The World of Greek Thought and Culture
Alexander and the Diffusion of Greek Culture
Alexander
The fact that the New Testament is written entirely in Greek – as opposed to the Hebrew and Aramaic languages of the Old Testament – can be largely explained in a single word: Alexander.
The most spectacular, and in many ways the most influential, of all ancient leaders, Alexander the Great conquered the entire eastern Mediterranean region, as well as the older civilizations of the ancient Near East (including Palestine) in the late fourth century BCE.
A brilliant military strategist and magnetic commander who won and held the devotion of his troops, Alexander embodied some of the most admired virtues of his age. Tutored by the philosopher-scientist Aristotle, he was both a practical man of action and a passionate disciple of Greek culture.
By the time he was thirty, Alexander had led his Macedonian armies to an unprecedented series of military victories that created the largest empire the world had yet known.
Extending from Greece eastward through the ancient realms of Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, and Afghanistan into western India, Alexander’s empire included most of the (then-recognized) world.
At the age of thirty-two, stricken by a sudden fever, Alexander died in Babylon (323 BCE). He did not live long enough to consolidate his far-flung conquests and achieve his goal of a single world government united under the flag of Greek civilization.
Hellenism
Both Alexander and his successors actively promoted Hellenism, the adoption of Greek language, literature, social customs, and ethical values.
Alexander’s policy of founding hundreds of new cities – some located thousands of miles from the Greek homeland – that perpetuated the Hellenic way of life created an international Greek-speaking culture and began a new historical era known as Hellenistic.
The Hellenistic era chronologically overlapped the period of Roman military expansion and continued as a cultural force into the early centuries CE.
During this epoch, which spanned 500 years, the last books of the Hebrew Bible, the entire New Testament, and an additional large body of noncanonical Jewish and Christian literature were composed. Most of these works were significantly influenced by some aspect of Greek thought.
Along with a new form of the Greek language, the koine spoken by Alexander’s soldiers, Hellenistic culture introduced a creative flowering of art, architecture, philosophy, science, literature, and religion.
It also produced, among educated classes at least, new ways of thought and expression, including a larger worldview in which Hellenistic peoples saw themselves as citizens not merely of a particular city-state (the polis) but of the world (cosmos) as a whole.
This cosmopolitan outlook helped break down barriers between different traditions, allowing an integration of Greek with other ethnic customs, a widespread process by which even the Palestinian Jewish community became partly Hellenized.
Many prominent Jews gave their children Greek names and embraced Greek styles of education, dress, behavior, and other social practices.
Koine
Koine became so widely spoken that the Jews of Alexandria, Egypt’s largest city, found it necessary to translate the Hebrew Bible into koine Greek, beginning about 250 BCE with the Torah and gradually adding other books.
This Greek edition, the Septuagint, was used not only by the Jews of the Diaspora but also by the early Christian churches, which produced their own Scripture, the New Testament, in koine Greek.
Greek Philosophy
Greek philosophy began in the late seventh century BCE in Miletus and other Greek cities along the coast of western Asia Minor. By the fifth century BCE, Athens had emerged as the intellectual center of the Greek world, home to numerous schools of thought that used the tools of logic to discredit old superstitions and to construct new theories about the universe.
Socrates
Some Athenian philosophers, such as Socrates (c. 469–399 BCE), focused on ethical questions, particularly the mental disciplines by which one could discover and lead the “good life,” a life worthy of responsible and intelligent human beings.
Socrates regarded human life as an ongoing quest for truth, a pilgrimage toward the unseen world of eternal spirit, the ultimate goal of the human soul. Questioning every belief that his fellow Athenians cherished as “obviously” true, Socrates good-naturedly cross-examined artisans, teachers, and politicians alike – demanding to learn how people could be so sure that their beliefs were valid.
While attracting a small circle of devoted followers, Socrates also irritated many of Athens’ most influential citizens, some of whom viewed this “gadfly” and his stinging questions as a threat to conventional morality.
His critics eventually placed Socrates on trial, where he was convicted and executed for introducing “new gods” and corrupting Athenian youth, charges that masked his adversaries’ real complaint. Socrates was the only person in Athens’s long history to be put to death for expressing unpopular idea.
