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In fact, if we view with an unprejudiced eye this Hellenistic literature of the sixth century that poetry followed out professionally and destitute of all productiveness of its own, that uniform imitation of the very shallowest forms of foreign art, that repertoire of translations, that changeling of epos we are tempted to reckon it simply one of the diseased symptoms of the epoch before us.
Over and over again Philo declares that his function is to expound the law of Moses. Moses was the interpreter of God's word to Israel; and Philo aspired to be the interpreter of the revelation of Moses to the Hellenistic world, "the living voice of the holy law."
Splendid in execution as Hellenistic sculpture often was, it won its place at the expense of architecture; one looks in vain for that selection and restraint which give its undying distinction to the earlier work.
It was from these able Hellenistic architects that the Romans learnt the monumental planning of their cities, and for centuries the architects most frequently employed were Greeks of Asia Minor. At this point, Hellenistic architecture merges into Roman, and loses its distinctive character.
But some developments of religion which our Hellenists particularly dislike, and are therefore anxious to disclaim as alien to Greek thought and practice, such as asceticism, sacramental magic, religious persecution, and timid reliance on authority, are maladies of the Greek spirit, and came into the Church from Hellenistic and not from Jewish sources.
Civilization was becoming more complex, and one finds this reflected in Hellenistic art, at once more florid than the Doric of the fourth century, yet also more skilful in its handling of complicated problems of planning and design.
He has been compared to Alexander of Macedonia; and certainly the idea of founding a Hellenic empire of the west which would have had as its core Epirus, Magna Graecia, and Sicily, would have commanded both the Italian seas, and would have reduced Rome and Carthage to the rank of barbarian peoples bordering on the Hellenistic state-system, like the Celts and the Indians was analogous in greatness and boldness to the idea which led the Macedonian king over the Hellespont.
Josephus in the Wars follows his Hellenistic source for the history of the Hasmonean monarchy without introducing any Jewish knowledge and without criticism. His summary is of incidents, not of movements, and he has a liking for romantic color.
How could God allow the wicked and dissolute Romans to prosper and the chosen people to be oppressed? The Hellenistic writers of Sibylline oracles and the Hebrew writers of Apocalypses, imitating the doom-songs of Isaiah and Ezekiel, announced the coming overthrow of evil and the triumph of good.
Beautiful as are the thoughts and fancies of the Talmudic rabbis, their Midrash was a purely national monument, closed by its form as by its language to the general world; Philo applied to the exposition of Judaism the most highly-trained philosophic mind of Alexandria, and brought out clearly for the Hellenistic people the latent philosophy of the Torah.
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