The suggestion may be hazarded that not merely the Hellenistic Jews, but also the Greeks themselves, viewed the progress of the Hasidim with real alarm. We are far as yet from the epoch of real propaganda, but to some extent it may already have begun. Where and when we can only speculate. Perhaps the fervor of Hasidic preaching had touched non-Jewish Syrians; perhaps some of the younger men of the Hellenists “relapsed” under Hasidic stimulation into Judaism. However the case may be, Greeks of influence may have noted that the Grecizing of Coele-Syria was not merely hindered by obstacles in Judea, but that the Judaizing of portions already won was a possibility that was attaining a constantly greater vividness. If this was the case, the persecution by Antiochus was a precaution, insensate and futile, but less at variance with Greek methods than it seems in the usual interpretation of the facts we know.

CHAPTER XI
THE JEWISH PROPAGANDA

The preaching of a gospel seems to us as natural as the existence of a religion. That is because the religions we know best are universal ones, of which the God is a transcendent being, in whose sight human distinctions are negligible. But for the Mediterranean world that was not the case. The religions were not universal; many of the gods were concretely believed to be the ancestors of certain groups of men, and not always remote ones. Local associations played a determining part. If we find an active propaganda here, it cannot be because the spread of a ritual or faith is an inherent characteristic. On the contrary, in normal circumstances there seems to be no reason why one community should change its gods or forms of worship for those of another.

But, as a matter of fact, they did change them. And the change was often effected consciously by the planned efforts of a group of worshipers, and in all the ways that have been used since—preaching, emotional revivals, and forcible conquest. One such carefully planned effort was that of the Jews, but only one of them. The circumstances in which this propaganda was carried out need close investigation.

In discussing Greek religion (above, p. [34]) it has been suggested that there was in every community a large number of men who found no real satisfaction in the state cult, and that it was chiefly among them that the proselytes of new and foreign religions were to be found. But that does not make us understand why these foreign religions should have sought proselytes, why they should have felt themselves under obligations to assume a mission. The stranger within the gates might reasonably be expected to do honor to the divine lord of the city: if he remained permanently, his inclusion in the civic family in some way is natural. But what was it that impelled Isis to seek worshipers so far from the Nile, where alone she could be properly adored, or the mysterious Cabiri to go so far from the caves where their power was greatest and most direct?[[143]]

The movement of which these special missions are phases was old and extensive. It covered the entire Eastern Mediterranean, and went perhaps further west and east than we can at present demonstrate. Its beginnings probably antedated the Hellenes. The religious unrest of which Christian missionaries made such excellent use was a phenomenon that goes back very far in the history of Mediterranean civilization. At certain periods of that history and in different places it reached culminating waves, but it is idle to attempt to discover a sufficient cause for it in a limited series of events within a circumscribed area of Greece or of Asia.

The briefest form in which the nature of this unrest can be phrased is the following—the quest for personal salvation.

We shall do well to remember that the ancient state was a real corporation, based not upon individuals but upon smaller family corporations. The rights of these corporations were paramount. It was only gradually that individuals were recognized at all in law.[[144]] The desire for personal salvation is a part of the growing consciousness of personality, and must have begun almost as soon as the state corporation itself became fixed.

Within a state only those individuals can have relatively free play who are to a certain extent the organs of the state; that is, those individuals who by conquest, wealth, or chance have secured for themselves political predominance in their respective communities. But these could never be more than a small minority. For the great majority everyday life was hemmed in by conventions that had the force of laws, and was restricted by legal limits drastically enforced. And this narrow and pitifully poor life was bounded by Sheol, or Hades, by a condition eloquently described as worse at its best than the least desirable existence under the face of the insufferable sun.[[145]]