Malachi to Christ
ALEXANDRIA

Grecian Period (333-150 B.C.)
Alexander
It was a striking remark of Hegel that Greece, the youthful prime of the world, came in with the youth Achilles and went out with the youth Alexander. But if Grecian history died with Alexander, Grecian influence was created by him. If Hellas ceased, Hellenism, the spirit of the Greek race throughout the Eastern world, now began its career. In the Prophets of the Captivity one feels the electric shock produced by the conquest of Cyrus. Unfortunately, there is no contemporary prophet in whom we can in like manner appreciate the approach of Alexander. Yet that was no inapt vision which, in the Book of Daniel (8:5) pictured the marvelous sight of the mountain goat from the Ionian shores, bounding over the face of the earth so swiftly as not to touch the ground (with one beautiful horn between his eyes, like the unicorn on the Persepolitan monuments) which ran in the fury of his power against the double-horned ram, the emblem of the Kings of Media and Persia, and there was no power in the ram to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground and stamped on him and there was none to deliver the ram out of his hand. So it was in yet a wider sense than the ancient seer had discerned: with astonishment and awe, Asia beheld the uninterrupted progress of a hero, the sweep of whose conquests was as wide and rapid as that of her own barbaric kings, or of the Scythian or Chaldaean hordes; but, unlike the transient whirlwinds of Asiatic warfare, the advance of the Macedonian leader was no less deliberate than rapid. At every step the Greek power took root – the language and civilization of Greece planted from the shores of the Aegean to the banks of the Indus, from the Caspian and great Hyrcanian plain to the Cataracts of the Nile; to exist for nearly a thousand years and in their effects endure forever.

In the tenth year, after crossing the Hellespont and having won his vast dominion, Alexander entered Babylon. Resting from his career in that oldest seat of earthly empire, he steadily surveyed his mass of various nations and revolved in his mind the great work of breathing into this huge but inert body the living spirit of Greek civilization. In the bloom of youthful manhood, at the age of thirty-two, he paused from the fiery speed of his earlier course; and for the first time gave the nations an opportunity of offering homage before his throne. They came from all extremities of the earth to propitiate his anger, to celebrate his greatness, or solicit his protection.

Among those various races, two nations, either then or in the earlier stages of his advance, are said to have approached the Grecian conqueror. Both interviews are wrapped in doubtful legend; yet both may have an element of truth and both certainly represent the enduring connection of that career with the two other most powerful currents of human history.

Later writers, yielding to that natural feeling which longs to bring together great characters, countries and delights of remote ages to contemplate how they would have regarded one another, assert that a Roman Embassy did appear before Alexander in Babylon; that like Cineas afterwards, the King was so struck with the dignity and manly bearing of the Roman patricians that he informed himself concerning their constitution, and prophesied that the Romans would one day become a great power. Arrian justly disbelieves this story: but history may allow us to think that Alexander and a Roman ambassador did meet at Babylon; that the greatest man of the ancient world saw and spoke with a citizen of that great nation which was destined to succeed him, founding a wider and more enduring empire. They met, too, in Babylon, almost beneath the shadow of the temple of Bel (perhaps the earliest monument ever raised by human pride and power) in a city stricken by the word of God's heaviest judgment as the symbol of greatness apart from and opposed to goodness.

Alexander at Tyre
A like scene was recounted in various forms by the Jewish writers when, after the battle of Issus, Alexander arrived at the other oldest seat of Asiatic power – Tyre. That ancient queen of the Mediterranean had survived the destruction perhaps anticipated by Ezekiel two centuries before. Her impregnable island fortress, her king, her worship of Melcarth or Moloch, probably with only a shadow of her former grandeur, still remained, like the stately colony of Venice after the fall of the Roman empire – a relic of the Old World long passed away. Then came embassies from the rival cities of Jerusalem and Shechem, each claiming his protection – the Jewish settlement still faithful to their Persian benefactors (fidelity of the Jews to their oaths of allegiance, even when contracted with heathen Princes, is much dwelt upon); the Samaritans still smarting from the insult inflicted on their second founder, the High Priest Manasseh. At last the Phoenician capital fell before that stupendous mole, which forever destroyed its insular character, and Alexander marched on to reduce the fortress of Gaza, which on its sandy eminence defied him in the south. It was upon returning from his savage triumph over the gallant defender of that last stronghold of the old Philistine power that he is represented as marching on the only remaining fortress that had refused to submit.

Alexander at Jerusalem
Like the French conqueror of later times, it may have been that he thought Jerusalem did not lie within the lines of his operations – such is the effect of the silence of Greek historians, and after them some of the most critical modern historians as well. But there is nothing incredible in the occurrence of some such event, as, in divers forms, has entered into the Jewish annals. The Samaritan version concentrated the whole interest of the story in their High Priest Hezekiah – the Jewish version fluctuates between the Talmud and Josephus. Alexander had come, so the Rabbinical account runs, to Antipatris at the entrance of the mountains, or, according to Josephus, mounted by the pass of Beth-horon, and found himself standing with Parmenio at the eminence long known as the watch-tower – in earlier days by its Hebrew name of Mizpeh, in later times by the corresponding Greek name of Scopus. There, before the conquest of Jebus, Samuel had held his assemblies; there, as in a commanding place of oversight, the Chaldaean and Persian Viceroys had their habitations; there was the Maccabaean wailing-place; and there Sennacherib, and afterward Titus, had their first view of the holy city. There, with Parmenio at his side, the Grecian conqueror now stood with the same prospect spread before him. Suddenly from the city emerged a long procession – the whole population streamed out, dressed in white; the priestly tribe in their white robes; the High Priest, apparently the chief authority in the place, in his purple and gold attire, turban on his head, bearing the golden plate on which was inscribed the ineffable name of Jehovah. It was Jaddua, the grandson of the indulgent Eliashib, son of the murderer John, who, as it was said in his agony of fear at Alexander's approach, had been warned in a dream to take this method of appeasing the conqueror's wrath. "Who are these?" he said to the Samaritan guides who had gained from him promise of the Temple's destruction and possession of Mount Moriah. "They are the rebels who deny your authority", said the rival sect. They marched all night, in two ranks, preceded by torches, and with the band of priestly musicians clashing their cymbals.

It was at the sunrise of a winter morning when they stood before the king – later observed as a joyous festival. To the astonishment of the surrounding chiefs, Alexander descended from his chariot and bowed to the earth before the Jewish leader. None ventured to ask the meaning of this seeming frenzy, save Parmenio alone. "Why should he, whom all men worship, worship the High Priest of the Jews?" "Not him", replied the King, "but the God, whose High Priest he is, I worship. Long ago, when at Dium in Macedonia, I saw in my dreams such an one in such an attire as this, who urged me to undertake the conquest of Persia and succeed" – "or" added the Rabbinical account, "it is the same figure that has appeared to me on the eve of each of my victories". Hand in hand with the High Priest and with the priestly tribe running by his side, he entered the sacred enclosure and offered the usual sacrifice, saw with pleasure the indication of the rise of the Grecian power in the prophetic books, granted free use of their ancestral laws, and specially of the year of jubilee inaugurated so solemnly a hundred years before under Nehemiah, promised to befriend the Jewish settlements of Babylonia and Media, and invited any who were disposed to serve in his army, with the preservation of their sacred customs.

"And who are these" (so added the fiercer tradition of the Talmud, in which theological legend has more deeply colored the historical event), asked Alexander, "who have threatened to take away your Temple?" "They are the Cutheans now standing before you", replied the Jewish High Priest, pointing to the hated Samaritans. "Take them", said the King, "they are in your hands". The Jews seized their enemies, threw them on the ground, pierced their heels, fastened them to the tails of horses which dragged them over thorns and briars till they reached Mount Gerizim (This could be a distortion of the story of Alexander's brutal treatment of Batis, the brave defender of Gaza). A ploughshare was driven over the Temple of Gerizim, and henceforth the day was observed as sacred to joy and festivity.

His Place in Religious History
These narratives are obviously mixed with fable, but it is probable that Alexander visited Jerusalem; that he paid his homage to the God of the Jews as he had paid it to the God of the Tyrians; that the rivalries of the Jews and Samaritans then, as of the Greeks and Latins now, grasped alike at the protection of this new Imperial power granted alternately to each. In a higher point of view, the romance of the story is not unworthy of the importance of this first meeting of the Greek and the Hebrew on the stage of history.

