers
(pho-bou/menoi or sebo/menai to\n theo/n, those who fear or revere God),
50 Philo (de
monarchia 7, 51
[II, 219 Ml) says the proselytes "have become naturalized in a new and
godly commonwealth."
51 By "proselytes
of
the gate?" (ge-re^ ha-sha-'a-r) medieval rabbis mean "the strangers
who are within Israel's gate" (cf. Ex. 20:10; Deut. 5:15; 14:21; 24:14)
or
the resident aliens who have not been naturalized; the expression does
not
occur in the Talmud, which calls the resident alien ge-r to^sha-b-an
expression
used in contrast to the ge-r ha-sedeq or real proselyte observing the
seven
commandments of the children of Noah" as also the whole Law of Moses
(see
Schu%rer, Geschichte, Vol. 3, pp. 177-180; Strack and Billerbeck,
Kommentar,
Vol. 2, pp. 715-723).
52 For the Hebrew
and Greek
terms, with references, see Schu%rer, Geschichte, Vol. 3, p. 174, n.
70; G. F.
Moore, Judaism, Vol. 1, p . 325, 338-341; Vol. 3, n. 96; Juster, Les
Juifs,
Vol. 1, pp. 274 f., n. 6. See also: J. Klausner, From Jesus to Paul,
PP. 40-45;
H. A. Wolfson, Philo, Vol. 2, pp. 372-374.
[[195]]
sharply
distinguished from
Jews (a term which includes the proselytes), constituted a conspicuous
part of
the synagogue congregations (Acts 13:16, 26, 43; 17:4, 17; cf. 10:2,
22; 16:14;
18:7; in 13:43 we find "religious proselytes," a designation which is
ambiguous). Josephus tells us that these God-fearing adherents to
Judaism sent
contribution; from the Diaspora to the Temple in Jerusalem (Antiquities
14:7, 2
[§110]); that Poppaea, the wife of Nero, was one of them (op. cit.
20:8, 11
[§1951); that Izates (d. A.D. 55), the king of Adiabene (the Assyrian
provinces
east of the Euphrates), together with Queen Helena his mother became an
adherent and was eventually circumcised (op. cit. 20:2, 3-5 [§§34-53]);
see
also Schu%rer, Geschichte, Vol. 3, pp. 169-172; Juster, Les juifs, Vol.
1, p.
202, n. 9; G. F. Moore, Judaism, Vol. 1, P. 349. Other
well-known adherents are the centurion
of
These Gentile adherents of
the synagogue
were attracted by Jewish monotheism and certain Jewish practices; they
rejected
idolatry and polytheism, but, objecting to circumcision and Jewish
citizenship,
they did not take the final steps required of true proselytes. Among Jewish practices which were widely
observed by these adherents and even by pagans, Josephus names the
Sabbath
observance, fasts, lighting the lamps just before the beginning of the
Sabbath,
and dietary prohibitions (Against Apion 2:39; cf. Tertullian, ad
nationes I,
13). According to Juvenal (Satires
14:96-106), it would happen that the son of a Roman who observed the
Sabbath
and some dietary laws would begin to worship the clouds and the deity
of
heaven, then be would class pork meat with human flesh, and finally be
would be
circumcised, would despise Roman laws, and would study, observe, and
fear only
the Jewish Law, which Moses handed down in a mysterious scroll. Although Josephus (Against Apion 2:10 [§1231)
says that of the many Greeks who have adopted the Jewish laws some "had
not courage enough to persevere and so departed from them again," the
number of the faithful God-fearing adherents must
have been conspicuous in the Diaspora of the first century of our era. It was primarily among them that Paul found
the early believers who constituted the nucleus of the incipient
Christian
Church, until converted pagans eventually became the great majority in
it.
Real proselytes were probably less numerous
than these adherents, especially among men.
Women, who did not have civic religious duties, were more pious,
and
were not held back by the requirement of circumcision, constituted the
bulk of
the proselytes and were presumably the majority even among the
adherents. When Hadrian forbade
circumcision, Jewish
missionary work ceased.
Jewish
Law required from the
Gentile who wished to become a
[[196]]
proselyte
that he be
circumcised and baptized, and (before A.D. 70) that he offer a
sacrifice.53
After these three initiatory rites, the neophyte was expected to adopt
all
Jewish doctrines and laws ("Ševery man that is circumcised...is a
debtor
to do the whole Law [Gal. 5:3]). Thus he
became "a naturalized citizen of a new religious commonwealth in which
be
is on full equality of rights and duties with born Jews" (G. F. Moore, Judaism, Vol. 1, p. 328). Human nature being what it is, it could not
be expected that the Jews would love the ger (proselyte) as one of
themselves
(cf. Lev.
53 For the
literature on
these requirements, see Schu%rer, Geschichte, Vol. 3, pp. 185; Juster,
Les
Juifs, Vol. 1, p. 255, n. 1; Moore, Judaim, Vol. 1, p. 331-335. On baptism of proselytes, see in particular
H. H. Rowley, "Jewish Proselyte Baptism" (HUCA 15 [1940, 313-334).
ALEXANDRIAN-JEWISH
LITERATURE
In
his admirable work on
Philo (2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947), Harry
A.
Wolfson states that the Alexandrian Jews, in presenting Judaism to the
Graeco-Roman world--which at times regarded their religion as atheism,
their
laws as inhospitable, and their practices as superstitous-tried to show
that
"their God...is the God of philosophers, that their laws...were like
the
ethics and politics recommended by philosophers, and that their
practices could
be explained as being based on reason" (op. cit.,Vol. 1, p. 19). In
other
words, substantially the whole Hellenistic-Jewish literature, from the
translation of the Pentateuch into Greek (the LXX, about 250 B.C.) to
the
writings of Philo (d. ca. A.D. 50) and Josephus (d. ca. A.D. 100), who
wrote in
Greek although he was a Palestinian, had a double purpose: to defend
the Jews
and Judaism from the attacks of
pagans and to prove the superiority of the Jews and Judaism over other
nations
and their religions. As appears clearly, for instance, in the Wisdom of
Solomon, this literature aimed at keeping the Jews loyal to their
ancestral
beliefs and practices and at convincing the pagans of the folly of
their own
polytheism and idolatry. Polemics and apologetics are inseparably
blended in
all these writings of Alexandrian Jews-omitting, of course, the Greek
versions
of Palestinian books circulation at
[[198]]
The book On the Jews by Alexander
Polyhistor (ca. 80-40 B.C.)1 is lost except for quotations by Josephus,
Eusebius of Caesarea and Clement of Alexandria; it was an objective,
impartial
collection of Jewish and pagan excerpts on Jewish history.
All other Graeco-Roman works on the Jews-as
almost all references to Jews in classical literature-are unfriendly,
if not
hostile and contemptuous (see Th. Reinach, Textes d'auteurs grecs et
romains
relatifs au Judaisme.
Without composing special
books against
the Jews, other Hellenistic writers likewise attacked them. In his important history of Egypt
(Aigyptiaka/), Manetho, an Egyptian priest living about 270-250 B.C.,
reported,
as he himself admitted, "from anonymously transmitted tales"
(Josephus, Against Apion 1, 16; cf. 1, 26) slanderous fantasies about
the early
history of the Jews (Josephus, op. cit. 1, 26-27); Manetho's Hyksos
stories in I,
14-16, pace Josephus, had no reference to the Jews.
Other derogatory fictitious tales about the
Jews were told by Mnaseas (ca. 200 B.C.) in his travel book (Josephus,
op. cit.
11, 9; cf. 1, 23; and Antiquities 1:3, 6); by Lysimachus (perhaps at
the
beginning of our era), whose account of the Exodus went beyond
Manetho's
"in the incredible nature of his forgeries...contrived out of his
bitter
hatred of the Jews" (Josephus, op. cit.
I, 34-35; cf. II, 2 and 14); by Chaeremon (ca. A.D. 50) in his
Egyptian
History (Josephus, op. cit. 1, 32-33; C. Mu%ller, Fragmenta histor.
graec. III,
495-499); by the philosopher and historian Posidonius, early in the
first
century before our era (Josephus, op. cit. 11, 7); by Tacitus
(Histories V,
2-5); and by the other authors quoted by Th. Reinach in his Textes
mentioned
above. The vicious and false accusations of these authors against the
Jews have
been briefly summarized in the preceding chapter.
Comparatively little
was written by the
Jews to retort the baseless slanders of their adversaries.
Indeed we know of only two real
"apologies" for Judaism and the Jews:3 Philo's Apology for the Jews
(lost, except for the quotation in Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica
VIII, 11),
and the
1. See E.
Schu%rer,
Geschichte, Vol. 3, 469-472. The fullest
treatment is: J. Freuden-thal, Alexander Polyhistor und die vm ihm
erhaltenen
Reste juddischer und samaii-tanischer Geschichtswerke.
