Chapter XI
THE JEWISH PROPAGANDA
[143]. Cumont, Les religions orientales dans le paganisme romain, gives the best and clearest account of the spread of these foreign cults. The Cabiri came from Samothrace. They were generally referred to as Θεοὶ μεγάλοι, and are found in many parts of the empire.
[144]. Athenian criminal statutes often contain in the penalty clause καὶ τὸ γένος αὐτοῦ. Cf. Glotz, La solidarité de la famille dans le droit Ath. Cf. for Teos C. I. G. 3044.
[145]. Homer, Odys. xi. 489-491.
[146]. Frequently pictured relief (Gardner, Greek Sculpt. p. 136) formerly in the Sabouroff Coll. Pl. i., Ath. Mitth. 1877. Taf. xx-xxiv.
[147]. Il. iii. 243-244; v. 638-651; xviii. 117-119.
[148]. Cf. the translation of Menelaus, ch. I, notes 28, 29.
[149]. Hymn in Dem. 480-482.
[150]. Ben Sira knows of no life after death except Sheol. Perhaps it is better to say that he refuses to acknowledge any. His repeated affirmations have the air of consciously repudiating a doctrine advanced by others. The author of Wisdom (iii. 4) is sure of an immortality of the elect. It is in the apocryphal literature generally, in Enoch, the Testaments of the Patriarchs—most of them written in the first century B.C.E.—that the scattered and contradictory references to a future life are to be found.
[151]. Josephus, Wars, II. viii. 14. His words are (οἱ Σαδδουκαῖοι) ψυχῆς τε τὴν διαμονὴν καὶ τὰς καθ’ Ἄδου τιμωρίας καὶ τιμὰς ἀναιροῦσι. The passages in Josephus are our only contemporary authority for the sects and their differences; and Josephus was a Pharisee. The word αναιροῦσι would in this context naturally have the meaning “deny,” but it might also simply indicate that the Sadducean belief on the subject was, in his opinion, so vague or so qualified as to render their whole transcendental scheme ineffectual. It is, however, more natural to give the word its dialectic sense (Cf. Plato, Rep. 533 c).