Henceforth, Alexander the Great became the symbol of their union. His name came into common Jewish use as a translation of Solomon. The philosophy of Aristotle was believed to have sprung from Alexander's gift of the works of Solomon. The friend of Jaddua becomes a Jewish proselyte. The son of Ammon, with the twisted horns appearing beneath his clustering locks, was transformed in the Muslim (archaic term is Mussulman) legends into the saintly Possessor of the Two Horns and reckoned among the Apostles of God. These legends or fancies were not without their corresponding realities. The Orientals were not far wrong when they treated Alexander as both conqueror and prophet. That capacious mind, which, first of the Greeks and with a wider grasp than even his mighty master Aristotle, conceived the idea of the universal Fatherhood of God, and the universal communion of all good men was not far from the realm of those with whom the Jew and Muslim have placed him. "God", he said, "is the common Father of all men, especially of the best men". He came inspired with the belief that he was the heaven-sent reconciler and pacificator of the whole world. These ideas bore fruit in two immense consequences. One was the union of the European and Asiatic races under one Empire, leading to the spread of Greek language as the common vehicle of communication in the Eastern, ultimately of the whole civilized world; of Greek ideas, partly for evil and partly for good, into the very recesses of the Semitic mind. Of this we shall trace the course as we proceed. The other fact was the foundation of Alexandria. At once it became the capital of the East, center of the three continents of the ancient earth – the point in which Greek philosophy and Hebrew religion were to meet in an indissoluble union.

Foundation of Alexanaria
On his rapid journey to the Oasis of Ammon, in the little fishing-town of Rhacotis, the discerning eye of Alexander saw the possibility of creating that which hitherto the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean had lacked – a magnificent harbor. When connected with the mainland by a mole, the low level reef of the isle of Pharos furnished the opportunity of such a shelter for ships which neither Tyre or Sidon or Joppa had ever been able to afford.

The first Ptolemy did well to name the city not after himself, but after Alexander. Not Constantine which was more identified with the city on the shores of the Bosphorus than was Alexander with that at the mouth of the Nile. His friend Hephaestion became its guardian hero. The military cloak of Alexander supplied its outline. It was his own plan for Babylon resuscitated; even the rectangular streets of the Asiatic capital were reproduced. In the later Jewish phraseology it even bore the name of Babylon. No funeral was ever more splendid than that which conveyed the remains of the dead King in the golden car drawn by sixty-four mules, each with its golden cover and golden bells, across desert and mountain, through the hills and vales of Palestine, till deposited in a tomb taking up a whole quarter of Alexandria, named "The Body". That tomb has gradually dwindled away to a Muslim chapel, kept by an aged crone who watches over a humble shrine, called "The Grave of Iskander of the Two Horns, founder of Alexandria". But according to the coarse saying of Demades, "the whole habitable earth was long filled, with the odor of that interment".

In this world's debate, Palestine was the principal stage across which "the kings of the South", the Alexandrian Ptolemies, and "the kings of the North" (Dan. 11:1-29), the Seleucidae from Antioch, passed to and fro with their court intrigues and incessant armies, their Indian elephants, their Grecian cavalry, their Oriental pomp. For the larger part of the century-and-half that succeeded Alexander's death, it was a province of the Graeco-Egyptian kingdom.

Greek Cities in Palestine
It was now that new constellations of towns sprang up, some of which acquired an undying fame in Jewish and Christian history, bearing in their names the mark of their Grecian origin. Judaea itself still remained entirely Semitic. But in a fringe around that sacred center the Ptolemies or the Seleucidae, but chiefly the Ptolemies, left their foot-prints, if not to this day, at least for centuries.

On the sea-coast, Gaza sprang from its ashes, now no more a Philistine, but a Grecian city. Close by, in Anthedon and Arethusa, we trace a Hellenic City of Flowers with the reminiscence of the famous Dorian fountain. To Alexandrian sailors, the seaport of Joppa became the scene of the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda. On another rocky headland rose the Tower of Strato, some Grecian magnate now unknown. Chief of all, the old Canaanitish fortress of Accho was transformed into "Ptolemais" by Ptolemy Philadelphus or his father. For centuries, this title overlaid the original name, only to reappear much later as "Acre". In the ancient capital of Ammon, beyond the Jordan, a like metamorphosis was effected when Rabbah, after the same Prince, was called Philadelphia. In its neighborhood the new town of Gerasa sprang up, so called, according to tradition, from the aged men (gerontes) whom Alexander left there because they were unable to keep up with his rapid march.

Further north were two towns, each with its Macedonian name – one Dium, so called from the Thracian city, where, according to the legend, Alexander had seen the figure of Jaddua in his dream; the other Pella (another Pella was in Moab), from the likeness of its abundant springs to the well-watered capital of Macedonia. Round the southern extremity of the Lake of Gennesareth the Canaanite Bethshan, from the reminiscence of its Scythian conquerors, became Scythopolis, with a new legend ascribing its foundation to Bacchus; and Sus (Hebrew word for horse) easily changed itself into the corresponding Greek name of Hippos. High up beyond Dan, the romantic cave which overhangs the chief source of the Jordan became the Sanctuary of Pan, and the town which clustered at its foot acquired, and has never lost (except for the period of Roman occupation), the name of Paneas.

Grecian Travelers
Through these Hellenic settlements it is not surprising that Grecian ever and anon some story reached the outer world from the Jewish settlement which they enclosed. At one time it was Hecataeus of Abdera, the indefatigable traveler, who in his vast researches had included the British Islands and Egyptian Temples. He travelled with the first Ptolemy into Palestine, and with admiration saw the sanctuary at Jerusalem; and there heard how the Jews in Alexander's army refused to join in rebuilding the Temple of Bel at Babylon; he long remembered the Jewish bowman, Mosollam, most famous of all the archers in his day, who acted as the guide of Hecataeus' party by the shores of the Red Sea, and by shooting the bird from which the soothsayers were drawing their auguries showed his professional skill, national courage, and religious superiority to the superstition of all around him.

At another time it was Agatharchides who was struck with a mixture of awe and contempt at the rigid observance of the Sabbath which led them to leave their city unguarded to be taken when, on that same expedition, Ptolemy invaded Judaea and captured Jerusalem. Most memorable of all, the great master of all the peculiarities of nature and men, and the eager investigator of all the varieties then pouring out of Asia, the mighty Aristotle himself, met with a Jew who had descended from his mountain stronghold to the Hellenised sea-board of his country, and thus in his travels encountered and conversed with Aristotle on the philosophy of Greece, and himself replied to the great master's inquiries on the wonders of his own people. Questions and answers are both unrecorded. But no imaginary dialogue can be conceived as more instructive than this actual conversation of which the bare fact alone remains in the fragment of Clearchus, to whom it was repeated by Aristotle himself.

The Chronicles
Within that inner circle of mountain fortress, for the long period from Alexander the Great to Antiochus Epiphanes, there are but few events which throw any light on the religious history of this now secluded people. We discern the fact, slightly, yet certainly indicated, that the last book of the Jewish annals which has come down to us in the Hebrew tongue was now finally concluded in its present form. The Book of Chronicles, including, as it doubtless did, in the same group the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, received at this time its latest touches. Darius the Persian is mentioned as belonging to an Empire which by that time had ceased to exist, and the priestly and royal lines are continued down to the contemporaries of Alexander (Neh. 12:11-22; 1 Chron. 3:22-24). The peculiarities of the Chronicler is a marked epoch in the story of the Jewish race, when we catch a parting glimpse of one who has accompanied us so long and with such varying interest. We bade farewell to the compiler of the prophetical Book of Kings on the banks of the Euphrates. Under the shadow of the Grecian dominion in the fastness of Jerusalem we bid farewell to the compiler of the priestly Chronicles.