Plato
Socrates’ youthful disciple Plato (c. 427–347 BCE) made his teacher the hero of a series of philosophical dialogues in which a saintly and humorous Socrates always outargues and outwits his opponents.
Because virtually all of Plato’s compositions, which he continued to produce until his death at eighty-four years of age, features Socrates as the chief speaker, separating Plato’s ideas from those of his mentor is difficult.
Although he was a philosopher and logician, Plato profoundly influenced the history of Western religion, particularly later beliefs about the immortality of the soul and the effects that decisions made in this life can have on posthumous rewards and punishments.
Plato’s dualistic view of reality also deeply affected subsequent religious thought. He posited the coexistence of two distinct worlds: one the familiar physical environment of matter and sense impressions, and the other and invisible realms of perfect, eternal ideas.
In this dualistic worldview, our bodies belong to the material sphere, where we are chained to the physical process of change, decay, and death. Our souls, however, originate in the unseen spirit world and after death return to it for postmortem judgment.
Stoicism
Another Greek philosophy that became extremely popular among the educated classes during Roman times was Stoicism.
Founded in Athens by Zeno (c. 336–263 BCE), the Stoic school emphasized the order and moral purpose of the universe. In the stoic view, Reason is the divine principle that gives coherence and meaning to our universe.
Identified as Logos (a Greek term for “word” or “cosmic wisdom”), this universal mind unifies the world and makes it intelligible to the human intellect.
Human souls are sparks from the divine Logos, which is symbolized by cosmic fire and sometimes associated with a supreme god.
Stoic teaching urged the individual to listen to the divine element within, to discipline both body and mind to attain a state of harmony with nature and the universe.
Stoics rigorously practiced self-control, learning self-sufficiency and noble indifference to both pleasure and pain. The Stoic ideal was to endure either personal gain or loss with equal serenity, without any show of emotion.
A strikingly different philosophical outlook appears in the teachings of Epicurus (c. 342–270 BCE). Whereas the Stoics believed in the soul’s immortality and a future world of rewards and penalties, Epicurus asserted that everything is completely physical or material, including the soul, which after death dissolves into nothingness along with the body.
The gods may exist, but they have no contact with or interest in humankind. Without a cosmic intelligence to guide them, people must create their own individual purposes in life.
A major goal is the avoidance of pain, which means that shrewd individuals will avoid public service or politics, where rivals may destroy them. Cultivating a private garden, the wise forgo sensual indulgences that weaken physically and mentally.
Using reason not to discover ultimate Truth, but to live well, the enlightened person seeks intellectual pleasures because mental enjoyments outlast those of the body.
Greco-Roman Religion
In contrast to Jewish monotheism (belief in single, all-powerful God), Greco-Roman religion was characterized by polytheism (belief in many gods).
The Twelve Olympians
Although the Greeks and Romans accepted the existence of innumerable deities, the highest gods were only twelve in number.
Because they dwelt on Mount Olympus, the loftiest peak in northern Greece, they were known as the Olympians.
Zeus, whom the Romans called Jupiter or Jove, ruled as king of the Olympian gods, all of whom were part of a divine family consisting of Zeus’s brothers, sisters, and children.
Zeus was a sky-god associated with both daylight and storm, a patriarchal deity who enforced his rule by obliterating opponents with his thunderbolt.
Zeus’s hot-tempered brother Poseidon (the Roman Neptune) was lord of the sea and earthquakes, while his other brother, Hades (Pluto), known as the “Zeus of the Underworld,” presided over a subterranean realm that housed the dead.
Representing a sinister aspect of divinity, Hades lent his name to the gloomy kingdom he ruled, a name that the New Testament writers also used to designate the soul’s posthumous abode.
Zeus’s sister-wife Hera (Juno) was queen of heaven and guardian of marriage and domesticity.
His sister Demeter (Ceres) promoted the fertility of earth’s soil that yielded life-sustaining grain.
His sister Hestia (Vesta) embodied the fixity and stability of the hearth and home.
Zeus’s eldest child was Athene (Minerva), goddess of wisdom, who – like a divine thought – had emerged fully formed from her father’s head.
Zeus also fathered Apollo, god of self-discipline, health, manly beauty, prophecy, and the creative arts.
