The Hebraic
and the Hellenic views of life have been often contrasted. The Hebrew stressed
reliance upon an omnipotent God and conformity to a divinely sanctioned moral
law; he was essentially serious, restrained, willing to recognize his finite
limitations. To seek God was the ultimate wisdom, to follow His precepts the
ultimate virtue. The Greek accepted no revelation as ultimate; he strove to
penetrate to the core of his conceptions, analyzing the very basis of his
knowledge. He was blessed with a delicate, subtle reason and with a keen desire
to use it, to probe with it, to open the very heart of reality.
The Hebrew was inclined to mysticism; he accepted the moral law and would
not go beyond it. The Greek bowed to no law but that of complete self-expression.
He loved beauty and art, the outdoor life, and every aspect of nature which
appealed to his aesthetic sensibilities. Where the Hebrew asked: "What
must I do?" the Greek asked: "Why must I do it?" ... The Hebrew
believed in the beauty of holiness; the Greek believed in the holiness of
beauty.
The two points of view could not very well be reconciled in an individual.
One could not accept a revealed law as ultimate, and yet honestly question
the very foundations of life; or submit to a moral law and yet exploit one's
capacities without restraint. But was it not possible for both spirits to
be present in a whole people, residing in individuals who were splendid examples
of each? National life would indeed be ideally rounded out if it developed
at once the burning zeal for social righteousness of an Amos or an Isaiah,
and the serene wisdom of a Socrates or a Plato, the moral fervor of a Jeremiah
and the artistic genius of a Praxiteles.
Unfortunately,
the best in the Greek spirit did not meet the best in the Hebrew spirit. The
splendid achievements of the philosophers and the artists, their search for
truth and beauty, their mellowed humanistic approach, did not come to the
East in the wagons of the Greek conquerors. There came instead a degraded
imitation of Hellenism, externals with the glowing heart burnt out, a crude
paganism, a callousness for the common weal, a cheap sophistry, a cynicism
easily undermining old conceptions and older loyalties, but substituting nothing
constructive in their place.
Too often
the gymnasium and the ampitheater meant lewdness and licentiousness; the search
for intellectual clarity meant dishonest banter and trickiness, the pursuit
of the beautiful meant moral irresponsibility....
In Judah,
coming after along period of priestly sternness and puritanic piety, the Greek
ideals wrought havoc. At first only a few more daring souls stepped out of
the established conventions. But as their numbers grew, the older generations
stood back aghast. The youth of the land were aping names and manner; they
were shamelessly displaying their nudeness in the Greek Palaestra. More too:
they were assimilating the whole Greek Weltanschauung. They were even attacking
the laws and customs in which they were reared. This was no mere passing fad,
to be treated indulgently.
The masses were, as usual, not the decisive elements in the conflict. They
were fuddled, bewildered, and inarticulate. They traveled in the beaten path,
perhaps vaguely wondering where the quarrel lay. But the two extreme factions,
Puritans and Hellenists, filled the synagogues and the marketplace with their
din as they sought to discredit each other.
Soon Judah was rent by the quarrels of two factions who could not understand
each other. Almost every family found itself divided. What was earnest to
one group was jest to the other; what was pleasure to one was torment to the
other; and neither side gave quarter. Those who loved the Greek ways found
Judaism crude and soul-repressing. They looked upon the sacerdotalists as
fools if sincere, and as hypocrites if not ready with answers. The stern nationalists,
on the other hand, alarmed by the assaults on their mode of life, drew no
distinctions in judging the alien culture. Hating lasciviousness, they decried
all that was beautiful in Greek art; hating sophistry and irreverence, they
decried all that the philosophers taught. There could be no compromise.
Victory, quite naturally, as usual seemed to go at first to the hellenizers.
They gathered to them the youth of all classes, the aristocracy, and even
some of the priests. Ambitious men discovered that the way to advancement,
at least socially, lay in living like the Greek gentlemen. By the beginning
of the second century, the old Judaism was in serious danger of dissolution,
threatened with death, not by the mellowed wisdom of ancient Hellas, but by
the bastard culture which called itself an offspring. Perhaps Judaism would
have been quietly swallowed up as so many other civilizations had been; but
at the dramatic moment history worked one of its miracles. Suddenly the hellenizers
were thoroughly discredited in a reaction, which shifted the whole balance
of the Near East, a reaction brought about by the harshness and stupidity
of new Syrian monarch who usurped the throne in 175 BCE.
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The
irony, is, of course, that the Maccabees led to the integration
of Hellenism and Judaism, so ultimately there was a synthesis. The
Rabbis didn't like this, which is why they never made a big deal
about Hannukah. They too, however, were very influenced by hellenistic
culture and Greek thinking, and did not represent a continuation
of the conservative, priestly religion of pre-hellenistic time.
The idea that authority stems from the study of Torah and the quest
for truth through learning (and not with the Priestly class) is
both Socratic and democratic [ed.].
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From:
A History of the Jews, 2nd rev. edition (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940),
pp.100-102. Reprinted in The Hanukkah Anthology. Philadelphia:
JPS, 1992. |
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Abraham
Leon Sachar was founder and first president of Brandeis University; he
was the author of the classic A History of the Jews and other historical
works. |