2 See on them
Schu%rer,
Geschichte, Vol. 1, 71-73; Vol. 3, 532-544. J. Juster, Les Juifs, Vol.
1, pp-
32-34. Schu%rer (op. cit. 3, 541) denies that Apion wrote a special
work
against the Jews: while only his book on Egypt is explicitly quoted in
connection with the Jews, Eusebius and Jerome (see Schu%rer, op. cit.,
P. 543)
definitely assert that he wrote a book on the Jews.
3 Cf. Paul
Kru%ger, Philo
und Josephus als Apologeten des Judentums.
[[199]]
work
wrongly entitled (since
Jerome) Against Apion by Flavius Josephus (Origen and Eusebius cite it
under
the title, "On the Antiquity of the Jews"). In
this work, written about A.D. 95, Josephus
argued that the Jews were no less ancient than any other civilized
nation (1,
1-23): "I suppose that, by my books of The Antiquities of the JewsŠI
have
made evident...that our Jewish nation is of very great
antiquity....Those
Antiquities contain the history of five thousand years." With great
learning (facilitated to a great extent by the convenient collection of
texts
about the Jews prepared by Alexander Polyhistor) Josephus referred to
many
non-Jewish historians (Manetho, Herodotus, Dius, Berossus, etc.) and
concluded
that the Jews were delivered from Egypt almost one thousand years
before the
siege of Troy (I, 16; in reality the two events are almost
contemporary).
Josephus was forced to refute, incidentally, slanderous tales about the
origin
of the Jews told by Manetho, Lysimachus, Chaeremon, and Apion (I,
24-II, 3).
Then, after replying to some specific charges made by Apion against the
Alexandrian Jews (II, 4-6) and against the Jewish worship and law (II,
7-12)
--mostly rather silly charges-Josephus proceeded to a matter that was
paramount
to Jewish apologists: the accusation that the Jews, being a people of
recent
origin, had made no contributions to human culture (II, 14-31) and of
the
law-abiding Jewish nation (II, 32-33;cf. II, 39). Taking the offensive,
Josephus pointed out the folly of pagan polytheism (II, 34-36) and the
unfriendliness to foreigners, far greater in ancient Greek legislations
than in
the Mosaic Law (II, 37-38), concluding that this law was the most
ancient of
all (II, 39), that it influenced Greek philosophers, and was attracting
converts to Judaism (II, 40). In closing he summarized his whole book
(II,
41-42).
In the other Hellenistic-Jewish
writings
the accusations against the Jews were not even mentioned: the authors
contented
themselves with glorifying the Jews and their religion, and ridiculing
paganism: these, in varying guises and different forms, are the
dominant themes
of this literature. Even the Palestinian
books written after 200 B.C. and translated into Greek, becoming part
of the
Septuagint, have in common this exaltation of the Jews over the pagans. History (I Maccabees) and fiction (Daniel,
Bel and the Dragon, Judith, Esther with additions) described the
triumphs of
Jews over heathen; or presented idealized portraits of exemplary Jewish
individuals (Tobit, Susanna). Ecclesiasticus extolled Judaism and
deemed
Hellenism unworthy of notice. And the Epistle of Jeremy caricatured
sarcastically the religion of the Gentiles as an extremely crass and
idiotic
worship of inanimate idols.
[[200]]
The
Alexandrian-Jewish
literature pursued its apologetic and polemic purposes with far greater
fervor
and forthrightness than the Palestinian, as a comparison between the
fairly
objective I Maccabees (Palestinian) and the fanatic II Maccabees
(Alexandrian)
will show. Hellenistic-Jewish historical writing was embellished with
fiction,
to stress the superiority of the Jews over the Gentiles (II Maccabees),
or
consisted of fiction pure and simple, with the same purpose (III
Maccabees, and
partly preserved books). Poetry and
philosophy were subservient to propaganda, which was not camouflaged
successfully (Wisdom of Solomon, Aristeas, Sibylline Oracles, IV
Maccabees,
etc.). Being utterly convinced that the Law and the other Scriptures
were
revelations of the sole true God, who had chosen Israel as his people,
but
living in the midst of people who ridiculed such claims, the
Alexandrian Jews
could make neither concessions nor compromises: they alone "had a very
great light," while over the heathen "was spread a heavy night"
(Wisd. of Sol. 17:21 f.),
The
only complete historical
works are II and III Maccabees and the historical books of Philo and
Josephus;
only fragments of other writings survive.
These fragments have been preserved for us by Eusebius
(Praeparatio
evangelica IX), Clement of Alexandria (Stromata), and Josephus-
ultimately they
seem to go back to the collection of passages on Jewish history made by
Alexander Polyhistor; they have been published by C. Mu%ller (Fragmenta
histor.
graec. III, 206-244) and by W. N. Stearns (Fragments ftom Graeco-Jewish
Writers.
Demetrius
(ca. 215 B.C.) was
erroneously regarded as a pagan by Josephus; his history of the Jews
was
entitled On the Kings in
[[201]]
been
primarily a
determination of Old Testament chronology, to prove the antiquity of
Pseudo-Hecataeus (ca. 200-150 B.C.) is a
Greek-writing Jewish historian who assumed the name of the philosopher
Hecataeus of Abdera (who was, according to Josephus, Against Apion I,
22
[§1831, a contemporary of Alexander). He
wrote a book entitled On the Jews or On Abraham (ibid. and Antiquities
1:7, 2
[§159]), which is quoted in the Letter of Aristeas §31 (cf. Josephus,
Antiquities
12:2, 4 [§381] and by Josephus (Against Apion I, 22 [§183-2041, cf.
Eusebius,
Praeparatio Evangelica IX, 4; and Against Apion II, 4 [§43]). The remnants of the book of Pseudo-Hecataeus
are collected by C. Mu%ller, Fragmenta historicorum graecorum, Vol. 2,
pp.
392-396. Mu%ller regards, probably
unnecessarily, On the Jews and On Abraham as two separate works of our
author;
they are probably different titles for the same book (for further
details and
bibliography, see Schu%rer, Geschichte, Vol. 3, pp. 603-608).
Eupolemus
(ca. 150 B.C.) has been often
identified with the ambassador sent to
Artapanus
(presumably ca. 100 B.C.)
wrote a book On the Jews in which he allowed his fancy to glorify his
people by
attributing to it all inventions and cultural advances.
Abraham taught astrology to Pharaoh
Pharethothes. Joseph improved Egyptian agriculture.
Jacob and his sons founded the shrines of
Athos and
[[202]]
Egyptian
civilization, the
first to develop navigation, architecture, strategy, and philosophy;
Moses
divided Egypt into 36 nomes, taught each nome how to worship God
(including the
veneration of the ibis and Apis), gave to the priests the knowledge of
the
hieroglyphic signs, organized the government; Pharaoh Chenephres failed
to kill
Moses and after the king's death God deliverer Israel from Egypt
through Moses,
by means of miraculous wonders.
Aristeas (presumably ca. 100 B.C.) likewise
wrote a book On the Jews. All we have is
a fragment dealing with Job, who (as in the apocryphal end of Job in
the LXX)
is identified with Jobab son of Zerah of Bozrah (Gen. 86:33), a
great-grandson
of Esau (Gen. 36:10, 13). The extant
corrupt text, however, makes Job a son of Esau and of his wife Bassara:
the city
Bozrah was thus taken to be the name of Esau's wife!
Our author, as later the author of the
Testament of Job, probably drew his misinformation from the apocryphal
addition
to Job in the Septuagint.
Cleodemus, or Malchus
(presumably ca. 100
B.C.), according to Polyhistor, was a prophet who wrote a history of
the Jews
in agreement with that of Moses (Josephus, Antiquities 1, 15). He relates that the three sons of Abraham and
Keturah-Apheran (Epher), Asourim (Asshurim), and Japhran (Ephah), cf.
Gen. 25:3
f.-gave their names to
A fragment quoted by Polyhistor from an
anonymous work (Eusebius, Praep. ev. IX,
18) and a parallel text in a much fuller form (ibid., IX, 17),
presumably from
the same book although attributed to Eupolemus, relate that Abraham was
descended from the giants (Gen. 6:1-4) who built the Tower of Babel
after the
Flood; Abrabam taught the Phoenicians "the circuits of the sun and
moon,
and all other things" and helped them in war; in Egypt be taught
astrology
and the other sciences to the priests of Heliopolis; Enoch was,
however, the discoverer
of astrology (cf. Enoch 72-82; jub. 4:17-21).