Apollo’s twin sister, Artemis (Diana), was virgin patron of wildlife and the hunt.
Zeus’s other Olympian children:
Hermes (Mercury), messenger of the gods and guide of souls to the Underworld.
Ares (Mars), god of war and aggression
Aphrodite (Venus), personification of feminine beauty and sexual allure
Dionysus, god of wine and ecstasy
When Zeus’s son Dionysus ascended to Mount Olympus, Hestia was customarily demoted to keep the total umber of Olympians at twelve.
When Augustus assumed imperial leadership of Rome in the first century BC, the Olympian gods were still honored in the public sacrifices and rituals of the state-supported religion, but to many people, they seemed increasingly remote from ordinary human concerns.
Asclepius and Dionysus
Only a few deities associated with the Olympian cult apparently offered a satisfying personal relationship with their worshipers.
Two of the most accessible figures were Asclepius and Dionysus, both of whom were born mortal and underwent suffering and death before achieving immortality, experiences that allowed them to bridge the gulf between humanity and divinity.
Asclepius, the most humane and compassionate of Greek heroes, was the mortal son of Apollo and Coronis, daughter of a king in Thessaly.
Inheriting from his divine father the gift of miraculous healing, Asclepius became the archetypal physician, devoting himself to curing the sick and maimed.
When his skill became so great that he was able to raise the dead, however, Zeus killed him with a thunderbolt for disrupting the natural order.
After attaining posthumous divinity, Asclepius, as the supreme patron of medicine, extended his benevolence throughout the Greco-Roman world.
Professional healers, known as the Sons of Asclepius, officiated at hundreds of sanctuaries, such as Epidaurus in Greece, where patients flocked to be relieved of their afflictions.
The myth of Dionysus foreshadows some later Christian theological interpretations of Jesus’ cosmic role.
As the inventor of wine making, Dionysus bestowed upon humanity a beverage that is a two-edged sword: It can liberate people from their cares, temporarily giving them the freedom of a god but its potentially negative aftereffects can also deliver a painful reminder of human limitations, the inability to assimilate a divine gift with impunity.
Scholars of world religion and mythology detect numerous parallels between the stories of heroes and gods from widely different cultures and periods.
Although Jesus is a historical figure and Dionysus a mythic being, their received life stories reveal components of an archetypal pattern.
Jesus and Dionysus
Dionysus
Is son of Zeus, king of the Greek gods
Is son of Semele, a virgin princess of Thebes
Survives an attempt by Hera to kill him as an infant
Performs miracles to inspire faith in his divinity
Battles supernatural evil in the form of Titans
Returns to his birthplace, where he is denied and rejected by family and former neighbors
Invents wine; promotes his gift to humanity throughout the world
Suffers wounding and death at the hands of the Titans
Descends into the Underworld
Rises to divine immortality, joining his father, Zeus, on Olympus
Evangelizes the world, establishing his universal cult
Punishes opponents who denied his divinity
Jesus
Is Son of God
Is son of Mary, a virgin of Nazareth
Survives an attempt by King Herod to kill him as an infant
Performs healings and other miracles
Resists Satan; exorcizes demons
Returns to his hometown, where he is rejected and threatened with death
Transforms water into wine; makes wine the sacred beverage in communion
Suffers wounding and crucifixion at the hands of the Romans
Descends into the Underworld
Resurrected to glory; reigns in heaven at God’s right hand
Directs followers to evangelize the world
Will return to pass judgment on nonbelievers
The Mystery Religions
Greco-Roman society also fostered a number of “underground religions” that exerted a wide influence.
Known as the mysteries (Greek, mysteria) because their adherants took oaths to never reveal their secrets, these cults initiated members into the sacred rites of gods who were thought to welcome human devotees, becoming their spiritual guardians and protectors.
Because they house a “god within,” humans can be awakened to their divine potential. Through ritual purification and ethical behavior, initiates could, in the next world, eventually share their god’s eternal life.
The material body (Greek, soma), meanwhile, was the soul’s prison (sema); death was merely the freeing of the soul to attain its ultimate home, the celestial realm above.
