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 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
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