Jews came into the occidental horizon as part of a larger whole. That whole was known as Syria. Unfortunately Syria itself is a very vague term, and is without real ethnographic or geographic unity. It might include Mesopotamia and all the intervening region between the Taurus and Egypt. One might suppose that with such a people as the Phoenicians Greek dealings had been so extensive and frequent that it was impossible to call them out of their name, but Tyrians too are considered and spoken of as branches of the Syrians. The name soon became practically a descriptive epithet, more or less derogatory in its implication.[70]

The lower part of the region between the Taurus and Sinai was known to Greeks as Syria Palaestina, a name almost certainly derived from the Philistine cities whose position on the coast and whose origin made them familiar to traders. The Greeks knew, of course, that variously denominated tribes occupied the hinterland, but what little they knew about them did not until somewhat later get into the literary fragments that have come down to us. Perhaps they would not even have been surprised to learn that here, as in Asia Minor, a very large number of peoples had settled and fought and jumbled one another into what seemed to superficial outsiders a common group of Syrians.

77The particular section later occupied by the Jews had itself been the scene of a racial babel. The Israelites were, by their tradition, expressly commanded to dispossess Hittite, Girgashite, Canaanite, Amorite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite.[71] The recurrence of this enumeration indicates an historical basis for the tradition. It is very likely that nations so named were actually subdued by the invading Hebrews. The fact that the tribes dispossessed are seven in number makes caution necessary in accepting the statement. Perhaps some of these “nations” are different names for the same group. Some of them, e.g. Hittite or Amorite, may be vague descriptive terms, like Syrian or even Hebrew.

Then there were the Phoenicians, representing perhaps the first Semitic invasion of this territory. Below them, the Philistines, “from Caphthor,” who are very plausibly identified with Cretans or “Minoans,” the Keftiu of the Egyptians.[72] During Mesopotamian and Egyptian sovereignty, Mesopotamian and Egyptian infiltration may be safely assumed. The desert never ceased to contribute its share of tribes. Permanent results of such nomad invasions were the settlement of the various Hebrew tribes—Moab and Edom in the southeast and Israel on both sides of the Jordan.

If the analogy of other times and places is to be followed, no one of these groups was ever completely and literally exterminated. Jewish tradition knows of an attempted extermination—that of the Amalekites—only as a very exceptional thing. The resultant nationalities, which in Greek times occupied Palestine, were 78likely enough to have been of somewhat mixed origin. When the Greeks came to know them well, however, the Jews had long been a well-defined group, frowning upon intermarriage, although it is not likely that the prohibition of connubium had its source in any importance attached to racial purity, or that all Jews everywhere were equally strict in enforcing it.[73]

As has been suggested, the first contact was probably military. Since Jews served in the Persian armies as far south as Elephantine, they probably were equally present in the battalions of Datis and of Mardonius.[74] Another early contact was in the slave-mart, no doubt both as buyers and the bought. Enterprising Tyrian traders had made themselves comfortable in Jerusalem before Nehemiah (Neh. xiii. 6), and human commodities formed the chief merchandise of most commerce. Before him, perhaps before the Exile, Joel reproaches the Phoenicians with the words, “The children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians.”[75] “Syrus” had become a common slave-name in Greece in the fifth century, and Syrus might include anything.[76]

All these scattered and uncertain hints do not tend to present a very clear picture. However, the time was rapidly coming when Greek contact with “Syria” was to be vastly more intimate.

In the spring of 334 B.C.E., Alexander crossed the Hellespont to carry out the cherished vision of Isocrates, a united Hellas drastically stamping out the Persian peril. From the complete success of his efforts we are 79wont to date the so-called Hellenistic epoch, the period in which Greek influences in art, government, and society were dominant. But Hellenization had in actual fact begun long ago in the domain of art. It had penetrated central Asia Minor far back in the seventh century B.C.E.,[77] and the magnificent “satrap-sarcophagus” at Sidon shows how thoroughly it was appreciated at the very borders of Judea well in the middle of the fifth century B.C.E.[78] A generation before Alexander the king of Sidon bore a Greek name.[79]

So the “king of Yavan,” who received the submission of Jerusalem, passed, on his way to Egypt, among a people to whom the name of Greek was quite familiar—who had long known of Greek skill in craftsmanship, Greek prowess on the field of battle, and Greek shrewdness in bargaining. The new empire, on the dizzy throne of which Alexander placed himself, seemed to all the East commensurate with the whole world, and to the kinsmen of the new king of kings and lord of lords all men were ready enough to grant the deference formerly owed to Persians.

