How the History of Hellenism Impacted Judah

Hellenism has its roots in the island of Crete with the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations, and the life of the Minoans can be traced back perhaps even prior to the children of Israel entering Egypt while the Mycenaean's would have lived just a few centuries prior to King David. The population expansion of the Greek speaking people involved movements north into what is now known as Greece, eventually the islands got populated with Greeks, and lastly lands across the oceans like the west coast of Turkey became populated by the Greek speaking people as well. Although some people have made the claim that Greeks influenced or interjected their culture into the Philistines and that of Egypt prior to large Greek federations like the Delian League first and the empire of Alexander the Great second, this would have been somewhat unlikely to have occurred with mass conquest since each Greek city was its own independent state with complete autonomy without any other civil form of government to answer to.

The overly dangerous problem of Hellenism is that it involved extreme polytheism in the worship of many gods, extremely unbiblical lifestyles as prostitution service would even be used as part of religious ritual like in the example of the temple of Zeus on mount Delphi, and a very dangerous appeal to intellectuals as a result of the Platonic school being so powerful with what eventually became many sects. Although Hellenism was not really a extreme problem for centuries of Jewish history, the time of Alexander the Great caused a conquest of Judah during the intertestamentary period, and during this time Alexander the Great would have forced Hellenic culture on the Jews as he was so enthralled with Hellenic culture that he made Greek cities all over the world that he named after himself (almost all of these cities did not last because Alexander made the cities with incredibly unstable governments since he populated each of the cities with Greeks from several different city-states that had different Greek cultures). The lifestyle of Alexander the Great was that he wanted to embrace diversity and enjoy the best of what all cultures had to offer, and everyone under his authority was expected to do the same, as he, while he expanded the entire known world under his dominion.

The Alexandrian Empire eventually left the Jews with a legacy of a disruption of the office of high priest, a ban on circumcision, the sacrifice of pings in the temple, and a statue of Zeus on the altar. Although Alexander the Great may have appeared to embrace all cultures with diversity while extending a spirit of good will, peace, and value to all, his legacy was that Judah became violated in an orgy of Hellenism expressing alternative values, practices, and worship. Overall, the Jews of Judah had not been as asleep to the evil of forced religious acceptance and pluralism as what many Americans and western people are today, so they revolted in the Maccabean revolt under the command of Judas Maccabeus while he lead a secret military militia and intelligence ring that was used to overcome the enemy by silent hidden force.

The good result of Hellenism entering the land of Judah is that it laid a foundation for the New Testament as Jesus Christ had very specific problems to address. Jesus Christ thus demonstrated, to Jews (familiar with the problems of the past that Hellenism gave to Judah) that the kingdom of God does not come through revolt, hostility to the aggressor, or even acceptance of a lesser worship of God, but instead the message of Jesus Christ to people familiar with the problems of Hellenism detouring worship was to offer oneself as a living sacrifice in order to be raise to life through conquering death and defeating the enemy out of love through faith. Today the western world with its 'Big Mac religion' enticing the masses into super simplicity and salvation without any real commitments or consequences while everyone's god is 'created equal' according to the pulpit of the public administers is paving a highway to a very Hellenic hell hallmarked by the perversion of justice by protecting capital offenders (as seen in the law of Moses) with complete freedom while punishing minor offences more profoundly, perversion of the family unit with mass slaughter of the unborn children along with government money incentives for bring pregnant and unmarried or disabled and separated, and perversion of Christianity with Christian professionals being eliminated from their positions as a result of performing their duties in a Christian way like in the case of science instructors. Overall, the problems with the problems of today are not that the cross of Christ is heavy to carry, but the problem is that the thought of committing oneself to God in a wholly holy way can be terrifying (because of the consequences) for someone that has not already given themselves as a living sacrifice to God to have the old nature put to death and the new nature emerge.

Bibliography

Lea, Thomas, and David Alan Black. The New Testament: Its Background and Message, 2^nd ed. Nashville, Tennessee: H&B Academic, 2003.

Scott, Julius. Jewish Background of the New Testement. Grand Rapids, Mishigan: Baker Academic, 1995.