to the people, 'Choose life, that thou mayest live!'...
For all who knew Me not in life when they received My benefits, who
despised My law when they yet had freedom, and did not heed the door of
repentance while it was still open before them, but disregarded it, after
death they shall come to know it!"(716)

5. Hellenistic Judaism also, particularly Philo,(717) considered the truly
divine in man to be his free will, which distinguishes him from the beast.
Yet Hellenistic naturalism could not grasp the fact that man's power to do
evil in opposition to God, the Source of the good, is the greatest
reminder of his moral responsibility. Josephus likewise mentions
frequently as a characteristic teaching of the Pharisees that man's free
will determines his acts without any compulsion of destiny.(718) Only we
must not accept too easily the words of this Jewish historian, who wrote
for his Roman masters and, therefore, represented the Jewish parties as so
many philosophical schools after the Greek pattern. The Pharisean doctrine
is presented most tersely in the Talmudic maxim: "Everything is in the
hands of God except the fear of God."(719) Like the quotation from R.
Akiba above, this contains the great truth that man's destiny is
determined by Providence, but his character depends upon his own free
decision. This idea recurs frequently in such Talmudic sayings as these:
"The wicked are in the power of their desires; the righteous have their
desires in their own power;"(720) "The eye, the ear, and the nostrils are
not in man's power, but the mouth, the hand, and the feet are."(721) That
is, the impressions we receive from the world without us come
involuntarily, but our acts, our steps, and our words arise from our own
volition.

6. A deeper insight into the problem of free will is offered in two other
Talmudic sayings; the one is: "Whosoever desires to pollute himself with
sin will find all the gates open before him, and whosoever desires to
attain the highest purity will find all the forces of goodness ready to
help him."(722) The other reads: "It can be proved by the Torah, the
Prophets, and the other sacred writings that man is led along the road
which he wishes to follow."(723)

As a matter of fact, no person is absolutely free, for innumerable
influences affect his decisions, consciously and unconsciously. For this
reason many thinkers, both ancient and modern, consider freedom a delusion
and hold to determinism, the do