The Sons of Tobiah
The priestly office still continued in the same corrupt condition as under the Persian dominion. The highest ambition of its occupants seems to have been the making of colossal fortunes by the farming of the revenues of the country, of which, as chief magistrate, the High Priest was made the collector, for the tribute to the Egyptian King (tribute to the foreign Kings was made up from the yearly poll-tax of half-shekel, called in Greek the didrachma). Out of this grew a rival ambition of the head of a powerful clan, which, under the name of The Sons of Tobiah, long exercised sway both in the Alexandrian court and in the Temple of Jerusalem. It seems they claimed some descent from the House of David, and the cleverness of their representative at this time (Joseph, nephew of the High Priest Onias) established him in high favor with Ptolemy IV. It is needless to follow the course of this earlier Anastasius. One permanent monument of his family remains. His youngest son, Hyrcanus, inheritor of his fortunes, deposited them in the bank, which, as in Greece, so in Judaea, was established in the Temple, and then settled himself as an independent freebooting chief in a fortified place beyond the Jordan. It was a castle of white marble, carved with colossal figures and surrounded by a deep moat. In face of it was a cliff honeycombed with a labyrinth of caverns. It was named "the Rock" (possibly the Hebrew Tsar, which is 'rock'). In this fantastic residence he reigned as an independent magnate among the neighboring Arabs, till at last he was hunted down by the Syrian Kings. But the castle and the rock still remain, preserving the name of Hyrcanus, the semi-Arabian chief, in the modern appellation of Arak-el-Emir.The fosse, the fragments of the colonnade, the entrance-gateway, with the colossal lions sculptured on its frieze, the mixture of Greek Ionic capitals with the palm-leaved architecture as of the Ptolemaic temples at Philae, the vast stables hewn out of the adjacent rock, all attest the splendor of this upstart Prince – this heir, if so be, of the lineage of David.

Simon the Just
Amid these intrigues and adventures there rises one stately figure, the High Priest Simon the Just (actually there are two High Priests in this period, both Simons and both sons of Onias. It is a question which of the two was Simon the Just and which of the two was the Simon described in Ecclesiasticus), towering above all who came before him and all who came after him in that office, from the time of Zerubbabel to the time of the Maccabees. According to one legend it was he who encountered Alexander the Great. According to another he was the last survivor of the members of the Great Synagogue. According to another it was he who warned Ptolemy Philopator (the one exception to the friendly character of the Ptolemaean Princes) not to enter the Temple. It was said that the expression of his intention had thrown the whole city into consternation. From the densely packed multitude there went up a cry so piercing that it would have seemed as if the very walls and foundations of the city shared in it. In the midst of the tumult the prayer of Simon was heard, invoking the All-seeing God. And then, like a reed broken by the wind, the Egyptian King fell on the pavement (III Macc. 1:28, 29; 2:1, 21, 24; Comp. II Macc. 3:25) and was carried out by his guards.

All the traditions combine in representing Simon as closing the better days of Judaism. Down to his time it was always the right hand of the High Priest that drew the lot of the consecrated goat – after his time the left and right wavered and varied. Down to his time the red thread round the neck of the scape-goat turned white, as a sign that the sins of the people were forgiven – afterwards, its change was uncertain. The candlestick at the entrance of the Temple burned in his time without fail – afterwards it often went out. Two faggots a day sufficed to keep the flame on the altar alive in his time – afterwards piles of wood were insufficient. It is said he foretold his own death because in his last year the old man who always accompanied him to the entrance of the Holy of Holies always wore white from head to toe, except in the year of his death the old man was attired in black. These were the forms in which the later Jewish belief expressed the sentiment of his transcendent worth, and of the manifold changes which were to follow him. But the more authentic indications convey the same impression. The very title of "the Just" always expressed the feeling that he stood alone in an untoward age. The description which has come down to us by his contemporaries, in whose judgment he worthily closed the long succession of ancient heroes, is that of a venerable personage who belonged to a nobler age and would never be seen again. They remembered his splendid appearance when he came out from behind the sacred curtain of the Holy of Holies into the midst of the people as they crowded the Temple on the Great Fast-day. It was like the morning star bursting from a cloud, or the moon in her fullness. It was like the sunlight striking the golden pinnacles of the Temple, or the rainbow in the stormy cloud. It was as the freshly blown rose, or the lilies clustering by the stream, the olive laden with fruit, or the fir-tree reaching to the sky with the fragrance as of frankincense, with the refinement as of a golden vessel set with gems. Every gesture was followed with admiration. To the gorgeous robes of his office he gave additional grace by the way he wore them. When he stood among the priests he towered above them like a cedar in a grove of palms. When he poured out the libations or offered the offerings, the blast of the silver trumpets, the loud shout of the people, the harmony of the various voices, the profound prostrations, were all in keeping and his final benediction was an event in the memory of those who had received it.

On the material fabric of the city and Temple he left his permanent traces in the repairs and fortification and elevation of the walls, in its double cloister and the brazen plates with which he encased the huge laver of ablutions. The respect which he won from Antiochus the Great, procured from him the timber and stone for the work. The precept which survived of his teaching was: There are three foundations of the world – the Law, the Worship (and herein consisted his peculiar teaching), and Benevolence. In accordance with this gentle humanity is the one anecdote handed down of his private thoughts. "I never", he said, "could endure to receive the monastic dedication of the Nazarites. Yet once I made an exception. There came a youth from the south to consecrate himself. I looked at him – his eyes were beautiful, his air magnificent, his long hair fell clustering in rich curls over his face. 'Why', I asked him, 'must you shave off these splendid locks?' 'I was a shepherd of my father's flocks in my native village', he replied. 'One day, drawing water at the well, I saw with undue complacency my reflection in the water. I should have given way to a wicked inclination and have been lost. I said, 'Wicked one, wilt thou be proud of that which does not belong to thee, who art but worms: and dust? O God, I will cut off these curls for the honour of heaven'. 'Then', said Simon, 'I embraced his head and exclaimed: 'Would that there were many such Nazarites in Israel!'"

There was yet one other character of the Ptolemaean period of Palestine – Joshua, the son of Sirach (contemporary or nearly contemporary of Simon) who was conspicuous in his time as the great student of sacred Hebrew literature, as the collector of the grave and short sentences of the wise men who went before him, and as himself uttering some things of his own understanding and judgment. But the characteristics of his work must be reserved for its appearance in the Greek form in which it is now known.

Jewish Colonies in Egypt
We turn from these brief and disjointed notices of the internal history of Palestine under the Ptolemies to the important Jewish settlement more directly connected with them in Egypt. It was directly to the east of Alexandria – close along the sea-shore, probably with a view to the convenience of their ablutions in the Mediterranean – that the Jewish colonists chiefly resided; and to this day the burial-ground of their race is on the sandy hillocks in the same situation. They were in such numbers as to be known by the name of The Tribe. They retained privileges on a level with the Macedonian settlers alleged to have been granted by Alexander. Now for the first time the commercial enterprise of the race found an outlet. They gradually became a separate community under their own chief, entitled Ethnarch or Alabarch, and represented more than a third of Alexandria, with a council corresponding to that which ultimately ruled at Jerusalem.

This was the only settlement of permanent interest. Under the Ptolemaean rule, other colonies may be traced here and there in insulated fragments. One was the band of Samaritans, who, still keeping up their deadly feud, retired to the Thebaid. Another was the group of anchorites by the lake Mareotis, forerunners of the parents of Christian monasticism. Another powerful community was settled at Cyrene, destined to react on the nation in Palestine by their special synagogue at Jerusalem (Acts 2:1; 6:1).

Leontopolis
Another, still in the future, but drawn by the same friendly influence of the Graeco-Egyptian dynasty, was the settlement at Leontopolis. In the subsequent troubles of Palestine, when it seemed that the Temple itself would perish, one of the High Priestly family, Nechoniah or Coniah (in Greek Onias) fled to Egypt and begged the loan of a deserted temple of Pasht, the Cat-Goddess, in the neighborhood of Heliopolis. There, with the military experience which he may have acquired in heading a band of troops in one of the Egyptian civil wars, he built a fortress and temple, which, although on a smaller scale, was to rival that of Jerusalem, where he and his sons, keeping up the martial traditions of the Levitical tribe, formed a powerful body of soldiery and assumed the name and habits of a camp. The general style of the sanctuary was apparently not Jewish but Egyptian. A huge tower (perhaps equivalent to the great gateway of Egyptian Temples) rose to the height of sixty cubits. There were no obelisks, but it was approached by the usual long colonnades of pillars. The altar alone resembled that of the Jewish temple. But instead of the candlestick, a golden chandelier was suspended from the roof by a golden chain. A circuit of brick walls, as in the adjacent sanctuary of Heliopolis, enclosed it, and the ruins of these it is that still form the three rugged sandhills known by the name of "the Mounds of the Jews". It was a bold attempt to form a new center of Judaism; and the attempt was supported by one of the earliest efforts to find in the poetic language of the ancient prophets a local, prosaic, and temporary application.

