The outward history of the Alexandrian community is far less interesting and of far less importance than its intellectual progress.  When Alexander planted the colony of Jews in his greatest foundation, he probably intended to facilitate the fusion of Eastern and Western thought through their mediation.  Such, at any rate, was the result of his work.  His marvellous exploits had put an end for a time to the political strife between Asia and Europe, and had started the movement between the two realms of culture, which was fated to produce the greatest combination of ideas that the world has known.  Now, at last, the Hebrew, with his lofty conception of God, came into close contact with the Greek, who had developed an equally noble conception of man.  Disraeli, in his usual sweeping manner, makes one of his characters in “Lothair” tell how the Aryan and Semitic races, after centuries of wandering upon opposite courses, met again and, represented by their two choicest families, the Hellenes and the Hebrews, brought together the treasures of their accumulated wisdom and secured the civilization of man.  Apart from the question of the original common source, of which we are no longer sure, his rhetoric is broadly true; but for two centuries the influence was nearly all upon one side.  The Jew, attracted by the brilliant art, literature, science, and philosophy of the Hellene, speedily Hellenized, and as early as the third century B.C.E.  Clearchus, the pupil of Aristotle, tells of a Jew whom his master met, who was “Greek not only in language but also in mind."[18] The Greek, on the other hand, who had not yet comprehended the majesty of his neighbor’s monotheism, for lack of adequate presentation, did not Hebraize.  In Palestine the adoption of Greek ways and the introduction of Greek ideas proceeded rapidly to the point of demoralization, until the Maccabees stayed it.  Unfortunately, the Hellenism that was brought to Palestine was not the lofty culture, the eager search for truth and knowledge, that marked Athens in the classical age; it was a bastard product of Greek elegance and Oriental luxury and sensuousness, a seeking after base pleasures, an assertion of naturalistic polytheism.  And hence came the strong reaction against Greek ideas among the bulk of the people, which prevented any permanent fusion of cultures in the land of Israel.

The Hellenism of Alexandria was a more genuine product.  The liberal policy of the early Ptolemies made their capital a centre of art, literature, science, and philosophy.  To their court were gathered the chief poets, savants, and thinkers of their age.  The Museum was the most celebrated literary academy, and the Library the most noted collection of books in the world.  Dwelling in this atmosphere of culture and research, the Hebrew mind rapidly expanded and began to take its part as an active force in civilization.  It acquired the love of knowledge in a wider sense than it had recognized before, and assimilated the teachings of Hellas in all their variety.  Within a hundred years of their settlement Hebrew or Aramaic had become to the Jews a strange language, and they spoke and thought in Greek.  Hence it was necessary to have an authoritative Greek translation of the Holy Scriptures, and the first great step in the Jewish-Hellenistic development is marked by the Septuagint version of the Bible.