Impact of Greek Culture on Normative Judaism by David Steinberg

It is likely that the Judaism of the fourth century BCE of the Persian province of Yehud (Judah, Judaea) is that reflected in the Torah (Genesis to Deuteronomy). It would have most resembled that later practiced by the Sadducees and Samaritans.

“Jewish religious life underwent a dramatic metamorphosis in the thousand years between the conquest of Alexander and the ascendancy of the Arabs (332 BCE-640 CE). Judaism in late antiquity, with all its varieties and nuances, was a far cry from that known and practiced in the First Temple, Persian, or even early Hellenistic period. Beliefs and practices hitherto marginal or unknown had now assumed center stage; new forms of religious leadership and new types of institutions had crystallized; the number and kinds of books considered sacred had expanded greatly; new holidays were added to the Jewish calendar, and older ones were recast and given new meanings in light of the evolving tradition and cataclysmic historical events.[1]”

1.2 Normative Judaism

Normative refers to what subsequent Jewish tradition considered legitimate and normative (See Avot chapter 1 and subsequent tradition - Mishnah, Babylonian Talmud, Geonim etc[2].) It implies no value judgment on the historical legitimacy, sincerity, piety or morality of the likely majority of Jews of every period who lived outside of the retrospectively blessed “normative” tradition. Thus the Sadducees, Essenes, Apocalyptic Jews, Pharisees, Zealots and others were all developments of earlier Jewish tradition. However, all of these, except the Pharisees, were retrospectively rendered “non-normative” by later rabbinic tradition which was the only Jewish tradition to survive. This is not at all dissimilar to the approach of the Deuteronomistic History in the late First Temple of Exilic period. Put another way, normative refers to the Rabbinic literary tradition which remained normative in Rabbinic circles until the beginning of the 19^th century, and in traditional circles, until the present.

It is interesting to note that:

· Josephus, a Pharisee, described the Pharisees as being few in number but with a strong following among the people;

· There are only a few hundred rabbis mentioned in the Mishnah and Talmuds;

· Roman-Byzantine period synagogue mosaics in Galilee, synagogue art in Dura-Europos, Jewish magic bowls from southern Mesopotamia and Hellenistic Jewish literature indicate that the majority of Jews had, at most, only one foot in the “normative” tradition

Of course, to say a tradition is normative is not to say it does not change over time.

1.3 Outside Influences on Jewish Culture

Outside influences on Jews throughout history have been stronger than their impact on the normative tradition and much stronger than their impact on normative literature. Foreign influences that have been successfully integrated into the normative tradition in pre-modern times, include all, or elements of:

· The Canaanite literary tradition (see)

· Greek logic, science and philosophy (see table)

· Sufism (Islamic mysticism) through the works of Maimonides son Abraham and Bahya ibn Paquda;

However, whereas in the normative tradition foreign influences have been integrated into a Jewish framework, for most Jews of the time, the situation was messier. They, in reality, were often cultural Canaanites, Babylonians, Hellenistic Greeks etc. with greater or lesser influence of Israelite-Jewish values. Sometimes it is difficult to know whether a literary work is fundamentally Jewish, expressed in Greek terms, as are those of Josephus, or fundamentally Greek in values and outlook. This question has never been resolved as it pertains to the philosopher Philo.

2.0 Greek Cultural-Religious History

2.1 Classical Greek Culture (Sixth to Fourth Centuries BCE)

The splendor of Classical Greek civilization does not need to be recounted here. Greek artistic and literary accomplishments highly influenced Western culture. However, the major impact on the Jewish cultural tradition was made by Greek philosophy and the closely related Greek science and mathematics.

Greek science was of truly world-shaking importance because without it, it is possible that the Scientific Revolution, and hence our own culture, would never have arisen. A couple of quotes -

“On Why it is said that the Greeks “invented” science.

In short, because they introduced the notions of natural causality and rational proof; because they tried to eliminate what they considered to be supernatural elements from their explanations for natural phenomena, because they made (often unobserved and sometimes unobservable) connections between phenomena and ordered them into parts and wholes or causes and effects (rather than just amassed observations), and because they tried to think their way rationally (which does not mean logically or sensibly to modern tastes) through the perceived order of observed phenomena. The belief in natural causation with consequent natural effects was matched by a belief that knowledge precedes by reasoning from intellectual premise to rational conclusion.”

