Greeks and Jews: The First Greek Records of Jewish Religion and Civilization

HE relations between Greeks and Jews make one of the most interesting chapters in the history of Hellenism. They form a part of the larger problem of Orient and Occident, which became real at various times and under different forms in the course of Greek history. We may distinguish three main periods in which the Greeks met with oriental nations: first, the era which found repercussion in the Homeric epics; second, the period of the Persian empire when Greek explorers like Hecataeus of Miletus, Ctesias and Herodotus, gave in their works historical, geographical, and ethnographical pictures of the Asiatic and Libyan nations and took an interest in their civilizations; third, the time when Asia was conquered by Alexander and consequently was penetrated by Greek culture. When later Jewish writers like the unknown author of the letter of Aristeas or Josephus, the historian, traced back the name of the Jewish people in Greek literature as far as possible, they were unable to discover anything which preceded the time of Alexander. For the passages which Josephus in his book, Against Apion,' the Greek anti-Semitic writer