18. COMMERCE AND THE JEWS. Commerce or the exchange of goods is and has at all times been one of the prime motors of civilization. In antiquity the Phoenicians were the great trading nation, and together with the various products they carried from one land to another they spread the elements of culture into remote parts of the earth. Thus they fur nished the Greeks with the very elements out of which their industry, art and literature after ward developed until they themselves became heirs to the Phoenician trade. Less known and recognized is the fact that during the early Middle Ages the Jews, owing to their disper sion over the globe and their connection with one another, were the merchant people par ex cellence, filling the position of the Canaanite of old as intermediaries of the world's trade.
Early Traders.— On the soil of Palestine the Hebrews were gradually transformed from a people of shepherds into farmers. Trading was greatly discouraged by legislation which prohibited loaning money on interest and the merchant's honesty was distrusted alike by prophet and by sage (Hosea xii, 7; Ecclesiasti cus xxvi, 29-xxvii, 2; Kiddushin iv, 14). The great caravan routes from Arabia and Egypt to Tyre and Damascus did not touch the high lands of Judwa and Samaria; it was the Ca naanite or Phoenician who °walked around" from town to town and from house to house with his merchandise (Isaiah xxiii, 8; Hosea xii, 8; Ezek. xvii, 4; Zech. xiv, 21; Prov. xxxi, 24). Once or twice the attempt was made to join the Phoenicians in maritime expeditions but without success (I Kings x, 15-22; xxii, 48). In the Babylonian exile the Jew imbibed an unquenchable love for the wide world; his eyes were opened to the facilities of com merce as he watched the markets of Babylonia and of Tyre (Ezek. xxvii; Genesis x; Tobit 13). Travel on land or on sea for the pur suit of commerce became a matter of frequent occurrence also among Palestinian Jews under the Persian dominion (Prov. vii, 19-20; Ps. cvii, 23; Tobit i, 13, 21; iii, 7; Jonah i, 3), al though the markets of Jerusalem were chiefly occupied by Phoenician traders at the time of Ezra (Nehem. iii, 31; 'tin, 16). Josephus also writes rather in a spirit of contempt for trade: We neither inhabit a maritime country nor do we delight in commercial occupation, but take pains in cultivating the fertile land we inhabit.° (Contra Apionem i, 12).
Hellenic Jews.— It was chiefly since the time of Alexander the Great and under the Ptolemies and Seleucides that the Jews settled in large numbers in the great centres of com merce all along the Mediterranean and en gaged in mercantile pursuits acquiring wealth and influence to such a degree as to rouse the jealousy of their Greek competitors. This was
especially the case in Alexandria where they inhabited a large portion of land along the sea and became owners of ships and great merchant princes controlling the navigation of the Nile. (Philo In Flaccum 8; III Maca. iii, 10; Jose phus Contra Apionem ii, 5; Comp. Frankel Mo natschrift, 1874, p. 147, and Theodore Reincharl, °JudaP in 'Dictionnaire des Antiquites Goth ques et Romaines>). There was scarcely a commercial town throughout the whole Roman Empire from Asia Minor to Spain in which they had not a colony of their own, enjoying the Protection of the Roman rulers because of their success (Josephus, Ant. xiv, 7, 2-3; Jewish War ii, 16, 4). They were Jews in race and faith, but Hellenes in culture; commerce broad ened their views and rendered them cosmopoli tan. Jewish merchants carried Jewish ideas wherever they went; they paved the way for a world-conquering faith. They ploughed the soil for Saint Paul and Christianity to reap the great harvest.
Judaea also came under the influence of the commercial spirit of the Hellenic Jew. The large list of goods mentioned in the Mishnah gives evidence of the extensive international trade carried on by the Jews which flooded the mother-country with merchandise imported from all parts of the globe and which enriched the Jewish vocabulary with a great variety of Greek terms (Herzfeld, 'Handelsgeschichte der Juden des Alterthums,> 1879; Schuerer, (Gesch. d. juedischen Volkes' II', 50-63). The ships sculptured upon the Maccabean mauso leum point to the possession of a mercantile fleet by the Jews stationed at Joppa, the port at which Simon the Maccabean prince endeav ored to develop the foreign trade (I Macc. xiii, 29; xiv, 5), whereas King Herod desired to make Caesarea a more convenient harbor (Josephus, Ant. xv, 9, 6). As a typical man of wealth of this time a high priest by the name of Eleazar ben Harsom is mentioned in the Talmud who is said to have inherited from his father a thousand towns on land and a thou sand ships on sea (Yoma 35b). But the best proof of the gradual transformation of the Jews from an agricultural to a commercial peo ple at the time of Herod is given by the fact that Hillel, the great master of the rabbinical schools, felt induced to institute a legal mode of procedure in regard to loans of money which virtually did away with the Mosaic pro hibition (Gittm v, 5). It shows that invest ment of capital in commercial speculation had become a necessity with the people.