“… (The) law of causality…. States that there is conformity with law throughout nature; nothing is arbitrary, there is a necessity for everything, as we see in the regular occurrence of all phenomena. Without this necessity, no accumulation of experience would be possible…. Its success in the realm of theoretical physics provides the fullest confirmation of the general law.

The conception of general conformity with law existing in nature is contained in Greek philosophy from the beginning.”

From Sambursky, Samuel, The physical world of the Greeks; translated from the Hebrew by Merton Dagut ; with a new preface by the author, Princeton University Press, 1987, c1956. pp. 16 and 159

2.2 Pagan Hellenism in Palestine (332 BCE-mid fourth century CE)

In 332-331 BCE Alexander the Great conquered Palestine as part of this larger conquest of the Persian Empire. After Alexander’s death, Egypt and Palestine were taken over by Ptolemy while Syria, Mesopotamia and Persia were taken over by Seleucus. After a 23 year struggle, the Seleucids took over Palestine in 200 BCE. During this period, a number of key developments took place:

v Philosophy – Philosophy remained centered in Athens. The new schools of Skepticism[3], Cynicism, Epicurianism[4] and Stoicism [5] developed. All of these were more concerned with man’s internal state and ethics than with man as a functioning member of society or with the larger questions of science, metaphysics and other theoretical questions. These developments were probably related to the end of the citizen-controlled city state and the inability of Hellenistic kingdoms to establish firm order. These factors created the feeling that the outside world was in chaos and uncontrollable and that, consequently, one had to seek inside oneself for security.

v Science and Mathematics – Alexandria became the center for these disciplines. The royal Museum was a great center of scientific and literary research. It is interesting to note that astrology was a Hellenistic creation which they developed as a “science” closely related to the doctrines of Stoicism (See Koester pp. 156-159; 376-380; Lloyd pp. 29-30). It can be argued that the Greek belief in Fate or Necessity, to which even the gods are subject, predisposed them to developing a concept of nature as a system governed by immutable natural laws. The extension of this paradigm into human affairs was the ultimate concept behind astrology[6]. Lloyd wrote – “In the Stoics’ eyes, the rational basis for the practice of divination, as for science itself, is the philosophical belief in the unbreakable chain of cause and effect.”

The number of Greek philosopher-scientists who changed world history by laying the groundwork for the scientific method and a world view[7] was quite small. Outside of the Museum-Library at Alexandria, the institutional basis to support research and the dissemination of results was very poor and haphazard;

v Greek Higher Culture in the Hellenistic Age was Limited to the Social Elite - Even within Greek literate society, the common sense was mythic, not philosophical-scientific, as evidenced by classical Greek drama. The ordinary Hellenistic Greek and Jew of the period, i.e. the rural and urban poor, were much more alike than their intellectual elites whose contrasting views are outlined in Table 1. Their world was one haunted by magic and the supernatural.

v Greek Cities (most of these would be considered small towns today on the basis of their populations) – These were widely founded by Alexander the Great and by the Seleucid Empire. With their Greek traditions of self-government and the related institutions these entities were quite different from the oriental towns that they displaced. At times, older cities were partly depopulated (e.g. Babylon[8]) in order to round up inhabitants for the new Greek polis. At other times, existing cities (Jerusalem, Acre, Beth Shean, Rabbat Ammon, Samaria etc.) were given Greek names and refounded as Greek cities. At other times entirely new cities were founded.

v The Greek cities became centers for the diffusion of Greek culture - Koester (pp. 356-357) discusses, what he calls, the “philosophical marketplace” of the second century and preceding centuries -

“The real life of ‘philosophy’… had left the schools and gone into the marketplace and onto the streets of the big cities. Many people called themselves ‘philosophers’; it was difficult to know whether a man offering his wisdom in the street was a god, a magician, the apostle of a new religion, or a true philosopher. In the imperial period the army of wandering missionaries or philosophers had become legion. All of them competed with each other, advertising their art in order to attract disciples, outdid each other in demonstrations of their power, and were by no means disinclined to draw money out of people’s pockets. Such missionaries competed even within the same religious or philosophical school … pagan, Christian and Jewish philosophers of this sort did not address the educated establishment but the common people, that is anybody they could meet in the streets…. Foremost was the art and adroitness of public speech. Even if these preachers and philosophers adhered to quite different schools of thought they agreed in their criticism of existing conditions, in their attack upon the shallowness, vanity, and corruption of the bourgeois urban life, and in their moral summons …. The entire scale of miraculous deeds of power was commonly used, from magical tricks to predictions of the future, from horoscopes to the healing of diseases and maladies, even the raising of dead people…. The ancient and new insights of philosophers and great thinkers were not in demand, but rather whatever could clarify the world and its powers as they affected peoples’ everyday problems…. New deities recommended themselves rather than critically tested philosophic doctrines; demonic forces were better explanations of the world than scientific knowledge. Simple moral rules of human behavior offered better advice than psychological insights into the motivations of human actions.”

