ng and of far less importance than its intellectual progress.
When Alexander planted the colony of Jews in his greatest foundation,
he probably intended to facilitate the fusion of Eastern and Western
thought through their mediation. Such, at any rate, was the result of
his work. His marvellous exploits had put an end for a time to the
political strife between Asia and Europe, and had started the movement
between the two realms of culture, which was fated to produce the
greatest combination of ideas that the world has known. Now, at last,
the Hebrew, with his lofty conception of God, came into close contact
with the Greek, who had developed an equally noble conception of man.
Disraeli, in his usual sweeping manner, makes one of his characters in
"Lothair" tell how the Aryan and Semitic races, after centuries of
wandering upon opposite courses, met again and, represented by their
two choicest families, the Hellenes and the Hebrews, brought together
the treasures of their accumulated wisdom and secured the civilization
of man. Apart from the question of the original common source, of
which we are no longer sure, his rhetoric is broadly true; but for two
centuries the influence was nearly all upon one side. The Jew,
attracted by the brilliant art, literature, science, and philosophy of
the Hellene, speedily Hellenized, and as early as the third century
B.C.E. Clearchus, the pupil of Aristotle, tells of a Jew whom his
master met, who was "Greek not only in language but also in mind."[18]
The Greek, on the other hand, who had not yet comprehended the majesty
of his neighbor's monotheism, for lack of adequate presentation, did
not Hebraize. In Palestine the adoption of Greek ways and the
introduction of Greek ideas proceeded rapidly to the point of
demoralization, until the Maccabees stayed it. Unfortunately, the
Hellenism that was brought to Palestine was not the lofty culture, the
eager search for truth and knowledge, that marked Athens in the
classical age; it was a bastard product of Greek elegance and Oriental
luxury and sensuousness, a seeking after base pleasures, an assertion
of naturalistic polytheism. And hence came the strong reaction against
Greek ideas among the bulk of the people, which prevented any
permanent fusion of cultures in the land of Israel.

The Hellenism of Alexandria was a more genuine product. The liberal
policy of the early Ptolemies made their capital a centre of art,
literature, science, and phi