enism is
doomed to perish, not the heathen; they are to acknowledge the heavenly
Judge in their very punishments and return to Him. Such is the conclusion
of all the exhortations of the prophets predicting punishment to the
nations. Moreover, those heathen who escape the doom of the world-powers
are to proclaim the mighty deeds of the Lord to the utmost lands. Nay,
according to the grand vision of the exilic seer, among the many nations
that shall assemble at the end of days to worship the Lord in Zion, select
ones will be admitted to the priesthood with the sons of Aaron.(1267) The
name _Hadrak_, understood as "he who bringeth back," suggested itself to
the rabbis as a title of the Messiah, the converter of the heathen
nations.(1268) So in both the Talmud and the Sibylline books(1269) Noah is
represented as a preacher of repentance to the nations before the flood,
and accordingly the latter book adjures the Hellenic world to repent of
their sinful lives before they would be overwhelmed by the flood of fire
at the great judgment day. In the same spirit the Haggadists tell that God
sent Balaam, Job, and other pious men as prophets of the heathen to teach
them the way of repentance.(1270) And the rabbis actually say that, if the
heathen nations had not refused the Torah when the Lord offered it to them
at Sinai, it would have been the common property of all mankind.(1271)

6. The leading minds of Judaism felt only pity for the blind obstinacy of
the great mass of heathen, who worshiped the creatures instead of the
Creator, or the stars of heaven instead of Him who is enthroned above the
skies. They regarded heathenism either as evidence of spiritual want and
weakness, or as the result of destiny. Indeed, the words of the
Deuteronomist sound like an echo of Babylonian fatalism when he asserts
that God himself assigned to the nations the worship of the stars as their
inheritance.(1272) Later the opinion gained ground that the heathen
deities were real demons, holding dominion over the nations and leading
them astray.(1273) The exilic seer attacked idolatry most vigorously as
folly and falsehood, and thus the note of derision and irony is struck by
Deutero-Isaiah, the Psalms, and in many of the propaganda writings of the
Hellenistic age, in their references to heathenism.

On the other hand, it is very significant that the Palestinian sages and
their successors condemned heathenism as a moral plague, conducing to
depravity,