=4. Jews in Egypt and Syria.=――Alexandria, the capital of Egypt, and Antioch, the capital of Syria, at this period took rank with Rome in all the arts of civilisation; and in science, and in philosophy, and in commerce, the Jews were in no wise behind their neighbours. Egypt had at this time a great number of Jewish inhabitants, perhaps a million altogether. They were artisans and merchants for the most part, but there was a goodly sprinkling too of soldiers and of scholars. And to the capital came, as it were, the cream of all the cultivation of the country. The Alexandrian philosopher Philo, who has so wide a classical reputation, was a Jew, not only by race, but by conviction and sympathy. He was born about the year 1 C.E. Both in Egypt and in Syria the civilisation was wholly Greek, and the Greeks were what is called pagans or heathens. Now there are pagans and pagans. The cannibals who murdered poor Captain Cook were one sort; these were not at all of that kind. The Greeks were cultivated, delightful, attractive heathens, and the science and philosophy, and the charm and polish, that the Jews of Egypt and of Syria gained from their intercourse with the Greeks was of distinct benefit to them. The drawback of it all, the weak point, was of course the paganism, which proved almost as catching as the polish. Greek Jews grew to be different from Palestinian Jews. To the Palestinian Jews, the Law, in sober truth, was ‘a light,’ and the commandment ‘a lamp.’ They hungered after no other ‘wisdom;’ and although its paths were no longer ‘the paths of peace,’ its ‘ways’ to them were ‘ways of pleasantness,’ and often the only ways of pleasantness they knew or cared to know. Greek Jews would have said, perhaps, that they took broader views of Judaism. They certainly took views broad enough to overlook a good deal, and their wide way of regarding things made them a trifle inexact about ancient landmarks. To Grecianised Jews the rigid practices of Judaism had become a little irksome, and the mystical rites of paganism a little attractive.