At Alexander’s untimely death it could scarcely have seemed to men that great changes were impending. On the contrary, the prestige of his literally miraculous successes, the impress of his powerful and fascinating personality, continued for a long time. It might be doubtful—in fact, it must have immediately become uncertain—whether the persons to whom the actual administration of affairs would fall, would be of Alexander’s blood. The satraps of the old régime had to 80some extent been displaced by the great king’s generals. Every one of these was convinced that the coveted prize would fall to the strongest or cleverest or quickest; but for a while a short and troubled truce was maintained under the shadow of regal authority embodied in the poor fool Arrhidaeus and the unborn child of Roxane. When the young Alexander was born, the conditions at Babylon challenged the intriguing of every court-parasite. Ptolemy, son of Lagos, satrap of Egypt, was the first to disregard the confused and divided authority of the zany king and his baby colleague. A general débacle followed. Palestine suffered more than others, because it was unfortunately situated on the road to Egypt. But by about 300 B.C.E. the country was definitely settled as a province of Egypt, and it entered upon a century of extraordinary and varied growth.

It is just about this time that unmistakable knowledge of the Jews themselves, as a separate nationality of Syrians, is evidenced in extant Greek writers. Histories of the nearer and of the remote East, impressions of travel and concatenation of irresponsible gossip of all sorts had long been written by Greeks. Some of these may well have contained reference to the Jews. In the fifth century, Herodotus speaks of the “Syrians of Palestine” in connection with the rite of circumcision, which, he claims to know from the testimony of the Syrians themselves, was derived from Egypt.[80] However, he obviously writes at second hand, so that we have no means of knowing whether or not he refers to Jews. That he knew the name ?ουδα?οι is not likely, 81but the fact that his source was probably a literary one makes it possible to date the acquaintance of Greeks with the practice of circumcision in this region, and therefore perhaps with Jews, at least to the beginning of the fifth century B.C.E.

The peculiar natural phenomena of the Dead Sea attracted the attention of travelers from very early times. Aristotle discusses it, and after him—no doubt before him, as well—the collectors of wonder-tales, of which we have so many later specimens. Interest in the Dead Sea, however, by no means implied interest in those who dwelt on its borders, and the story of the bituminous formation on the water and the curious manner in which it was collected could be and was told without so much as a mention of the name of Jews.[81]

But they are mentioned, and for the first time in extant Greek writers, by the famous pupil and successor of Aristotle, Theophrastus of Lesbos. The passage does not occur in any one of the works of Theophrastus which we have in bulk, such as the Characters or the Natural History. It is a quotation made by the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyrius, who wrote somewhere about 275 C. E. The quotation may, in accordance with ancient custom, be of substance rather than verbatim. Faulty memory may have further diminished its value for our purposes. When we add to these facts possible uncertainties in the transmission of the text of Porphyrius, we are in a fair way of realizing from what dubious material we must piece our knowledge together.

82The passage is in itself, except perhaps for one casual phrase, strangely unimportant, but as the earliest plain reference to Jews in a Greek writer it deserves citation in full:

As a matter of fact, if the Jews, those Syrians who still maintain the ancient form of animal sacrifice, were to urge us to adopt their method, we should probably find the practice repellent. Their system is the following: they do not eat of the sacrificial flesh, but burn all of it at night, after they have poured a great deal of honey and wine upon it. The sacrifice they seek to complete rather rapidly, so that the All-Seer may not become a witness of pollution. Throughout the entire time, inasmuch as they are philosophers by race, they discuss the nature of the Deity among themselves, and spend the night in observing the stars, looking up at them and invoking them as divine in their prayers.

As Reinach points out,[82] there is scarcely a correct word in this description considered as an account of actual Jewish sacrificial rites. If we have a correct, or even approximately correct, version of Theophrastus’ report, he or his informant was curiously misinformed. This informant obviously could not have been a Jew. No Jew could have been so ignorant of the customs of his people. Nor did his statement come directly from any one who had actually witnessed, from the Court of the Gentiles, even a small part of a Jewish sacrifice. It may well be that we have before us an inextricable confusion between Jewish and other Syrian rites. We are left to wholly uncontrolled speculation, if we are bent on knowing whence Theophrastus derived the assertions he makes here.

The important words of the passage are found in the casual phrase ?τε φιλ?σοφοι τ? γ?νο? ?ν&............