been, in presence of so many from the Greek and Roman world, and after the long and

persistent struggle of their rulers to Grecianise Palestine, nay, even in view of so many

magnificent heathen temples on the very soil of Palestine, to exclude all knowledge of, or

contact with Grecianism. But not to be able to exclude was to have in sight the dazzle of that

unknown, which as such, and in itself, must have had peculiar attractions to the Jewish mind. It

needed stern principle to repress the curiosity thus awakened. When a young Rabbi, Ben

Dama, asked his uncle whether he might not study Greek philosophy, since he had mastered

the `Law' in every aspect of it, the older Rabbi replied by a reference to Josh. i. 8: `Go and

search what is the hour which is neither of the day nor of the night, and in it thou mayest study

Greek philosophy.'11 Yet even the Jewish patriarch, Gamaliel II., who may have sat with Saul of

Tarsus at the feet of his grandfather, was said to have busied himself with Greek, as he certainly

held liberal views on many points connected with Grecianism. To be sure, tradition justified him

on the ground that his position brought him into contact with the ruling powers, and, perhaps, to

further vindicate him, ascribed similar pursuits to the elder Gamaliel, although groundlessly, to

judge from the circumstance that he was so impressed even with the wrong of possessing a

Targum on Job in Aramæan, that he had it buried deep in the ground.

But all these are indications of a tendency existing. How wide it must have spread, appears from

the fact that the ban had to be pronounced on all who studied `Greek wisdom.' One of the

greatest Rabbis, Elisha ben Abujah, seems to have been actually led to apostacy by such

studies. True, he appears as the `Acher' - the `other' - in Talmudic writings, whom it was not

proper even to name. But he was not yet an apostate from the Synagogue when those `Greek

songs' ever flowed from his lips; and it was in the very Beth-ha-Midrash, or theological

academy, that a multitude of Siphrey Minim (heretical books) flew from his breast, where they

had lain concealed.12 It may be so, that the expression `Siphrey Homeros' (Homeric writings),

which occur not only in the Talmud13 but even in the Mishnah14 referred pre-eminently, if not

exclusively, to the religious or semi-religious Jewish Hellenistic literature, outside even the

Apocrypha.15 But its occurrence proves, at any rate, that the Hellenists were credited with the

study of Greek literature, and that through them, if not more directly, the Palestinians had

become acquainted with it.

Siphrey Homeros applies exclusively to the Judæo-Alexandrian heretical writings; according to Fürst