Caesar and Christ

[The following is Episode 6 of my 16-part documentary series entitled Larger than Life, about the role that beliefs play in shaping the events of our civilization.]

            In the centuries between 1600 and 1200 B.C., two great conflicts occurred that would be forever remembered among civilizations and peoples up to modern times, their sagas being told and retold in dramas, plays, poems, and religious texts written in many languages, and recited in many lands.  The Hebrews, under their leader Moses, would defeat the powerful Egyptian empire in a bold slave revolt that gave them a new beginning, and a new destiny.  And the Greeks, led by Agamemnon, Menelaeus, Odysseus, and others, would bring down the kingdom of Troy, a rival sea power that dared to offend the honor of their people.  But each of these victories resulted in new challenges, new trials and tribulations that had to be faced in order to ensure a complete and lasting success.  Moses led his people through the desert for forty years before bringing them to their homeland, and almost none of those who had left Egypt with him would live to cross the River Jordan into that land.  Odysseus would lead his own men through strange and hostile waters for ten years before returning to his own homeland of Ithaca, and, like Moses, none of those who began the journey in his company would survive to join him there.  Moses was guided and protected by the desert God of the Hebrews; Odysseus relied upon the support of the Greek goddess, Athena.  And while two great nations would spring from the victors in these conflicts, Israel and Greece, the losers, too, would remain to make a mark upon history.  Egypt continued to be a great power for centuries after the Hebrew slave revolt.  But the survivors that fled from the ruins of fallen Troy would create a new kingdom in a distant land, a kingdom so powerful that it would rise to conquer the Greeks, the Israelites, and the Egyptians alike.  The name of this new empire, mightier than any that had risen before it, was Rome.

            According to Roman legend, it was Aeneas, a prince of Troy’s royal family, who founded its kingdom.  Aeneas, like the Greek hero Achilles, had a mortal father and a goddess for a mother.  His mother was none other than Aphrodite, one of the principal goddesses of the Greek and Trojan pantheon.  Aeneas had fought bravely in the Trojan War, but after the fall of Troy, as the invading Greek armies ransacked the city, he fled with his son and aged father.  Like Odysseus, and Moses, Aeneas and his comrades endured much wandering before arriving at what would become their home, on the shores of Italy, and like these other two heroes, he faced conflict with hostile adversaries even after he arrived.  After defeating his principal enemy, a native king, Aeneas married the daughter of another king, of Latium, and through her fathered the Roman race.  Rome itself was believed to have been founded centuries later, in 753 B.C., by Romulus and Remus, twin sons of the virgin princess Rhea Silvia, a descendent of Aeneas.  Her father had been a king, who had been deposed by his evil younger brother Amulius.  Amulius had tried to eliminate any future rivals by forcing Rhea, the king’s only daughter, to become a priestess, but when she fathered twin sons with the god Mars, Amulius was forced to resort to more desperate measures.  He tried to have his infant nephews murdered by having them thrown in a basket into the Tiber River.  The boys were saved, nursed, and protected by a she-wolf, until they were discovered by a shepherd and brought up by his wife.  When they reached manhood, they confronted and overpowered their evil uncle, and restored the throne to their grandfather.  The brothers then left to found a new city of their own, Rome, and after the death of Remus, Romulus became its sole ruler.  And according to legend, Romulus was eventually carried up to heaven by his father, the god Mars, and was himself worshiped as a god by later generations.

Romulus and Remus Reared by a She-Wolf

            Seven kings ruled Rome over a period of about two and half centuries, beginning with the legendary Romulus and ending with Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, a tyrant who was overthrown in 510 B.C.  After this revolution, the Romans began a social experiment that would result in one of the most memorable and glorious ages in history, the rise of the republic.  In a previous episode, we encountered similar experiments that had been undertaken by the Greeks, in Athens, Sparta, and other city-states.  Solon and other reformers had established democracy, or rule by the people, as the form of government for Athens.  Now one very interesting question – but one that is very rarely asked, even today . . . especially today – is what the difference is between a democracy and a republic.  We Americans have a Democrat Party and a Republican Party, and may believe that they are fundamentally – or at least superficially – different in their philosophies and platforms, but most of us don’t see a particular link between the name “Democrat” or “Republican” and what makes each party stand for what it does.  Are these merely different names for the same thing?  “Democracy” means, in its literal translation from the Greek, “rule by the people”, while “republic”, on the other hand, literally translated from its Latin roots means, “the public thing”.  The Greek philosopher Plato wrote a classic book on politics, the title of which is generally translated into English as “The Republic.”  Ironically, in this book, Plato suggests that the most perfect form of government would not be one ruled by the people, or a democracy as his fellow Athenians knew it, but rather one ruled by those most capable of leading – a kind of dominant caste made up of “philosopher-kings”.

