Before resuming the story of Judea under the procurators, let us take another survey of Jews and Judaism in lands outside of Palestine. The voluntary dispersion still went on. The Jews were now scattered over all the Roman Empire, which included Asiatic and European lands from Syria to Spain. We also find our ancestors, at the beginning of the Christian era, in Arabia and in Parthia, an Asiatic kingdom south of the Caspian Sea. But, however widely scattered, religion was the bond of union and Jerusalem the spiritual centre. From distant lands many would from time to time make pilgrimages to the Temple. The attitude of the heathen world was on the whole not unfriendly to the Jews. They were disliked for their rejection of the heathen gods, for their aloofness, their stern morality, their sobriety, and their material success; while their exclusiveness--partly but not wholly justifiable--led to the erroneous supposition that they were hostile to mankind. But the Jews of the Diaspora were less exclusive and more tolerant than those of Judea. This was particularly true of Alexandria, capital of Egypt, now part of the Roman Empire. There had existed here--apart from occasional outbursts of racial antagonism among the populace, a cordial interchange of ideas in which the Jews met the Greeks more than half way. (chaps. ii and vi.) The Jews admired the culture of the educated Greeks and felt drawn toward the lofty philosophy of Plato, the nearest Greek approach to the monotheism and morality of the Hebrews. The broadening effect of this infusion of Greek thought, gave to Judaism in Alexandria a distinct character, and it came to be known as Hellenistic Judaism, and its espousers, Hellenistic Jews. We have used the term Hellenist in an earlier chapter, in a bad sense as descriptive of Jews who yielded to those Greek influences that were pagan, to the detriment of Judaism. Here we apply the term in a good sense to those who were open to Greek influences that were intellectual, to the advantage of Judaism. We have already marked the effect of Greek thought in some of the Apocryphal writings, particularly in the "Wisdom of Solomon." Appreciating the metaphysics of the Greek philosophers, the Jewish Hellenists were anxious to bring home to the Greeks and to others the spiritual and moral truths of Judaism. Jewish Missionaries.