Thallus5 probably lived during the reign of
Tiberius (14-37). There is no compelling reason, as H. A. Rigg, Jr.,
has shown
(HTR 34 [19411 111-119), to consider Thallus a Samaritan, in accordance
with a
conjectural emendation in Josephus, Antiquities 18:6, 4 (§167): "For
there
4 Pltarch (Lives:
Sertorius,
ch. 9) relates that from Heracles and Tinge, the widow of Antaeus, was
bom
Sophax, whose son was Diodorus.
5 The remnants of his writings are printed in C. Muller,
Fragmenta histor. graec., Vol 3, pp. 517-519; and in F. Jacoby, Die
Fragmente
der griechischen Historiker, Vol. 2-B, p. 256.
[Commentary in Vol. 2-D, pp. 835 ff.
[[203]]
was
another [allos,
corrected to Thallos] Samaritan by birth, a freedman of Caesar
[Tiberius]. . . ."
According to Eusebius, be composed a universal history "from the
capture
of
The second and third books of the Maccabees
belong here, with the other histories embellished with legends and
fictitious
tales.6 II Maccabees, for which the reader is referred to Part II,
Chap. XI, of
this book, deals with actual facts, even though they are often hidden
by a
thick layer of romance and fiction; III Maccabees (dating from the last
century
D.C.) purports to be history but is a story invented for the
glorification of
the Jews, which has nothing to do with the Maccabees and has no basis
in
reality. Like Judith and Esther, it is
the story of an imaginary triumph of the Jews over their enemies; a
similar
story is told independently by Josephus (Against Apion II, 5), who,
however,
dates the events in the reign of Ptolemy VII (IX) Physcon (170-116
B.C.)
instead of the time of Ptolemy IV Philopator (221-203 B.C.). III
Maccabees may
be summarized as follows.
Ptolemy IV, accompanied by his sister
(later
his wife) Arsinoe%, led hs army against Antiochus III the Great
(223-187 B.C.)
and encamped at Raphia (1:1). There a
Jew converted to paganism, Dositheus, saved Ptolemy from a conspiracy
(1:2f.).
As Antiochus was on the point of winning the battle of Raphia (217
D.C.),
Arsinoe% induced the tottering Egyptian troops to fight on to victory
(1:4-6).
So Ptolemy, having thus conquered Coele-Syria, visited neighboring
cities and
shrines (1:7). Having received the congratulations of the Jews, Ptolemy
visited
Jeru-
6 This
characteristic type
of Hellenistic historical writing is well described by (XV:34, 1): "I
am
quite aware of the miraculous occurrences and embellishments which the
chroniclers of this event have added to their narrative with a view of
producing a striking effect upon their hearers, making more of their
comments
on the story itself and the main incidents."
[[204]]
Jews (4:1-3). All over Egypt the Jews
were chained in the dark holds of ships (4:4-10) and brought to Schedia
to be
imprisoned in the hippodrome outside of Alexandria (4:11).
Soon after, the Alexandrian Jews were
likewise placed there (4:12f.). All of them were to be registered
before their
execution (
[[205]]
fetters
(5:3-5) prayed
ardently (5:6-8). God caused the king to
sleep until late, so that the execution of the Jews was necessarily
postponed
until the following day (5;9-22). At
dawn everything was in readiness (
The
historical and
psychological improbabilities of this tale are manifest, and match the
rhetorical artificiality, fastidiousness, and preciosity typical of a
pretentious but decadent style. The
wealth of rare and even new words is unsurpassed in similar writings:
more than
one hundred words are not found elsewhere in the LXX and fourteen are
unknown
in all Greek literature. The author's
effort to stir the reader's emotions by
[[206]]
highly
colored dramatic
descriptions (
This rapid survey of Hellenistic-Jewish
historical writing would not be complete without a mention of the
historical
works of the two outstandnding Jewish authors who wrote in Greek: Philo
and
Josephus.
Philo (d. Ca.
A.D. 50)7 was primarily a philosopher, but since most of his 38
works
are either parts of a running commentary on the Pentateuch or essays on
selected topics in the same, he necessarily deals with Biblical history
down to
Moses. In his biography of Moses (De
vita Mosis), he presented him as the wisest of all legislators. His philosophical principles naturally
colored this rewriting of Biblical history.
In addition to ancient times he also described contemporary
events and
movements. The book on contemplative
life (De vita contemplativa)8 describes the life of the Therapeutae,
ascetic
hermits devoted to meditation, allegorical study of the Law of Moses,
composition of sacred poetry, and contemplation of God.
More important for the political history of
the first century of our era is a work which, according to Eusebius
(Ecclessiastical History II, 5, 1; the sequel [5, 6-6, 3] gives a brief
summary
of the work), comprised five books: only the third (Against Flaccus)
and fourth
(Embassy to Caligula [legatio ad Gaium) survive; perhaps Against
7 For a
bibliography of
publications on Philo, see: B. L. Goodhart and E. R. Goodenougb, The
Politics
of Philo Judaeus with a General Bibliography.
8 Philo's De vita
contemplativa was regarded by Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History II, 17;
cf. II,
16, 2) as a description of Christian monasticism, and the authenticity
of this
work has been questioned by some scholars; see, e.g., Schu%rer, op.
cit., 3,
687-691; Bre/hier, op. cit., pp. 321-24.
[[207]]
Flaccus
alludes at the
beginning to the second volume (dealing with a plot of Sejanus [d. A.D.
311
against the Jews; cf. Eusebius, Chronicon, ed. Seboene, 150-151), while
the
Embassy to Gaius at the end possibly refers to the palinodi/a
(retraction),
i.e., the change for the better of the situation of the Jews after the
death of
Caligula in A.D. 41, which apparently formed the subject of the fifth
book. The general title of the work
seems to have been On Virtues (peri\ areto^n) and indicated that in the
end virtue
triumphed over wickedness.9 The main topic of the book was really the
miserable
end of the principal persecutors of the Jews, namely, Sejanus, Flaccus,
Caligula, and probably also Pilate. The
divine vengeance against the enemies of the Jews is stressed in earlier
Jewish
histories (see, for instance, II Kings 19:36 f. ), notably in II
Maccabees
(3:22-40; 5:6-10; 9:5 f.; 13:4-8; 15:28-35), and in pseudo-histories
(Daniel,
Judith, Esther, etc.). Notwithstanding this nationalistic bias and
religious
dogma, these books of Philo are invaluable sources, particularly where
they
relate events of which Philo was himself an eyewitness.
Josephus, son of Matthias (born in
Jerusalem in A.D. 37-38, died after A.D. 100), who assumed Vespasian's
family
name, Flavius, after be was liberated from captivity in 69, is the most
famous
of Jewish historians.10 His life is fairly well known through his
autobiography
(The Life of Fl. Josephus), which deals primarily with his activity as
governor
of Galilee in 66-67 and was written soon after 100; it supplements his
Antiquities. Through references to
himself in his history of the war of 66-70 (see also Against Apion I,
9-10)
Josephus has likewise thrown light on his own career.
The first work of Josephus was his history of
the war of 66-70 in Aramaic (War, Preface), of which we have his
translation
into Greek,
9 in contrast
with these
views which Schu%rer (Geschichte, Vol. 3, pp. 678-682) has defended, L.
Massebieau, ("Le classement des oeuvres de Philon," pp. 65-78.
.Bibliothe\que de l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes.
Section des sciences religieuses.
10 For details on
Josephus
the reader is referred to the illuminating lectures of H. St. John
Thackeray on
Josephus: The Man and the Historian (New York, Jewish Institute of
Religion
Press, 1929). See also G. Ho%1scher,
"Josephus" in Pauly-Wissowa, Realenzyklopa%die der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft, Vol. 9, pp. 1943 ft.
[[208]]
entitled
On the Jewish War
(Peri\ tou^ ioudaikou^ pole/mou; Bellum judaicum), in seven books. The contents, in brief, are as follows: Book
I: The history from Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-164 B.C.) to the death
of Herod
the Great (4 B.C.). Book II: From 4 B.C. to the first year of the war
(66-67), inclusive. Book III: The war in
The
Antiquities of the Jews
(loudaike' archaiologia; Antiquitates judaicae), in twenty books, deals
with
the history of the Jews to A.D. 66. The
individual books cover the following periods: Book 1: >From the
creation of
the world to the death of Isaac. Book
11: From Esau and Jacob to the Exodus.
Books III-IV: From the Exodus to the death of Moses. Book V: From the death of Moses to the death
of Eli. Book VI: From the death of Eli to the death of Saul. Book VII: David. Book
VIII: From Solomon to Ahab (853 B.C.).
