+ On the other hand, the phrase YS7 DY ‘people of the
land’ is used in opposition to Pharisees, who were not all scribes, t Cf. Weber, Jiid. Theologie?, 1897, p 125 ff.
priests on points of interpretation of the Law. At the age of sixteen he began to study carefully the tenets and maxims of the three sects—the Saddu- cees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes ; nay, he even lived for three years with a rigid ascetic in the desert, in order to put also this conception of life to the proof. When nineteen years old he decided to cast in his lot with the Pharisaic party, but he studied, further, the Greek language and litera- ture. He had such a command of Greek that in his twenty-sixth year he was able to travel to Rome, where he obtained access to the Empress, who treated him with great consideration. He tells us, however, regarding his attainments in Greek, that, while he had made a thorough study of the language, his Jewish usages had hampered him in acquiring an exact pronunciation of it. ‘It is not our way to accord any great appreciation to those who have learned many languages . . . for this is an accomplishment of which slaves are as capable as freemen. But those alone are regarded as wise who thoroughly understand the laws, and can expound the Holy Scriptures’ (Ant. Xx. xii. 2). That Josephus had difficulty, further, in the use of Greek in writing, is evident from the circum- stance that, in preparing his history of the Jewish war, he availed himself of the help of colleagues who were proficient in Greek (c. Apion. i. 9). But he not only devoted himself to the study of the language, but, as his writings show, had read a very considerable number of Greek authors, besides being acquainted in some measure with Greek philosophy. Here, then, we see how, in the case of a Palestinian Jew of good family, a strictly Jewish education might be combined with a Hel- lenizing tendency.*
As to the ordinary stage of culture among the Jews, this was in general conditioned by their
acknowledged dependence upon the Holy Serip- *
tures. Here lay hidden all the treasures of wisdom for those who knew how to dig them up. While the Hellenistic Jews were under the influence of Greek philosophy, and made frequent attempts to dis- cover in the Scriptures the ideas of foreign wisdom, the native exegesis was based essentially upon the text itself, whose many secrets it was sought to penetrate by an acuteness which displayed itself in the form of ingenious combinations of passages of Scripture. Nothing had any value whose pres- ence could not be demonstrated in the Law and in the Scriptures. And yet the world of ideas in which these men moved was not so completely uninfluenced by foreign culture as they themselves may have imagined. Several centuries of contact with Parsism had not passed without leaving clear traces.t As little were the Palestinian Jews able to shut themselves off from the influence of the Greek spirit, by whose effects they were every- where surrounded, and whose traces may be largely observed in the Palestinian Midrash. Yet all this worked quietly and unconsciously, and did not lead to any essential transformation of the Palestinian culture.
As far as a knowledge of history was concerned, there was naturally a disposition to abide by the information contained in the Bible ; whereas there were only broken reminiscences of the events of the post-Biblical period. In this respect, indeed,
* On the other hand, when Rabbi Ishmael was asked whether it was allowable to learn Greek wisdom along with the Law, he replied (in allusion to the words ‘by day and by night,’ Jos 18, Ps 1? etc.): ‘ Only if thou canst find a time which is neither day nor night’ (Bacher, Die Agada der Tannaitten, i. 262).
t Cf. E. Stave, Ueber den Einjluss des Parsismus auf das Judentum, 1898 ; also the art. ZoROASTRIANISM by J. H. Moulton in vol. iv. The Babylonian influence contended for, especially by Gunkel, is still somewhat problematical, and its extent is in any case not yet demonstrated.
{ Cf. Freudenthal, Hellenistiche Studien, 1875, p. 66 ff. ; Siegfried, Philo von Alexandrien, 283 ff.
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NEW TESTAMENT TIMES
a man like Josephus forms an exception, but he is likewise an exception among his Palestinian fellow-countrymen, and his great work on the history of Israel was intended not for Jews but for the rest of the world.*
Of an acquaintance with natural science we can scarcely speak. The Book of Enoch, it is true, occupies itself in detail with cosmological and astronomical secrets, and shows, amidst a multi- tude of fantastic notions, a knowledge of the twelve signs of the zodiac, the regular phases of the moon, the solar and lunar years, perhaps the 8-year cycle of the Greeks, the four intercalary days, and it contains also some geographical allu- sions (chs. 72ff.). But this must be viewed as peculiar to a few writers, and not as the standard of the jas Gees culture. At all events, in a letter of R. Gamaliel 11. + the intercalating of 30 days into the current year is justified on the ground that the lambs are still small, and the crops not yet ripe. On the 30th day of each month the Sanhedrin met, and, if it was then announced to it that the moon- crescent was visible, the day was marked as holy, so that the Soe month had only 29 days counted to it.