xtolling the proselytes. Thus the
verse of Deutero-Isaiah: "One shall say, 'I am the Lord's,' and another
shall call himself by the name of Jacob; and another shall subscribe with
his hand unto the Lord, and surname himself by the name of Israel" is
peculiarly applied in the Midrash. The first half, we are told, denotes
two classes of Israelites, those who are without blemish, and those who
have sinned and repented; the second half includes the two classes of
proselytes, those who have become full Jews (_Gere ha Zedek_) and those
who are merely worshippers of God (_Yir'e Shamayim_). A later Haggadic
version characteristically omits the last, recognizing only the full
converts (_Gere Emeth_) as proselytes.(1345) The following parable in the
spirit of the Essenes illustrates their viewpoint. In commenting upon the
verse from the Psalms: "The Lord keepeth the strangers," the story is
told: A king possessed a flock of sheep and goats and noted that a deer
joined them, accompanying them to their pasture and returning with them.
So he said to the herdsmen: "Take good care of this deer of mine which has
left the free and broad desert to go in and out with my flock, and do not
let it suffer hunger or thirst." Likewise God takes special delight in the
proselytes who leave their own nation, giving up their fellowship with the
great multitude in order to worship Him as the One and Only God, together
with the little people of Israel.(1346) Similarly the Biblical verse
concerning wisdom: "I love them that love me, and those that seek me
earnestly shall find me"(1347) is referred to the proselytes, "who give up
their entire past from pure love of God, and place their lives under the
sheltering wings of the divine majesty." All these Midrashic passages and
many others are but feeble echoes of the conceptions of the Hellenistic
propaganda, which were so ably set forth by Philo and the Book of Asenath.
Indeed, Judaism must have exerted a powerful influence upon the cultured
world of Hellas and Rome in those days, as is evidenced both in the
Hellenistic writings of the Jew and in the Greek and Roman writers
themselves. Their very defamation of Judaism unwittingly gives testimony
to the danger to which Judaism exposed the pagan conception of life, and
to the hold it took upon many of the heathen.(1348)

10. The reaction against this missionary movement took place in Judea. The
enforced conversion of the Idumeans to Judaism by John Hyrcanus