full citizenship and limited self-government which the early Ptolemies had bestowed.[13] Josephus records a letter of Augustus to the Jewish community at Cyrene, in which he ordains: "Since the nation of the Jews hath been found grateful to the Roman people, it seemed good to me and my counsellors that the Jews have liberty to make use of their own customs, and that their sacred money be not touched, but sent to Jerusalem, and that they be not obliged to go before the judge on the Sabbath day nor on the day of preparation for it after the ninth hour," i.e., after the early evening.[14] This decree is typical of the emperor's attitude to his Jewish subjects; and Egypt became more and more a favored home of the race, so that the Jewish population in the land, from the Libyan desert to the border of Ethiopia, was estimated in Philo's time at not less than one million.[15]

The prosperity and privileges of the Jews, combined with their peculiar customs and their religious [pg.22] separateness, did not fail at Alexandria, as they have not failed in any country of the Diaspora, to arouse the mixed envy and dislike of the rude populace, and give a handle to the agitations of self-seeking demagogues. The third book of the Maccabees tells of a Ptolemaic persecution during which Jewish victims were turned into the arena at Alexandria, to be trodden down by elephants made fierce with the blood of grapes, and of their deliverance by Divine Providence. Some fiction is certainly mixed with this recital, but it may well be that during the rule of the stupid and cruel usurper Ptolemy Physcon (c. 120 B.C.E.) the protection of the royal house was for political reasons removed for a time from the Jews. Josephus[16] relates that the anniversary of the deliverance was celebrated as a festival in Egypt. The popular feeling against the peculiar people was of an abiding character, for it had abiding causes, envy and dislike of a separate manner of life; and the professional anti-Semite,[17] who had his forerunners before the reign of the first Ptolemy, was able from time to time to fan popular feelings into flame. In those days, when history and fiction were not clearly distinguished, he was apt to hide his attacks under the guise of history, and stir up odium by scurrilous and offensive accounts of the ancient Hebrews. Hence anti-Jewish literature originated at Alexandria.

[pg.23] Manetho, an historian of the second century B.C.E., in his chronicles of Egypt, introduced an anti-Jewish pamphlet with an original account of the Exodus, which became the model for a school of scribes more virulent and less distinguished than himself. The Battle of Histories was taken up with spirit by the Jews, and it was round the history of the Israelites in Egypt that the conflict chiefly raged. In reply to the offensive picture of a Manetho and the diatribes of some "starveling Greekling," there appeared the eulogistic picture of an Aristeas, the improved Exodus of an Artapanus. Joseph and Moses figured as the most brilliant of Egyptian statesmen, and the Ptolemies as admirers of the Scriptures. The morality of this apologetic literature, and more particularly of the literary forgeries which formed part of it, has been impugned by certain German theologians. But apart from the necessities of the case, it is not fair to apply to an age in which Cicero declared that artistic lying was legitimate in history, the standard of modern German accuracy. The fabrications of Jewish apologists were in the spirit of the time.

The outward history of the Alexandrian community is far less interesting and of far less importance than its intellectual progress. When Alexander planted the colony of Jews in his greatest foundation, he probably intended to facilitate the fusion of Eastern and Western thought through their mediation. Such, at any rate, was the result of his work. His marvellous exploits had put an end for a time to the political strife between Asia and Europe, and had [pg.24] started the movement between the two realms of culture, which was fated to produce the greatest combination of ideas that the world has known. Now, at last, the Hebrew, with his lofty conception of God, came into close contact with the Greek, who had developed an equally noble conception of man. Disraeli, in his usual sweeping manner, makes one of his characters in "Lothair" tell how the Aryan and Semitic races, after centuries of wandering upon opposite courses, met again and, represented by their two choicest families, the Hellenes and the Hebrews, brought together the treasures of their accumulated wisdom and secured the civilization of man. Apart from the question of the original common source, of which we are no longer sure, his rhetoric is broadly true; but for two centuries the influence was nearly all upon one side. The Jew, attracted by the brilliant art, literature, science, and philosophy of the Hellene, speedily Hellenized, and as early as the third century B.C.E. Clearchus, the pupil of Aristotle, tells of a Jew whom his master met, who was "Greek not only in language but also in mind."[18] The Greek, on the other hand, who had not yet comprehended the majesty of his neighbor's monotheism, for lack of adequate presentation, did not Hebraize. In Palestine the adoption of Greek ways and the introduction of Greek ideas proceeded rapidly to the point of demoralization, until the Maccabees stayed it. Unfortunately, the Hellenism that was brought to Palestine was not [pg.25] the lofty culture, the eager search for truth and knowledge, that marked Athens in the classical age; it was a bastard product of Greek elegance and Oriental luxury and sensuousness, a seeking after base pleasures, an assertion of naturalistic polytheism. And hence came the strong reaction against Greek ideas among the bulk of the people, which prevented any permanent fusion of cultures in the land of Israel.

The Hellenism of Alexandria was a more genuine product. The liberal policy of the early Ptolemies made their capital a centre of art, literature, science, and philosophy. To their court were gathered the chief poets, savants, and thinkers of their age. The Museum was the most celebrated literary academy, and the Library the most noted collection of books in the world. Dwelling in this atmosphere of culture and research, the Hebrew mind rapidly expanded and began to take its part as an active force in civilization. It acquired the love of knowledge in a wider sense than it had recognized before, and assimilated the teachings of Hellas in all their variety. Within a hundred years of their settlement Hebrew or Aramaic had become to the Jews a strange language, and they spoke and thought in Greek. Hence it was necessary to have an authoritative Greek translation of the Holy Scriptures, and the first great step in the Jewish-Hellenistic