In the relations that subsisted between Jews and Greeks after Alexander, Egypt plays an important part, so that particular attention must be directed to that country.
The influence of Egypt upon Palestine is no new thing in its history. For century after century the mighty empire across Sinai had been the huge and determining fact in the political destiny of all Palestinian nations. Indeed Palestine is much more properly within the Egyptian sphere of culture than the Babylonian. The glamor lasted even when the Pharaoh had become a broken reed. Men’s minds instinctively turned in that direction, and the vigor of the relatively youthful Assyria could not hold imaginations with half the force of the remembered glories of Thutmose and Ramses.
Egypt had been in Persian times a turbulent province, subdued with difficulty and demanding constantly renewed subjugation. Shortly before Alexander’s conquest, Artaxerxes Ochus had reconquered it with brutal severity. It offered no resistance to the victorious Macedonians. Upon Alexander himself it exercised an undoubted attraction. The ancient gods of this most ancient of countries were those best fitted to confirm his 91rather raw divinity. From none else than Amon himself, in his isolated shrine in the desert, he claimed to have received revelation of his divine lineage. And at the mouth of the Nile he laid the foundation of the greatest monument he was destined to have, the city of Alexandria.
When Alexander’s satraps proceeded to carve out portions for themselves, Egypt was seized by Ptolemy, whose quick brain had grasped at once the advantages accruing from the possession of an inexhaustible granary and from the relative remoteness of his position. The first contests would have to be fought in Asia. To attack Egypt meant a costly and carefully planned expedition, with the hazards of a rear attack. It was attempted, and it failed. Egypt might, as far as the country itself was concerned, breathe freely for a while, and give itself the opportunity of developing its extraordinary resources.
One of Ptolemy’s first aggressive campaigns was the seizure of Palestine, the natural geographical extension. Judea and Jerusalem fell into his hands. It is probable, as will be later discussed, that the story of the capture of the city on the Sabbath is apocryphal. But there can be no doubt that one of the immediate consequences of the annexation of Palestine was a greatly increased emigration of Jews, and doubtless of Palestinians generally, to Egypt. There is the tradition of a deportation, but it is feebly supported. However, the emigration was unquestionably vigorously encouraged and stimulated by the king. The new city needed 92inhabitants, and Egyptians were as yet looked at askance by their Macedonian rulers.
From the beginning, a great number of Greeks, Jews, Persians, Syrians, and Egyptians dwelt side by side in Alexandria. Greeks who now spoke of Jews could do so at first hand, and they could also obtain at first hand accounts of Jews from other nations, especially from the Egyptians. When, therefore, at about this time, Hecataeus of Abdera, a Greek living in Egypt, wrote a history of that country, he had more to say of the Jews than that they were a Syrian caste of strange ritual. Indeed his account of them is so important that it will be briefly summarized.
A pestilence broke out in Egypt, which was popularly attributed to the neglect of the national cult owing to the presence of foreign elements in the population. To propitiate the gods, the strangers (?λλ?φυλλοι) were expelled. The most distinguished and energetic, as some say, arrived in Greece led by famous chieftains, of whom Danaus and Cadmus are the best known. The mass of the population settled in the neighboring Palestine, which was then a desert.
This colony (?ποικ?α) was led by a certain Moses, famous for his wisdom and valor. He founded several cities, of which Ierosolyma is now the best-known. Having organized cult and government, he divided the people into twelve tribes, because he considered that number the absolutely perfect one, and because it corresponded to the number of months in the year.
93He made no statues of gods, because he regarded as God and Ruler of all things the heavens that encircled the earth, and accordingly did not believe that the Deity resembled man in form. The sacrifices he instituted, the manner of life he prescribed, were different from those of surrounding nations. This was due to the expulsion they had suffered, which induced Moses to ordain an inhospitable (μισ?ξενον) and inhuman (?π?νθρωπον) form of living.
Since the nation was to be directed by priests, he chose for that purpose men of the highest character and ability. These he instructed, not merely for their sacerdotal functions, but also for their judicial and governmental duties. They were to be the guardians of law and morality.
