This racial pride on the part of the Jews was still more increased by the coming of another unusually proud people, the Greeks.  In the year B.C. 333, Alexander the Great defeated the army of the king of Persia and soon extended his rule over all western Asia, including Judaea.  Very soon Greeks were everywhere to be seen, in all the cities of Palestine.  In order to protect the country from the desert robbers who, as we have seen, had been making their raids through all the centuries, a chain of Greek cities was built to the east of the Jordan and thousands of Greek settlers were brought there to live.  The ruins of many beautiful Greek temples and theaters may still be seen in that country.  Samaria was also rebuilt as a Greek city, the capital of the province.  So there were Greeks on all sides of Jerusalem and throngs of Greek merchants and travelers were to be seen on the streets of every Jewish city and village.

The Greeks in some ways had as much to be proud of as a people as the Jews.  Their sculptors had carved the most beautiful marbles in the world.  Their poets had composed the most beautiful poems.  Their philosophers were wiser than those of any other nation.  Moreover, many of these Greeks who came into Palestine and other countries of Asia were filled with a truly missionary spirit.  It is said that Alexander the Great was inspired by the thought that he was helping to spread the art and wisdom and culture of the Greeks throughout the world.

=The struggle between Judaism and Hellenism.=—­This meant that the old religion of Jehovah was in danger of being forgotten not only in Babylonia and other lands but even in Judaea and Jerusalem.  Many Jews quite fell in love with the new art and learning of the Greeks.  They learned the Greek language, gave their children Greek names, such as “Jason,” for example, instead of “Joshua.”  A gymnasium was built in Jerusalem where Jewish lads learned to exercise and play games after the Greek style.  Many of them tried to hide the fact that they were Jews, and too often they ceased to worship Jehovah, the God of their fathers, and offered sacrifices to Zeus and other Greek divinities.

=The beginnings of the Pharisees.=—­Other Jews fought against all these new ideas and fashions.  They became more strict than ever in their observance of the peculiar customs and regulations of the Jewish law.  It was at this time that the beginnings of the party of the Pharisees came into existence, of which we read in the New Testament.  The word “Pharisee” means “one who is kept apart, or separate”; that is, one who holds aloof from the heathen and from heathen customs.  They were the men who “when they come from the market place, eat not, except they bathe themselves.”  They might have touched some heathen person in the street which they thought made them ceremonially unclean.  In the earlier days the Pharisees were called “Hasideans,” or “the pious.”

It was right, of course, that these men should struggle to keep their religion alive.  The great religious truths of the prophets were worth more to the world than all the art and wisdom of the Greeks.  But the result of the struggle was an even greater scorn on the part of the Hebrews for all men who were not Jews.