Mithras
Perhaps the most rigorously organized and politically effective mystery cult in the Roman Empire was that of Mithras, which became Rome’s official state religion in the third century CE.
Although Mithras, whose name means “covenant,” was originally a Persian god embodying the divine power of light, his mysteries did not appear in the Greco-Roman world until the first century CE.
Scholars believe that, although Mithraism used names taken from ancient Persian mythology, it developed as a new cult in the West under the influence of Hellenistic astrology.
Pictorial carvings decorating the walls of the caves in which Mithraic rituals were performed show that Mithras was a solar deity who presided over the stars, planets, and other astronomical features of the celestial zodiac.
He was born from a rock on December 25, then calculated as the winter solstice.
After his birthplace was visited by shepherds, Mithras went forth to slay a bull (the zodiacal sign of Taurus), from whose blood and semen new life emerges.
Christianity’s leading competitor during the first three centuries CE, Mithraism featured some rituals paralleling those of the church, including baptism, communal meals, and oaths of celibacy.
As Christians were figuratively washed in the “blood of the Lamb,” Mithraic initiates were sprinkled and purified with the blood flowing from a sacrificial bull.
Despite the fact that it apparently fulfilled its members’ emotional and spiritual needs, Mithraism had a fatal flaw: Women could not be admitted to the god’s service.
When the Christian church, which baptized women as well as men, overcame its chief rival, however, it retained one of Mithraism’s most potent symbols, the natal day of its lord. Because the solstice appropriately signifies the birth of God’s Son, “the light of the world” (as well as the birth of the Mithraic sun), the church eventually chose Mithras’s birthday to celebrate as that of Jesus.
Demeter
Other mystery religions stress the importance of a female figure, a mother goddess who can offer help in this life and intervene for one in the next world.
Demeter, who gave the world grain – the bread of life – and her daughter Persephone were worshiped at Eleusis and elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean.
Originally concerned with agricultural fertility and the cycle of the seasons, the Eleusinian Mysteries developed into a mystical celebration of death and rebirth.
Isis
Even more popular in Roman times was Isis, an Egyptian mother goddess whom artists typically depicted as a madonna holding her infant son Horus.
The myth of Isis involved her male consort Osiris, originally a mortal ruler of ancient Egypt. Like Dionysys, Osiris suffered death by being torn to pieces but was restored to life as god of the Underworld.
Osiris owed his postmortem existence to his sister-wife, Isis, who had searched throughout the world to find and reassemble the pieces of his dismembered corpse.
By Greco-Roman times, the cults of Isis and Osiris, king and judge of the dead, had developed mystical rituals that promised worshipers a posthumous union with the divine.
The World of Roman Political Power
Alexander and His Successors
Alexander’s conquests create a new international culture, the Hellenistic, bringing Greek language, literature, ideas, and customs to the entire Near Eastern world, including Palestine.
This broad diffusion of Greek philosophic and religious thought plays a major role in the development of both Judaism and Christianity.
The Ptolemaic dynasty, established by Ptolemy I, general and one of Alexander’s successors, controls Palestine.
Many Jews are attracted to Greek learning and the Hellenistic lifestyle.
The Seleucid dynasty of Syria, descendants of Alexander’s general Seleucus, ends Ptolemaic rule over Palestine and begins a new reign over the Jews (197-142 BC).
Antiochus’s Persecution and the Maccabean Revolt
The Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV “Epiphanes” attempts to eradicate the Jewish religion, forbidding Torah observance, and erecting an altar to Zeus in the Temple precincts (“the abomination” of Daniel 9:27).
He forbade reading or teaching the Mosaic Law, ordered copies of the Hebrew Bible burned, executed women who had their sons circumcised, and ordered the infants’ bodies tied around their mothers’ necks. Keeping the Sabbath was also declared a crime punishable by death.
Mattathias, a Torah loyalist, and his five sons initiate the Maccabean revolt.
Led by Judas Maccabeus, a Jewish guerrilla army recaptures, purifies, and rededicates the Temple, and event later commemorated in the festival of Hanukkah.
By 142 BC, the Jews have expelled the Syrian armies and established an independent state governed by Hasmonean (Maccabean) rulers.
In 63 BC, a claimant to the Hasmonean throne, John Hyrcanus II, asked Rome for help in ousting his younger brother, Aristobulus II, who had made himself both High Priest and king.
