The notices of the Jewish people wliich occur in Greek writers have been collected by Josephus (con- trii Apion, i, 22). The chief are Pythagoras, Herodo- tus, Ohoerilus, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Hecatajus. The main drift of the argument of Josephus is to show that the Greek authors derived their materials from Jewish sources, or with more or less distinctness refer- red to Jewish historj'. For Pvthagoras, he cites Her- mippus's life ; for Aristotle, Clearchus ; but it should be remembered that the Neo-Platonism of these au- thorities makes tliem comparatively worthless ; that Hermippus, in particular, belongs to that Alexandrian school which made it its business to fuse the Hebrew traditions with the philosophy of Greece, and propiti- ate the genius of Orientalism by denying the merit of originalitj' to the great and independent thinkers of the West. This style of thought was further devel- oped by lamblicluis ; and a very good specimen of it may be seen in Le Clerc's notes on Grotius, De Verit. It has been ably and vehemently assailed by Hitter, IliH. Phil. b. i, c. 3. Herodotus mentions the Syrians of Palestine as confessing that thej' derived the rite of circumcision from the Egyptians (ii, 104). Biihr, how- ever, does not think it likelj' that Herodotus visited the interior of Palestine, though he was acquainted with the sea-coast. (On the other hand, see Dahl- man, p. 55, 56, Engl, transl.) It is almost impossible to suppose that Herodotus could have visited Jerusa- lem without giving us some more detailed account of it than the merely incidental notices in ii, 159, and iii, 5, not to mention that the site of Kavinic, or Cadytis, is still a disputed question. The victory of Pharaoh- Necho over Josiah at Megiddo is recorded by Herodo- tus (comp. Herod, ii, 159 with 2 Kings xxiii, 29 sq. ; 2 (^hron. XXXV, 20 sq.). It is singular that Josephus should have omitted these references, and cited He- rodotus only as mentioning the rite of circumcision. The work of Theophrastus cited is not extant ; he enumerates among other oaths that of Corban. Choe- rilus is supposed by Josephus to describe tlie Jews in a by no means flattering portrait of a people who ac- companied Xerxes in his expedition against Greece. The chief points of identification are their speaking the Phoenician language, and dwelling in the. Soli/mean mormlains, near a broad lake, Avhich, according to Jo- sephus, was the Dead Sea. The Hecataeus of Josephus is Hecataeus of Abdera, a contemporary of Alexander the Great, and of Ptolemy son of Lagus. The authen- ticity of the Historj' of the Jews attributed to him by Josephus has been cafled in question by Origen and others.
After the complete subjugation of the Greeks by the Romans, and the absorption into the Roman empire of the kingdoms which were formed out of the dominions of Alexander, the political connection between the Greeks and Jews as two independent nations no longer existed. — Smith, s. v.
When a beginning had been made of preaching Christianity to the Gentiles, Greece immediately be- came a principal sphere for missionary exertion. The vernacular tongue of the Hellenistic Christians was understood over so large an e.xtent of country as al- most of itself to point out in what direction they should exert themselves. The Grecian cities, whether in Eu-
rope or Asia, were the peculiar field for Paul, for whose labors a superintending Providence had long before been providing in the large number of devout Greeks who attended the Jewisti sj'nagogues. Greece Proper was divided by the Romans into two provinces, of which the northern was called Macedonia, and the southern Achaia (as in 2 Cor ix, 2, etc.) ; and we learn incidentally from Acts xviii that the proconsul of the latter resided at Corinth. To determine the exact di- vision between the provinces is difiicult, nor is the question of any importance to a Biblical student. Achaia, however, had probably very nearly the same frontier as tlie kingdom of modern Greece, -whicli is limited by a line reaching from the gulf of Volo to that of Arta, in great part along the chain of Mount Othrys. Of the cities celebrated in Greek history, noi.e arc prominent in the early Christian times except Corinth. Laconia, and its chief town Sparta, had ceased to be of any importance : Athens was never eminent as a Christian church. In Macedonia were the two great cities of Philippi and Tliessalonica (formerly called Therme) ; yet of these the former was rather recent, being founded by Philip the Great ; the latter was not distinguished above the otlier Grecian cities on the same coast. Nicopolis, on the gulf of Ambracia (or Arta), had been built by Augustus in memory of his victory at Actium, and was, perhaps, the limit of Achaia on the western coast (Tacitus, Annal. ii, bo). It had risen into some importance in Paul's days, and, as many suppose, it is to this Nicopolis that he alludes in his epistle to Titus. See Nicopolis.
3. Among the Greeks the arts of war and peace were carried to greater perfection than among any earlier people. In navigation they were little behind the Tj-rians and Carthaginians ; in political foresight they equalled them ; in military science, both by sea and land, the}' were decidedly their superiors ; while in the power of reconciling subject-foreigners to the conquer- ors and to their institutions, they perhaps surpassed all other nations of the world. Their copious, cultivated, and flexible tongue carried with it no small mental education to all who learned it thoroughl}' ; and so sa- gacious were the arrangements of the great Alexander throughout his rapidly acquired Asiatic empire, that in the twenty 3'ears of dreadful war between his gen- erals which followed his death, no rising of the natives against Greek influence appears to have been thought of. Without any change of population adequate un- der other circumstances to effect it, the Greek tongue and Greek feeling spread far and sank deep through the Macedonian dominions. Half of Asia Minor be- came a new Greece, and the cities of Syria, North Palestine, and Egypt were deeply imbued with the same influence. See Greek Language.