The life and work of St. Paul

68 THK LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL.
could not fail to draw the attention of their domestic circles to the belief
which they had embraced. In every considerable city of the Roman Empire
the service of the synagogue was held in Greek, and these services were
perfectly open to any one who liked to be present at them. Greek, too,
became emphatically the language of Christianity. Multitudes of early converts
had been Jewish proselytes before they became Christian disciples. They
passed from the synagogue of Hellenists into the Church of Christ.
The influences exercised by the Dispersion on the Jews themselves were,
of course, too varied and multitudinous to be summed up under one head ; yet
we may trace two consequences which, century after century, worked in
opposite directions, but each of which was deeply marked. On the one hand
they became more faithful to their religion ; on the other more cosmopolitan
in their views. Although they made their homo in the heathen countries to
which they had been removed by conquest, or had wandered in pursuit of
commerce, it must not be supposed that they were at all ready to forfeit their
nationality or abandon their traditions. On the contrary, the great majority
of them clung to both with a more desperate tenacity. In the destruction of
their independence they had recognised the retribution threatened in that
long-neglected series of prophecies which had rebuked them for their idolatries.
Of all polytheistic tendencies the Jew was cured for ever, and as
though to repair past centuries of rebellion and indifference as though to
earn the fulfilment of that great promise of an Anointed Deliverer which was
the centre of all their hopes they devoted themselves with all the ardour of
their self-conscious pride to keep the minutest observances of their Law and
ritual. Their faithfulness a complete contrast to their old apostasies was
due to the work of the Sopherim. or Scribes. It was towards Jerusalem that
they worshipped ; it was to the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem that they looked
for legal decisions ; it was from the Amoraim and Tanaim of Jerusalem
that they accepted all solutions of casuistical difficulties; it was from
Jerusalem that were flashed the fire-signals which announced over many lands
the true date of the new moons ; it was into the treasury of Jerusalem that
they poured, not only the stated Temple-tribute of half a shekel, but gifts far
more costly, which told of their unshaken devotion to the church of their
fathers. It was in Jerusalem that they maintained a special synagogue, and
to Jerusalem
1
that they made incessant pilgrimages. The hatred, the suspicion,
the contempt created in many countries by the exclusiveness of their
prejudices, the peculiarity of their institutions, the jealousy of their successes,
only wedded them more fanatically to the observance of their Levitical rules
by giving a tinge of martyrdom to the fulfilment of obligations. It became
cvXo/3ts) may be seen in Acts x. 2; xiii. 43 ; xvi. 14, &c., and passim. Owing to the
painful and, to Hellenic imagination, revolting rite of circumcision, women were more
tella us that
frequently converted to Judaism than men. Josephus (B. J. ii. 20, 2)
nearly all the women of Damascus had adopted Judaism ; and even in the first century
three celebrated Rabbis were sons of heathen mothers who had embraced the faith of
Moses (Derenbourg, Palest., p. 223).
1 See Philo, Legal. 36 ; in Flacc. 7 ; Jos. 4fl#. *vl. 6, 7 ; rvjii 9, 1 ; Olc.
28 ; Shekalim, 7, 4 ; Rosh Hashana, 2, 4.