The civilization of Europe and America is composed of elements of many different kinds and of various origin. Most of the beginnings cannot be recovered within the limits of recorded history. We do not know where and when a great many of our fundamental institutions arose, and about them we are reduced to conjectures that are sometimes frankly improbable. But about a great many elements of our civilization, and precisely those upon which we base our claim to be called civilized—indeed, which give us the word and the concept of civic life—we know relatively a great deal, and we know that they originated on the eastern shores of the large landlocked sea known as the Mediterranean.

We are beginning to be aware that the process of developing these elements was much longer than we had been accustomed to believe. Many races and several millennia seem to have elaborated slowly the institutions that older historians were prepared to regard as the conscious contrivance of a single epoch. But even if increasing archeological research shall render us more familiar than we are with Pelasgians, Myceneans, Minoans, Aegeans, it is not likely that the claims of two historic peoples to have founded European civilization will be seriously impugned. These are the Romans and 14the Greeks. To these must be added another people, the Jews, whose contribution to civilization was no less real and lasting.

The Greeks and Romans have left descendants only in a qualified sense. There are no doubt thousands of individuals now living who are the actual descendants of the kinsmen and contemporaries of the great names in Greek and Roman history; but these individuals are widely scattered, and are united by national and racial bonds with thousands of individuals not so descended, from whom they have become wholly indistinguishable. We have documentary evidence of great masses of other races, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Semitic, entering into the territory occupied by Greeks and Romans and mingling with them, and to this evidence is added the confirmation of anthropological researches. This fact has made it possible to consider Greek and Roman history objectively. Only rarely can investigators be found who feel more than a very diluted pride in the achievements of peoples so dubiously connected with themselves. It is therefore with increasing clarity of vision that we are ordering the large body of facts we already know about Greeks and Romans, and are gathering them in constantly broadening categories.

That unfortunately is not the case with the Jews. Here, too, racial admixture was present, but it never took place on a large scale at any one time, and may always have remained exceptional. However that may be, common belief both among Jews and non-Jews holds very strongly the view that the Jews of to-day are 15the lineal descendants of the community reorganized by Ezra, nor is it likely that this belief would be seriously modified by much stronger evidence to the contrary than has yet been adduced.[1] The result has been that the place of the Jews in history has been determined upon the basis of institutions avowedly hostile to them. It may be said that historians have introduced the Jews as a point of departure for Christianity, and have not otherwise concerned themselves with them.

There was a time when Greek and Roman and Jew were in contact. What was the nature of that contact? What were its results? What were the mutual impressions made by all three of them on one another? The usual answer has been largely a transference of modern attitudes to ancient times. Is another answer possible? Do the materials at our disposal permit us to arrive at a firmer and better conclusion?

It is necessary first to know the conditions of our inquiry. The period that we must partially analyze extends from the end of the Babylonian Captivity to the establishment of Christianity—roughly from about 450 B.C.E. to 350 C.E., some seven or eight hundred years.

The time limits are of course arbitrary. The contact with Greeks may have begun before the earlier of the two limits, and the relations of the Jews with both Greeks and Romans certainly did not cease with either Constantine or Theodosius. However, it was during the years that followed the return from the Exile that much of the equipment was prepared with which the 16Jew actually met the Greek, and, on the other hand, the relations of Christian Rome to the Jews were determined by quite different considerations from those that governed Pagan Rome. It is at this point accordingly that a study of the Jews among the Greeks and Romans may properly end.
The Sources

Even for laymen it has become a matter of great interest to know upon what material the statements are based which scientists and scholars present to them. It is part perhaps of the general skepticism that has displaced the abundant faith of past generations in the printed word. For that reason what the sources are from which we must obtain the statements that we shall make here, will be briefly indicated below.

First we have a number of Greek and Latin writers who incidentally or specially referred to the Jews. However, as is the case with many other matters of prime importance, the writings of most of these authors have not come down to us completely, but in fragments. That is to say, we have only the brief citations made of them by much later writers, or contained in very late compilations, such as lexicons, commonplace books, or manuals for instruction. Modern scholars have found it imperatively necessary to collect these fragments, so that they may be compared and studied more readily. In this way the fragments of lost books on history, grammar, music, of lost poems and plays, have been collected at various times. Similarly the fragments concerning the Jews have been collected, and gathered into 17a single book by M. Théodore Reinach, under the title of Textes d’ auteurs grecs et latins relatifs au judaisme. Here the Greek and Latin texts and the French translation of them are arranged in parallel columns, and furnished with explanatory footnotes. M. Reinach’s great distinction as a classical scholar enables him to speak with authority upon many of the controverted questions that these texts contain. Often his judgment as to what certain passages mean may be unquestioningly accepted, and at all times one disagrees with him with diffidence.