Book IX: From the death of Ahab to the fall of
Josephus
completed his
Antiquities in 93-94. He had written it
for educated Greeks and Romans to prove that the Jews had "formerly
been
in great esteem" and had not been prevented from keeping their
ancestral
laws and practicing their religion; and "to take away the causes of
that
hatred which unreasonable men bear" to the Jews (Antiquities 16:6, 8). In the first ten books, dealing with Biblical
history and using almost solely the Old Testament as his source,
Josephus not
only omitted or modified unpleasant incidents but, following
Alexandrian Jewish
historians (Demetrius, Artapanus, etc.), which he knew through
Alexander
Polyhistor, as also Philo and the Palestinian Haggadah, he freely added
legends
and juristic comments to the data furnished by the Pentateuch. In confirmation of his account he eagerly
quoted such authorities as Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, Manetho, Berossus,
and
others. For the
[[209]]
blank
period from Nehemiah
(432 B.C.) to Antiochus Epiphanes (175) Josephus could give only a few
legends
or fictitious tales, such as Alexander's visit to Jerusalem (11:8,
4-5), a
summary of the Letter of Aristeas (12:2), and rarely an occasional fact
gleaned
from Greek histories, such as the conquest of Jerusalem by Ptolemy I
Lagus
(12:1 [§51; cf. Against Apion 1:22 [§§209-211]) reported by
Agatharchides of
Cnidus.11 For the period 175-135 Josephus utilized I Maccabees, at
times
quoting it literally, but often modifying it freely (cf. C. L. W.
Grimids
commentary on I Maccabees, pp. xxviii f.) and disregarded I Macc.
14-16; he did
not use II Maccabees at all. Down to the
year 143 B.C. he also used Polybius (12:9, 1).12 For the period 135-37
B.C. he
cites primarily the lost history of the years 143-27 B.C. by the famous
geographer Strabo of Cappadocia, who died about A.D. 20 (the first and
last
references are 13:10, 4 and 15:1, 2) and the world history of Herod's
confidential
secretary, Nicholas of Damascusl3 (13:8, 4 to 14:6, 4).
Nicholas alone is manifestly Josephus'
accurate and detailed source for the life of Herod in books XVI-XVII
(in book
XV there are traces of a second source, unfavorable to Herod): the
history of
Herod's last years (14-4 B.C.), told in books 125-144 of Nicholas, is
apparently reproduced with hardly any change, in spite of the admission
that
Nicholas was partial to Herod (16:7, 1). Josephus quotes also book 96
of
Nicholas with reference to the Flood (1:3, 6; cf. 3, 9) and book 4 with
reference to Abraham (1:7, 2) and David (7:5, 2). The
history of Nicholas ended in book 144
with the accession of Archelaus (4 B.C.); consequently, the
information available to Josephus from then to A.D. 41 was extremely
scanty. The reign of Agrippa 1 (41-44)
is reported in greater detail, presumably because Josephus could obtain
information from eyewitnesses and particularly from Agrippa II (d. 100). For the years preceding the outbreak of the
war in 66 Josephus could rely on his own memory; but the source from
which he
derived the exact and full information for the events at Rome in 41,
when
Caligula died and Claudius succeeded him, is still unknown, as also the
source
of the dossier of Caesar's and Augustus'
11 B. Niese (Geschichte der Griechischm und
Makedonischen Staaten, Vol. 1, p. 230, n. 4.
12 On the sources
of Josephus for the post-Biblical period, see H. Bloch, Die Quellen des
Fl.
Josephus in seiner Archa%ologia.
13 The remnants
of the history of
Nicholas of Damascus are published by C. Mu%ller, Fragm. hist. graec. Vol. 3, pp. 343-464; Vol. 4, pp.
661-668. See on Nicholas, Schu%rer,
Geschichte: Vol. 1, pp. 50-57.
[[210]]
edicts
in favor of the Jews,
and other public documents (a complete list, with bibliography, is
given by J.
Juster, Les Juifs, Vol. 1, pp. 132-159).
The apologetic tendency of Josephus in the Antiquities (cf.
16:6, 1 and
8) unfortunately induces him to select only decrees favorable to the
Jews (in
13:9, 2; 14:8, 5;
The latest
Jewish-Hellenistic historian
known by name to us is Justus of Tiberias (ca.
A.D. 110), a rival of Josephus (who refers to him in his Life,
§§ 9, 12,
17, 35, 37, 54, 65, 70, 74). He wrote a
history of the Jewish war of 66-70, in which be criticized Josephus
(Life §65),
and a chronicle of the Jewish kings, which was still known to Photius
in the
ninth century (see for further details, Schu%rer, Geschichte, Vol. 1,
pp.
58-63; H. Luther, losephus und Justus von Tiberias [Doctoral
Dissertation].
Alexander
Polyhistor, as has
been noticed, is responsible for the survival of a portion of
Alexandrian-Jewish historical writings; at the same time the extant
fragments
of the epic and dramatic Jewish literature in
14 A word should
be said
about the references of Josephus to Christian beginnings: for full
bibliography
see, R. Eisler, Ie-sou^s Basileu\s ou Basileusas, 2 vols. Heidelberg,
1928-1930
(English abridgment: R. Eisler, The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist
according to Flavius Josephus' Recently Rediscovered 'Capture of
Jerusalem'
etc. Englsh ed. by A. H. Krappe.
[[211]]
Greek
were quoted from
Polyhistor by Eusebius in the Praeparatio Evangelica.15
Philo the Elder
(ca. 100 B.C.), as
Josephus (Against Atfion, 1, 23) calls him to distinguish him from
Philo the
philosopher, composed in rhetorical Homeric hexameters (the meter of
the
Sibylline Oracles) an epic poem On Jerusalern.
Eusebius has preserved three small fragments on Abraham, on
Joseph, and
on the springs and aqueducts of
Theodotus (ca. 100 B.C.) wrote a parallel poem
On Shechem of which Eusebius has preserved a portion, partly verbatim
and
partly in summary. The author called
Shechem a "holy city" and must therefore have been a Samaritan. After a description of the site of the town,
its conquest by the Hebrews is related on the basis of Gen. 34. In the manner of numerous Hellenistic poets,
Theodotus composed an epic celebrating the mythical origin and
legendary
history of his city. He tells us that Shechem received its name frorn
Sikimios
the son of Hermes (cf. Shechem the son of Hamor, Gen. 34:2) and he
connects the
city of the Samaritans with Greek mythology-a procedure known in
earlier
Jewish-Hellenistic writers.
Ezekiel the dramatist
(ca. 100 B.C.) is
the sole kdown Jew who wrote tragedies in Greek. Only
one of them, The Exodus, is partially
known through excerpts preserved by Eusebius and Clement of Alexandria. It begins with a long monologue of Moses
reviewing his past life, spoken in Midian where he had fled after
slaying an
Egyptian taskmaster (Ex.
Ezekiel manifestly followed the Biblical
narrative fairly closely, but felt free to add haggadic embellishments
at
will. His iambic trimeters lack true
poetic inspiration but are adequate in naffatives and descriptions. if,
as,
seems probable, this drama was composed for the stage and was
15 For the text,
see C.
Mu%ller, Fragm. hist. graec., Vol. 3, pp. 213, 219, 229 (Philo);
217-219
(Theodotus). For Ezekiel see: Du%bner's
edition in the appendix to F. C. Wagner, Fragmmta Euripidis. Pwis, 1846, pp. vii-x, 1-7; and J. Wieneke,
Ezechielis Judaei poetae almndrini fabulae quae inscribitur Exagoge
fragmenta.
Mu%nster, 1931. See, in general, Schu%rer, Geschichte, Vol. 3, pp.
497-503.
[[212]]
actually
performed, it not
merely instructed and edified the Jews but gained for them if not
friendship,
at least a better understanding, on the part of some of the pagan
spectators.
In appraising a mixed philosophy such as that
of the Alexandrian Jews, some scholars regard it as Jewish thought
modified by
Greek philosophy (Schu%rer, Geschichte, Vol. 3, P. 503), while others,
on the
contrary, would say that the Jewish thinkers "systematically set about
remaking Greek philosophy according to the pattern of a belief and
tradition of
an entirely different origin." (H. A. Wolfson, Philo, Vol. 1, p. 4).16
It
seems probable that both attitudes were current in ancient Alexandria:
the
Greeks presumably accused the Jews of adopting their own thought and
language,
and regarded the synagogue as a school of philosophy (G. F. Moore,
Judaism,
Vol. 1, pp. 284 f. ), while, conversely, Aristobulus, Philo, and
Josephus did
not hesitate to assert "the dependence of Greek philosophers upon
Moses" (Wolfson, Philo Vol. 1, P. 141; cf. Schu%rer, Geschichte, Vol.