In the glowing prediction of the homage which Egypt should hereafter pay to Israel, Isaiah had expressed the hope that there should be five cities in Egypt speaking the language of Canaan and revering the Sacred Name, and that one of these should be the sacred City of the Sun (Is. 19:18, 19; "The city of the sun" – wrongly translated in the A.V. "the city of destruction"). What had been indicated then as the most surprising triumph – the conversion of the chief sanctuary of the old Egyptian worship to the true religion – was seized by Onias as a proof that in the neighborhood, if not within the walls, of the Sun City, which the Greeks called "Heliopolis" and which the Egyptians called "On", there should rise a temple of Jehovah. The very name of On was a likeness to his own name of Onias. The passage in Isaiah was further changed to give the city a name which more resembled the title of Jerusalem. As the City of the Palestinian sanctuary was called the Holy City, the City of Holiness, so this was supposed to have been foreseen as the Righteous City – the City of Righteousness (appears in the LXX translation of Is. 12:18, 19). Further, it was within view of that sacred college where according to Egyptian tradition Moses himself had studied. But a worship and system so elaborately built up on doubtful etymologies and plays on ambiguous words was not destined to long endurance; and, although an ample patrimony was granted by the Egyptian kings for the endowment of this new Pontificate, and although the territory round was long called the "Land of Onias", and the sanctuary lasted for three centuries, passing away under the pressure of the Romano government, and left no permanent trace even on the Alexandrian Jews. The failure of such a distorted prediction is a likeness of what may be in store for equally fanciful applications of sacred words and doubtful interpretations in more modern times.

It may be that round this center of ancient Jewish traditions, on the border of the desert secluded from the great world of Alexandria, was gathered the opposition to the Grecian learning which we faintly discern in the next century. But it only had a local and sectarian existence. The flow of the religious life of the new story of Israel in Egypt rolled on regardless of this artificial and insulated sanctuary. The presiding genius of Egyptian Judaism was not the priestly house of Onias, but the royal house of Ptolemy.

The Ptolemies
Over these Jewish colonists, as over their native Egyptian subjects, the Ptolemies, at least for the first four reigns, ruled with beneficent toleration. After the hard dominion of the Persian iconoclasts, the Egyptian priesthood welcomed them as deliverers. The temples were restored or rebuilt after the antique model. The names of the Grecian Kings and Queens were carved in hieroglyphics, and their figures painted on the Temple walls in the disguise of the Pharaohs. They became as Egyptians to the Egyptians, and to Jews they became almost as Jews, sending their accustomed sacrifice to the Temple of Jerusalem and patronizing with lands and privileges the Temple of Leontopolis (the one exception is Ptolemy Philopator, whose endeavor to enter the Temple and whose employment of the Indian punishment of trampling under the feet of enraged elephants is the subject of the third Book of Maccabees; but even these incidents terminate happily for the Jews). He is restrained from entering the Temple by Simon the Just; he is compelled to acknowledge the rights of the Alexandrian Jews by the reluctance of elephants; and this was commemorated by a festival like that of Purim. The Museum with its unique Library, the scholars who frequented the court (Euclid the geometrician, Apelles the painter, Eratosthenes the grammarian) brought the Grecian learning to the very doors of the Israelite community. In this fostering atmosphere there sprang up those influences which Alexandria forever exercised over the Jewish and thus over the Christian Church.

The Septuagint (LXX)
The first was the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek – the rise of what may properly be termed the Greek Bible.

As the meeting of the Greek Empire with the Jewish nation is presented to us in the legend of Alexander's interview with Jaddua, so the meeting of the two sacred languages of Greek and Hebrew is presented to us in the legend of the Seventy Translators. Two centuries later it was believed that in the reign of the second Ptolemy the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek was undertaken at Alexandria. It is perhaps probable that it sprang up spontaneously to supply the wants of Alexandrian Jews. But the Jewish community would not be satisfied with this homely origin. The story took two forms. One was that King Ptolemy Philadelphus, wishing to discover the difference between Jews and Samaritans, summoned five translators – three representing Samaritans, one Jew, and one assessor (the number five also appears in the Talmudic traditions. By tradition, two names were connected with the work, Aristobulus with Exodus, Lysimachus with Esther). The Samaritans undertook the Pentateuch, the Jew the later Books, and the King approved the Samaritan version. This was no doubt the Samaritan tradition. It points to the gradual growth of the work. It also may connect itself with the venerable High Priest Hezekiah, whom Hecataeus met in Egypt and who appears to have been the chief of the sacerdotal order, not in Jerusalem but in Samaria (note: no Jewish Hezekiah is known at this time. The Samaritan High Priest in Alexander's time was Hezekiah. Hecataeus never distinguishes between Jews and Samaritans).

The larger story is that of which the full account is given in the letter ascribed to Aristeas, a courtier of Ptolemy II. This account rose above the level of the sectarian differences of Jew and Samaritan, attaching itself to the wide sympathies of the great patrons of Gentile literature. Ptolemy Philadelphus (thus ran the tale) was resolved to enrich his new library by so important a treasure as an intelligible version of the sacred books of such a large class of his subjects. Seventy or seventy-two delegates were sent from the High Priest at Jerusalem – it may be, as in the story, in order to give six from each of the twelve tribes, or in order to correspond to the sum total of the Jewish Council, or in accordance with the mystic number which pervades this and other Eastern stories. A long catalogue of the splendid tables, cisterns, and bowls existed which Josephus describes as if he had seen them, and which are said to have been sent by Ptolemy at this time as presents to conciliate the Jewish High Priest to the work. A local tradition long pointed out the island of the Pharian lighthouse as the scene of their labors. There, it was believed, they pursued their work, withdrawn in that seagirt fortress from the turmoil of the streets of Alexandria, and with the opportunity of performing every morning their religious ablutions in the sea which washed their threshold – and on the shore of which, as late as the second century, were shown the remains of the seventy or the thirty-six cells in which the translators had been lodged, and in which (so the later Alexandrian tradition maintained) each produced by miracle exactly the same inspired version as all the rest, without one error or contradiction.

Like all such incidents of the contact between a narrower and a broader civilization, the event itself was by different portions or at different times of the Jewish community invested with totally contrary aspects.

On the one hand, it was regarded as a great calamity, equal to that of the worship of the Golden Calf. The day on which it was accomplished was believed to have been the beginning of a three-day preternatural darkness over the whole world and was commemorated as a day of fasting and humiliation (the fast-day was the 8th of Tebet [January]; because of their hatred of the Jewish translation, the Samaritans took the same view). It needs only slight evidence to convince us that such a feeling more or less widely-spread must have existed. It is the same instinct which to this hour makes it a sin, if not an impossibility, in the eyes of a devout Muslim to translate the Koran; which in the Christian Church assailed Jerome with the coarsest vituperation for venturing on a Latin version which differed from the Greek. To translate the Latin Scriptures into the languages of modern Europe was regarded by the Reformation as heresy; to revise the authorized version of the seventeenth century was regarded in England as a dangerous innovation; or in the Roman Church to correct the barbarous dialect of the Douay translation of the Vulgate or to admit to any errors in the text or the rendering of the Vulgate itself. In one and all of these cases the reluctance sprung from the same tenacious adherence to ancient and sacred forms – from the same unwillingness to admit the dislodgment of even the most flagrant inaccuracies when once familiarized by established use. But for all these venerable texts, even in some instances the Koran, this sentiment has been compelled to yield to the more generous desire of arriving at the hidden meaning of sacred truth – making that truth more widely known. So it was in the most eminent degree in the case of the Septuagint. Fictitious as it may be, the story of the splendor of the reception of the translators at Alexandria indicates the pride which was taken in the work (probability just the Pentateuch was translated under Ptolemy Philadelphus). The eagerness of the tradition to connect the translation with the Grecian king and his universal library shows how gladly it was welcomed as a bridge between the Jewish and Gentile world; the fantastic addition which was made in Christian times of the preternatural inspiration of the seventy translators, shows how readily the new takes the place of the old and exhibits the transference, the same reverence which has again and again occurred in the most striking form – it may even be of the same superstition for the new version as had formerly clung with exclusive attachment to the old.

