The world situation, as Baron has indicated, was propitious for the spread of new ideas and 'Judaism found a great opportunity. It appealed strongly to generations in which the craving for the supernatural was coupled with a wish for a rational understanding of life, and dominated by a desire for moral rules which, while simple and easily grasped, were firmly rooted in the realm of the infinite. What Judaism brought to a religiously minded Hellenist was in some ways less, in others more than mere philosophy.'(1) It caught on apace though one major obstacle, the necessity for circumcision, deterred many Greeks and Romans because of the 'open derision of the protagonists at every subsequent gymnastic performance by them in the stadium'. This, however, was no hindrance to Egyptians, Meroites or Phoenicians, who had practised the rite for ages, nor for the Syrian women, who 'seem to have adopted Judaism in large numbers, as frequently happens in all religious conversions'. (2)

Both Judaism and the Jewish people expanded by the absorption of large numbers of people who could not be described as racially Jews but who, 'through a conscious process of assimilation', says Baron, were expected to divest themselves of all former ethnic characteristics and gradually to become ethnic Jews. (3) In this way the Jewish religion was spread, chiefly by a process of cultural diffusion, while migration, either from one country of the Diaspora to another or from Palestine as a result of the Roman conquest, also played a role.

At the same time Hellenistic culture was spreading far and wide.

It is probable that the southern limit of its penetration into the heart of Africa, passing through Meroe in the Nile basin, was drawn at Axum in the Abyssinian highlands. Here Greek became the language of the court and here, suggests Baron, 'Judaism must have been firmly established during the Second Commonwealth, or else the Falasha Jews could not have remained until to-day ignorant of the festivals of Hanukkah and Purim. '(4) This is in contrast, it may be added, to the rabbinical Judaism of the

(1) ibid., p. 173.
(2) ibid., p. 177.
(3) ibid., p. 181.
(4) ibid., p. 169. This proposition requires modification in view of Leslau's assertion that the Feast of Esther (Purim) is celebrated by the Falashas (see below, p. 69). The festival of Hanukkah (or Chanukah), on the other hand, was instituted m Talmudic times and passed the Falashas by.