v The Greek and Macedonian settlers who formed the core of non-local citizens of the many “Greek” cities of the Hellenistic were mainly poor, single, uneducated males who promptly married, or formed informal alliances with local women. Their male children would have a Greek education[9] but from their mothers, they would imbibe the traditional folk culture of the region surrounding their island of Hellenism. Generally, the Greeks were good at organizing and this, combined with a total lack of traditional duties and restraints toward the “barbarian” i.e. non-Greek, natives, enabled them to exploit the peasantry much more effectively and ruthlessly than was done by Persians working through traditional local elites.

v Seleucid attempt to use the Greek cities to support the integrity of the Empire - The Seleucid authorities hoped that the network of Hellenistic cities would form a “cultural glue” which might help to maintain the empire’s integrity. In part, to bind these cities to the Seleucid state, the Seleucids followed the practice of allowing Greek cities special trading privileges within the empire[10]and empowering them to tax the surrounding peasantry. Squeezing maximum taxes from the non-Greek peasantry tied in with wide-spread Greek attitude that non-Greeks were inferior, barbarians. They did not consider that they had any mission to Hellenize the “barbarians”. In fact, the privileged position of Greek settlers was dependant on not incorporating natives into their ranks.

v Seleucid policies of favoring Greek cities had the impact of ensuring hostile relations between those cities and the surrounding country side which, in turn, made the cities look to the central government for security thus guaranteeing the city’s loyalty to the empire and giving the royal government secure bases throughout the empire.

2.3 The End of Ancient Greek Culture – and its Revival Under Islam

After about 120 BCE Greek science started to loose its originality. Little of worth was produced after 200 CE. Much of what was written, especially by Roman writers[11], were digests of knowledge. This had the perverse effect of spreading the often erroneous conclusions of Greek science while eliminating the really useful part – the scientific mindset.

The last great Greek philosopher was Plotinus (205-270 CE) whose adult life virtually coincided with the great crisis of the Roman Empire (235-270 CE) marked by civil wars, barbarian invasions, terrible inflation and economic decline. This crisis destroyed the social base of Greek culture in the Roman Empire[12]. The establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Empire, in the early to mid-fourth century marked the beginning of a new Christian culture whose languages were Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Egyptian, Armenian, British (i.e. Old Welsh) etc. depending on place and class. This is effectively, the beginning of the Middle Ages from a cultural point of view.

The Roman emperor Julian the Apostate tried to revive classical Greek religion and culture in the mid fourth century. He is said to have consulted the Oracle of Delphi. The Pythia responded with the following oracle:

"Tell to the king that the carven hall is fallen in decay;

Apollo has no chapel left, no prophesying bay,

No talking spring. The stream is dry that had so much to say."

During the second to fourth centuries CE, all peoples in the Empire, pagans and others, were becoming more mystical, more religious and even more prey to magic which, in any case, had always been strong in the Greek and other cultures of the Empire. This mystical, anti-rational trend was probably one of the causes of the decline of Greek science as well as contributing to the triumph of Christianity and to the decline of Greek history writing and its eventual replacement as a popular form by Byzantine hagiography.

After a period of almost total eclipse, from the fourth century CE, Greek learning was revived in the Arab-Muslim world through the translation of Greek texts into Arabic. It should be noted that what was translated was not a cross-section of Greek literature. The Arabs translated and studied virtually everything they could find on philosophy, medicine, the exact sciences, astronomy and the occult but were uninterested in Greek poetry, drama and history.