Its Importance
If ever there was a translation which by its importance rose to a level with the original, it was this. It was not the original Hebrew but the Septuagint translation through which the religious truths of Judaism became known to the Greek and Roman. It was the Septuagint which was the Bible of the Evangelists and Apostles in the first century, and of the Christian Church for the first age of its existence, which is still the only recognized authorized text of the Eastern Church and the basis of the only authorized text of the Latin Church. Widely as it differs from the Hebrew Scriptures in form, substance, chronology, language; unequal, imperfect, grotesque as are its renderings, nevertheless, it has rivalled, if not superseded, those Scriptures themselves through large periods of ecclesiastical history. No doubt, this substitution was in great measure based on the fable of the miraculous accuracy of the translation, and has led to the strangest theological confusions in the treatment of the Bible by the older Churches – which thus claim the same authority for two contradictory texts, and avowedly prefer the translation to the original. But still, on the whole, in the triumph of the Septuagint the cause of freedom, of criticism, of charity also triumphed. No criticism need fear to handle freely the Sacred Volume, in which the Alexandrian translators ventured on such bold variations, accommodations, omissions, and insertions, with the applause of the Christian world from Irenaeus to Augustine. Whatever religious scruple is felt at circulating occasional errors in the hope of inculcating the general truth with which they have been entangled should disappear before the example of the authoritative and universal use of the Septuagint in early times, which differs far more widely from the original and is far more deeply imbued with the natural infirmity of translators than any other version of the Bible that has since appeared.

Its Peculiarities
Again, the gradual completion of the translation, dragging its slow length along for at least two centuries, is an encouragement to the laborious efforts of modern scholars, each adding something to the knowledge of the preceding time. In the interpretation of the Scriptures, the use to which the Seventy turned their knowledge of Egyptian localities and customs is a faint, yet sufficient stimulus to the duty of seeking light far and near. When the Greek translators stumble upon Hebrew words such as those describing the furniture of the Temple or the tunes of the Psalms, the honest silence with which they hold their pens, leaving the unintelligible phrases in their native obscurity unexplained is an example of the modest love of truth, capable of confessing its own ignorance – a modesty such as many interpreters have grievously lacked. If the noble army of translators, as they have sometimes been called, may look with affectionate veneration on Jerome's cell of Bethlehem, on Luther's study in the Castle of the Wartburg, on the Jerusalem Chamber, where occasionally the majestic language of the English Bible has been revised, yet the goal of their most sacred pilgrimage should be the narrow rocky islet of the Alexandrian harbor, where was kindled a brighter and more enduring beacon in the intellectual and religious sphere even than the world-renowned Pharos, which in the maritime world has been the parent of all the lights that from shore to shore and sea to sea have guided the mariners for two thousand years.

We do not propose to follow their labor into detail, or to give the various instances of the liberties taken with the sacred text, lengthening the chronology to suit the more exacting claims of Egyptian science, softening the anthropomorphic representations of the Divinity to meet the requirements of Grecian philosophy.

We shall give only one example of the connection of the translation with the Alexandrian Court and with Hellenic culture. There was a tradition in the Talmud that in the Pentateuch (Lev. 11:6; Deut. 14:7), in rendering the word Arnebeth (hare) not by lagos (the usual Greek word for hare) but by dasypus (hairy-foot), the Greek translators were influenced or controlled by the desire to avoid a homely use of the name of Lagus, the father of the Ptolemaean dynasty. The mere supposition of such a curtly concession on so minute a point implies a dependence on the Greek sovereign, which far exceeds even the dedication of the Authorized English Version to King James I, or Sixtus V's imperious preface to the Vulgate.

But, though it is hardly necessary to resort to so strange a hypothesis, the real explanation leads us to the intervention of another influence on the text more reasonable and equally curious. The substitution of the word dasypus for lagos was not uncommon at this time, but for its frequency there was a cause more interesting than the power of the Lagidae. The conquests of Alexander had contributed to the production of a more permanent monument of his progress than the dynasty of the Ptolemies. On the specimens sent home to his great teacher had been founded and published the greatest scientific work of ancient times, Aristotle's "History of Animals". In it the modern word dasypus had almost entirely superseded the older word lagos and therefore the translators at Alexandria might well have been expected to catch the new fashion. But there was an even more striking example of Aristotle's influence on this passage. In that same context the hare in Hebrew Scriptures is described as a ruminating animal. In the ancient world, before the birth of accurate observation, that which had the appearance of rumination was taken for the reality and so considered. But by the time that the Greek translators approached this text, the secret of the hare's habits had been disclosed by the natural history of Aristotle, and, accordingly, on this minute point arose the first direct conflict, often since repeated, between Theology and Science. The venerable translators who were at work, if so be, on the Pharos island, were too conscientious to reject so clear an evidence of the fact; but they were too timid to allow the contradiction to appear. Therefore, with the usual rashness of fear, they twice over boldly interpolated the word "not" into the sacred text, and thus, as they thought, reconciled it to science by reversing the special point of the passage (Lev. 11:5, 6). Since that time there have been other falsifications of Science to meet the demands of theology, but this was the first instance.

The Apocrypha
The appearance of the Septuagint translation was important not only in itself, but as affording a new opening for constant additions to the sacred volume. The Hebrew Literature had nearly come to an end. If here and there a fresh Hebrew book or fresh Hebrew Psalm might be added, their entrance was more or less covert, ambiguous, and questionable. But the Greek literature was still abounding, and into that vast world the Jewish race was now entering. With very few exceptions, from this time forward any new sacred book which should win its way must be part not of the Hebrew, but of the Greek Bible. The tents of Shem were closed, but the doors of Japheth were expanded with a never ending enlargement. The first pages of this Greek volume began with the Grecian translation of the Pentateuch; but its last pages were not closed till they had included the last of the writings which bore the name of St. John. This was the chief outward bond between the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. By this unity of the sacred language the beginning and end of the sacred literature were indissolubly linked together, and not only so, but by its intervention the gap between the Old and the New Testament was filled and their differences were veiled under the common garb of Greek. Into that vacant space, clothed in the same language, stole in those Grecian books, which in the Latin Church have been called Deuterocanonical, and in the Protestant Churches Apocryphal, but which in the early ages of Christianity were blended, under the common sanction of the Septuagint, with the earlier books which closed with Malachi, the Chronicles, or Daniel, according to the varying order in which the Hebrew books were arranged.

The introduction of these writings into the very heart of the ancient Scriptures has had wider consequences than is often recognized. It may be necessary to briefly give the history of the generic title of these books:

1. By the early Church they were (when not reckoned as Canonical) called Ecclesiastical, i.e., books read in public services of the Church.
2. By the Roman Catholic Church, at least since the Council of Trent, they have been called Deuterocanonical, a title of inferiority, expressing their relation in regard to the Hebrew books, but is hardly consistent with the entire equality with the Canonical books to which they have been raised by the Council of Trent and more recently by the Council of the Vatican.
3. By the Protestant Churches they have been called Apocryphal, a name which has passed through three phases: (a) A title of praise bestowed by the Gnostics on their own books of hidden wisdom; (b)A title of reproach bestowed by the early Church on the spurious Gospels and like literature, with the view of stigmatizing them with the same name as that applied to the Gnostic books; and (c) The title of the Deuterocanonical Books of the Old Testament, first given by Wycliffe, and finally adopted by Protestant Churches at the Reformation.

No doubt, in some respects it has had a debasing effect on the religious systems which have been founded on the mixed volume resulting from such additions. The books of this second Canon partook largely of the enfeebled style, the exaggerated rhetoric, the legendary extravagance, and on the other hand, the rigid exclusiveness, which characterized the history and literature of the nation after the return from the Captivity. Thus far, it was a true instinct which has caused the Rabbinical schools to denounce the perusal of these writings with a severity like that of the Roman Index. "He who studies the uncanonical books will have no portion in the world to come". "He who introduces into his house more than the twenty-four introduces confusion". And the like condemnation has been felt, if not expressed, by those Protestant Churches or teachers who have most eagerly excluded from use any Bible or Calendar that contains them. But there is another side to the question. These writings, if not deserving to be called "Canonical", as by the Church of Rome, or "inspired" though not canonical Scriptures, as by the Church of England, are invaluable for keeping alive not only the continuity of sacred literature, but the sense of the gradations of excellence even in sacred books; and thus serving as a perpetual protest against the uniform, rigorous, rigid, levelling theory, which has been the bane of all theology, and which has tended so greatly to obscure the true meaning and purpose even of the earlier Hebrew Scriptures.

