History of religions Author:George Foot Moore Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III JUDAISM SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE Alexander and his Successors—The Asmonseans—Rise of the Pharisees —Doctrine of Retribution after Death, Resurrect... more »ion, Immortality —Essenes and Other Sects—Philo—The Synagogue—Popular Literature and Apocalypses—Wars with Rome—The Stronghold of Judaism, the Law—Judaism as Revealed Religion—The Idea of God—Angels and Demons—The Golden Age and the Last Judgment—The Talmud. The battle of Issos in 333 had made Alexander the master of all 'western Syria. In the division of his empire Palestine, after some vicissitudes, became part of the kingdom of the Ptolemies in Egypt, and remained in their possession, though not uncontested, until 198 B. C., when it passed into the hands of the Seleucid kings. With the conquests of Alexander began a new and wider dispersion of the Jews; as soldiers, traders, and adventurers they were to be found in all the new centres of politics and commerce which sprang up everywhere in the East. In these cities, where Greek was not only the language of administration but the common language of intercourse among their polyglot inhabitants, the Jews in the course of a generation or two exchanged their Aramaic vernacular for the new cosmopolitan speech. In Alexandria, where they formed from the beginning a considerable part of the population, they found it necessary early in the third century to provide themselves with a Greek version of their sacred Law. In Judea itself the upper classes made haste to acquire at least a veneer of Hellenistic culture, and the unfavourable influences of Hellenism are more apparent there than in the dispersion itself. Particularly under the Seleucids, who intheir perennial financial embarrassment sold the office to the highest bidder, the high priests strove to commend themselves still...« less