Note 75 — Chapter VI · THE FIRST CONTACT BETWEEN GREEK AND JEW

Joel iii. 6. There is nothing in the extant Book of Joel inconsistent with a pre-Exilic date. Such slave raids as the Phoenicians are here accused of making, the Greeks made freely in Homeric times, and Greek merchants were already in every mart. In the famous picture of a golden age in Isaiah, Jewish captives are to be assembled “from Assyria, Egypt—and from the islands of the sea” (Isaiah xi. 11), a passage indubitably pre-Exilic. The “islands of the sea,” however, are obviously Greek.