[74] Athenian colonists were settled in the Nile delta in the seventh century B.C. at latest, and at an even earlier date intercourse had been maintained between Greece and Egypt by the medium of Greek traders to the Nile, and Greek mercenaries in the Egyptian service. The cult of Isis was introduced into Attica, at the Peiraios, in the fourth century B.C. (Foucart, _Associations réligieuses_, etc., p. 83), and extended over the Grecian islands and the mainlands of Greece and Ionia. [75] Budge, _Book of the Dead_, 1901, 1. lxv., and _Ib._ lxvii. _sqq._ Le Page Renouf, _Hibbert Lectures_, 1879, pp. 180-1. [76] According to one Rabbi Leo, the wicked are tortured by fire and otherwise, some without hope of remission, others for a time only.--E. Cowper, _Apocryphal Gospels_, Introduction, lxviii. [77] At a somewhat later date, the doctrine of the end of the world by fire, held by many of the Stoics who, in the first century of the Empire, represented the best and most serious side of Pagan thought, would appear to have encouraged the bent of Christian teaching in that direction rather by familiarising the subject to men’s minds than by the contribution of any new matter. [78] The speculative writings of the Rabbis belong to a time when the Jewish schools of learning had fallen under the spell of Hellenism. So preponderating was the influence of the latter that Professor Percy Gardner appears inclined to trace the entire Hades theory to the Orphic rites, and suggests a ‘great probability that the Christian doctrine of the Descent into Hades, together with the imagery in which the future world was presented to the early Christian imagination, was derived neither from a Christian nor a Jewish, nor even a Hellenic source, but from the mystical lore of Dionysos and Orpheus.’--_Contemporary Review_, March 1895. So Mr. Alfred Nutt, speaking of the Elysium of the Christian apocryphal writers, considers that the ‘source must be sought for not in Jewish but in Greek conceptions,’ and that the Christian Heaven derives immediately from the Hellenic one.--_Voyage of Bran_, i. 256, and see ch. xi. generally. With all respect to these eminent authorities, I would submit that it would be going too far absolutely to exclude from those parts of late Jewish and early Christian eschatology which deal with the theory of Hades, including the Descent thither, and with the description of Elysium, all indebtedness to the Oriental creeds which have contributed so much to that eschatology in other respects. With this reservation, we may readily agree with Mr. Nutt that ‘Christian eschatology, as so much else of Christian doctrine, is emphatically a product of the fertilising influence of Hellenic philosophy and religion upon Eastern thought and fancy’ (_op. cit._, p. 281); only contending that Eastern thought and fancy contributed much of the raw material. [79] Le Page Renouf, _op. cit._, p. 183.