3,
P. 547)-which meant that Greek philosophy was an irnperfect form of
Judaism. It is not necessary to enter
here into a debate between the two points of view, Jewish and Gentile. What is certain is that Alexandrian Jewish
thinkers interpreted Judaism in the light of Greek philosophy and that
both
Jews and Greeks at times regarded Judaism as a philosophy (for
references see
Juster, Les Juifs, Vol. 1, P. 243, n. 2).
A
philosophical conception of Judaism is not yet apparent in the earliest
monument of Hellenistic Judaism, the Greek version of the Pentateuch
made in
Alexandria about 250 B.C. (the "Septuagint" in its original sense,
cf. the Letter of Aristeas). The
translators
were probably Alexandrians who had some familiarity with Greek thought;
they
strove for an accurate rendering, and if occasionally they appear to
echo
philosophical teachings, there is no reason for regarding such possible
reverberations as deliberate attempts to read Greek philosophy into the
Scriptures.17 When such a conscious identification of the teaching of
Moses and
of Plate was made later, by Alexandrian Jews, it presupposed an
allegorical
interpretation of the Scriptures," such as had been adopted in Greece
for
the philosophical
H.
A. Wolfson, Philo, Vol. 1, pp. 115-138.
[[213]]
interpretation
of Homer and
Hesiod, beginning with Theagenes of Rhegium (ca. 525 B.C. [?]) and
others after
him. After Philo, this interpretation
the Old Testament passed into Christianity, beginning with Paul (Cal.
f.; II
Cor. 3:13-16; cf. I Cor. 10:14) and the Epistle to the Hebrews,
continuing with
Barnabas, Justin Martyr, and the Alexandrian school (Clement of
Alexandria and
Origen), and persisting to the present day among those orthodox
Protestants who
find an allusion to the Trinity in plurals, "Let us make man in our
imageŠ" and "Go, let us go downŠ" (Gen. 1:26 and 11:7).
Such an allegorical interpretation, in trast
with modern historical and critical methods of interpretation, is the
last line
of defense of traditional orthodoxy, now as in antiquity.
In Hellenistic Judaism the
allegorical
method was occasionally employed before Philo.
In reality
Strictly speaking, the
allegorical
interpretation of Scriptures, by means of which the deepest
metaphysical truths
were dscovered in the most trivial incidents reported in the Bible, was
first
practiced by Philo, who in this followed Greek models rather than
Jewish
ones. For the few examples of allegory
in the Wisdom of Solomon and the Letter of Aristeas, as those in
rabbinical
literature (cf. Wolfson, Philo, Vol. 1, pp. 133 f.), are by no means
"philosophical
allegory of the kind we find in Philo" (ibid.) . Nevertheless, it was
thought long before Philo that the noblest ethical and religious truths
had
been revealed by God throughout his in-
[[214]]
spired
Scriptures, but often
not literally and plainly, but "through a glass, darkly," so that the
ignorant failed to discover the deep meaning underlying the literal
sense of
the scriptural words. Thus the Bible
became an inexhaustible mine of truth; every generation of men
discovered new
verities in it, for, as Paul said, "whatsoever things were written
aforetime were written for our learning" (Rom. 15:4; cf. I Cor.
In the Wisdom of
Solomon (for which see
below, Part II, Chap. V) the notion of Wisdom (sophi/a) was manifestly
colored
by Greek ideas, and yet was allegedly derived from Prov. 8 (cf. Job.
28): Wisd.
9:9, for instance, is a summary of Prov. 8:22-30; and "the worker" in
the statement that Wisdom is "the worker [techni/tes, artificer,
craftsman] of all things" (Wisd.
If the Scriptures,
rightly interpreted,
taught the tenets of Greek philosophy, it was natural to assume that
Greek
philosophers derived their teachings from Moses. Before
Philo, this was asserted in a
Jewish-AIexandrian work entitled An Explanation of the Mosaic Law (or
the
like), attributed to Aristobulus.
According to Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius, he wrote during
the
reign of Ptolemy VI Philometor (181-145 B.C.).19 The first of the three
extant
fragments of this work (Eusebius, Praep.
19 See J.
Drummond, Philo
Judaem, Vol. 1, pp. 242-252; Schu%rer, Geschichte, Vol. 3, pp. 512-522. The authenticity of this work has been
seriously questioned by Elter and others.
Schu%rer defends it, while E. Bre/hier, (Les ide/es
philosophiques et
religiones de Philon d'Ale/xandrie, pp. 47f.) believes that "the
author...copied Philo, condensing him, obscuring him, often without
understanding him." The text of the extant fragments of this work is
printed by W. N. Stearns, Fragments from Graeco-Jewish Writers.
[[215]]
Ev.
XIII:12, 1-16) dealt
with Gen. 1-2: Homer, Hesiod, Pythagora, Socrates, and Plato were
familiar with
the Pentateuch in a Greek version made before the Persian conquest of
Egypt
(525 B.C.), and used it in their works.20 The words "God said...and it
was
so" (Gen. 1), as Greek philosophers recognized, mean that everything
came
into being through God's power (dynamis); Orpheus (in spurious Jewish
verses)
and Aratus attest that God's power permeates everything. The seventh
day on
which God rested (Gen. 2:1-3) may be called the day in which light was
created,
inasmuch as the Peripatetics call Wisdom the lamp of life and Solomon
declared
(Prov. 8:22-30) that Wisfom existed before the world. God's rest means
the
quiet maintenance of the divine universal order; the significance of
the number
7 is explained after the manner of the Pythagoreans. Verses of Homer,
Hesiod,
and Linus are quoted in this explanation of the Sabbath.
The second fragment (Eusebius, Praep. ev.
VIII:10), dealing apparently with God's revelation of the Law on Sinai,
explains the anthropomorphic expressions referring to God's "hands,
arm,
face, feet, walking about." We must not be misled thereby and adopt a
fairy-tale notion of God's appearance. These words are figurative, as
in Greek
"hand" means "power." God's descent on Sinai means merely
the revelation of his power.
The third
fragment (quoted by Eusebius,
Eccles. History VII:32, 17-18, according to the paraphrase of
Anatolius)
explains that the Passover is celebrated when the sun stands in the
sign of the
automnal equinox.
The derivation of Greek philosphy from the
Pentateuch, the philosophical interpretation of the Bible (possibly
with
Gentile readers in mind), the elimination of scriptual
anthropomophisms, the
quotation from ancient Greek poets, which characterize this work, will
be
developed more fully by Philo.
The Fourth Book
of Maccabees discloses a
deeper knowledge of Greek philosophy than all other Hellenistic-Jewish
writings, except Philo's works. It likewise strives to find
philosophical ideas
in the Old Testament (cf.
1. The introduction (1:1-12). The
philosophical (stoic) theme to be discussed is "whether devout reason
[ho
eusebes logismos] rules supreme over the passions" (1:1; cf. 1:7, 9, 13
f., 19, 30; 2:6 f., 10, 24;
20 Philo likewise
asserted
the dependence of Greek philosophers on Moses; cf. Wolfson, Philo, Vol.
1,
p.141.
[[216]]
13:1;
16:1; 18:2). This
subject is important both theoretically and practically (1:2-4). The
skeptical
objection that reason is not the master of forgetfulness and blameless
ignorance, is irrelevant (1:5f.). The best example of the supremacy of
devout
reason is furnished by the martyrdom of Eleazar, the seven brothers,
and their
mother (II Macc.
2. The philosophical expostions (
3. The evidence from
history (
b. The martyrdom of
Eleazar (-7; cf. II
Macc.
21 Reason and
wisdom are
here defined in accordance with the teaching of the Stoics; for
references see
C. L. W. Grimm's commentary ad loca.
[[217]]
brought
before Antiochus
(5:1-3), who urged him to partake of swine's meat (5:4-13). Eleazar replied that all transgressions of
the Law are equally serious (
c. The martyrdom of
the seven brothers
(8-12; cf. 11 Macc. 7). Seven young
brothers and their mother (7:1-4) were exhorted by Antiochus "to share
in
the Hellenic life" (8:1-11) but were not terrified at the sight of the
instruments of torture (
d. Reflections on the heroism of
the seven
brothers (13:1-14:10). Thus their reason won the victory over their
passions
and their pains (13:1-7); they encouraged one another through the fine
example
of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego (Dan. 3:13-23), and that of Isaac
(Gen.
22:1-13); through their descent from Abraham; through the eternal
punishment of
violators of the Law, and conversely their bliss together with their
forefathers after the martyrdom; and through loyalty to those on
the.point of
death or already expired, and to brothers (13:8-22).
Thus their brotherly love was so strengthened
that they could encourage one another to suffer agony (
e. The fortitude and death of the mother
(
[[218]]
she
preferred for her sons
righteousness rather than escape from death (15:1-7).
