Alexander and his successors invited the .lews to join in this work of colonization, and they re- sponde<l freely. In Egypt, indeed, there were already Jews sen-ing in the army of Psammiti- chus I. as early as B.C. 650 ; and under .lereniiah went many others. Hut of these wa.s left a mere remnant, when, on the occasion of the foundation of Alexandria, a fresh ma-ss of Jewish colonists was introduced. Here they had an ethnarch of their own, and privileges from the first ; and tliey increased so much tiiat I'hilo {in Ftitc. ii. 5'_';i) I)efore A.D. 40 estimated their number at a million. From Egj'pt they spread westward, and already, in Sulla's time, were an ini|iortaiit class in Cyreiie. In the Ea.st the bulk of the Jewish race still re- mained, of course, in tlieidd lands of the Caiitivity, beyond the Euphrate.s, there contracting Persian and Assyrian iHdiefs and culture rather than Greek. But in tlie Gr. cities of Sj-ria they were, from the
• See ftrt. on • Primitive Pictogmpha and Script firun Cr*t« and the PeJopoaacM' In Joum. q/UtUtnie Studim, ?uL xiv. pt. 2, lOM, p. SM.
time of the Diadochi, vei-y numerous. In Daniascua .los. {IJJ VII. viii. 7) says there were 18,000 slain in the war of A.D. 60-70 alone. Antioch was full of them, as were all the coa^it cities, from Sidon southwards. In Asia Minor, as e.irly a« the middle of the 4th cent. B.C., Aristotle met an educated Jew who was Greek not only in speech, but in spirit (Jos. c. Ap. i. 22). In Plirj-u;ia and Lydia, Antiochus the Great planted 200O families oi Mesopotamian Jews (Jos. Ant. xil. iii. 4) — a
Sroof that it was not from the small district of udica alone and from the remnant restored by CjTUS that the new Jewish colonists were drawn by the Seleucid kings. However, since Ptol. Lagos transferred 100,000 from Jud;ea to Egypt (Aristete Ejiist.), there must have been a great surplus of population in the Holy Land itself at the begin- ning of the .3rd cent. B.C. Pliilo (de Lcrjnt. ii. 587) has preserved a letter of Herod Agripjia to Caligula, testifying to the extent of the Greek diaspora in the year A.D. 38. ' Jerusiilem,' wrote Agrippa, ' is the capital city, not of a single countrv, but of most, because of its colonies in Egj'pt, f lia'nicia, .Syria in general, and Hollow Syria, as also in Pamphylia, Cilicia, most districts of Asia (Minor), as far as Bitbynia and the extreme parts of Pontus.' In tlie same way, he continues, Europe wa-s full of .lews : Tliessalv', Bieoti.a, M.acedoni.t, -'Etolia, Attica, Argos, Corinth, the best and larger part of Peloponnese. And not the main- land only. For EuWa, Cypnis, Crete, and the islands generally, were full of Jews.
Many of tliese Jewish colonists adopt«l Gr. speech, habits, and culture. They wrote and tiiouglit in Greek. They read the Gr. poets and orators ; admired and were spectators of Gr. jd.ays ; joined Gr. philosophic sects, Pytliagora'an, Peri- patetic, Stoic or Epicurean. On theotlier hand, dis- tinctively Jewish sects, like that of the Alexandrian Therapeut-T?, ramified, according to Pliilo (ii. 474), in many parts of the inhabited world, esp. in Cireece. Of the interpenetration of the Jewish by the Hellenic genius wliich resulted, we have left in religions literature three great monuments, the LX.\, the NT, and the works of Philo ; not to mention numerous extra-canonical ai>ocry|iha, some originally written in Ar.ani. or Heb., bnt mostly surviving in a Gr. form alone. Foremost among the latter in religious interest are the surviving fragments of J?nocA and the Jewish Sibylline poems.
The copious works of Philo have probably sur- vived by mere accident ; but that they are a mere remnant of a larger Jewish-Gr. literature is evident from the anonymous references to other writers with which his pages abound. Christian writers, especially Eusebius, have preserved the names of, a-s well as extracts from, several Hellenistic writers of early date : e.g. of a Pliilo who wrote an ei)ic on Jerus. , of a poet Theodotus, and of Ezekiel who wrote a drama about Moses. Among the pliiloso- ]iliic writers Aristobulus is remarkable as the lirst to use, so far a.s we know, the allegorical method of expounding the Momiic law, alK)Ut li.c. 170-150.
Tliese writers were Alexandrine, but there .are many more (ir. authors who were probably Pal. Jews or even Samaritans. Among the.se, Alex. Polyhistor (B.C. 80-40) has jircserved to us in his worlvs, as cited by Eusebius, fragments of the chronicler Demetrius (u.c. 222-205), of EuiKilemas (B.C. 158-1.57), and Artapanus. Aristeas, and Cleo- demus, all four .Jewish historians. .la.'^oii of Cyrene (c. B.C. 100) wrote a history of the Macca- Iwean wars, of which 2 Mac is an abriilgiiient made before Philo's age. The Wisjlom of Sol. was prob- ably written in Alexandria before Philo's day. Niimenius and l.onginns, in the 2nd and 3rd cents. A.D. , wrote to some extent under Jewish intluence, but were not Jewi.
262
GREECE, HELLENISM
GKEECE, HELLENLSM
It is of peculiar interest to know how far Hellen- ism had,* in tlie 300 years preceding Jesus of Nazareth, invaded Jud;ea itself. The circunistjince that the strictly Jewish territory of Juda-a, Galilee, and Pera;a was wedged in between large and alllueut Gr. cities on the E. and W., would in itself suggest considerable inroads of Hellenism. Nor must it be forgotten that at least at everj' pass- over thousands of Gr.-speakini; Jews were present in Jerus., and that many of them were domiciled there, as is clear from their haviii'r synagogues.