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Revision 1.4 Hellenism

Revision 1.4 Hellenism

Last updated on: July 6, 2020 at 10:48 am by Dan Peterson

Revision 1.4 Hellenism 2020-07-06T10:48:24-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Raphael, “The School of Athens” (1505)
In this painting, located in the Vatican Apartments, Plato (the older bearded man, shown gesturing upwards) walks with his younger student, Aristotle (who motions downward, suggesting how his philosophical approach would come to differ from his master’s). In the foreground, Michelangelo sits, looking downward, resting his head on his fist. Over toward the right border of the painting, the very young Raphael himself, wearing a black beret-like hat, looks directly at the viewer.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

The records that the Hebrews had so laboriously created would eventually prove to be of great worth to their descendants, helping them understand their own uniqueness and their special covenant relationship with God.[1] New challenges were arising, and these records became invaluable. In the late fourth century B.C., the landscape of the Near East was dramatically changed by the invasion of Alexander the Great. Alexander, descendant of a royal family in the relatively uncultured area of Macedonia, north of Greece, was a pupil of the great philosopher Aristotle and, with all the fervor of a convert, brought a form of Greek civilization with him wherever he went.[2] His armies pushed into Asia and Africa, establishing Greek colonies such as Alexandria in Egypt. After a few years of what has come to be known as the Hellenistic Age, much of the eastern Mediterranean world was tied together in an unprecedented way by links of culture, common learning, and shared knowledge of the Greek language.[3] People were able to move around now. A new international society was created in which Jews could, and did, spread out across much of the eastern Mediterranean. Large Jewish colonies were established in many areas, most notably in the new city of Alexandria. (This diaspora or “dispersion” merely continued a process of dispersal which had begun with the Babylonian captivity. Many Jews, having grown wealthy and comfortable, had simply stayed in Babylonia when the captivity came to an end.)

Alexander’s successors—he died at a very young age—were his generals, who carved out empires for themselves. Noteworthy among these were Ptolemy in Egypt, and Seleucus in Syria and Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). The Jews who remained in Palestine were ruled first by the Ptolemies and then, after 200 B.C., by the Seleucids. These new Hellenistic rulers brought Greek institutions with them. The most prominent of these institutions was the gymnasium, whose functions were far broader than the name suggests to modern hearers. It was not only an athletic center where, to the horror of pious Jews, men and sometimes women competed in the nude, but a community center. Furthermore, it was the main educational institution of Greek culture.

That culture held tremendous attraction. People who wanted to be sophisticated—people such as Philip of Macedon, who hired Aristotle to tutor his son Alexander—were eager to learn from the Greeks. Moreover, they were often eager to be Greeks. Or, at least, they tried to imitate them to the extent of their ability. The best science and philosophy of the period were Greek. The most prosperous people of the new period were either Greeks or imitators of Greeks. They were phenomenal traders and merchants, with networks across the Mediterranean world. Owing to such trade and learning, the eastern Mediterranean coast was soon heavily Hellenized. And the Greek cities of the coast established satellite towns in the interior. Soon, the mountainous regions of Judea and Samaria seemed rustic and backward by contrast.

But adaptation to the world comes at a price. At the least, it presents considerable risks. Greek culture was the passport to sophistication, to social advancement. Those who rejected it were likely to be mocked by their more up-to-date neighbors.[4] Some Jews, therefore, and especially the upper classes, the rich, and the chief priests, wanted to be like their Hellenized overlords. If their Jewishness got in the way, well, they were prepared to abandon it, or better yet, to redefine it so that it was no longer an obstacle. A number even wanted to push the pace of Hellenization—some for selfish, materialistic interests and others because they were genuinely attracted to Hellenistic ideas (which were, it must constantly be stressed, genuinely attractive). Consequently, there was, among many Jews of the period, a distinctly secularizing and materialistic tendency.

Reactions varied. Many Jews, probably the majority, resisted. Some withdrew into an ever more rigorous adherence to the old traditions. The Essene community at Qumran, from whom we’ve received the Dead Sea Scrolls, seems to have originated in the third century B.C. as a reaction to what it perceived as the “corruption” brought in by the Greeks. Other pious Jews sought to adapt to the new world without giving up their principles. They learned Greek, they lived in Hellenized cities (many in Alexandria), and they translated their scriptures into Greek, giving us the famous Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament that is still an important document to this day. (The New Testament figure of Apollos is a good illustration of this middle tendency to neither withdraw from the “modern” world nor totally surrender to it. We are told of him that he was a Jew and that he was “mighty in the scriptures” even before his conversion to Christianity. Yet he was “born at Alexandria,” and there can hardly be a more perfectly Greek name than Apollos.)[5]

But the resources available to Judaism for resistance and adaptation were fairly limited by now. By 200 B.C., the idea of a Jewish canon was beginning to take shape. This had the effect of discouraging additions. Prophecy was discouraged and began to die out. Even the Jews themselves realized that something was missing. The First Book of Maccabees, for example, was written in the century before Christ. Speaking of one difficult period for the Jews, it declares that “there had been nothing like it since the disappearance of prophecy among them.”[6] Later on, during another period of stress and confusion, “the Jews and the priests . . . agreed that Simon [Maccabeus] should be their perpetual leader and high priest until a trustworthy prophet should arise.”[7] Clearly, although a new living prophet was sorely needed, no prophet was found.

[1] See 1 Nephi 5:21. The Book of Mormon furnishes a splendid example, in the Mulekites, of a people who lacked such records and who consequently lost their identity and even their language. See Omni 1:17. This situation, which comports so well with what scholars know today about linguistic evolution and the development of cultures, seems to me utterly beyond the capacity of an uneducated 1820s New York farm boy to have made up on his own.

[2] Aristotle, in his turn, had studied under Plato, who had been a disciple of Socrates. There is probably no more distinguished lineage of teachers and students anywhere in the history of education.

[3] Words like Hellenistic and Hellene come from the Greeks’ word for their own homeland, Hellas.

[4] See 1 Nephi 8:26-28.

[5] Acts 18:24-25. Apollos became a very important missionary ally of Paul’s. See 1 Corinthians 1:12; 3:4-6, 22; 16:12; Titus 3:13.

[6] 1 Maccabees 9:27 (Jerusalem Bible translation).

[7] 1 Maccabees 14:41 (Jerusalem Bible translation).

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