Secondly, we have the Jewish literature of the period; but that literature was produced under such various conditions and with such diverse purposes that a further classification is necessary.

Most important for our purposes is that part of Jewish literature which was a direct outcome of the contact we are setting forth—the apologetic writings of the Jews, or those books written in Greek, only rarely in Latin, in which Jewish customs and history are explained or defended for non-Jewish readers. Most of these books likewise have been lost, and have left only inconsiderable fragments, but in the case of two writers we have very extensive remains. One of these men is the Alexandrian Jew Philo, a contemporary of the first Roman emperors. The other was the Palestinian Jew Joseph, who played an important, if ignoble, part in the rebellion of 68 C.E.

An estimate of the character of Philo and Josephus—to give the latter the name by which alone he is 18remembered—or of the value of their works, is out of place here. Philo’s extant writings are chiefly concerned with philosophic exposition, and are only indirectly of documentary value. However, he also wrote a “Defense” of his people, of which large portions have survived, notably the In Flaccum, a bitter invective against the prefect of Egypt under Tiberius, and the Legatio ad Gaium, a plea in behalf of the Alexandrian Jews made to the emperor Caligula by an embassy of which Philo was himself a member.[2]

An apologetic purpose, for himself more than for his fellow-citizens, is discernible in practically all the extant writings of Josephus. One of them, however, the misnamed Contra Apionem, is avowedly a defense of the Jews against certain misrepresentations contained in Greek books. The importance of Josephus’ works is impossible to overrate. For many matters he is our sole authority. But the character exhibited in his own account of his conduct has impaired the credibility of much of what he says, and has provoked numerous controversies. It is impossible to disregard him, and unsafe to rely upon him. However, it is not unlikely that fuller knowledge, which the sands of Egypt and Palestine may at any time offer, will compel us to change our attitude toward him completely.[3]

Besides the apologetic Jewish writings, directed to gentile readers, there was a flourishing literature in Greek (and perhaps in Latin too) intended for Greek-speaking Jews. It may be said that no branch of literary art was quite neglected. The great majority of 19these books are lost. Some, however, of a homiletic or parenetic tendency, attained partial sanctity in some of the Jewish congregations, and were, under such protection, transferred to the Christian communities that succeeded them. They may now be found in collections of Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, such as the German collection of Kautzsch and that recently completed in English by Charles. Examples are the Wisdom of Solomon, the Jewish Sibyl, the Letter of Aristeas, etc.

All these books were intended for Jewish readers, but for Jews whose sole mother tongue was Greek. In Palestine and Syria the Jews spoke Aramaic, and the educated among them used Hebrew for both literary and colloquial purposes. There was consequently an active literature in these languages. Some books so written were early translated into Greek, and from Greek into Latin and Ethiopic, and have survived as part of the Apocrypha. Judith, First Maccabees, Tobit, are instances. It was a rare and fortunate accident that gave us the Hebrew original of such a book, of Ben Sira, or Ecclesiasticus.

Again, the highly organized religious and legal institutions of the Jews found literary expression in the decisions and comments upon them that all such institutions involve. The exposition of the consecrated ancient literature was also begun in this period. It was not, however, till relatively late, 200 C.E. and after, that actual books were put together, so that it is dangerous to accept uncritically references to earlier dates.

20The books referred to are primarily the Mishnah and the other extant collections of Baraitot. Besides these, such works as the Megillat Taanit and the Seder Olam must be grouped here. The earlier portions of both Talmuds may be included, perhaps all of the Jerusalem Talmud.

One source of somewhat problematic character remains to be considered. Biblical critics have been at some pains to assign as much as possible of the Bible to the earlier centuries of the period we have delimited. That more than a very slight portion can be so assigned is scarcely probable, but some of it may, especially those books or passages in which Greek influence is clearly noticeable. However, little profit can be gained for our purposes from material that demands such a deal of caution in its use.

Finally, besides literary evidences, which, as we have seen, have wretchedly failed to substantiate the poet’s vaunt of being more lasting than brass, we have the brass itself; that is, we have the stones, coins, utensils, potsherds, and papyri inscribed with Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Babylonian, and Egyptian words, which are the actual contemporaries, just as we have them, of the events they illustrate. It is the study of evidences like these that has principally differentiated modern historical research from the methods it displaced, and in the unceasing increase of these fragmentary and invaluable remains our hopes of better knowledge of ancient life are centered.