Witnessing their torments, she urged them to
die for their religion (15:8-18). Having
the choice of life or death for her sons, she chose the latter,
following
Abraham's example, and withstood the waves of passion as Noah's ark
withstood
the waves of the Flood (
f. Concluding praise of the martyrs
(17:8-24). A fitting epitaph (17:8-10)
should be inscribed on the tombs of these martyrs who received the
crown of
victory as athletes of righteousness (
4. Peroration (18). Let
Although the
author was a zealous
orthodox Jew trained in "the Law and the Prophets" (
The
argument of the book is presented
logically and consistently, even though in reality it begs the question. He proves that devout reason is the absolute
master of the passions by regarding reason as the determination to live
according to wisdom, which is not merely knowledge but also the
observance of
the Law of Moses. He then defines the
"passions" as moral defects contrary to the four cardinal virtues,
but not mental defects such as forgetfulness and ignorance, over which
reason
has no control. In other words: reason
possesses wisdom; wisdom is manifested
22 C. L. W. Grimm
in his
commentary (cf. the preceding note) believed that the book ended with
18:2 and
that 18:3-23 was an addition by a later band; but, as R. B. Townshend
has shown
(in R. H. Charles, Pseudepigrapha, pp. 655f.), there is no compelling
reason
for rejecting 18:3-23.
[[219]]
in
the four cardinal virtues
that control the passions opposed to them; therefore reason controls
these
passions. Q.E.D. In harmony with
Rabbinic Judaism, he concludes that reason does not extirpate the
passions, but
enables us to resist them successfully, and also that while there may
be small
and great sins, any transgression of the Law of Moses, be it in small
things or
in great, is equally heinous (cf. the Stoic teaching), for it shows
contempt
for the Law (5:19-20; cf. James 2: 10).
The
general theme of the
book (the supremacy of reason over the passions) as well as many of the
special
arguments and views presented are clearly Stoic.23 The famous Stoic
paradox
"The sage is not merely free but also a king" is echoed in 7:23 and
14:2; the martyrs behave with true Stoic apathy (9:17f.; 11:25; 15:11,
14);
wisdom (1:16) is defined in the Stoic manner.
He differs from the Stoics, however, in his more comprehensive
conception of the passions and in regarding them as divinely implanted
in man (
As
a Jew addressing Jews the
author tended to subordinate the Stoic philosophy to the Law of Moses,
even
though he wished to equate them. On the one hand, he refuted the Greek
view
that the Law of Moses was a "preposterous philosophy" (
In
two points the author
changes the religious teaching of II Macca-
23 H. A. Wolfson
(Philo,
Vol. 2, pp. 271 f.), however, asserts that "guided by tradition the
author
comes out in opposition to the Stoics." But C. L. W. Grimm has shown
(in
his commentary to IV Maccabees, p. 288) how pervasive Stoic teaching is
in this
book.
24 In 2:21 f. the
author gives us a notion of his idea of a human
being. When God created man, He planted
at the periphery, near the surface of his being (periephy/teusen), the
passions
and inclinations, but He placed the mind (nou^s) or reason (the ego) on
a
throne to dominate, under the guidance of the Law, over the senses and
passions
(cf.
[[220]]
bees,
from which (or from
whose source, Jason of Cyrene) he derived the stories of the Maccabean
martyrs
(cf. the table of parallels in Charles, Pseudepigrapha, p. 665). While II Maccabees repeatedly speaks of the
resurrection of the body as the hope of the martyrs and only once (II
Macc.
7:36) of "eternal life" (which may be a loose way of speaking of the
resurrection),25 IV Maccabees, like the Wisdom of Solomon, teaches the
doctrine
of the immortality of the spirit (14:5; 16:13)- "pure and immortal
souls" (18:23)-both of the pious (14:6 ) 26 and of the wicked (13:15);
the
pious are honored by God and have an abode in heaven (17:5) after
achieving
"the prize of victory in incorruption in everlasting life" (17:12)
or, better, with a slight change in the Greek, "the prize of victory
was
incormption." They shall stand beside the throne of God and live in
blissful etemity (
Another difference
between these two
books lies in the evaluation of the torments and death of the martyrs. In II Maccabees the martyrs were selected for
torment from the midst of a sinful people to be an example of God's
punishing
justice and to appease his wrath against
25 Modem
Christians,
conversely, generally understand by "resurrection of the flesh" in
the Apostles' Creed the immortality of the spirit-a Platonic doctline
which
excludes the bodily resurrection.
26 R. B.
Townshend in Charles, Pseudepigrapha,
p. 679, translates literally, "as if prompted by the immortal soul of
religion" (14:6). The meaning, however, seems to be, "so those holy
youths, prompted by the immortality of their pious soulŠ"
27 In this book
immortality is not, as in Plato, a quality of the spirit but the result
of
God's intervention (7:19; 17:17-21; 18:23).
28 IV Macc. 6:29;
cf. 17:22 (Rahlfs
17:21). This word for ransom occurs four
times in the epistles of Ignatius of Antioch (Ephesians 21:1; Smymeans
10:2;
Poly-carp 2:3; 6:1). Ignatius died a
martyr during the reign of Trajan (98-117).
ALEXANDRIAN-JEWISH
LITERATUM
[[221]]
bees,
through his notion of
expiatory martyrdom, somehow anticipated the main lines of Paul's
doctrine of
the atonement.29
The Alexandrian-Jewish
philosophy and the
allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures on which it rests reached
their
culmination and end in the works of Philo of Alexandria (d. about A.D.
50).30
Soon after Philo's death it was rejected by the Jews, but it furnished
to
incipient Christianity a philosophical scaffolding for its faith. The works of Philo have been grouped as
follows:31
1.
Questions and answers (Ze-te-/mata
kai\ ly/seis; Quaestiones et solutiones) on the Pentateuch, of which we
have
parts of six books dealing with Gen. 1-28 (lacking Gen. 10:10-15:6);
and parts
of the second and all of the fifth book on Exodus, surviving in
Armenian and
Latin translations, but lost in the Greek.
Here Philo interpreted the books of the Pentateuch both
literally and
allegorically. For instance, this is the
comment on the words "in this generation" (Gen. 7:1):
It
is an admirable
expression which is meanwhile added, the one which says, "in this
generation have I seen thee righteous," that he might not appear to
condemn earlier generations, nor cut off the future hope of generations
of
later times. This is the literal sense. But according to the spiritual meaning, when
God will have the mind, the ruler of the soul, which is the head of the
family,
then he saves likewise the whole family together with him; I mean all
parts...and the things of the body. As
the mind is in the soul, so the soul is in the body.
Through good advice all parts of the soul
thrive, and its whole house is benefited along with it.
When the whole soul is in good condition,
then all of its house likewise is found to be benefited with it, namely
the
body (profits) through sound conduct and continence, after those
passionate desires
which cause diseases have been destroyed.
Quaest. et
solut. II, 11 (surviving in Armenian)
2. Allegory of the Holy Laws (no/mo-n hiero^n
allegori/a; legum allegoria) is a purely allegorical commentary on the
Pentateuch,
consisting of many individual works. We
have the parts dealing with Gen. 2-41 either verse by verse (Gen. 2-4)
or in
longer sections (thus there are two books de ebrietate on Gen. 9). Here Philo gives his views on the nature of
human
29 Paul uses
hilaste-/rion
in the sense of "propitiation" (Rom.
30 For the
bibliography on Philo see
above, note 7. The reader is referred to the works of Drummond,
Goodenough, and
Wolfson for a presentation of Philo's teaching, which cannot be
adequately
described here. The most convenient edition of his works (not yet
completed) is
F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker, Philo with an English Translation,
Vols. 1-9.
The Loeb Classical Library.
31 Cf. the
bibliography in H. A. Wolfson, Philo, Vol. 1, p. 87, n. 1.
[[222]]
beings,
from the points of
view of physiology, psychology, epistemology, and ethics.
Thus, for instance, commenting on Gen. 2: 10
he says, "'River' is generic virtue, goodness. This
issues out of Eden, the wisdom of God,
and this is the Logos [i.e., Word, Reason] of God, for in accordance
with that
has generic virtue been made. And generic virtue waters the garden,
that is, it
waters the particular virtues" (Leg. alleg. 1, 19, 165 [1, 56 MI). The four rivers of Gen. 2:10-14 are the four
cardinal virtues of Plato and the Stoics: prudence, temperance,
fortitude, and
justice. The individual books in the
legum allegoria series are; Legum allegoria, books I (on Gen. 2:1-17),
II (on
Gen. 2:18-3: la), III (on Gen. 3: Sb-19); On the Cherubim and the Fiery
Sword
(de Cherubim et flammeo gladio, on Gen. 3:24; 4:1); On the Sacrifices
of Abel
and Cain (de sacrificiis Abeli et Caini, on Gen. 4:2-4); That the Worse
Usually
Waylays the Better (quod deterius potiori insidiari soleat, on Gen.
