"Preacher" (Ecclesiastes, Koheleth) contains Pyrrhonic ideas.[1] The Wisdom of Solomon, 2 Maccabees, Theodotion, the Aristeas Letter, etc., follow; there are things like the Menander collection of Maxims, as to which it is impossible to say whether they ought to be regarded as Jewish or as Greek. There were, about 160, high priests who were so Hellenistic in spirit that they combated the Jewish religion, and later there were rulers like Hyrcanus and Herod who did the same by political methods. This danger came to an end instantly and for good in A.D. 70.
In the time of Jesus there were in Jerusalem three tendencies which can be described as generally Aramæan, represented respectively by the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. Although the connotations of these names varied, and although both in Christian and in Jewish research most diverse views are held about them, it may at any rate be said that the first of these tendencies is found in greatest purity in Judaism, the second in Chaldeanism, the third in Hellenism.[2] Essene is the rise of the cult (almost the Order) of Mithras in the east of Asia Minor. The Sadducees, although in Jerusalem they appear as a small and distinguished group — Josephus compares them with the Epicureans — are thoroughly Aramæan in their apocalyptic and eschatological views, in virtue of a certain element which makes them, so to say, the Dostoyevskis of this Early period. They stand to the Pharisees in the relation of mysticism to scholasticism, of John to Paul, of Bundahish to Vendidad[3] in the Persian world. The Apocalyptic is popular, and many of its traits are spiritually common property throughout the Aramæan world; the Talmudic and Avestan Pharisaism is exclusive and tries to rule out every other religion with uncompromising rigour.
The Essenes appear in Jerusalem as a monastic order like the Neopythagoreans. They possessed secret texts.[4] In the broad sense they are representative of the Pseudomorphosis, and in consequence they disappear from Jewry completely after A.D. 70, while precisely in this period Christian literature was becoming purely Greek — not in the least of the causes of this being that the Hellenized Western Jews left Judaism to retreat into its East, and gradually adopted Christianity.
But also Apocalyptic, which is an expression-form of townless and town-fearing mankind, soon came to an end within the Synagogue, after a last wonderful reaction to the stimulus of the great catastrophe.[5] When it had become evident that the teaching of Jesus would lead not to a reform of Judaism,
- ↑ Pyrrho himself had studied under Magian priests. See, for Pyrrhonism, Ency. Brit., XI ed., articles "Scepticism," "Megarian School," "Pyrrho." — Tr.
- ↑ Schiele (Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, III, 812) reverses the two latter names; this, however, does not affect the phenomenon in any way.
- ↑ The Cosmogony and the Law, in the Zoroastrian Scriptures. — Tr.
- ↑ Bousset, Rel. d. Jud., p. 532.
- ↑ Baruch, Ezra IV (2 Esdras), the original text of John's Revelation.
