What then, was Wisdom’s opponent? Not Folly in the perennial sense, else where was the novelty of the situation? The foe was Folly masquerading as Wisdom, a specious spurious Wisdom which, said the Jewish moralists, despite appearances was No-Wisdom. But if it was not the reality, it was very like it; for the false Wisdom was beautiful, brilliant, and exceedingly effective, had all the rights of sovereignty save one, all the qualities of permanence save one--a firm basis in morality. It lacked only the “fear of the Lord,” which the Jew defined as “to depart from evil,” and which he held to be the one possible foundation for the truly wise life. Not having that, it was but the devil robed as an angel of light, Folly of Follies, a Temple of Wisdom founded upon the sand. In order to do justice to the efforts made by the Jews of the third and second centuries B.C. to maintain an intellectual, moral and spiritual independence in face of the new learning, or rather the new manner of life we are about to describe, it is necessary to appreciate not only the force of the attack but also the limited resources of the defence. Let us begin therefore by striving to realise the position of the Palestinian Jews in the ancient world.[39] The overwhelming religious importance of the Jews has so distorted the proportions of that world that even the professed student of antiquity finds it difficult to recover the true perspective and realise their geographical and historical insignificance. Without pausing to reflect, answer this question, “Which were the chief nations of antiquity?” “The Jews, the Greeks, the Romans,” is perhaps the reply that would rise most readily to your lips. But as well might one classify the inhabitants of the modern Western world into Manxmen, Europeans, and Americans! “Which were the famous countries of the pre-Christian era?” “Palestine, Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia,” might be our response. But the Egyptians and Babylonians did not hang with breathless interest on the fortunes of Palestine, as we are naturally prone to imagine. They cared no more for the fate of Jerusalem than modern Europe does for the fortunes of Monaco. Now and again a king of Egypt marching north along the Philistine plain, or a grand monarch of Babylon, sweeping south to the borders of Nile, might turn aside a fraction of his host to ravage and overcome the Judæan highlands. But, as a rule, Jerusalem, not being on the main track of conquest, was not vitally affected by the coming and going of the huge armies that issued periodically from the northern and southern Empires.