began with a mere flirtation, encouraged by the rulers of the land and
kept up by the Jews, who wished to gain the favour of the conquering
race and to show themselves and their history in as favourable a light
as possible, it soon ended in a serious attachment. The Hebrews made
themselves acquainted with Hellenic life and thought. They studied Homer
and Hesiod, Empedocles and Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle, and they
were startled by the discovery that in Greek thought there were many
elements, moral and religious, familiar to them: this enhanced the
attraction. The narrowness and exclusiveness to which strict nationality
always gives rise, engendering contempt and hatred for everything
foreign--which made even the Greeks, with all their intellectual
culture, draw a line of demarcation between Greek and barbarian--gave
way to a spirit of cosmopolitan breadth of view which has only very
rarely been equalled in history. Hellenic and Hebrew forms of
thought were brought into friendly union, and gave birth to ideas
and aspirations of which humanity may always be proud. Greek æsthetic
judgment and Semitic mysticism, different phases of thought in
themselves, were welded into one. The religious conceptions of Moses
and the Prophets were expressed in the language of the philosophical
schools; an attempt was made to bring into harmony the dogmas of
supernatural revelation and the fruits of human speculative thought.
Such an attempt is a great undertaking, for, if sincerely and
relentlessly pursued, it must end in breaking down the barriers of
separation, in the establishment of a common truth, and in the sacrifice
of cherished ideals and convictions which prove to be wrong. If carried
to its logical conclusion, such a cosmopolitan broad-mindedness, such
a cross-fertilisation of intellectual products, must give rise to the
ennobling idea that there is only one truth, and that the external forms
are only fleeting waves upon the vast ocean of human ideals. The
attempt was made in Alexandria by the Judæo-Hellenic philosophers.