“The translation of Greek and Syriac works into Arabic… became serious business under Harun ar-Rashid (786-809)…. By the year 1000 AD, almost the entire corpus of Greek medicine, natural philosophy and mathematical science had been rendered into usable Arabic versions…. The scientific movement in Islam was both distinguished and durable … by the end of the ninth century translation activity had crested and serious scholarship was under way. From the middle of the ninth century until well into the thirteenth, we find impressive scientific work in all the main branches of Greek science being carried forward throughout the Islamic world. The period of Muslim preeminence in science lasted for 500 years – a longer period of time than has intervened between Copernicus and ourselves.” From Lindberg, David C., The Beginnings of Western Science, University of Chicago Press, 1992 p. 168-180

3.0 Jewish Response to Pagan Hellenism

All Jews, even those in the Latin speaking west and in Parthian Mesopotamia, were in direct, or often indirect, contact with Hellenistic culture from the fourth century BCE until the rise of Islam. However, the nature of the challenge this posed, and the nature, degree and rapidity of Hellenization varied greatly depending on era, class, location and education[13] (see).

3.1 Under the Hellenistic Monarchies (332-167 BCE)

The first major Jewish contact with Greek culture was when Judah was ruled by the Ptolemies. The Jews in Judah did not meet Greek scientists, philosophers or historians. The Jews met mercenaries, tax collectors, petty officials, money lenders and merchants who penetrated even the most obscure village[14]. Jews outside Judah proper, who lived near Greek cities, also had to suffer the generally rapacious colonists.

Under Persian rule, Judah had been a theocracy under the rule of the high priest with the Torah recognized, by the Persians, as the law of the land. This situation continued under the Ptolemies and Seleucids. Although 40 “Greek” cities were founded in Palestine, none were within the autonomous province of Judah. Eventually,[15] one faction of the Jewish ruling class, led by priests, attempted, with royal support, to abolish the Torah as the royal law of Judah and to refound Judah as the territory of a new polis – Antioch of Jerusalem. It is possible that such a transformation would have conferred on the ruling class a right to exploit Jewish peasants without restraint, perhaps trading privileges within the empire and certainly social acceptance as Greeks within the vast Hellenistic world.

This led to the Hasmonean revolt which put an end to religious Hellenization in the sense of abandoning the Torah for a Greek life style. It also led to an explosion of new varieties of Judaism – Apocalyptic Judaism, Hasidim (not to be confused with the modern mystical variety), Essenes, Sadducees, Pharisees and no doubt others.

In the wake of the success of the Hasmonean revolt cultural and linguistic Hellenization in Eretz Israel continued apace until, by the third or fourth century CE, Greek was probably the majority language of the country.

“The motivation of the Hasmonean revolt has often been misunderstood. It has been contended that this revolt came in protest to the process of Hellenization in Judaea, but this was patently not the case. The Maccabees revolted in response to the persecutions imposed by the king and, according to Bickerman and others at least, at the instigation of radical Jewish Hellenizers. The fact is that the Hasmoneans themselves quickly adopted Hellenistic mores; they instituted holidays celebrating military victories (Nicanor Day on the 13^th of Adar) as did the Greeks, and signed treaties with Rome and forged close alliances with the upper strata of Jerusalem society. The latter’s Hellenized proclivities – like those of the Hasmoneans themselves … are attested by names such as Alexander, Diodorus, Appolonius, Eupolemus, Antiochus, Numenius, Jason, Antipater, and Aeneas. “[16]

3.2 Hellenistic Culture as the Rabbis Experienced it Under the Pagan Roman Empire (First to Fourth Centuries CE)

The Jerusalem Talmud, also called Palestinian Talmud, is an amalgam of the teachings of three important rabbinical academies all of which were located in major Hellenistic Greek cities i.e. Caesarea (the capital of Roman Palestine), Sepporis and Tiberias. Thus, the rabbis and students had to be able to speak Greek and were daily exposed to Hellenistic-Roman institutions and culture. This urban environment included:

v Street philosophers, with their popularized and simplified philosophy;

v Greek literature, both classic and popular Hellenistic, was widely available. On the other hand, science was a rare specialist taste. Even in the great Hellenistic cities books on science would have been hard to find;

v An active oral culture that allowed the rabbis to learn many Greek proverbs etc. which may have originated in a literary milieu;

v Greek theatre which was universally available. However, plays always involved dedications to the pagan gods. Though Philo, and no doubt many other good Jews, attended the theatre, the rabbis would not;

v Greek schooling. The curriculum consisted of:

· Study and memorization of Homer and Euripides and, to a lesser extent, of Demosthenes, Thucydides and Meander;

· Reading and writing;

· Arithmetic; and,

· Rhetoric.