The Roman Senate

            Whether the Romans had something like Plato’s ideal in mind when they created their “republic” is not clear – probably the most important thing on their minds at the time was to prevent the rise of future tyrants like the one they just deposed.  We’ll see in a moment that if this was their goal it was eventually doomed to fail, but not before the republic produced centuries of greatness for Rome.  In place of a king, the new republic was headed by two chief executives - or consuls, as they were eventually called - that were chosen annually by their peers.  The two leaders were advised by a council of elders, known as the senate, an institution that had survived from the earlier age of kings.  While the formal power of the senate was limited, its members held office for life, and their advice was highly respected.  But while this new form of government was more democratic than the one that had been overthrown, in its earliest years its effectiveness was marred by a deep social division that had existed among the Romans for centuries.  There were two classes of free citizens in Rome: patricians and plebeians.  The patricians, aristocratic land-holders, enjoyed both wealth and privilege, while the plebeians rarely had wealth, and were completely excluded from participating in political affairs.  This eventually led to violent dissension between the two classes, until the plebeians successfully gained rights and privileges comparable to the patricians.  In part because of this struggle, new offices were created that exercised special powers in the government, including two quaestors to help the consuls manage financial affairs, two censors responsible for overseeing moral issues, and a number of tribunes whose function was to protect and represent the rights and interests of the plebeians.  In 445 B.C., intermarriage between patricians and plebeians was recognized by law, and in 367 B.C., Rome’s highest office, the consulship, was opened to the plebeian class.  Within the next one hundred years, the political distinctions between the two classes had all but disappeared, and the republic became truly democratic.  And yet, while these formal class distinctions disappeared, there continued to be a conspicuous rift between rich aristocrats, who could now be found among both patricians and plebeians, and the poorer general population, who came to be known as the populares.  This growing gap between rich and poor would contribute to the eventual downfall of the Roman republic.

            But while the republic was evolving, Rome itself was growing, mainly through a series of wars with neighboring Italian peoples.  Rome’s strategy for growth was as cunning as it was effective, relying upon coalitions and alliances among friendly neighbors, which were directed against those who were less friendly or openly hostile.  Those who cooperated with Rome were granted full or partial citizenship, while those who resisted faced conquest.  By 264 B.C., the entire Italian peninsula was under Roman control.  With Italy in check, the growing Republic turned its attentions outward, entering into a struggle with Carthage, a great seafaring nation on the coast of Africa that had control of the Mediterranean.  The war would last for more than sixty years, and would nearly lead to disaster for Rome as the brilliant Carthaginian general Hannibal led an invading land army – with 26,000 troops and 60 elephants - across the Alps from the north.  But the tide of battle turned when the Roman general Scipio Africanus invaded Carthage with an army of his own, forcing Hannibal to return to face him.  Hannibal was defeated, and Carthage surrendered.  Sixty years later, the Romans destroyed the city of Carthage itself, burning it down and salting the earth so that nothing could grow in its soil, because they could no longer even tolerate the existence of this former powerful enemy and continuing potential rival.  Meanwhile, other great powers fell under the outward-directed onslaught of the Roman legions.  The Macedonians, under King Philip V and later his son Perseus, heirs to Alexander the Great, fought and were defeated by Rome’s forces, and in their wake much of Greece also succumbed to Roman domination.  The province of Spain became an occupied territory, and much of what had been the empire of King Antiochus III of Syria was surrendered to Rome after his defeat at the hands of its armies.

Hannibal's Army

            But Rome’s growth as a world power actually had a pernicious effect on its own people.  With victory and conquest came the influx of wealth, and slaves.  The upper class became richer, and their new opulent lifestyles led to arrogance, greed, and a decline of the simple Roman virtues that had once been the core and foundation of this society.  And there was no “trickle down” effect from the affluent down to the common laborers.  In fact, with slave labor now abundant, the peasant farmers found that they could not compete with the large, sprawling agricultural estates owned by the aristocrats and manned by free labor.  As smaller farms disappeared, the working class dwindled, and in its wake was a mob of poor, unemployed, angry and disillusioned citizens.  It was inevitable that despair would give way to violence, and the threat of outright civil war between rich and poor.  Attempts to resolve the problem through political and social reform failed.  Two brothers, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, both met their deaths when, as tribunes, they attempted to alleviate the condition of the poor by passing laws that would help restore small farms and create jobs for the masses.  As the specter of a complete social breakdown grew more ominous, and as it became clear that the problem could not be solved through the mechanism of government, another faction entered the fray, the military.

