g its strength, but the dissolving
forces of civilization never operated more powerfully than in the
early centuries of the common era, when the intellect of the world was
jaded and weary, and the great movement in culture was a jumbling
together of the ideas of East and West. More especially in the
cosmopolitan towns, Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome, national life,
national culture, and national religion were undermined; and even the
Jew, despite the stronghold of his law and tradition, was caught in
the general vortex of mingling creeds and theologies. Out of this
confusion (which was in one aspect a continuation of the work of
Philo) emerged, first, fantastic Gnostic religious and philosophical
sects, and, finally, the Christian Church, which proved the system
best fitted to survive in the circumstances, but was in essence as
well as in origin a blending of different outlooks, and true to the
cardinal points of neither Hebraism nor Hellenism. The rabbis, with
remarkable intuition, saw that the Hellenistic development of Judaism,
which had vainly striven to make Judaism universal, had ended in
violating its monotheism and abrogating its law; and in that era of
disintegration, denationalization, and decomposition they determined
to keep their heritage pure and inviolate. Judaism by their efforts
was the only national culture which survived, and some sacrifice had
to be made to secure this end. The literary monuments of the
Alexandrian community from the Septuagint translation to the
philosophy of the Christian scholarchs were cut out of Jewish
tradition, and the Babylonian school was ignorant altogether of the
[Hebrew: hkma yonit] (Greek wisdom). When Ben Zoma desired to study the
[Hebrew: sfrim hitsonim], and asked of his teacher at what hour of the
day it was lawful to do so, he received the reply that it was permissible
at an hour which was neither day nor night; for the precept was to study
the Torah by day and night, as it is said, [Hebrew: ] (Josh. i. 8). Bar
Kappara, indeed, a rabbi of the third century, explained Genesis ix. 27,
"God shall enlarge Japheth and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem," to
mean that the words of the Torah shall be recited in the speech of
Japheth (_i.e._, Greek) in the synagogues and schools,[323] but by
most other teachers the union between Shem and Japheth was no longer
encouraged, because Japheth had become degraded and was allied with
the cruel children of Edom (Rome).

Besides the