Pompey’s legions occupy Palestine, annexing it as part of the Roman Empire.
The Roman Senate appoints Herod (Herod the Great), a nobleman of Idumea (the ancient Edom), king of Judea.
After laying siege to Jerusalem, Herod takes the city by force; he then lavishly rebuilds the Jerusalem Temple.
After Herod the Great’s death, his kingdom is divided among his three sons.
Herod Antipas (4 BC–39 CE) rules Galilee and Perea
Herod Philip (4 BC–34 CE) rules territories north and eats of Galilee
Herod Archelaus (4 BC–6 CE) rules Judea, Samaria, and Idumea but is deposed. His territories henceforth are administered directly by Roman officials.
The Roman Emperors
With the city of Rome as its administrative capital, the empire governed most of the known world.
It’s subjects included people of virtually every race, language group, and ethnic background.
Gaius Octavius (the grandnephew of Julius Caesar) becomes undisputed ruler of the entire Roman Empire (27 BC–AD 14).
Renamed Augustus by the Roman Senate, Octavius ends the civil wars that had divided Rome for generations and establishes a long period of civil order called the Pax Romana (Roman Peace).
Jesus was born during his reign which lasted until Jesus was around twenty years old.
After this, Tiberius, stepson of Augustus, rules Rome (14–37).
Pontius Pilate, appointed by Rome, governs as prefect of Judea (26–36)
The ministries and executions of John the Baptist and Jesus took place during this time. Also Paul’s conversion takes place after he witnesses the resurrected Christ.
Gaius, also known as Caligula, becomes emperor (37–41) and threatens to install the emperor’s statue in the Jerusalem Temple.
Claudius (41–54) ruled Rome during the time when Paul was writing his earliest letters. He expelled some of the Jews from Rome.
Following a major fire in Rome, the emperor Nero (54–68) persecutes Christians there. According to tradition Peter and Paul are martyred then. Nero, who was insane, commits suicide.
After Nero, four emperors reigned during the same year: Galba (68–69), Otho (69), Vitellius (69), and Vespasian (69–79).
The Gospel of Mark was written during the reign of Vespasian.
The Jewish War took place during the reigns of Vespasian and Titus (79–81), with the destruction of Jerusalem taking place in AD 70.
The Book of Revelation was written during the reign of Domitian (81–96), as well as the other three canonical Gospels.
Nerva (96–98) and then Trajan (98–117) ruled during a time when Christians were being persecuted in Asia Minor.
During the Second Jewish Revolt, the bar Kochba rebellion against Rome is crushed by the emperor Hadrian (117–138). The Jews are banished from Jerusalem.
After this, Antoninus Pius ruled Rome (138–161), during which time the last canonical book of the Bible (2 Peter) was written, followed by the reigns of Macus Aurelius (161–180) and Commodus (180–192).
The Jewish Revolt Against Rome
About thirty-five years after Jesus’ crucifixion, the Palestinian Jews rose in armed revolt against Rome.
This was an overwhelming disaster for the Jewish people with the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and the slaughter of many thousands of men, women, and children.
According to Josephus, the extreme revolutionary party, the Zealots, virtually forced General Titus (who later became emperor of Rome) to destroy the holy city and its Temple by their obstinate refusal to accept the Roman terms of peace.
A second Jewish rebellion against Rome (132–135) was led by a young man popularly known as bar Kochba (Son of the Star), whom many Palestinian Jews believed to be the Messiah who would restore David’s kingdom.
Brutally suppressed by the emperor Hadrian, the bar Kochba rebellion resulted in a second Roman destruction of Jerusalem (135).
A Roman shrine was then constructed on the site of Yahweh’s Temple, and Jews were forbidden to enter their city on pain of death.
The period of Jesus’ life is thus chronologically framed by two Jewish wars for religious and political independence.
The first, led by the Maccabees, created an autonomous Jewish state.
The second, a generation after Jesus’ death, resulted in national annihilation.
Bar Kochba’s later attempt to restore Jewish fortunes met with a similar defeat.
From this time until 1948, when the modern nation of Israel was established, the Jews were to be a people without a country.
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