HELLER r
teaching, and ready to receive it. The Hellenists them- selves were at once missionaries to the heathen and prophets to their own comitrymen. Their lives were an abiding protest against polytheism and pantheisrn, and they retained with unshaken zeal the sum of their ancient creed, when the preacher had popularly occu- pied the place of the priest, and a service of prayer, and praise, and exhortation had succeeded in daily life to the elaborate ritual of the Temple. Yet this new de- velopment of Judaism was obtained without the sacri- fice of national ties. The connection of the Hellenists with the Temple was not broken, except in the case of some of the Egyptian Jews. Unity coexisted with dis- persion; and the organization of the Church was fore- shadowed, not only in the widening breadth of doctrine, but even externally in the scattered communities which looked to Jerusalem as their common centre.
In another aspect Hellenism served as the prepara- tion for a catholic creed. As it furnished the language of Christianity, it supplied also that literary instinct wliich counteracted the traditional reserve of the Pales- tinian Jews. The writings of the N. Test., and aU the writings of the apostolic age, with the exception of the original Gospel of Matthew, were, as f.ir as we know, Greek ; and Greek seems to have remained the sole ve- hicle of Christian literatiu-e, and the principal medium of Christian worship, till the Church of North Africa rose into importance in the time of Tertullian. The Canon of the Christian Scriptures, the early creeds, and the litiu-gies, are the memorials of this Hellenistic pre- dominance in the Church, and the types of its working ; and if in later times the Greek spirit descended to the investigation of painful subtleties, it may be questioned whether the fidness of Christian truth could have been developed without the power of Greek thought temper- ed by Hebrew tliscipUne.
The general relations of Hellenism to Judaism are well treated in the histories of Ewald and Jost ; but the Hellenistic language is as yet, critically speaking, al- most unexplored. Winer's Grammar {Gramm. d. N. T. Spnir/iifUoms, 7th ed. 18G8) has done great service in establisliing the idea of law in N.-T. language, which was oljliteiatod by earlier interpreters, but even Winer does not iiivrsti'_cate the origin of the pecidiarities of the IK ileiii-iii- dialect. The idioms of the N. T. cannot be disciisseil ajiart from those of the Sept., and no ex- planation can be considered perfect which does not take into account the origin of the corresponding Hebrew idioms. For this work even the materials are as yet deficient. The text of the Sept. is stiU in a most un- satisfactory condition ; and while Bruder's Concordance leaves nothing to be desired for the vocabulary of the N. T., Trommius's Concordance to the Sept., however useful, is quite untrustworthy for critical purposes. — Smith, s. V. See Greek Language.
Heller, Yomtov Lip.-max b.-Nath.V!J, a distinguish- ed liabbi of the Polish school, born at WaUerstein, duchy of Anspach, Germany, in 1579. He filled the appoint- ment of Rabbi to the great synagogues at Vienna, Prague, and Ivrakau. While at Prague (1629) he was prosecuted by the government upon a charge that he had written in praise of the Talmud to the injury of the Christian rehgion, was imprisoned, and fined 10,000 flor- ins. After his release he went to Poland, where, in 1G44, he became Rabbi of the synagogue at Krakau. Here he died in 1G54. Heller Avrote his autobiography (naiX rbi5-a), printed in 183G, which contains a com- plete list of all his works. Among the most important of them are his glossaries to the Mishna pi ms&ir). These are considered by Oriental scholars as very valu- able.— Jost, Gesck. d. Juden. iii, 243 ; Etheridge, Intvod. to Ihbr. Literature, p. 448. (J. H. W.)
Helm, TTTjodXiov, the 7-udder of a ship (Jas. iii, 4). See Rl-dder.
Helmet ("313 or "31p, Jcola', TrepiKKpaXala), a military cap for the defence of the head in battle (1 Sam.
HELMET
HELMONT
177
HELP
i
Ancient Helmets : a-e, Egyptian ; /, g, Persian ; h-k, Syr- ian ; l-o, Phrygian ; p, q, Dacian ; r-u, Assyrian.
xvii, 5, 38, etc.; Eph. vi, 17; 1 Thess. v, 8). See Ar-
MOH.
Helmont, FRANgois Mercury:, baron van, was born at Yilvorde in 1G18. Ill liis yonlli he studied med- icine, and applied himself especially to alchemy. He then joined a band of gypsies, with whom he travelled through part of Europe, but was arrested in Italy in l(')G-_', and cast into the dungeons of the Incpiisition. In IGO;'), being liberated, he went to Sulzbaoh, where he worked with Knorr of Kosenroth at the Kahbala denu- duta. He published, about the same time, a work on the alphabet of the primitive tongue, i. e. Hebrew (Sulz- baoh, 1007, 12mo), which, according to him, is so natural that every letter expresses merely the position of the lips while pronouncing it: he pretended to teach the deaf and dumb to articulate all the sounds of his alpha- bet at first sight. He believed in the transmigration of souls, the universal remedy, and the philosopher's stone. He [ravelled afterwards through England, and returned through Hanover to Berlin, in a suburb of wliich city he dietl in 1G99 (Moreri says he died at Cologne; Toppens, in Switzerland; Wachter, at P^mmerich, in Dec. 1G98). Leibnitz \vTote on him the following epitaph :