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Show I The GRAPHIC BIBLeI J By LEWIS BROWNE ; s McCTure Newspaper Syndicate W.NU Service. jVW!:' was a growing familiarity with all tilings Greek. Jews began to affect af-fect the use of Greek words in their conversation, and began to give their children Greek names. THE RULE OF THE PRIESTS FOR all that the Jews were "civilized," their religion was hardly so vital, so simple, as it had been in the days of Micah or Jeremiah. It laid stress on showy externals, on essentially unimportant un-important things not eating certain cer-tain foods, bringing regular gifts to the priest, observing certain festivals. fes-tivals. And the exile was very largely to blame for this change. Even before the destruction of the old Temple, the seeds of a religion re-ligion of priestliness had taken root in Palestine. But it had been unable un-able to nourish then because the greater prophets . had been most strenuously opposed to it, and the peopl themselves had been only feebly attracted by it. Now, however, how-ever, that the Jews had seen the great temples and had witnessed the gorgeous ceremonies of priest-ridden priest-ridden peoples like the Babylonians, Babyloni-ans, they eagerly took to imitating that sort of thing. And gone were the rebels, the true prophets, who might have decried the trend. Year by year the power of the priests grew mightier among the Jews. Wealth rapidly accumulated to their hands, for each season the plain people had to take them the choicest portions of their flocks and harvests. Forgotten was the old democratic ideal of the prophets proph-ets that all Jews were priests. Now only those who were supposed to come from the tribe of Levi were allowed to minister in the Temple; and furthermore only those who were supposed to come from the tribe of Levi were allowed al-lowed to minister in the Temple; and furthermore only those of the family of Aaron of the tribe of Levi were considered holy enough actually to perform the sacrifices; and still further, only one directly descended from Solomon's favorite priest, Zadok, could possibly become be-come the High Priest. The High Priest was virtually the king of the land, and the lesser less-er priests were the princes. They were no better, of course, than lay kings and princes. They were forever for-ever conspiring among themselves, cheating and murdering their way from one office to another. But for all their corruption, they did succeed in doing one thing: they kept the Jews alive as a separate people. They walled them in with their little rules and regulations, keeping them rigorously segregated segregat-ed from all the other tribes and peoples. Even the half-Jewish Samaritans were cut off completely complete-ly and had to start a temple of their own in northern Palestine. But despite the efforts of the priests, foreign influences did seep into the life of the people. Gradually Gradu-ally their language changed from Hebrew to Aramaic, so that after a few generations they could not understand even their own Scriptures. Scrip-tures. In their synagogues each Sabbath for those "meeting houses" they had created in the exile had become common now throughout Judea they had to read their Holy Writings through an Aramaic translation called the Targum. And many of their religious reli-gious ideas changed, too. Outwardly Outward-ly no sign of this change in thought was evident None was there to hail It, and so none could rise to decry it. But then came Alexander, and all was made open. In the fateful year 333 B. C. Alexander Al-exander of Macedon became master mas-ter of the Persian empire, and a year later, on his march toward Egypt, he took possession of Palestine. Pal-estine. (The little land was stii: the one bridge used by the empire builders). But this Alexander, a mere boy in years, was quite un like the ordinary world-conqueror His aim seems to have been nol so -much the gaining of power as the spreading of culture. H( dreamed of scattering throughou tee world the seeds of Greek civili zation. And so energetically die he try to realize his dream that though he died at the age of thir ty-three. his Greek colonies dottcc all of the then-known world. Alexander's effect on the Jew; and their religion was greater thai that of any other non-Jew in his tory. He was generous to then and gave them every liberty; bu at the same time he located peace ful ettlements of his own peopli llirVtighout Palestine. The resul |