364 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY vin 



their nation, had not the leaders of the nation 

 been zealous, even to death, for the dross of the law 

 in which it was embedded. The struggle of the 

 Jews, under the Maccabean house, against the 

 SeleucidaB was as important for mankind as that of 

 the Greeks against the Persians. And, of all the 

 strange ironies of history, perhaps the strangest 

 is that " Pharisee " is current, as a term of reproach, 

 among the theological descendants of that sect of 

 Nazarenes who, without the martyr spirit of those 

 primitive Puritans, would never have come into 

 existence. They, like their historical successors, 

 our own Puritans, have shared the general fate of 

 the poor wise men who save cities. 



A criticism of theology from the side of science 

 is not thought of by the prophets, and is at most 

 indicated in the books of Job and Ecclesiastes, in 

 both of which the problem of vindicating the ways 

 of God to man is given up, though on different 

 grounds, as a hopeless one. But with the ex- 

 tensive introduction of Greek thought among the 

 Jews, which took place, not only during the 

 domination of the Seleucidse in Palestine, but in 

 the great Judaic colony which flourished in 

 Egypt under the Ptolemies, criticism, on both 

 ethical and scientific grounds, took a new depar- 

 ture. 



In the hands of the Alexandrian Jews, as repre- 

 sented by Philo, the fundamental axiom of later 

 Jewish, as of Christian monotheism, that the Deity 



