Brad, take a look at http://members.eisa.com/~ec086636/christians&jews.htm on my website. It may answer your question to at least some extent. Here are some references to Judaic-Greek interactions from the site:
"Arguably, Christianity owes its origin less to Judaism than to the Greeks. The Christian sense of mystery and duality, of good and evil, of Heaven and Hell, of generalized sin as opposed to disobedience of divine law, of a pantheon consisting of a great god and lesser and more specialized spiritual beings, is essentially Greek. But it would seem that what Christians also inherited from the Greeks was a prejudice against the Jews. To some considerable degree, this prejudice was economically based. The Jews formed a large part of the population of the Graeco-Roman world. Many of them were neither poor nor downtrodden, but wealthy and powerful, a matter which played no small role in their eventual persecution. The wealthiest Jews were to be found in the major commercial centers of the ancient Mediterranean world. Among the most prominent of these centers was Alexandria, which was founded by Alexander himself in 332 BCE, and which, in a generation or two, had displaced Athens as the Mediterranean's most important commercial and cultural center. By the standards of the day, Alexandria was a large city. At the time of Christ, it had nearly half a million people, with Jews comprising some 30 to 40 percent of its population. From Alexandria, the Ptolemies, a dynasty founded by Alexander, maintained close control over the economy of Egypt, Rome's wealthiest province and granary. However, following the death of Cleopatra VII, the last of the Ptolemies, in 30 B.C., the city fell under direct Roman rule, and a path was opened to greater individual initiative. It would appear that the Jews took full advantage of this, accumulating wealth and economic influence, and incurring the envy and wrath of the Greek Gentile population. Much the same process occurred throughout the Roman world, engendering strong anti-Jewish feeling. Gentiles both envied and dreaded the Jews, feeling that they would be overwhelmed by growing Jewish influence while their own income and wealth remained stagnant. The several references in Greek and Latin literature to the wealth of the Jews and Jewish rulers suggest that such envy was not misplaced. It became a major source of anti-Jewish hostility throughout the classical period. (Feldman, Louis H., Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World, Princeton, 1993, pp.108-109)" Ed Weick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Ray Evans Harrell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2003 6:57 PM Subject: [Futurework] Athens and Jerusalem > It is obvious (and I read it again recently, > but I didn't write down the reference...) that > "The West" as we know it has a "multiple inheritance" > from the Greeks and the Jews. > > Does anyone know anything about whether there was > any contact between the two in "classical" (not > late-Hellenistic!) times? > What would Pericles, Aristotle, Socrates, Sophocles, > Pindar, Homer, Hesiod, Pythagoras, Protagoras et al. > have made of Abraham, Moses, Jeramiah, Amos, Solomon > et al., and vice versa? > > Did they engage with each other? (That's probably > historically irrelevant, since, if they did engage > with each other, the engagement didn't result in > a marriage, let alone any offspring -- like if the > Chinese discovered The New World before Columbus, etc.). > But, as psychoanalysts say: "everything is grist for the > mill". > > And, yes, what if Alexander the Great had not died in Iraq, > but had been able to complete a journey to The East, > and return? Might Persepolis have become Cosmopolis (ref. > Stephen Toulmin's book by that name) and ethnicities have > now for almost 2,500 years, have been -- for us > citizens of the universal city -- of concern only > to our ethnographers? Would we today live in a world where > nachines move themselves so that we no longer > need slaves, but we would still spend our days > in leisured pursuit of "shining words and deeds" in the > public space of the [cosmo-s creating] polis? > > \brad mccormick > > -- > Let your light so shine before men, > that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16) > > Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) > > <![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
