CHAPTER II. THE JEWISH DISPERSION IN THE WEST - THE HELLENISTS - ORIGIN OF HELLENIST LITERATURE IN THE GREEK TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE - CHARACTER OF THE SEPTUAGINT.
When we turn from the Jewish dispersion' in the East to that in the West, we seem to breathe quite a different atmosphere. Despite their intense nationalism, all unconsciously to themselves, their mental characteristics and tendencies were in the opposite direction from those of their brethren. With those of the East rested the future of Judaism; with them of the West, in a sense, that of the world. The one represented old Israel, stretching forth its hands to where the dawn of a new day was about to break. These Jews of the West are known by the term Hellenists - from llenzein, to conform to the language and manners of the Greeks. [87]
Whatever their religious and social isolation, it was, in the nature of thing, impossible that the Jewish communities in the West should remains unaffected by Grecian culture and modes of thought; just as, on the other hand, the Greek world, despite popular hatred and the contempt of the higher classes, could not wholly withdraw itself from Jewish influences. Witness here the many converts to Judaism among the Gentiles; [88] witness also the evident preparedness of the lands of this dispersion' for the new doctrine which was to come from Judea. Many causes contributed to render the Jews of the West accessible to Greek influences. They had not a long local history to look back upon, nor did they form a compact body, like their brethren in the East. They were craftsmen, traders, merchants, settled for a time here or there - units might combine into communities, but could not form one people. Then their position was not favourable to the sway of traditionalism. Their occupations, the very reasons for their being in a strange land,' were purely secular. That lofty absorption of thought and life in the study of the Law, written and oral, which characterised the East, was to the, something in the dim distance, sacred, like the soil and the institutions of Palestine, but unattainable. In Palestine or Babylonia numberless influences from his earliest years, all that he saw and heard, the very force of circumstances, would tend to make an earnest Jew a disciple of the Rabbis; in the West it would lead him to hellenise.' It was, so to speak, in the air'; and he could no more shut his mind against Greek thought than he could withdraw his body from atmospheric influences. That restless, searching, subtle Greek intellect would penetrate everywhere, and flash its light into the innermost recesses of his home and Synagogue.
To be sure, they were intensely Jewish, these communities of strangers. Like our scattered colonists in distant lands, they would cling with double affection to the customs of their home, and invest with the halo of tender memories the sacred traditions of their faith. The Grecian Jew might well look with contempt, not unmingled with pity, on the idolatrous rites practised around, from which long ago the pitiless irony of Isaiah had torn the veil of beauty, to show the hideousness and unreality beneath. The dissoluteness of public and private life, the frivolity and aimlessness of their pursuits, political aspirations, popular assemblies, amusements - in short, the utter decay of society, in all its phases, would lie open to his gaze. It is in terms of lofty scorn, not unmingled with indignation, which only occasionally gives way to the softer mood of warning, or even invitation, that Jewish Hellenistic literature, whether in the Apocrypha or in its Apocalyptic utterances, address heathenism.
From that spectacle the Grecian Jew would turn with infinite satisfaction - not to say, pride - to his own community, to think of its spiritual enlightenment, and to pass in review its exclusive privileges. [89] It was with no uncertain steps that he would go past those splendid temples to his own humbler Synagogue, pleased to find himself there surrounded by those who shared his descent, his faith, his hopes; and gratified to see their number swelled by many who, heathens by birth, had learned the error of their ways, and now, so to speak, humbly stood as suppliant strangers of the gate,' to seek admission into his sanctuary. [90] How different were the rites which he practised, hallowed in their Divine origin, rational in themselves, and at the same time deeply significant, from the absurd superstitions around. Who could have compared with the voiceless, meaningless, blasphemous heathen worship, if it deserved the name, that of the Synagogue, with its pathetic hymns, its sublime liturgy, its Divine Scriptures, and those stated sermons' which instructed in virtue and piety,' of which not only Philo, [91] Agrippa, [92] and Josephus, [93] speak as a regular institution, but whose antiquity and general prevalence is attested in Jewish writings, [94] and nowhere more strongly than in the book of the Acts of the Apostles?