writings a low moral standard among the Egyptian Jews. They were not
meant to suggest, to the cultured at any rate, that the Sibyl in one
case or Heraclitus in another had really written the words ascribed to
them. The so-called forgery was a literary device of a like nature
with the dialogues of Plato or the political fantasies of More and
Swift. By the striking nature of their utterances the writers hoped to
catch the ear of the Gentile world for the saving doctrine which they
taught. The form is Greek, but the spirit is Hebraic; in the third
Sibylline oracle, particularly, the call to monotheism and the
denunciation of idolatry, with the pictures of the Divine reward for
the righteous, and of the Divine judgment for the ungodly, remind us
of the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah; as when the poet says,[25]
"Witless mortals, who cling to an image that ye have fashioned to be
your god, why do ye vainly go astray, and march along a path which is
not straight? Why remember ye not the eternal founder of All? One only
God there is who ruleth alone." And again: "The children of Israel
shall mark out the path of life to all mortals, for they are the
interpreters of God, exalted by Him, and bearing a great joy to all
mankind."[26] The consciousness of the Jewish mission is the dominant
note. Masters now of Greek culture, the Jews believed that they had a
philosophy of their own, which it was their privilege to teach to the
Greeks; their conception of God and the government of the world was
truer than any other; their conception of man's duty more righteous;
even their conception of the state more ideal.

The apocryphal book, the Wisdom of Solomon, which was probably written
at Alexandria during the first century B.C.E., is marked by the same
spirit. There again we meet with the glorification of the one true God
of Israel, and the denunciation of pagan idolatry; and while the
author writes in Greek and shows the influence of Greek ideas, he