4:8-15); On
the Offspring of Cain (de posteritate Caini, on Gen. 4:16-25); On the
Giants
(de gigantibus, on Gen. 6:1-4) and That God Is Unchangeable (quod Deus
sit
immutabilis, on Gen. 6:4-12); On Agriculture (de agricultura, on Gen.
9:20a and
de plantatione Noe, on Gen. 9:20b); On Intoxication (de ebrietate, of
which
only the first of two books, dealing with Gen. 9:21, survives); On
Temperance
(do sobrietate, on Gen. 9:24-27); On the Confusion of Languages (de
confusions
linguarum, on Gen. 11:1-9); On the Migration of Abraham (de migratione
Abrahami, on Gen. 12:1-6); Who Is to Be the Heir of Divine Things (Quis
rerum
divinarum haeres sit, on Gen. 15:2-18); On the Meeting about Education
(de
congressu quaerendae eruditianis causa, on Gen. 16:1-6); On Fugitives
(de
profugis, on Gen. 16:6-14); On the Change of Names (de mutatione
nominum, on
Gen. 17:1-22); (On God [de deo, a fragment in Armenian on Gen. 18:2]);
On
Dreams (de somniis; book II, on Gen. 28:12-22 and 31:11-13; book III,
on Gen.
37:5-11; 40:5-19; 41:1-36; three other books are lost).
3. Studies on
miscellaneous Pentateuchal
subjects, seldom utilizing the allegorical method, constituting an
introduction
to the Law of Moses for a large circle of readers, notably Gentiles.32
This
collection includes the following books:
The
Life of the Sage (bi/os
sophou^) Who Has Been Perfected through Education.
Book I: de Abrahamo (On Abraham), dealing
with Enosh, who typifies hope; Enoch, the type of conversion and
improvement;
Noah, the type of righteousness; Abraham, the type of the virtue
acquired
through teaching; (Isaac, the type of the natural or inborn virtue, and
Jacob;
the type of the virtue acquired through practice, are lost).
Book
II: de Josepho (On
Joseph, the type of the statesman); de
32 See E. R.
Goodenough in
HTR 27 (1933) 109-125.
[[223]]
decalogo
(On the Ten
Commandments); de specialibus legibus (an arrangement of all
Pentateuchal laws
in accordance with the Ten Commandments) I-IV.
I (Ex. 20:3-6): de circumcisione (On Circumcision), de monarchia
(On
Monotheism) 1-11, de praemiis sacerdotum (On the Emoluments of the
Priesthood),
de sacrificantibus or de victimas offerentibus (On Proper Victims and
On those
who Offer Sacrifice), de mercede meretricis (On the Wages of a Harlot). II (Ex. 20:7-12): de septenario (On the
Sabbath), de festo cophini (on Deut. 26), de colendis parentibus (On
Honoring
the Parents). III (Ex. 20:13-14) and IV
(Ex. 20:15-17): de judice (On the judge), de concupiscentia (On
Covetousness),
de justitia (On justice), de tribus virtutibus (On Three Virtues
recorded with
others by Moses: de fortitudine, de caritate, de poenitentia [on
courage,
humanity, and repentance]) (also, de nobilitate); de praemiis et poenis
and de
execrationibus (On Rewards and Punishments, and On Curses; see Lev. 26
and
Deut. 28).
4. Separate
historical and philosophical
works. On the Life of Moses (vita Mosis
I-III, or better I-II), addressed to Gentile readers; That Every Good
Person Is
Free (quod omnis probus liber); Against Flaccus (adversus Flaccum); The
Embassy
to Caius Caligula (de legatione ad Caium); On Providence (de
providentia); That
Dumb Animals Have an Intelligence of Their Own (de Alexandro et quod
propriam
rationem muta animalia habeant); Assumptions (hypothetika/, lost except
for the
references in Eusebius, Praep. ev. VIII, 5-7); On the Jews (or Apology
for the
Jews, lost except for Eusebius, Praep. ev.
VIII, 11 [on the Essenes]), possibly identical with the
preceding work.
5.
Entirely lost works. Three books of
quaestiones et solutiones on
Exodus (cf. above, No. 1); two books of legum allegoria (cf. above, No.
2); On
Rewards (peri\ mistho^n commenting on Gen. 15:1, mentioned at the
beginning of
quis rerum divinarum haeres sit); two books On Testa-ments (peri\
diathe-ko^n,
mentioned at the beginning of de mutatione nominum); three of the five
books de
somniis (cf. above, No. 2); the books on Isaac and Jacob, following de
Abrahamo
(cf. above, No. 3); That Every Bad Person Is a Slave (peri\ tou^
dou^lon ei^nai
pa/nta phau^lon), the first half and the opposite of quod omnis probus
liber
(No. 4, above), mentioned by Eusebius (Eccl. Hist.
II:18, 6); three books of a work on the
persecution of the Jews at Alexandria, of which only adversus Flaccum
and de
legatione ad Caium (No. 4, above) survive; On Numbers (peri\
arithmo^n),
mentioned in vita Mosis III, 11; and possibly a book on the rule of the
sage
(peri\ te^s arche^s tou^ sophou^), which Philo says he intended to
write (quod
omnis probus liber §3).
6. Spurious
works. De vita contemplativa (On the
Therapeutae
[ascetics] in
[[224]]
ruptibilitate
mundi; de
mundo; de Sampsone; interpretatio hebraicorum nominum; liber
antiquitatum
biblicarum; breviarium temporum.
4.
Jewish Propaganda Works
Attributed to Gentiles
The
Letter of Aristeas33 purports
to be a letter written by Aristeas, an official of Ptolemy II
Philadelphus,
king of
a. Introduction (§§I-8). Aristeas
will give his brother Philocrates an
account of his mission to Eleazar (the high priest of the Jews) to
further the
preparation of a Greek translation of the Jewish law (§§I-8).
b. Preparatory steps (§§9-50). Demetrius of Phalerum, the chief librarian,
induced Ptolemy II to add a translation of the Jewish Law to the
200,000
volumes in the Museum (§§9-11). Aristeas
thought that the occasion was propitious to request the king to free
the Jews
enslaved by Ptolemy 1 (§§12-20), and through a royal decree they were
emancipated (§§21-27). Demetrius
prepared a memorandum for the king (§§28-32), who wrote a letter to
Eleazar the
high priest in Jerusalem requesting that seventy-two translators be
sent to
Egypt (§§33-40). Eleazar replied favorably (§§41-46) and sent 72
elders, who
are named in §§47-50.
c. The royal gifts
to Eleazar (§§51-82): a
sacred table, enormous and richly ornate (§§51-72); golden mixing bowls
and
polished silver bowls (§§73-78); and golden vials (§§79-82).
d. Description of
e. The seventy-two translators were
such noble
and able men that Eleazar was greatly concerned about their safe return
(§§121-127).
33 The Greek text
has been
edited by H. St. John Thackuay in H. B. Swete, Introduction to the Old
Testammt
in Greek, pp.- 499-574.
[[225]]
f. Eleazar's explanation and
defense of
the Jewish laws, and particularly of monotheism, purifications, and
dietary
prescriptions (§§128-171).
g. The
royal welcome to the translators
(§§172-186).
h. The banquets in the translators' honor
during seven successive days and the answer of each translator to a
question
asked by the king (§§187-300). The
questions deal with the art of government, ethics, philosophy, and
practical
wisdom.
i. The Pentateuch was translated into
Greek
by the seventy-two translators on the
This
fanciful story of the
origin of the Septuagint is merely a pretext for defending Judaism
against its
heathen denigrators, for extolling its nobility and reasonableness, and
for
striving to convert Greek-speaking Gentiles to it.
The author pleads eloquently for the
political independence and emancipation from slavery of the Jews in his
own
day, who are said to worship the same god as the Greeks (Zeus or Dis)
under
another name (§§15-16, §19). Eleazar
expounded so convincingly the logic of some aspects of Judaism which
were
occasionally ridiculed (§§128-169) that Aristeas-allegedly
a pagan-praised "the holiness and
meaning in conformity with nature" of the Jewish Law (§§170-171). He was likewise deeply moved by the
Pseudo-Phocylides,
an
unknown Jewish-Alexandrian poet living probably in the last century
before our era,
composed a didactic poem in 230 Greek hexameters and attributed his
composition
to Phocylides of Miletus (sixth century B.C.), an author of wise
sayings, few
of which are extant. Our Jewish author
moralizes about the problems of daily life, after the manner of Sirach,
but
deliberately follows the prescriptions of the Pentateuch (even down to
such
details as Deut. 14:21 and 22:6f). In
order to make the forgery at least apparently plausible, peculiar
Jewish prescriptions
and polemic against idolatry are entirely omitted.
