The rabbis recognized that this consummation was far away,
and that Judaism must remain particularist for centuries in the hope
of a final universalism. Meantime it must hold fast to the law and, in
default of a national home, strengthen the national religious life in
each Jewish household. They regarded Greek as not only a strange but a
hostile tongue, and the allegorical exegesis of the Bible, which had
led to the whittling away of the law, as a godless wisdom. The
Septuagint translation, which had offered a starting point for
philosophical speculation, was replaced by a new Greek version of the
Old Testament made by Aquila, a proselyte, in the first century. It
gave a baldly literal translation of the Hebrew text, sacrificing form
and even lucidity to a faithful transcript. With unconscious irony the
rabbis, who rejoiced in its truth to the Hebrew, said of Aquila, "Thou
art fairer than the children of men, grace is poured into thy
lips"[329] (Ps. xlv). In truth the work was utterly innocent of
literary grace. A translation of the Bible marked the end, as it had
marked the beginning, of Jewish-Hellenistic literature, but if the
first had suggested the admission, so the other suggested the
rejection of Greek philosophy from the interpretation of Judaism and a
return to the exclusive national standpoint.
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