Although some Jews in rabbinical circles were given enough of a Greek education to enable them to deal with Roman officials, it is doubtful if many rabbis attained a full Greek education.

During the Talmudic period (135-500 CE) rabbis in Palestine lived in a complex linguistic environment. Many rabbis:

v spoke Greek on the street;

v spoke Mishnaic Hebrew, by then a dead language, in the school room;

v spoke Aramaic loaded with thousands of Greek words in informal discourse with their colleagues; and,

v used the same Aramaic, supplemented by Greek, for writing.

4.0 The Impact of Greek Culture on Normative Judaism from the Hellenistic Period through the Middle Ages c. 330 BCE- 1250 CE

See Table 4 - Phases of Impact of Greek Culture on Normative Judaism

Tables

Table 1 - Some Differences between the Hellenistic Philosophical-Scientific World View and that Reflected in the Torah

Table 2 - Being Rational in Context: Four Rational Responses to Drought

Table 3 - Variables making for Rapid Hellenization

Table 4 - Phases of Impact of Greek Culture on Normative Judaism

Table 1

Some Differences between the Hellenistic Philosophical-Scientific World View and that Reflected in the Torah

Nb. Hellenistic Philosophical-Scientific world view was the property of very small elite within the larger Greek-speaking community during the Hellenistic-Roman period. Jewish folk beliefs probably diverged significantly from those reflected in the Torah in most periods.

Issue	Hellenistic Philosophical-Scientific	Judaism as Reflected in the Torah
Centrality of Man vs. Centrality of God	Man is at the center and “Man is the measure of all things” (Protagoras)	Theocentric - man’s task is to serve God.
Religion	The gods in Greek traditional polytheistic religion were capricious and not particularly ethical. The sole requirement was to believe that the gods existed and to perform ritual and sacrifice, through which the gods received their due. The very unsatisfactory nature of this religion[17], from an ethical viewpoint, opened the way to secular science of ethics[18]. Greek philosophers, with their demythologized world view (see), could only fit in the divine if the gods were removed from the material world and man.	Ethical Monotheism
Law – Divine or Secular?	*Law (nomos) is to suit society. It can be made and changed by the society.*	*Law (Torah) is God’s revelation regarding how God wants people to live. It cannot be changed by society in theory though it is adaptable in practice.*
Secular or Theocratic Rule?	Democracy, and other secular forms of government, follow from above.	Theocracy by authorized interpreters of God’s law.
Ethics[19] also called moral philosophy the discipline concerned with what is morally good and bad, right and wrong. The term is also applied to any system or theory of moral values or principles.	The Sophists, Plato and Aristotle[20] produced the preeminent early ethical thinking in Greece. In the Hellenistic-Roman era, Middle-Platonism[21], the Stoicism[22] and Epicurianism[23] and finally, from the third century, Neoplatonism became dominant. Starting in the mid-fourth century, Christian theology gradually took over the field in the Roman world.	“Unlike the ethical system of Greek philosophy, which seeks to define virtues (who is courageous, generous or just, etc.), the bible demands of every human being, and behave virtuously toward his fellow man, and is not concerned with abstract definitions.”[24] In the Torah, however, behaving virtuously is equal to obeying God’s Law regardless of whether we would view specific laws as moral, social or cultic[25].
Source of Knowledge N.b. The incompatibility of the Greek concept of Nature, as being governed by immutable natural laws, and the scriptural belief in miracles[26] was a major issue for medieval Islamic, Jewish, and Christian philosophy.	Science - Reason is the key to finding the truth about anything – ethics, nature of man, the natural world. Popular beliefs and commonly-held opinions to be rejected as sources of knowledge. - Nature is demythologized. Nature is governed by immutable natural laws. It is to be studied and can be understood using logic and generalized theory[27]. Though nature could be understood, the Greeks did not assume, unlike modern Western culture, that understanding could lead to control of nature and the world around them. The major exception to this fatalistic approach was astrology[28].	The general Torah approach is: - The Torah tells you everything you need to know – the rest should be left to God[29]; - If the community and individual are in God’s favor, god will ensure that everything will be fine with the community and individual; - Sacred tradition is binding. Since God created and maintains everything, natural phenomena, and everything else, should be admired as testimony to God’s providence and greatness. It should not be analyzed.