It is for this reason that the Jews have never had a king, but appoint as ruler the wisest and ablest of their priests. They call him high priest (?ρχιερε??), and regard him as bearer of the divine commands, which he announces at the public assemblies and other meetings. In this matter the Jews are so credulous that they fall to the ground and adore (προσκυνε?ν) the high priest when he interprets the divine message. At the end of their laws is written, “These words, which Moses heard from God, he states to the Jews.”
Moses showed much foresight in military matters, since he compelled the young men to train themselves by exercises that involved courage and daring and endurance of privations. In his campaigns he conquered most of the surrounding territory, which was 94divided equally among all citizens, except that the priests received larger shares, so that they might enjoy greater leisure for their public duties. These allotments the possessors were forbidden to sell, in order to prevent depopulation by the creation of great estates. As an additional means to that end he compelled every one to rear his children, an arrangement that involved little expense and made the Jews at all times a very populous nation. Marriage and funeral rites were likewise quite different from those of their neighbors.
However, many of these ancient customs were modified under Persian, and more recently under Macedonian, supremacy.[94]
So far Hecataeus of Abdera. The fragment is interesting, not merely as the first connected account of Jews by a Greek, but also from a number of facts that are contained implicitly in his narrative.
We have seen, in the previous chapter, what general knowledge of the Jews educated Greeks had in the latter half of the fourth century. Hecataeus could scarcely avoid being familiar with that version before he came to Egypt. That he ever was in Judea there is no evidence. If he followed his master Ptolemy, he might easily have been there. But the information he gives was almost certainly obtained in Egypt, and the sources of that information will be more closely examined.
It is evident at once that some of his facts must have come from contemporary Jewish sources. His statement of conditions among the Jews is markedly accurate 95for the time in which he wrote, although to be sure these conditions do not date to Moses. The absence of a king, the presence of a priestly nobility, the judicial functions of the priests, the compulsory military service, the supremacy of the high priest, and the veneration accorded to him, are all matters of which only a resident of Judea can have been cognizant.
Was the source a literary one? Did Hecataeus, writing at about 300 B.C.E., have before him a translation of the Bible or of the Pentateuch or a part of it? In the first place there is very little reason to believe that such a translation was current or was needed at this time. Secondly, the matters mentioned are just those that do not stand out at all in such a rapid reading of the Bible as a curious Greek might have given it. To obtain even approximate parallels, single verses of the Bible must be cited. But the statements of Hecataeus do correspond to actual conditions in the Judea of his time. We may therefore plausibly suppose that Hecataeus’ informant was a Greek-speaking Jew, perhaps a soldier. Certain inaccuracies in the account would not militate against such a supposition. Whoever it was from whom the information came, cannot himself have been especially conversant with his national history. The glorious period of Jewish history was that of the kings, of David and Solomon. For any Jew to have asserted that no king ever reigned over them is scarcely conceivable. But that may be an inference of the Greek and not a statement of the Jew, and that in Egypt there 96were Jews crassly ignorant of everything but the facts of their own time, we can readily enough imagine.[95]
Was there any other source of information? Obviously no Jew told Hecataeus that his people were descendants of Egyptian outcasts, at least in the way in which they are here described; no Jew qualified the institutions of his people as “inhospitable and inhuman”; no Jew represented his kinsmen as credulous dupes. Plainly these stories are told from the Egyptian point of view. The first almost surely is. It constitutes in outline what has often been called the “Egyptian version of the Exodus.”
As to that version this question at once arises: What are its sources? Is it a malicious distortion of the Biblical story, or has it an independent origin in Egyptian traditions?
The former supposition is the one generally accepted. We have seen that there is little likelihood that a Greek translation of the Pentateuch existed as early as 300 B.C.E. If then the Egyptian version is consciously based upon the Jewish story, that story must have been known to the Egyptians by oral transmission only. Until recently, imagined difficulties in the way of assuming such a transmission seemed weighty objections, but all these difficulties have disappeared in the light of the Assuan and Elephantine papyri. The existence of Jewish c............