The Books of the Apocrypha are of varying character and value. Some, like the Book of Judith, are apparently mere fables; some, like the additions to the Books of Ezra, Esther, and Daniel, are examples of the free and facile mode in which, at that time, the earlier sacred books were improved, modified, enlarged, and corrected by the Alexandrian critics. Some, like the Books of the Maccabees, are more or less exact attempts at contemporary or nearly contemporary history. Some, like the Psalter of Solomon, have never gained an entrance even into the outer court of sacred writings. Some, like the Second Book of Esdras and the Book of Enoch, have attained some Biblical authority but only within a very limited range. But there are two which tower above the rest, and which, even by those who most disparage the others, are held in reverential esteem. One is the recommendation of the theology of Palestine to Alexandria, the "Wisdom of the Son of Sirach"; the other is the recommendation of the theology of Alexandria to Palestine, the "Wisdom of Solomon".

These books are both in the same class of literature. They both attach themselves in the Hebrew Scriptures, not to the Prophetical or Historical or Poetical portions, but to those writings on which the influence of the external world had already made itself felt, the books which bear the name of Solomon. They both furnish links which connect the earlier Hebrew literature with that final outburst of religious teaching recorded in the Gospels and Epistles. The Parables and Discourses beside the Galilean Lake, the Epistles of James, John, and the unknown author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, have hardly any affinity with the style of Daniel, Malachi, Tobit or the Rabbinical schools, but they are the direct continuation, although in a more exalted form, of those two Apocryphal Books of Wisdom.

The Wisdom of the Son of Sirach (180 B.C.)
The Wisdoms of Joshua (or as the Greeks called him, Jesus), the Son of Sirach, was the first of those writings which, from the sanction given to them by the Church, were called "Ecclesiastical" as distinct from "Canonical", and thus took to itself the name "Ecclesiasticus", which properly belonged to them all. It was for the Jews of Alexandria first and then for the Christians, "The Church Book";the favorite book of ecclesiastical edification; the Whole Duty of Man, the Imitation – the summary of all virtues, as it was called in its original title.

132 B.C.
It must have acquired this reputation early. The grandson of its author arrived in Alexandria in the close of the troubled reign of Ptolemy Physcon – the second of those kings who were renowned among the Gentiles for bearing, seriously or ironically, the name of "benefactor" (Euergetes). When, among his countrymen in a foreign land, he discovered no slight difference of education, and at the same time a keen desire to become instructed in the customs of their fathers, he found no task more worthy of his labor, knowledge, and sleepless study than to translate into Greek this collection of all that was practical in the precepts and inspiring in the history of his people.

It is, perhaps, the only one of the Deuterocanonical books composed originally, not in Greek, but in Hebrew; and the translator knew well the difficulty of rendering the peculiarities of his native tongue into the fluent language of Alexandria (First Book of Maccabees and Judith may also be exceptions). It is the first reflection which we possess on the Old Testament Scriptures after the commencement of the formation of the Canon. The Law and the Prophets were already closed. The other books were, as the phrase implies, still regarded as an appendix, capable of additions, yet already beginning to be parted by an intelligible though invisible line from those of later date. The Son of Sirach had given much of himself to their perusal; he was, as we may say, the first Biblical student; but he felt that he still had something new to add, something old to collect. Like a great teacher of later times, he was as one born out of due time (1 Cor. 15:8). He had awakened last of all, as one that gathereth after the grape-gatherers; by the blessing of the Lord he profited and filled his wine-press like a gleaner of grapes. Like the grandfather and grandson, it was a noble ambition to carry into the minutest duties of daily life the principles of their ancient law – laboring not only for himself, but for all who seek learning.

It is one of the largest books in the whole Bible. It contains the first allusions to the earlier records of the Jewish race. The Psalms and occasionally the Prophets had touched on the history of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Samuel. But neither in Psalms, Prophets, Proverbs or history is there the slightest reference to the mystic opening of the Book of Genesis, which in Christian times has been the battle-field of  many a strife, theological, scientific, and critical. In passing allusions to the creation of Adam and the old giants, it is the Son of Sirach who is the first precursor of the Pelagian controversy, of the "Paradise Lost", of the Elohistic and Jehovistic theories.

Jerusalem is still the center and Palestine the horizon of his thoughts. The Priesthood, with their offerings, dues and stately appearance, are to him the most prominent figures of Jewish community. Nor is the modern institution of Scribes forgotten. He draws his images of grandeur from the cedars of Lebanon and the fir-trees that clothe the sides of Hermon, from the terebrinth with its spreading branches – his images of beauty from the palm-trees in the tropical heat of Engedi, or from the roses and lilies and fragrant shade by the well-watered gardens of Jericho. The drops of bitterness, which well up amid his exuberant flow of patriotic thanksgiving, are all discharged within that narrow range of vision which fixed his whole theological and national animosity on the three hostile tribes that penned in the little Jewish colony – Edomites on the south, Philistines on the west, and Samaritans on the north. In accordance with this local and almost provincial limitation is the absence of those wider Oriental or Western aspects which abound in other Canonical or Deuterocanonical books of this period. After Malachi, it is the one specimen during this period of a purely Palestinian treatise.

But the grandson, through whose careful translation alone it has been preserved, was not wrong in thinking that it had a sufficiently universal character to make it suitable for the vast complex world in which he found himself – in the capital of Alexander's dominions. While it is evident that the breath of Grecian spirit touched it at the core and raised it out of its Semitic atmosphere, still, one can hardly direct any Alexandrian influence in its style. To apply a well-known metaphor, the closed hand of the Hebrew proverb opened into the outstretched palm of Grecian rhetoric (See especially Ecclus. 38:24; 39:11). Although his birthplace and home were Jerusalem, the author was yet a traveler in foreign lands; he knew the value, though perhaps not actual experience, of "serving among great men and before princes"; he had "tried the good and the evil among men" (Ecclus. 39:4; 51:13).

In some respects the Book of the Son of Sirach is but a repetition of the ancient writings of Solomon. In some of its maxims it sinks below the dignity of those writings by the homeliness of its details (Ecclus. 8:11-19; 11:10; 12:2; 19:1; 29; 37:11)  for guidance of behavior at meals (Ecclus. 31:16), of commercial speculations, of social advancement. But its general tone is worthy of that first contact between the two great civilizations of the ancient world, and breathes a spirit which an Isaiah, a Sophocles or a Theophrastus would not have despised or condemned. There is not a word in it to countenance the minute casuistries of later Rabbis, or the metaphysical subtleties of later Alexandrians. It pours out its whole strength in discussing the conduct of human life, or the direction of the soul to noble aims. We find here full delineation of the idea of education through a slow, gradual process. "At first by crooked ways, then will she return, the 5 straight way, and comfort him, and show him her secrets" (Ecclus.4:17). "At the last thou shalt find her rest, and that shall be turned to thy joy. Then shall her fetters be a strong defense for thee, and her chains a robe of glory" (Ecclus. 6:28). Here is a pointed warning against spoiled children: "Cocker thy child, and he shall make thee afraid, play with him and he will bring thee to heaviness" (Ecclus. 30:9). Here is the measure of true nobleness: "It is not meet to despise a poor man that hath understanding, neither is it convenient to magnify a sinful man. Great men and judges and potentates shall be honoured, yet, is there none of them greater than he that feareth the Lord. To the slave that is wise shall they that are free do service, and he that hath knowledge will not grudge when he is reformed" (Ecclus. 10:23, 24). Here is the backbone of the honest love of truth: "In nowise speak against the truth, but be abashed of the error of thy ignorance." "Be not ashamed to confess thy faults, nor swim against the stream of conviction." "Strive for the truth unto death and the Lord shall fight for thee" (Ecclus. 4:25). Here is a tender compassion which reaches far into the future religion of mankind: "Let it not grieve thee to bow down thine ear to the poor and give him a friendly answer with gentleness. Be as a father to the fatherless, and instead of a husband to the widow; so shalt thou be as the son of the Most High and He shall love thee more than thy mother doth" (Ecclus. 4:8, 10). While there is at times the mournful and hopeless view of life and death which pervades the earlier "Preacher" (Ecclus. 41:1), still, on the whole the tone is one of vigorous, magnanimous action.

