2. The relations of the Hebrews with the Greeks were always of a distant kind until the Macedonian conquest of the East : hence in the Old Testament the mention of the Greeks is naturallj' rare. See Javan. It is possible that Moses may have derived some geo- graphical outlines from the Egyptians, but he does not use them in Gen. x, 2-5, where he mentions the de- scendants of Javan as peopling the isles of the Gen- tiles. This is merely the vaguest possible indication of a geographical locality ; and yet it is not improba- ble tliat his Egyptian teachers were almost equally in the dark as to the position of a country which had not at that time arrived at a unity sufficiently imposing to arrest the attention of its neighbors. The amount and precision of the information possessed by Moses must be measured by the nature of the relation which we can conceive as existing in his time between Greece and Egypt. Now it appears from Herodotus that pri- or to the Trojan War the current of tradition, sacred and mythological, set from Egypt towards Greece ; and the first quasi-historical event which awakened the curicsity and stimulated the imagination of the Eg3'ptian priests was the story of Paris and Helen (Herodotus, ii, 43, 51, 52, and 112). At the time of the Exodus, therefore, it is not likely that Greece had en- tered into any definite relation whatever with Egypt. Withdrawn from the sea-coast, and only gradually fighting their waj' to it during the period of the Judg- es, the Hebrews could have had no opportunity of form- ing connections with the Greeks. From the time of IMoses to that of Joel we have no notice of the Greeks in the Hebrew writings, except that which was con- tained in the word Javan (Gen. x, 2) ; and it does not seem probable that during this period the word had any peculiar significance for a Jew, except in so far as it was associated with the idea of islanders. When, indeed, thej' came into contact with the lonians of Asia Minor, and recognised them as the long-lost isl- anders of the Western migration, it was natural that they should mark the similarity of sound between 'i'Ti='jTi and lones, and the application of that name to the Asiatic Greeks would tend to satisfy in some measure a longing to realize the Mosaic ethnography. Accordingly, the O.-T. word, which in the A. Vers, is Greece, Greeks, etc., is in Hebrew "p"^, Javan (Joel iii,
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Map of Aucieat Greece.
G ; Dan. viii, 21) : the Hebrew, however, is sometimes retained (Isa. Ixvi, 19 ; Ezek. xxvii, 13). In Gen. x, ■J the Sept. has kciI 'liovai' Kcii 'EXirrd, with which Ko- senmiiller compares Herod, i, 56-58, and professes to discover the two elements of the Greelc race. From 'liiivav he gets the Ionian or Pelasgian, from 'EXiad ("for which he supposes the Heb. original rTl3"'bx), the Hellenic element. This is excessive!)' fanciful. See
EUSIIAH.
The Greeks and Hebrews met for the first time in the slave-market. The medium of communication seems to have been the Tvrian slave-merdiant. About H.C. 800 Joel speaks of the Tvrians as selling the chil- dren of Judah to the Grecians (Joel iii, G); and in ]>.ek. xxvii, 13 the Greeks are mentioned as bartering their brazen vessels for slaves. On the other hand, Bochart says that the Greek slaves were highly val- ued throughout the East {Geogr. Sac. pt. i, lib. ill, c. .3, p. 17.")); and it is probable that the Tyrians took ad- vantage of the calamities which befell cither nation to sell tliem as slaves to the otiiTir. Abuud;wit opportu- nities would be afforded by the attacks of the Lydian
monarch}' on the one people, and the Syrian on the other ; and it is certain that Tyre wculd let slip no oc- casion of replenishing her slave-market. See Tyre.
Prophetical notice of Greece occurs in Dan. viii, 21, etc., where the histor}' of Alexander and his success- ors is rapidly sketched. See Goat. Zechariah (ix, 13) foretells the triumphs of the Maccabees against the Grffico-Syrian empire, while Isaiah looks forward to the conversion of the Greeks, among other Gen- tiles, through the instrumentality of Jewish missiona- ries (Ixvi, 1!)\ For the connection between the Jews and the quasi-Greek kingdoms which sprnng out of the divided empire of Alexander, see ANTionius; Ptolemy.
The presence of Alexander (q. v.) himself at Jeru- salem, and his respectful demeanor, are described by Josephus (^Ant: xi, 8, 3) ; and some Jews are even said to have joined him in his expedition against Persia (Hecat. ap. Joseph, c. Apion, ii, 4), as the Samaritans had already done in the siege of Tvre (Josephus, Ant. xi, 8, 4-G)"; In 1 Mace, xii, 5-23 (aliout B.C. 180). and Josephus, Aiit. xii, 4, 10, we have an account of
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an embassy and letter sent by the Lacedaamonians to the Jews. The most remarkable feature in the trans- action is the chiini which the Lacedemonians prefer to kindred with the Jews, and which Areus professes to estaljlish by reference to a book. It is by no means unlikely that two declining nations, the one crouching beneath a Grasco-Syrian invader, and the otlier beneath a Roman j'oke, should draw together in face of the com- mon calamity ; or we ma}' with Jahn (^Heb. Comm. ix, t)l, note) regard the affair as a piece of pompous tri- fling or idle curiosity, at a period when "all nations were curious to ascertain their origin, and their rela- tionship to other nations." See Onias.