Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- Translators' Note
- Introduction
- PART I THE FIRST MIRROR
- 1 Waking the Dead-Greece as an Ideal and an Exemplar
- 2 Hellenism and Hebraism: The Two Poles of the World
- 3 Israel and Greece: Reviving a Legendary Past
- 4 ‘Greek Wisdom’ as Secular Knowledge and Science
- 5 Japheth in the Tents of Shem: The Reception of the Classical Heritage in Modern Hebrew Culture
- 6 The Moral Dimension: Commonality and Particularity
- 7 Worlds without Compromise: Reconstructing the Disparities
- 8 Have Jews Imagination? Jews and the Creative Arts
- PART II THE SECOND MIRROR
- PART III ATHENS IN JERUSALEM
- Conclusion: What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Israel and Greece: Reviving a Legendary Past
from PART I - THE FIRST MIRROR
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- Translators' Note
- Introduction
- PART I THE FIRST MIRROR
- 1 Waking the Dead-Greece as an Ideal and an Exemplar
- 2 Hellenism and Hebraism: The Two Poles of the World
- 3 Israel and Greece: Reviving a Legendary Past
- 4 ‘Greek Wisdom’ as Secular Knowledge and Science
- 5 Japheth in the Tents of Shem: The Reception of the Classical Heritage in Modern Hebrew Culture
- 6 The Moral Dimension: Commonality and Particularity
- 7 Worlds without Compromise: Reconstructing the Disparities
- 8 Have Jews Imagination? Jews and the Creative Arts
- PART II THE SECOND MIRROR
- PART III ATHENS IN JERUSALEM
- Conclusion: What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
My first thought is one of intense astonishment at the current opinion that, in the study of primeval history, the Greeks alone deserve serious attention, … For in the Greek world everything will be found to be modern, and dating, so to speak, from yesterday or the day before … Surely then, it is absurd that the Greeks should be so conceited as to think themselves the sole possessors of a knowledge of antiquity and the only accurate reporters of its history …
JOSEPHUS, Against Apion, i. 6–7, IS (trans. H. St J. Thackeray)THE COMMON ORIGIN OF CULTURE: MYTHOLOGY AND EUHEMERISM
THE interest in the origin of nations (origines gentium), in the origins of culture, in its stages of progress, and in the ways in which cultural traits were transmitted and diffused was shared by many ancient peoples, and the problem of how man acquired the arts became a focus of reflection. Greek (and Latin) authors examined the conditions which favoured the genesis and progress of culture and civilization, linguistic and cultural patterns, and the connection between habitat and habits, national character and institutions, and the variety and diversity of humanity. Ethnography was regarded as an access to history. Even though they never used the term 'culture’ in the modern sense, there is no doubt that they had great interest in the phenomenon of culture and in cultural history.
Aeschylus (if he is the author) describes in Prometheus Bound the stages of cultural development: the gift of fire, the use of animals for transport, the invention of the sailing-ship, the discovery of medicine, of divination, of metals. In Antigone the figure of Prometheus disappears and Man is now truly a self-taught inventor. In Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, v. 1241-57, the genesis and evolution of culture is the product of necessity, skill, and a sense of utility. Isocrates stated that ‘… we have come together and founded cities and invented arts …’. Man has done the work for himself; 'he taught himself’ each new knowledge. In the words of Xenophanes in the sixth century BC:
Knowledge came not to men from the first divine revelation, But man's search, with time, all things more clearly reveals.
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- Athens in JerusalemClassical Antiquity and Hellenism in the Making of the Modern Secular Jew, pp. 58 - 78Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1997