Besides the Pentateuch, the author utilized
the Jewish wisdom books (Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiasticus,
and
Wisdom of Solomon). Although the Church
Fathers do not quote this book, it became a textbook in the Byzantine
period,
and is therefore extant in many manuscripts and printed editions, the
first of
which appeared in 1495
[[226]]
(for
further details and
bibliography see Schu%rer, Geschichte, Vol. 3, pp. 617-622; S. Kraus,
in Jewish
Encyclopedia, Vol. 10, pp. 255 f.).
The
Sibylline Oracles34 now
surviving are in part the work of Hellenistic Jews.
The Sibyl was a prophetess, the pagan
counterpart of the Hebrew prophets-as Michelangelo realized when be
painted the
Sibyls opposite the prophets on the wall of the Sistine Chapel.
Vergil's
description of how Apollo entered into the Cumaean Sibyl at the moment
of
inspiration (Aeneid 6, 40 ff.) shows that, like the prophets, the
Sibyls were
thought to be literally and physically filled with the divine spirit at
the
moment of inspiration. The etymology of
"Sibyl" given by Varro, from Aeolic sios boulla (Greek theou^
boule-/, theoboule-/, counsel of God), is manifestly fanciful, but the
real origin
of the word, which is not a personal name, is unknown.
The earliest and foremost of the Sibyls was
Herophile the Erythraean (in
According
to Plutarch,
Heraclitus knew Sibylline oracles in verse which mentioned "many
revolutions and upheavals in Greek cities, many appearances of
barbarous hordes
and murders of rulers." A collection of such oracles was housed in
The
extant collection of
Sibylline Oracles was preserved, as well as abundantly edited, by
Christians,
so that it is at times difficult to say whether some verses are Jewish
or
Christian (pagan material, such as III, 110-154, is scarce). It comprised fifteen books (books IX, X, and
XV are lost), of which 4,240 verses are extant.
In view of the popularity of the Sibylhne Oracles among the
pagans, it
is not surprising that an Alexandrian Jew living about 140 B.C. should
compose
some spurious oracles in the same style to teach the truths of the
Jewish
religion. His example was followed by
Jews and Christians in later times. In
any case, while the authors of the present collection lived between the
second
century B.C. and the fifth century of our era, the early oracles were
regarded
as genuine and ancient by some Jews: Josephus in Antiquities I, 4:3
quotes
freely Sibylline Oracles III, 97-104, which he presumably read in
Alexander
Polybistor's Chaldaika/. Christian
authors-beginning with Justin Martyr (d. ca. 165), and including
Clement of
Alexandria (d. ca. 220), Theophilus of Antioch (d. ca. 185), Lactantius
(d. ca.
325), and
34 The best
edition of the
Greek text is that of J. Geffcken, Die Oracula Sibyllina.
[[227]]
Augustine
(d. 430)-likewise
regarded the oracles as ancient pagan poetry.
Celsus (second century), in his book against the Christians,
mocked
their credulity and accused them of fabricating Sibylline oracles. The oracles generally regarded as Jewish (in
books III-V) may be summarized as follows:
1. Book III, about 140 B.C. a. Its Introduction
apparently consisted of two long fragments preserved by Theophilus of
Antioch
(ad Autolycum ii, 36): Lactantius quotes passages from these fragments
and from
book III as oracles of the Erythraean Sibyl, but passages from other
books are
attributed to other Sibyls. The two
introductory fragments furnish the keynote of the Jewish Sibyl (if not
of
Alexandrian-Jewish apologetics in general) by stressing the truth of
Jewish
monotheism, in contrast with the falsehood and folly of pagan idolatry
and
animal worship.
b. III, 1-92 seems to have originally belonged
to book II, which is late. III, 1-45 praises God, the universal
Creator, who
fashioned "four-lettered Adam" (in Greek, the letters A-D-A-M are the
initials for east, west, north, South; cf also II Enoch 30:13), and
denounces
the heathen for their idolatry and wickedness. III, 46-62 (obscure)
announces
the final judgment and the eternal rule of a holy king over the whole
world
(the Jewish Messiah or Jesus Christ?); then the Latins will suffer and
three
men (either the first [Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus; 60 B.C.] or second [
c. III, 93-96 (Christian?) longs for the rise of
the sun that sbail neverset, which will
be obeyed by all.
d. III, 97-294 begins abruptly a history of the
world from the building of the
[[228]]
the
Titans died, there arose
the kingdoms of
Now
the Sibyl began to
prophesy (162-164) about the kingdoms of Solomon, the Phoenicians, and
other
nations of
e.
III, 295-488 contains
prophecies of woes: against
After Alexander
(381-387), Antiochus IV
Epiphanes and his successors will devastate
The
fall of
The
Sibyl proclaims the doom
of Lycia (433), Chalcedon (434-435), Cyzicus (436, 442-443), Byzantium
(437-438), Krasos in Lycia (439-441), Rhodes (444-448), Persia
(449-450), Samos
(451-456), Cyprus (57-458), Trallis (459-463), Italy (464-469),
Laodicea
(470-473), and other cities and nations (474-488).
f. III, 489-808 contains oracles of doom
and
eschatological predictions. God ordered
the Sibyl to proclaim the doom of
The
pagans should worship
God (624-631) to avoid the outbreak of his wrath (632-651).
The
Messiah (652-655) will
enrich the Jews (656-661). God will
judge the nations (662-701) and bring peace and prosperity to the Jews
(702-731).
[[229]]
earth
(766-771) for the
benefit of the Jews (672-684). Rejoice,
O Virgin of Israel (685-687), for wild animals will become tame
(688-695). Cosmic portents will presage
the judgment
(696-808).
g. III,
809-829 (colophon). The Sibyl came from
2.
Book IV (about A.D. 80, for the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D.
70
[115-116, 125-127] and the eruption of Vesuvius in August of A.D. 79
[130-136]
are clearly mentioned). a. Introduction.
The Sibyl is the prophetess of the true God (1-23).
b.
Happy are the pious Jews (24-34), for they do not imitate the
shameless
pagans doomed to the fires of hell (35-46).
c.
The history of the world (47-139): the Assyrian (47-53), Medic
(54-60),
and Persian (61-75) empires; the expedition of Xerxes against the
Greeks in
491-490 B.C. (76-70), the eruption of Etna (80-82), the Peloponnesian
War or the
fighting in 446 B.C. (83-85), the conquests of Alexander (86-101), the
Macedonian wars of Rome from 214 to 168 B.C. (102-104), the Roman
conquest of
Corinth and Carthage in 146 B.C. (105-106), the Laodicean earthquake
(107-108),
the ruin of Lycian Myra (109-113), Rome's Armenian wars in A.D. 43-6(3
(114),
the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 (115-127), the earthquake at
Salamis
and Paphos in Cyprus in A.D. 76 (128-129), the destruction of Pompeii
through
the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79 (130-136), and the return of Nero
Redivivus, who was reported to have fled beyond the Euphrates when he
died (cf.
119-120), from Parthia (137-139).
d.
Woes against various localities (140-161):
e.
Exhortation to repentance (162-170), to avoid the destruction of
the
world by fire (171-178).
f.
The final judgment (179-192).
Following the destruction of the world by fire and the
resurrection
(179-182), God will judge the world again (183-192).
3.
Book V (about A.D. 125). a. The history of
b. Woes on several nations (52-227):
introduction (52-59),
[[230]]
wrought
by Nero (137-154)
will be avenged after a comet, appearing in A.D. 73, presages disaster
for
c. A poem on violence
(hy/bris), the
fountainhead of evils (228-246).
d. A eulogy of the Jews (247-255,
260-285),
interrupted by a Christian interpolation on Jesus Christ: Jesus, whose
name is
the Greek form of Joshua, was nailed on the cross and, like Joshua,
stopped the
sun (256-259; cf. Luke
e. Woes on several nations (286-343):
woe on
f. The end of the world (344-385). God's appearance in power (344--360) cosmic
upheavals, the return of Nero redivivus as the Antichrist, the
resurrection,
and war (361-380) will precede the golden age of the Jews (381-385).
g. A denunciation of Roman immorality
(386-402; cf. 111, 384-386; Rom.
h. The Messiah (414-433).
A blessed man holding God's scepter has come
from heaven (414-415) to destroy the heathen and glorify
i. Woes on
j. The astral battle (512-530). The various stars and constellations, notably
those of the Zodiac, fought furiously (512-527) until heaven hurled
them to the
earth and into the ocean; "they kindled the whole earth:
and the sky remained starless"
(528-530).
//end of Part I//