to the Most High God.'17 A nation, the vast majority of which was dispersed over the whole
inhabited earth, had ceased to be a special, and become a world-nation.18 Yet its heart beat in
Jerusalem, and thence the life-blood passed to its most distant members. And this, indeed, if we
rightly understand it, was the grand object of the `Jewish dispersion' throughout the world.
16. Strabo apud Jos. Ant. xiv. 7.2: `It is not easy to find a place in the world that has not admitted this
race, and is not mastered by it.'
17. Philo in Flaccum (ed. Francf.), p. 971.
18. Comp. Jos. Ant. xii. 3; xiii. 10. 4; 13. 1; xiv. 6. 2; 8. 1; 10. 8; Sueton. Cæs. 85.
What has been said applies, perhaps, in a special manner, to the Western, rather than to the
Eastern `dispersion.' The connection of the latter with Palestine was so close as almost to seem
one of continuity. In the account of the truly representative gathering in Jerusalem on that ever-
memorable Feast of Weeks,19 the division of the `dispersion' into two grand sections - the
Eastern or Trans-Euphratic, and the Western or Hellenist - seems clearly marked.20 In this
arrangement the former would include `the Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and dwellers in
Mesopotamia,' Judæa standing, so to speak, in the middle, while `the Bretes and Arabians'
would typically represent the farthest outrunners respectively of the Western and the Eastern
Diaspora. The former, as we know from the New Testament, commonly bore in Palestine the
name of the `dispersion of the Greeks,'21 and of `Hellenists' or `Grecians.'22 On the other hand,
the Trans-Euphratic Jews, who `inhabited Babylon and many of the other satrapies,'23 were
included with the Palestinians and the Syrians under the term `Hebrews,' from the common
language which they spoke.
19. Acts ii. 9-11
20. Grimm (Clavis N.T. p. 113) quotes two passages from Philo, in one of which he contradistinguishes
`us,' the Hellenist Jews, from `the Hebrews,' and speaks of the Greek as `our language.'
21. St. John vii. 35.
22. Acts vi. 1; ix. 29; xi. 20.
23. Philo ad Cajum, p. 1023; Jos. Ant. xv. 3.1.
But the difference between the `Grecians' and the `Hebrews' was far deeper than merely of
language, and extended to the whole direction of thought. There were mental influences at work
in the Greek world from which, in the nature of things, it was impossible even for Jews to
withdraw themselves, and which, indeed, were as necessary for the fulfillment of their mission as
their isolation from heathenism, and their connection with Jerusalem. At the same time it was
only natural that the Hellenists, placed as they were in the midst of such hostile elements, should
intensely wish to be Jews, equal to their Eastern brethren. On the other hand, Pharisaism, in its
pride of legal purity and of the possession of traditional lore, with all that it involved, made no
secret of its contempt for the Hellenists, and openly declared the Grecian far inferior to the
Babylonian `dispersion.'24 That such feelings, and the suspicions which they engendered, had
struck deep into the popular mind, appears from the fact, that even in the Apostolic Church, and