He must have been a delightful teacher who could write of filial affection and friendship in all its forms, and rise above the harshness of relations with his slaves (Ecclus. 41:1). He must have seen deep into the problems of social life, contrasting as keenly as Bacon or Goethe the judgments of the uneducated many and the highly-educated few. Yet, in the midst of these homely and varied experiences which belong only to the imitator of the wise King, a voice as of the Prophet and Psalmist is still heard. Again and again the strain is raised, such as Amos and Isaiah had lifted up, not the less impressive for the quiet soberness with which it is urged. It is the same doctrine of the substitution of the moral duties for the ceremonial. The true "atonement" for sins is declared to be, not the sacrifices in the Temple courts, but "the honor to parents", "the giving of alms" – the trust in "oblations", the recklessness of reliance on the mere mercy of God are solemnly discountenanced. "He that requiteth a good turn offereth fine flour; and he that giveth alms sacrificeth praise. To depart from unrighteousness is propitiation" (Ecclus. 3:3, 4, 30; 5:5, 6: 7:9, 10; 35:1-7). And underneath all this there still burns the gentle flame of hope and resignation. "Look at the generations of old and see [it is the passage which shone before the face of Bunyan] did ever any trust in the Lord and were confounded? As His majesty is so is His mercy" (Ecclus. 2:4-18). Both by example and definition there is no more exalted description of the true greatness of prayer (Ecclus. 23:1-6; 35:17).

There is yet another characteristic of the Son of Sirach, more peculiarly his own. As the philosophy of the Hebrew Scriptures is contained in the larger part of the book (possibly from older documents) so their poetry finds a voice in the conclusion, which is beyond question original. It is the song of praise (Ecclus. 42:15 through 50:29) which, beginning with the glories of the Creation, breaks forth into that Hymn of the Forefathers, as it is called in its ancient title to which there is no parallel in the Old Testament, but of which the catalogue of the worthies of faith in the Epistle to the Hebrews is similar. Here and here only is a full expression given to that natural instinct of reverence for the mighty dead, which has in these striking words been heard from generation to generation in the festivals of the great benefactors of Christendom, or when the illustrious of the earth are committed to the grave.

"Let us now praise famous men and the fathers that begat us" (Ecclus. 44:1). "Their bodies are buried in peace, but their name liveth for evermore" (Ecclus. 44:14). It begins with the unknown sages of antiquity; it closes with the "Ultimus Judarorum" as it seemed, of his own generation, Simon the Just. Well might the grandson delight to render into Greek for the countrymen of Pindar and Pericles a roll of heroes nobler than were ever commemorated at the Isthmian games or in the Athenian Ceramicus.

The Book of Wisdom
The "Wisdom of the Son of Sirach" was followed, at how long an interval we know not, by the "Wisdom of Solomon". The former book was the expression of a sage at Jerusalem with a tincture of Alexandrian learning. The latter book was the expression of an Alexandrian sage presenting his Grecian ideas under the forms of Jewish history.

With him we feel the oppressive atmosphere of the elaborate Egyptian idolatry. Through his eyes we see the ships passing along the Mediterranean waters into the Alexandrian harbor. We trace the footprint of Aristotle in the word by word enumeration of the four great ethical virtues. We recognize the rhetoric of the Grecian sophists in the Ptolemaean Court; we are present at the luxurious banquets and lax discussions of the neighboring philosophers of Cyrene. But in the midst of this Gentile scenery there is a voice which speaks to this new world with the authority of ancient prophets. The book is a signal instance of the custom of placing modern untried writings under the shelter of some venerable authority prevalent both in the Jewish and the Grecian world in the two centuries before the Christian era. No name appeared for this purpose as weighty as that of the master of the wisdom of Israel. Solomon is evoked from the dead past to address the living rulers of mankind. "Love righteousness ye that are judges of the earth. Hear, therefore, O ye kings, and understand; for your power is given unto you of the Lord, and your dominion from the Most High, who shall try your works and search out your counsels. Being ministers of His kingdom, ye have not judged aright, nor kept the law, nor walked after the counsel of God" (Wisdom 1:2; 6:1, 3, 4). It is the first strong expression, uttered with the combined force of Greek freedom and Hebrew solemnity, not of the Divine right, but of the Divine duty, of kings; and it might well be provoked by the spectacle of the corrupt rulers whether of the Egyptian or Syrian dynasties. The importance of wisdom and the value of justice had often been set forth before, both by Jew and Greek. But there is a wider and more tender grasp of the whole complex relation of intellectual and moral excellence, and therefore of the whole ideal of true religion, in the indications which this Book contains of the universal workings of the Divine Mind in the heart of man.

"Love is the care of education; love is the keeping of wisdom. The just man maketh his boast that God is his father, and that he is the son of God. The Spirit of the Lord filleth the world. Thou sparest all, for they are thine, O Lord, thou lover of souls. Thine incorruptible Spirit filleth all things. Thy providence, O Father, governeth the world. Yet they were unto themselves more grievous than the darkness" (Wisdom 17:21). "The Holy Spirit of education". "An understanding spirit, holy, one only, manifold, subtile, flexible, transparent, undefiled, plain, not subject to hurt, loving the thing that is good, quick, which cannot be hindered, ready to do good, kind to man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having all power, overseeing all things and going through all spirits however pure, intelligent and subtile, more moving than any motion, passing through all things by reason of her pureness; for she is the breath of the power of God, and an influence flowing from the genuine glory of the Almighty; therefore no defiled thing can fall into her: the lightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the energy of God, and the image of His goodness; being but one, she can do all things: and, remaining in herself, she maketh all things new, and, in all ages entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God and prophets" (Wisdom 7:22-27).

The conception of "Wisdom" as the personified idea of the mind in God, in creation (a mirror in which the world and mankind are ever present to Him) is in part derived from the ancient Solomonian theology, but it is colored by the Platonic doctrine, and lends itself to the wide development opened by the doctrine of "the Word" in Christian theology, and by the doctrine of "Law" in European philosophy. The very phrases, "Love or Charity", "Holy Spirit", "only begotten", "manifold", "philanthropic", "Providence", "the Fatherhood of God", occur here in the Greek Bible, some of them in the Greek language, for the first time; and do not appear again till we find them in the New Testament. No wonder that this singular book has been ascribed to Philo, or to that other Jew of Alexandria, who was "eloquent and mighty in the Scriptures" (Acts 18:24), and in whom Luther saw as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. No wonder that Ewald, with his usual insight, declares that "in the deep glow which, with all its apparent tranquility, streams through its veins, in the nervous energy of its proverbial style, in the depths of its representations, we have a premonition of John; and in the conception of heathenism a preparation for Paul, like a warm rustle of spring, ere the time is fully come".

Gladstone, the eminent statesman, in one of his most generous moods, presented an elaborate description of Wisdom. He spoke of "an exact anticipation of the liberal aspect of true Religion which flourishes not by a policy of isolation, but by filling itself with a humane and genial warmth, in close sympathy with every true instinct and need of men, regardful of the just titles of every faculty of his nature, apt to associate with and make its own all, under whatever name, which goes to enrich and enlarge the patrimony of the race" (address to the University of Edinburgh on the Influence of Greece, 1865).

These preluding's of a high philosophy and faith, whether two centuries before or close upon the dawn of the new era, are, in any case, the genuine product of Alexandrian Judaism – the union of Greek and Hebrew thought. And in one special quarter of the religious horizon there is a revelation which this unknown author is the first to proclaim, with the authority of firm conviction and deep insight, whether to the Gentile or the Jew, namely, the revelation of "the hope full of immortality", "the immortality of righteousness" (Wisdom 3:4; 1:15). In the Psalmists and Prophets there had been bright anticipations of such a hope, inseparable from their unfailing assurance of the power and goodness of the Eternal. But it rarely took the form of a positive, distinct assertion. In the Grecian world a vast step forward was taken in the Platonic representations of the last teachings of Socrates. At last the seed thus sown by the doctrine of Athenian philosophy fell on the prolific soil of a Hebrew faith, and struck root downward to a depth from which it has never since been eradicated, and bore fruit upward which has sustained the moral life of Christendom to this hour. Nor is it only the force and pathos with which this truth of a future existence is urged, but the grounds on which it is based, filling the soul and intensify the teaching of this Jewish Phaedo. It is founded on those two convictions, which, similar to the most philosophic and most simple minds, still seem the most cogent; the imperfection of a good man's existence if limited to this present life and the firm grasp on the Divine perfections. "The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God." "In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die; but they are in peace". "He, being made perfect in a short time, fulfilled a long time". "God created man to be immortal, and made him an image of His own eternity. To know God is perfect righteousness. To know His power is the root of immortality" (Wisdom 3:2; 4:13; 5:15; 15:3).

