to nothing but agriculture, the knowledge of the laws and war, and willingly left the glory of excelling in curious arts and sciences to the Greeks: that they might have the more time to extend their conquests, and attend to the government of their subjects, making politics, as Virgil says,* their principal concern. The Jews were still a great deal more serious, as they made morality and the service of God their chief study. We have a good example of it in the book of Ecclesiasticus, written about the same time. Yet this was the reason that the Greeks, looked upon them as an ignorant people, seeing they would learn nothing but their own law t They called them Barbarians, as they did all nations that were not Greeks, and despised them more than any other strangers upon account of their religion, which appeared to them austere and absurdt. They saw them refrain from debauchery, not out of frugality and policy, but a principle of conscience: this appeared to them too strict, and they were particularly offended at their sabbaths, their fasts, and distinction of meats. They accounted them enemies to all mankind. They live separate from every body else, says a Greek philosopher, having nothing common with us, neither altar, offerings, prayers, nor sacrifices. They are at a greater distance from us than the inhabitants of Susa, Bactria, and Indiai§ * Excudent alii spirantia mollius æra, &c. Eneid. vi. 847. + Joseph. cont. App.l.i. c. 4. et l. ii. c. 6. Orig. cont. Cels. 1. v. Judæorum mos tristis absurdusque.-Tacit. hist. v. init. We We may add to this, that the fear of idolatry made the Jews reject sculpture and painting, (which arts the Greeks held in much esteem) as useless, ridiculous pieces of workmanship, and the fruits of idleness:* which is the reason that idols are so often called vanity in Scripture, to shew they are vain things, that have only a deceitful outside, and serve to no manner of good purpose. They are also called an abomination, because they cannot be sufficiently detested, when we consider the stupidity that attributes the incommunicable name of God to them. For the same reason, the Jews could not hear, without horror, the impious fables which the Greek poets were filled with. Thus they drew upon themselves the hatred of the Grammarians, whose profession it was to explain them; and of the Rhapsodists, who made a trade of singing their heroic poems in public; and of the actors of tragedies and comedies, and of all others, whose livelihood depended upon poetry and false theology. The Jews indeed made it a rule not to laugh. at other nations, nor to say any thing disrespectful of their gods;§ but it was scarce possible that some word of contempt should not escape from them. Now how angry must a Greek Grammarian have been, if he had heard a Jew repeat a passage out of the Prophets against idols; if he had heard him assert that Homer was a false prophet and impostor, or ridicule * Orig. cont. Cels. 1. iv. + Isaiah xliv. 10. Jer. x. 15, § Joseph. cont. App. Wisdom xiii. 13. the absurdities that occur in the genealogies, the amours and crimes of their gods? How could they bear any one's shewing an abhorrence of the scandalous impurities of the theatre, and the abominable ceremonies of Bacchus and Ceres: in a word, to hear him maintain that the God of the Jews was the only true God, and that they only, of all the people upon earth, were in possession of the right religion and morality? They despised them the more for not knowing how to make learned harangues, or dispute in form, and because, for a proof of these great truths, they chiefly alledged facts, that is to say, the great miracles that God had wrought in the sight of their fathers.. Now the common people among the Greeks did not make any distinction betwixt those miracles and the prodigies which they also related in their fables: and philosophers thought them impossible, because they only reasoned from the laws of nature, which they held to be absolutely fixed and unalterable.* This being the disposition of the Greeks, they listened the more eagerly to the calumnies of the Phoenicians, Egyptians, and other enemies of the Jews. And thence proceeded those impertinent stories that Tacitus tells us so gravely, when he is explaining the origin of the Jews, and has a mind to act the learned historian; and which are to be met with likewise in Justin, who had had the same information. Strabo does not seem to know much more of the matter, though he treats it more sensibly.‡ * Galen de usu Partium. Hist. 1. v. init. Lib. xvi. But But besides these slanders, which might easily have been overlooked, the Greeks proceeded to violence and persecution. Thus Ptolemy Philopator, after he had lost the battle of Raphia, discharged his wrath upon the Jews: and his son Epiphanes, being provoked at their not letting him go into the sanctuary, would have them exposed to elephants, as it is related in the Maccabees. Under Seleucus Philopator, king of Syria, Heliodorus came to plunder the sacred treasure, and nothing but a miracle prevented his doing it.* At last, under Antiochus Epiphanes began the greatest persecution they ever suffered, and which is not inferior to any that the Christians have endured since.† Those who died at that time for the law of God have been ordinarily classed among the martyrs. They are the first we know of, who laid down their lives in that good cause. The three companions of Daniel, when they were cast into the furnace, and he himself, by being exposed to the lions, had all the merit of martyrdom; but God wrought miracles to preserve them. Eleazar, the seven brethren, and the rest that are mentioned in the history of the Maccabees,§ really gave up their lives for the sake of God and the law of their fathers, which is the first example, that I know, of this kind of virtue, in the whole history of the world. We see no infidel, not even one of the philosophers, who chose to suffer death, and the most cruel punish * 2 Macc. iii. 7, &c. +1 Macc. i. &c. § 2 Macc. vi. 18. and c. vii. Dan. iii. 21. auction, and divided their lands among their own citizens, whom they sent to establish colonies there which was the certain way to secure their conquests. Neither the Jews nor Israelites were so hardly used by the Assyrians. Some had great liberty allowed them, as Tobit by king Enemessar; and there were some rich among them, as Tobit himself, his kinsman Raguel, and his friend Gabael; and at Babylon Joachim, Susanna's husband. It appears likewise by the story of Susanna, that the Jews, notwithstanding their captivity, had the exercise of their laws, and the power to appoint judges of life and death. * However, it was impossible but this mingling with strangers should cause some change in their manners, since one of their chief maxims was to separate themselves from all other nations. Many were prevailed upon to worship idols, eat forbidden food, and marry wives from among strangers, and all conformed to their masters in things indifferent, one of which was their language. Thus, during the seventy years that the captivity lasted, they forgot Hebrew, and none but the learned understood it, as it is now with the Latin among us. Their vulgar tongue was the Syriac or Chaldee, such as that in which a large portion of Daniel and Ezra are written, and the Targums or Paraphrases upon Scripture that were composed afterwards, that the people might understand it. They changed their letters too, and, instead of the old ones which the Samaritans have preserved, took the Chaldean, which we erroneously call the Hebrew. * Tob. i. 14. + Hist. of Susanna, CHAP, |