That among such a vast community there should have been poverty, and that at one time, as the Palestinians sneered, learning may have been left to pine in want, we can readily believe. For, as one of the Rabbis had it in explanation of Deut. xxx. 13: 'Wisdom is not 'beyond the sea', that is, it will not be found among traders or merchants,' [c Er. 55 a.] whose mind must be engrossed by gain. And it was trade and commerce which procured to the Babylonians their wealth and influence, although agriculture was not neglected. Their caravans, of whose camel drivers, by the way, no very flattering account is given [a Kidd. iv.], carried the rich carpets and woven stuffs of the East, as well as its precious spices, to the West: generally through Palestine to the Phoenician harbours, where a fleet of merchantmen belonging to Jewish bankers and shippers lay ready to convey them to every quarter of the world. These merchant princes were keenly alive to all that
passed, not only in the financial, but in the political world. We know that they were in possession of State secrets, and entrusted with the intricacies of diplomacy. Yet, whatever its condition, this Eastern Jewish community was intensely Hebrew. Only eight days' journey, though, according to Philo's western ideas of it, by a difficult road [1 Philo ad Cajum, ed. Frcf. p. 1023.], separated them from Palestine; and every pulsation there vibrated in Babylonia. It was in the most outlying part of that colony, in the wide plains of Arabia, that Saul of Tarsus spent those three years of silent thought and unknown labour, which preceded his re-appearance in Jerusalem, when from the burning longing to labour among his brethren, kindled by long residence among these Hebrews of the Hebrews, he was directed to that strange work which was his life's mission, [b Gal. i. 17;] And it was among the same community that Peter wrote and laboured, [c 1 Pet. v. 13.] amidst discouragements of which we can form some conception from the sad boast of Nehardaa, that up to the end of the third century it had not numbered among its members any convert to Christianity. [2 Pes. 56 a, apud Neubauer, u. s., p. 351.] In what has been said, no notice has been taken of those wanderers of the ten tribes, whose trackless footsteps seem as mysterious as their after- fate. The Talmudists name four countries as their seats. But, even if we were to attach historic credence to their vague statements, at least two of these localities cannot with any certainty be identified. [3 Comp. Neubauer, pp. 315, 372; Hamburger, Real-Encykl. p. 135.] Only thus far all agree as to point us northwards, through India, Armenia, the Kurdish mountains, and the Caucasus. And with this tallies a curious reference in what is known as IV. Esdras, which locates them in a land called Arzareth, a term which has, with some probability, been identified with the land of Ararat. [4 Comp. Volkmar, Handb. d. Einl. in d. Apokr. iite Abth., pp. 193, 194, notes. For the reasons there stated, I prefer this to the ingenious interpretation proposed by Dr. Schiller-Szinessy (Journ. of Philol. for 1870, pp. 113, 114), who regards it as a contraction of Erez achereth, 'another land,' referred to in Deut. xxix. 27 (28).] Josephus [a Ant. xi. 5.2.] describes them as an innumerable multitude, and vaguely locates them beyond the Euphrates. The Mishnah is silent as to their seats, but discusses their future restoration; Rabbi Akiba denying and Rabbi Eliezer anticipating it. [b Sanh. x. 3.] [1 R. Eliezer seems to connect their return with the dawn of the new Messianic day.] Another Jewish tradition [c Ber. R. 73.] locates them by the fabled river Sabbatyon, which was supposed to cease its flow on the weekly Sabbath. This, of course, is an implied admission of ignorance of their seats. Similarly, the Talmud [d Jer. Sanb 29 c.]speaks of three localities whither they had been banished : the district around the river Sabbatyon; Daphne, near Antioch; while the third was overshadowed and hidden by a cloud.
