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Updated: September 29, 2025
It is part of the heritage from the Jewish prophets and psalmists and the Babylonian interaction with Hebraism. Philo had large sympathies with the Essenic development of Judaism, and he speaks at times as though he had joined one of their communities, and therein had been initiated into the great mysteries and secret philosophies of the sages.
Can't you understand how I am longing to help the men and women I see around me, who are dying for want of joy and beauty in their lives? It is the old struggle between Hellenism and Hebraism between happiness and righteousness.
The indispensable basis of conduct and self-control, the platform upon which alone the perfection aimed at by Greece can come into bloom, was not to be reached by our race so easily; centuries of probation and discipline were needed to bring us to it. Therefore the bright promise of Hellenism faded, and Hebraism ruled the world.
But what we may with truth say is, that all which Protestantism was to itself clearly conscious of, all which it succeeded in clearly setting forth in words, had the characters of Hebraism rather than of Hellenism.
The greatness of the difference is well measured by the difference in force, beauty, significance and usefulness, between primitive Christianity and Protestantism. Eighteen hundred years ago it was altogether the hour of Hebraism; primitive Christianity was legitimately and truly the ascendent force in the world at that time, and the way of mankind's progress lay through its full development.
Both Hellenism and Hebraism arise out of the wants of human nature, and address themselves to satisfying those wants.
And this discipline has been nowhere so effectively taught as in the school of Hebraism. Sophocles and Plato knew as well as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews that "without holiness no man shall see God," and their notion of what goes to make up holiness was larger than his.
The opposition might be put too bluntly by saying that "Hellenism" represents to Mr Arnold the love of truth at any price, and "Hebraism" the love of goodness at any price; but the actual difference is not far from this, or from those of knowing and doing, fear of stupidity and fear of sin, &c.
Phases of Hebraism. Israel's tribal monotheism. Problems involved. The prophets put new wine in old bottles. Inspiration and authority. Beginnings of the Church. Bigotry turned into a principle. Penance accepted. Christianity combines optimism and asceticism. Reason smothered between the two. The essence of the good not adventitious but expressive.
Hebraism, says Matthew Arnold, is the spirit which obeys the mandate, "walk by your light"; Hellenism the spirit which remembers the other, "have a care your light be not darkness." The former prefers doing to thinking, the latter is bent on finding the truth it loves. Carlyle is a Hebraist unrelieved and unretrieved by the Hellene.
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