Though the religious and intellectual development of the Alexandrian
community proceeded on different lines from that of the main body of
the nation in Palestine, yet the connection between the two was
maintained closely for centuries. The colony, as we have noticed,
recognized whole-heartedly the spiritual headship of Jerusalem, and at
the great festivals of the year a deputation went from Alexandria to
the holy sanctuary, bearing offerings from the whole community. In
Jerusalem, on the other hand, special synagogues, where Greek was the
language,[35] were built for Alexandrian visitors. Alexandrian
artisans and craftsmen took part in the building of Herod's temple,
but were found inferior to native workmen.[36] The notices within the
building were written in Greek as well as in Aramaic, and the golden
gates to the inner court were, we are told by Josephus,[37] the gift
of Philo's brother, the head of the Alexandrian community. Some
fragments have come down to us of a poem about Jerusalem in Greek
verse by a certain Philo, who lived in the first century B.C.E., and
was perhaps an ancestor of our worthy. He glorifies the Holy City,
extols its fertility, and speaks of its ever-flowing waters beneath
the earth. His greater namesake says that wherever the Jews live they
consider Jerusalem as their metropolis. The Talmud again tells how
Judah Ben Tabbai and Joshua Ben Perahya, during the persecution of the
Pharisees by Hyreanus, fled to Alexandria, and how later Joshua Ben
Hanania[38] sojourned there and gave answers to twelve questions which
the Jews propounded to him, three of them dealing with "the Wisdom."
The Talmud has frequent reference to Alexandrian Jews, and that it
makes little direct mention of the Alexandrian exegesis is explained
by the distrust of the whole Hellenistic movement, which the rise of
Christianity and the growth of Gnosticism induced in the rabbis of the
second and third centuries. They lived at a time when it had been