Later Jewish notices connect the final discovery and the return of the 'lost tribes' with their conversion under that second Messiah who, in contradistinction to 'the Son of David' is styled 'the Son of Joseph,' to whom Jewish tradition ascribes what it cannot reconcile with the royal dignity of'the Son of David,' and which, if applied to Him, would almost inevitably lead up to the most wide concessions in the Christian argument. [2 This is not the place to discuss the later Jewish fiction of a second or 'suffering' Messiah, 'the son of Joseph,' whose special mission it would be to bring back the ten tribes, and to subject them to Messiah, 'the son of David,' but who would perish in the war against Gog and Magog.] As regards the ten tribes there is this truth underlying the strange hypothesis, that, as their persistent apostacy from the God of Israel and His worship had cut them off from his people, so the fulfilment of the Divine promises to them in the latter days would imply, as it were, a second birth to make them once more Israel. Beyond this we are travelling chiefly into the region of conjecture. Modern investigations have pointed to the Nestorians, [3 Comp. the work of Dr. Asahel Grant on the Nestorians. His arguments have been
well summarised and expanded in an interesting note in Mr. Nutths Sketch of Samaritan History, pp. 2-4.] and latterly with almost convincing evidence (so far as such is possible) to the Afghans, as descended from the lost tribes. [4 I would here call special attention to a most interesting paper on the subject ('A New Afghan Question'), by Mr. H. W. Bellew, in the 'Journal of the United Service Institution of India,' for 1881, pp. 49-97.] Such mixture with, and lapse into, Gentile nationalities seems to have been before the minds of those Rabbis who ordered that, if at present a non-Jew weds a Jewess, such a union was to be respected, since the stranger might be a descendant of the ten tribes, [e Yebam 16 b.] Besides, there is reason to believe that part of them, at least, had coalesced with their brethren of the later exile; [5 Kidd. 69 b.] while we know that individuals who had settled in Palestine and, presumably, elsewhere, were able to trace descent from them.[l So Anna from the tribe of Aser, St. Luke ii. 36. Lutterbeck (Neutest. Lehrbegr. pp. 102, 103) argues that the ten tribes had become wholly undistinguishable from the other two. But his arguments are not convincing, and his opinion was certainly not that of those who lived in the time of Christ, or who reflected their ideas.] Still the great mass of the ten tribes was in the days of Christ, as in our own, lost to the Hebrew nation.
INTRODUCTORY
THE PREPARATION FOR THE GOSPEL: THE JEWISH WORLD IN THE DAYS OF CHRIST
THE JEWISH DISPERSION IN THE WEST, THE HELLENISTS, ORIGIN OF HELLENIST LITERATURE IN THE GREEK TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE, CHARACTER OF THE SEPTUAGINT.
CHAPTER II.
When we turn from the Jewish 'dispersion' in the East to that in the West, we seem to breathe quite a different atmosphere. Despite their intense nationalism, all unconsciously to themselves, their mental characteristics and tendencies were in the opposite direction from those of their brethren. With those of the East rested the future of Judaism; with them of the West, in a sense, that of the world. The one represented old Israel, stretching forth its hands to where the dawn of a new day was about to break. These Jews of the West are known by the term Hellenists, from , to conform to the language and manners of the Greeks. [1 Indeed, the word Alnisti (or Alunistin), 'Greek', actually occurs, as in Jer. Sot. 21 b, line 14 from bottom. Bohl (Forsch. n. ein. Volksb. p. 7) quotes Philo (Leg. ad Caj. p. 1023) in proof that he regarded the Eastern dispersion as a branch separate from the Palestinians. But the passage does not convey to me the inference which he draws from it. Dr. Guillemard (Hebraisms in the Greek Test.) on Acts vi. 1, agreeing with Dr. Roberts, argues that the term 'Hellenist' indicated only principles, and not birthplace, and that there were Hebrews and Hellenists in and out of Palestine. But this view is untenable.]
Whatever their religious and social isolation, it was, in the nature of thing, impossible that the Jewish communities in the West should remains unaffected by Grecian culture and modes of though; just as, on the other hand, the Greek world, despite popular hatred and the contempt of the higher classes, could not wholly withdraw itself from Jewish influences. Witness here the many
converts to Judaism among the Gentiles; [2 An account of this propaganda of Judaism and of its results will be given in another connection.] witness also the evident preparedness of the lands of this 'dispersion' for the new doctrine which was to come from Judea. Many causes contributed to render the Jews of the West accessible to Greek influences. They had not a long local history to look back upon, nor did they form a compact body, like their brethren in the East. They were craftsmen, traders, merchants, settled for a time here or there, units might combine into communities, but could not form one people. Then their position was not favourable to the sway of traditionalism. Their occupations, the very reasons for their being in a 'strange land,' were purely secular. That lofty absorption of thought and life in the study of the Law, writtem and oral, which characterised the East, was to the, something in the dim distance, sacred, like the soil and the institutions of Palestine, but unattainable. In Palestine or Babylonia numberless influences from his earliest years, all that he saw and heard, the very force of circumstances, would tend to make an earnest Jew a disciple of the Rabbis; in the West it would lead him to 'hellenise.' It was, so to speak, 'in the air'; and he could no more shut his mind against Greek thought than he could withdraw his body from atmospheric influences. That restless, searching, subtle Greek intellect would penetrate