Aristobulus (180 B.C.)
There is yet one more expansion of the limits of sacred literature into the world of general culture. The Hebrew antagonism to the Gentile polytheism is still brought out strongly in Baruch and the Greek Daniel. But now for the first time we clearly see not only the imperceptible influence of one upon the other, but the avowed recognition of the religious excellence of each.

This tendency is summed up in one name, now almost forgotten, possibly used as a mask for writings of a somewhat later age, but of the highest eminence at the time and standing at the fountainhead of two vast streams of thought, of which the effects on theology have never ceased. In a critical moment in the fate of the Jews of Palestine they are represented as addressing a letter to "Aristobulus, master of King Ptolemy, and of the stock of the anointed priests" (Macc. 1:10). This was Aristobulus (His Hebrew name was probably Judas), first of that name which afterwards became so common, himself chief of the Jewish community at Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy VII, whose instructor he had become. He is one of those mysterious personages, of whom history speaks little, yet whose importance is beyond proportion to the small space which they appear to occupy (for arguments against the genuineness of the Aristobulian writings see Kuenen 3:207). There were no doubt others who endeavored to blend into one the two literatures that met under the shadow of the Alexandrian Museum. As a point of interest, the Jewish historians of this period at Alexandria were Demetrius, Eupolemus, Artapanus, Cleodemus, and Jason of Cyrene. The Jewish poets were Ezekiel, Philo the Elder, and Theodotus. Some rewrote the story of Israel in the verse of Grecian epic or tragedy. Some interwove with the sacred narrative the traditions of Egypt and Chaldaea. But it was Aristobulus who, as far as we know, first made this reconciliation his deliberate and avowed object.

His Endeavor to Hebraise Grecian Literature
Unlike most of the later Alexandrian scholars, he was a disciple, not of Plato, but of Aristotle. The master of Alexander still held sway in Alexander's city. Under this potent influence, Aristobulus was determined to find the Hebrew religion in the Greek philosophy. He was also determined to find the Greek philosophy in the Hebrew Scriptures. In each of these enterprises there was a noble motive, but a dangerous method. In the attempt to find the Hebrew truth in the Greek he was fired, as well as many a devout Jew may also have been, clinging to a desire to claim an affinity with that which was deemed most sacred in the Jewish faith now for the first time opening in that glorious literature on the Oriental horizon. It was like the Renaissance of the same literature after the night of the Middle Ages. Like the medieval ecclesiastic, the Jewish priest was ravished with the beauty of the new vision and longed to make it his own. But the means by which he endeavored to cross the gulf which parted them was

A fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in th' eclipse, and rigged with curses dark.

Under probably an unconscious delusion, like many Jewish and Christian theologians afterwards, he persuaded himself that the identity between some of the most characteristic features of the two literatures sprang, not from the native likeness which exists between all things true and beautiful, but from the fact, as he alleged, that the one was borrowed from the other; that the sages and poets of Grecian antiquity had plagiarized their best parts from Moses or Solomon or Jeremiah. And then, with the facile descent of error, he labored to strengthen his cause by the deliberate falsification of Greek literature, sometimes by inventing whole passages, sometimes by interpolating occasional fragments, in which the ancient Gentile poets should be made to express the elevated sentiments of Hebrew monotheism.

Orpheus
Of the venerable names, that which lent itself most easily to this deception was Orpheus, lost in the mists of mythology, yet still living by the natural pathos and inherent wisdom of his story. It was alleged he had met Moses (the Greek Musaeus) in Egypt, and hence the Orphic poems which contained so much of the Mosaic cosmogony. As deeply as the course of true philosophy and history was colored and perverted by this double falsehood, still, it contained within it profound truth which in after times gradually faded away, to be revived in our own age, that the comparison of the mythologies of different ages reveals to us the same Divinity, the same morality, "in sundry times and in divers manners", throughout all their various forms. And that beautiful legend which Aristobulus chose as representing their union (the figure of Orpheus taming the savage and bestial natures by the celestial harmony of his lyre) passed into the imagery of the first Christians to express almost without a figure the reconciliation of the Pagan to the Christian World, as seen represented in the paintings of the Roman Catacombs or in the Chapel of Alexander Severus.

The Sibyls (165 B.C. or 124 B.C.)
Another name, which, if not Aristobulus himself, a contemporary or successor borrowed for the purpose of winning the favor, not only of the Greek, but of the now rising Roman world, was that of the Sibyls. Either under the seventh or the eighth Ptolemy there appeared at Alexandria the oldest of the Sibylline oracles, bearing the name or of the Erythraean Sibyl, which, containing the past history and the dim forebodings of the future, imposed equally on the Greek, Jewish, and Christian world and almost added another book to the Canon. When Thomas of Celano composed the grandest hymn of the Latin Church he did not scruple to place the Sibyl on a level with David; and when Michel Angelo adorned the roof of the Sistine Chapel, the figures of the weird sisters of Pagan antiquity are as prominent as the seers of Israel and Judah. Their union was the result of the bold stroke of an Alexandrian Jew; but it kept alive, till the time when comparative theology claimed the just rights for the old Creeds of the world, the important truth which a more isolated theology overlooked, that those rights existed and must not be ignored.

His Endeavor to Idealize the Hebrew Scriptures
In like manner, the wish to find the grace and freedom of Grecian literature in the Hebrew Scriptures was prompted by the natural desire to make the True Religion embrace all that was best in the ideas now for the first time revealed to Israel from beyond the sea. Here again, Aristobulus embarked on a method of reconciliation, which, although in his hands, as far as we know, it rarely passed the limits of reasonable exposition, was destined to grow into disproportionate magnitude and exercise a baneful influence over the theology of nearly two thousand years. He was the inventor of allegorical interpretation. For himself it was little if anything more than the sublime maxim that the spirit and not the letter is the essence of every great and good utterance; and that, especially in treating of the Divine and of the Unseen, metaphors must not be pressed into facts nor rhetoric transformed into logic. In the hands of his followers, this just principle was perverted into a system by which the historical, and therefore the real, meaning of the Sacred Books was made to give way to every fanciful meaning which could be attached to the words, numbers, or statements contained in them, however remote.

Aristobulus was the mental ancestor of Philo, and though with a yet wider spiritual insight, Philo was the immediate parent of that fantastic theology which to most of the Fathers and of the Schoolmen took the place of the reasonable and critical interpretation of all the Scriptures of the Old Testament and much of the New. Yet, still, even here it must be borne in mind that the first origin of the allegorical interpretation lay in the sincere and laudable effort to extract from the coarse materials of primitive imagery the more elevated truths which often lay wrapped up in them, to draw out the ethical and the spiritual elements of the Bible and to discard those which were temporary and accidental. In this sense, if Aristobulus is responsible for the extravagances of Philo, Origen, or Cocceius, he may also claim the glory of having first led the way in the road trodden long afterwards by his own countrymen Maimonides and Spinoza, and by the Christian followers of the rational theology of Hooker, Cudworth, and Coleridge, Herder, Schleiermacher, and Hegel. He was the first to start what Milman called "thegreat religious problem – the discovery, if possible, of a test by which we may discern what are the eternal and irrepealable truths of the Bible, what the imaginative vesture, the framework, in which those truths are set forth in the Hebrew and even in the Christian Scriptures".

Authorities:
Thomas Arnold, History of Rome
Downers Grove, Dictionary of the Bible
Plutarch, Alexander
Hartwig Derenbourg, Histoire de la Palestine
Georg Heinrich August von Ewald, History of Israel
Abraham Kuenen, Religion of Israel to the Fall of the Jewish State
George Grote, History of Greece
Henry Hart Milman, Annals of St. Paul’s
Samuel Sharpe, History of Egypt Under the Ptolemies
William Surenhusius, Mischna of the Jews
Clermont Ganneau, Revue Archeologique
Benjamin Jowett, Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles, Vol. II
Henry Baker Tristram, The Land of Israel
Hans Herzfeld, Geschichte
Humphrey Hody, De Bibliorum Textibus Originalibus
Justin Martyr, Cohort. ad Graces
Brooke Foss Westcott, The Bible in the Church
Henry Hart Milman, Annals of St. Paul's
David Roberts, The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, & Nubia
Alexander Roberts, Greek the Language of Christ and His Apostles
Titus Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews
Aristotle, History of Animals
John J. I. Dollinger, The Gentile and The Jew
Michel Nicolas, Des doctrines religieuses des Juifs
Alfred Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social Life
Alfred Edersheim, The Temple
Morris Jacob Raphall, Post-Biblical History of the Jews
Adriaan Reland, Palaestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrate

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