Hellenistic Judaism: Secular Hellenism Upon Judea
The first part in my trilogy of these posts, where I view the book "Hellemism and Judaism", the only book I can see talking about the real influences of hellenism upon Judaism, and talk about Hellenistic Judaism in both historical ways and how to implement it into a practice as a Judeo-Pagan. Here we will discuss how Alexander the Great's conquering upon Judea/Palestine and the Hellenistic influence that came with such impacted the surrounding culture and life of Jewish people at the time.
"Even the Jews met the civilization of early Hellenism, coming in the wake of Alexander and the kingdoms of the Diadochi which followed him, as a fully secular force. This was the experience of the whole of the East. Its dominant feature was the impact made by the apparently insuperable war technique of Greece and Macedon, with which the Jews, too, gradually became familiar through Jewish mercenaries. This made its mark on the conception of the Holy War in Jewish apocalyptic and made possible the later Maccabean revolt and the Jewish expansionist policy which followed. A further deep impression was left by the strict Ptolemaic system of administration and taxation, and here above all by the typically Greek institution of farming out dues of all kinds. This became a firm institution in Judea over the centuries which followed: the power of the state was henceforward embodied not least in the hated relva. The development of the constitution of the Jewish temple state as we know it from New Testament times, with the delicate balance between high priest and Sanhedrin, also probably goes back to the Ptolemaic period."
This is the quote from Hellenism and Judaism to spark my looking into at these secular, cultural aspects here. Jewish people aren't unknown for applying other cultures and their religious things secularly. In fact, many Christmas songs? Those were written by Jewish people, in a day and age where music and entertainment were one of the few solid ways to make a living. So fun for the Jews controlling media nowadays /s, but that example isn't our focus here.
Here the author goes into more detail about Jewish people using Greek ideas and inventions. They played Greek sports like chariot racing and had good relations with Greece. Here, as I paraphrase, the author describes "good relations between Judea and Sparta", making comparison of Moses to the Oracle of Delphi as cited evidence. Whatever the real reason, all we know is we have cited letters from Jewish officials to Spartan ones over matters.
How did they write? In Greek of course!
"The situation in Judea is illuminated by the letters of the Jew Tobias to Apollonius and the king himself, which were all written in excellent Greek and beautiful handwriting by his Greek secretary in 257 nc"
We see additionally, in this quote,
"Clearchus of Soli records the meeting of Aristotle with a Greek-educated Palestinian Jew from Judea in Asia Minor about 345 BC. Although this report in unhistorical, we may conclude from it that at the time of Clearchus, about the middle of the third century Bc, there were Jews from Palestine to whom the description that he was a Greek 'not only in his language but also in his soul' could be applied with some degree of accuracy."
Aristotle? Meeting a Jew? Apparently more likely than you think, as shocking as this came across to me too. Here we see both sides taking the time to understand each other, Aristotle his Jewish meeter and his Jewish meeter the culture of ancient Greece.
"It was required of the overeer of the camp', among other thing, that he was familiar with ail the languages of the families diving in the campi, und this surely included Girock. A similar demand wan made in the Talmud of members of the Sanhedrin, so that they were not compelled to me an interpreters Unlike literary Hehrew, popular Aramaic or Hebrew conatantly adopted new Greek loanwords, us in shown by the lan guage of the Mishnaic and Talmudic literature. While it reflects the situation at later period, its origins go back well before the Christian era The collec tion of the loanwords in the Misha to be found in Schürer shows the areas in which Hellenistic influence first became visible: military matters, state admin tration and legislature, trade and commerce, clothing and household utenni, and not least in building. The so-called copper scroll with its utopian list of trentes also contains a series of Greek loanwords, " When towards the end of the first oentury ac, Hillel in practice repealed the regulation of the remision of debts in the webbath year (Deut. 15.1-11) by the pomibility of a special reservation on the part of the creditor, thin reservation wangi rena Greek name introduced into Palestinian legal language: prearbt - poreba, a sign that even at that time legal language wan shot through with Greek."
Continuing in this passage, we see how Greek itself influenced the local language. In following passages we read that high class Jewish people had "Greek-ified counterparts" to their names. I joke about Ladino being Hebrew through the Spanish processor and Yiddish being Hebrew through the German processor, but this is Hebrew through the Greek processor. These high class folk often held connections to Greece or Greek people, although the exact reason these names were then chosen is unknown.
"According to that, the high priest chose for the translation of the Torah into Greck six men from cach tribe who were distinguished by their 'paideia' and 'not only had a mastery of Jewish literature, but had also acquired a thorough knowledge of Greek. This report of 72 Jews knowing Greek at the time of Philadelphus may be an exaggeration, but we can conclude that at the time of the composition of the letter in the second half of the second century BCa knowledge of Greek could be taken for granted among Palestinian Jews of the aristocracy. Moreover, the books of Maccabees clearly show that not only the members of the Hellenistic party but also many supporters of Judas and his brothers had a command of Greek: this is the only way in which the embassies to Rome and Sparta and the tedious negotiations with the Syrian rulers are conceivable 10 There was no stopping the penetration of the Greek language even in Jewish Palestine, and the young Jew who wanted to rise a stage above the mass of the simple people had to learn it. This process was strengthened by contacts with the Diaspora in Egypt, Asia Minor and the Aegean, above all after the temple in Jerusalem attracted more and more fentival pilgrims from there. The significance of Jerusalem grew with the growth of the western Diaspora, though it continued to remain the centre of world Judaism, now predominantly Greek-speaking.14 There was no break in this development even as a result of the Maccabean revolt, but it was furthered because after Jewish independence had been won, the Hasmoneans followed a quite deliberate policy of influencing the Diaspora, which was then continued by Herod. It could not fail to affect the Jews in Palestine. From the second century Bc onwards we can trace the beginnings of a Graeco Jewish literature in Palestine (see below, pp. 88-102). Finally, one need only mention the many Greek inscriptions in Jerusalem, which only in part derive from those who had returned from the Diaspora: they do belong, though, for the most part to the later period between Herod and AD 70.14 Probably the earliest Greek inscription from Jerusalem is a graffito from the magnificent tomb of Jason, decked with drawings of ship. The tomb comes from the time of Alexander Jannacus, 103-76 BC, and the graffito is composed in the style of the Hellenistic epitaph with the motto 'Enjoy life'."
We can take a few things from this passage. More than enough folk in Judea knew ancient greek, and there was enough of a demand to translate the Torah to that language. Here is also mentioned the talks with Sparta I referred to earlier. There's honestly a lot to unpack there- including that grafittio from the tomb of Jason.
While this has been short, I wanted to provide a sample overview of Hellenistic Judea. These cultures overlap, just learning about it all really makes me feel better as a Judeo-Pagan personally.
I wish I could find that post where another Jewish hellenic polytheist talked about the actual story of Hannukah, featuring class war and all. I could make that into a while overview post itself. So while I gather for my next installment where I talk about the actual overlap of religion (featuring lots of Helios) take care!
(All quotes here are sourced from Hellenism and Judaism by Martin Hengel)
