The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

V. Alexandria-Intellectual Center of Learned World

1. ALEXANDER’S VISION OF GREEK INTELLECTUAL DOMINANCE

In his subjugation of the Persian world Alexander the Great simultaneously brought the Jewish race under Grecian rule. His ambitious goal was that the genius of Greece should ultimately infuse all civilizations, first with the Greek language and then its literature, customs, and philosophy. CFF1 647.2

To this end he founded the city of Alexandria, which became not only the crossroads and “mixing bowl” of the nations, and a center of political power, commerce, and wealth, but the hub of literary and scientific development. Alexander envisioned it as the intellectual metropolis of the learned world. Scores of Greek cities developed around the Mediterranean basin, and hosts of Jews swarmed to these cities. CFF1 647.3

2. PTOLEMIES AND SELEUCIDS STRUGGLE FOR MASTERY

After Alexander’s death the struggle for mastery soon narrowed down to the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria. The Ptolemies transferred more than one hundred thousand Jews into Egypt, which figure grew to a million by the time of Christ. These exiles were thrust into a new environment, a new language, and the involvements of a new Greek philosophy. In the market places they heard men discussing the lofty idealism and intriguing philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno. In time they began to feel the pull and the power of the surrounding Greek intellectualism, with its focal point in Alexandria. They studied its language, its history, and its philosophy, and were moved thereby. CFF1 647.4

Picture 5: Alexandrian Library:
In the Vast Alexandrian Library, With Its Amazing Assemblage of Scrolls, Hebrew Students Were Inducted Into Greek Philosophy.
Page 647

But the Jews of Palestine, caught between two fires, remained conservative and traditional. Thus a definite cleavage developed, Palestinian Judaism maintaining independence of thought, with views definitely, if not radically, different from the later Alexandrian Jews with their Platonic anthropology. CFF1 648.1

The Syrian tyranny and the accession of Antiochus (IV) Epiphanes marked a period of anguish for the Jews. We repeat, for emphasis, that Antiochus suppressed the Jewish religion, massacred the Jews, pillaged the Temple of its treasures, turned it over to the worship of Zeus, prohibited all sacrifices and services under pain of death, and caused swine’s flesh to be offered on the altar. He transformed Jerusalem into a Greek city, garrisoned by Syrians. But under the Maccabean revolt the Temple services were restored by the Jewish patriots. CFF1 648.2

3. HEBREW STUDENTS INDUCTED INTO GREEK LEARNING

Meantime Alexandria was not only the meeting place of Europe, Asia, and Africa but also to a large extent the focal point of western Judaism. Alexandria’s vast library of more than a half million papyrus rolls represented the accumulated learning of the nations. Its academies, its vast museum (actually a royal university), its halls of philosophy, and school of medicine attracted scholars from all over the world, many thousands converging there from all lands. Historians, poets, and philosophers came to sit at the feet of Greek masters. CFF1 649.1

And here also in the multiple halls of the library and university Hebrew students read Greek philosophy and poetry. Inevitably yet imperceptibly the charm and brilliance of Hellenism began to captivate the mind of the Alexandrian Jews. After the Greek language was adopted by them it soon became necessary for the Scriptures to be translated into the Greek Septuagint. This, be it noted, was begun under the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, which translation became a sort of “people’s Bible” for the Jews of the Dispersion. CFF1 649.2

The next step was to attempt to explain Judaism to the Greeks—to present an apologetic for its faith, so as to appeal to Greek thought. This took the form of such books as Ecclesiasticus, written originally in Hebrew by Jesus the son of Sira, and translated into Greek by his grandson, probably about 132 B.C.; the Books of the Maccabees, 2 Enoch (the Slavonic Book of Enoch). The Sibylline Oracles sought to parallel current heathen myths with the stories of the Old Testament, but tinctured with Hellenic terms. This literature was a strange commingling of Platonic, Jewish, Rabbinic, Socratic, and Egyptian elements. CFF1 649.3