A similar condition of things prevailed also in the country to the east of the Jordan. Here, too, there had been numerous settlements of Jews, who, however, were so hard pressed by the heathen that Judas Maccabzeus brought them to Jerusalem (1 Mac 5*). But at a later period the middle portion of the trans-Jordanic tract was conquered by Alexander Jannzeus, and the Law imposed upon its inhabitants for the same reason as in the case of the Idumeans (cf. Jos. And. XIII. xv. 4). As the boundaries of Perwa (j7!5 72y), the district inhabited by the Jews, Josephus gives: Pella on the north, Philadelphia on the east, and Macherus on the south. Considerable tracts, however, of the trans-Jordanic country belonged to the Hellenistic cities, which were specially numerous here, and in which the Jews constituted only a minority. Also in the northern portion (Batanzea, Gaulanitis, Auranitis, and Trachonitis) the population was half-heathen half-Jewish (Jos. BJ i. iii. 5f.). But the Jewish element was strengthened by the Babylonian Jews whom Herod transplanted here in order to combat the plague of robbers (Jos. Ant. XVII. ii. 13).
The task which, since the time of Ezra, had been assigned to strict Jews—the task of maintain- ing a complete isolation from the heathen world— was thus an extremely difficult one; for not onl were they surrounded on all sides by the heathen, but Hellenistic cities intruded as enclaves in the midst of the Jewish country itself. Moreover,
* Quite remarkable is the severe judgment on Galilee attri- buted to Johanan b. Zaccai (Jerus. Shabbath 15d): ‘Galilee, Galilee, thou hatest the Law, therefore thou shalt yet find em- ployment among robbers.’
t Cf. Buhl, GAP 72.
NEW TESTAMENT TIMES
the rapid development of commerce brought the Jews into close contact with foreigners, while, finally, the foreign rule naturally introduced many non-Jewish elements into the land. The attractive influence which Greek culture exercised over the Jews is shown by the history of events immediately preceding the Maccabzean era; and even the Has- monans who originally came forward to oppose the ethnicizing of the Jews, were afterwards increasingly attracted by Hellenism, so that Aristo- bulus I. actually received the surname of @i\é\dnv (‘friend of the Greeks’). Herod the Great, too, in spite of his essentially barbarian nature, sought to pose asa patron of Greek culture, surrounded himself with Greek orators and writers, had his sons educated at Rome, and made his appearance as a pure Greek in the Hellenistic cities that were subject to him. Nay, even in Jerusalem, to the scandal of the Jews, he caused theatres, circuses, and other Greek buildings to be erected. The
game course was pursued by his successors.
Tiberias, for instance, was a city with a perfectly pronounced Greek stamp, which may account for the fact that Jesus never visited it. The main- taining of Jewish uniqueness unimpaired was, we repeat, a very difficult task ; much more difficult in Palestine than for the Jews of the Diaspora, who found themselves in unequivocal opposition to their environment.
ii. LANGUAGES.—The language of the Jews who returned to Palestine from Babylon was Old Hebrew. But even during the Persian domination Aramaic, which was then the language of com- merce and diplomacy, began to force its way among the Jews as with the neighbouring peoples. The earliest traces of this are found in the extracts in the Book of Ezra drawn from an Aramaic historical writing. The Book of Daniel, composed in the 2nd cent. B.C., is written partly in Aramaic. At the time of Christ the ordinary speech of the people had come to be Aramaic, as is evident not only from the New Testament, but from various cultus terms used by Josephus, and from state- ments contained in the older Jewish literature. The necessary consequence of this change was the custom of having the passages of Scripture which were read in the synagogue followed by an Aramaic translation—a custom which the Mishna presupposes as an ancient inheritance. The Aramaic spoken by the Jews was a dialect of the Western Aramaic, the pronunciation of which, moreover, differed somewhat in different parts of the country, varying again amongst the Samaritans as compared with the Jews.* :
The Old Hebrew language yielded, however, only gradually to the Aramaic idiom, and, before it disappeared, it developed a final species, the so-called New Hebrew. Even after men had begun to write in Aramaic, Hebrew writings were still composed ; ¢.g. the Book of Chronicles (¢. 300 B.C.), the Book of Sirach (not long after 200), various Psalms belonging to the Maccabean period, and the Book of Ecclesiastes. The Has- monzan rulers, who above all laboured for a national reawakening, favoured the ancient speech, as the Hebrew legends on their coins show; and the First Book of Maccabees was unquestionably written in Hebrew. But the last remark applies also to the Psalms of Solomon, which emanated from the middle of the last century B.C., and to the Apocalypses of Baruch and Ezra, composed after the Fall of Jerusalem. Later still, Hebrew continued to be for long the language of teachers of the Law, so that the Mishna (2nd cent. A.D.) 1s composed in New Hebrew. It was only after the date last named that Hebrew ceased to be a living
* Of. Mt 2673; Dalman, Grammatik des jiid.-pal. Aramédisch, 43 ff., Die Worte Jesu, i. 64.
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