KINGSHIP 113Jewish religious particularism. If terms used for Moses and his law
could be applied to any Roman emperor, the unique value of Judaism
would have been gone, and the raison d'Hre of the distinct race with it.
Not monotheism, but religious Judaism, must have perished with such
a concession.
Thirdly, with this went an equally important motive in the refusal,
the instinct of Jewish patriotism. How much Philo resented being ruled
by Roman conquerors has clearly appeared. In the allegories of Joseph
for the inner circle of his own people there is a venom which shows
that the suicidal patriotism of the Jews of his day burned in Philo no
less hotly because its light was kept skillfully hid from Roman eyes.
How could such a patriotism be expected to reason so logically that it
was ready to admit that a gentile autocrat over Jewish liberties shared
in divine nature? That Roman rule could be recognized as a divine dis
pensation to discipline the faithful for a time was entirely possible, and
Philo and his friends intended to start no armed revolt. But death itself
was better than admitting that these rulers, like Moses, had the "greater
share of divine nature" which made them saviors of the human race.
Jews could take many hellenistic ideas into their religion, but not divine
kings when they were Greeks or Romans who ruled over the Jews by
force.
It was not monotheism which was the issue, clearly, and I can think
of no other motive than this politico-religious one as the reason why
Jews stopped at this point in their hellenization. No more than mono
theism can I believe that the issue was the Jewish detestation of images.
The Jew was not asked, be it remembered, to go into pagan temples to
venerate the emperor's statue with pagan rites. He was asked to put the
image into his own synagogues, and show respect to it in his own fash
ion. Discovery of Jewish art has recently taught us that by not more
than a century after Philo's time, and perhaps before him, hellenized
Jews were making the freest use of pagan images in their catacombs
and synagogues. We are even told in the Talmud^111 that rabbis of the
late First and early Second Centuries put various images, including
in. J. D. Eisenstein, "Mazzah," The Jewish Encyclopedia, VIII, 394: "In the house of R.
Gamaliel the perforations of the mazzot represented figures.... The figures were those of
animals, flowers, etc. Artistic perforation was later prohibited as it consumed too much time and
caused fermentation. Baytus ben Zonin suggested stamping the mazzah with ready-made figured
plates, but was opposed on the ground that no discrimination must be made in favor of any
particular kind of perforation (Pes. 37a). R. Isaac b. Gayyat says the figures represented Greeks,
doves, and fishes."