Marius and his Republican Legion

            As a result of Rome’s continuing wars of expansion, a new, professional class of soldiers came into being, led by powerful generals who enjoyed the complete loyalty of their troops.  The generals offered Rome’s citizens security from foreign invasion, the maintenance of internal order, and the promise of the wealth of spoils gained in war, or lifetime employment, or both, to those who had the privilege of serving in their armies.  It was natural that Rome should turn to these men in times of distress, even when the cause of this distress was not from a foreign enemy.  And in this deeply divided society, with a wealthy but increasingly nervous class on the one hand, and a desperate and impoverished one on the other, each viewing the other with hatred, fear, and suspicion, it was also natural that each class would seek to find its own champion in one of the generals.  The first champion of the popular class was Marius, the first champion of the aristocrats, Sulla, and these two generals would divide their time between fighting external enemies and competing with each other for control of Rome.  For a time, Marius and his army held sway, and, along with a political ally, Lucius Cornelius Cinna, would rule Rome with a reign of terror, massacring senators and members of the wealthy class who had opposed them.  But after Marius’s death, Sulla returned with his troops, taking control of the city, declaring himself dictator, and publishing his own list of enemies and outlaws.  Sulla’s tactics, while less violent than those of Marius, were just as pernicious: one of his methods of vengeance was the confiscation of an enemy’s lands, which would then be made a reward for faithful service to his soldiers – who generally made very poor farmers – or abandoned outright.  As a consequence, Rome, which had once had a thriving agricultural economy, became dependent on grain imports from foreign countries to survive.

            By the time of Sulla’s death, the Roman republic had become a sham, and the government was under the control of the powerful, whether this power came from military might, wealth, or the ability to sway the masses.  In 59 B.C., might, wealth, and ingenuity were each personified in three men who together would rule Rome as a triumvirate: Pompey the Great, renowned for clearing the Mediterranean Sea of pirates and for his conquests of lands in the east, including Syria and Judea, Crassus, an immensely wealthy man who gained his fame in putting down a slave rebellion led by the gladiator Spartacus, and a young, ambitious, clever, and immensely popular politician named Julius Caesar.  These three continued to pretend that they were lawfully holding political office, first with Caesar serving as consul, and later Pompey and Crassus, and each, when not in Rome, having military commands over foreign provinces, at the head of large armies.  Caesar used his army with great success, conquering the land of the Gauls, in Western Europe, but Crassus proved to be less skillful in managing an army than he was in managing his wealth.  In a military campaign against the Parthians, in the east, his army was badly defeated, and Crassus was killed.  The alliance between Caesar and Pompey, which had always been an uneasy one, now broke down.  When the Roman senate, under Pompey’s leadership as sole consul, ordered Caesar to either disband his armies or be declared a public enemy, Caesar turned his armies toward Rome, crossing a small stream called the Rubicon that had been the lawful boundary of his province, while uttering that immortal line, “The die is cast”.  In addition to the great military skill that he had acquired during his wars in Gaul, Caesar still had the wiles of a clever politician, and as his armies advanced through Italy, the moderation that he showed to all who fell under their sway won him new allies.  Entire legions of soldiers joined his cause, and many cities willingly opened their gates upon his approach.  When the two opposing armies joined in battle on the plains of Pharsalus, in eastern Greece, Pompey’s armies were crushed, and Pompey himself fled to Egypt, with Caesar in pursuit.  Pompey died in Egypt, but at the hands of an assassin, not Caesar’s, leaving Caesar as the uncrowned king of the Roman world.

Julius Caesar

            The rest of Caesar’s story, of his romance with Cleopatra, his death at the hands of Brutus, Cassius, and other senators, and the avenging of his murder by Marc Antony, his friend, Marcus Lepidus, a former lieutenant, and Gaius Octavius, his grand-nephew, is well chronicled in the histories and dramas of later centuries.  During the short time that he had ruled, he had been a benevolent dictator, perhaps even an enlightened one, but his rule did seal the doom of the Roman Republic.  The new governing triumvirate of Antony, Lepidus, and Octavius would also break down, and in its wake only one man would remain to hold the reins of power.  This was Caesar’s nephew Octavius, later given the honorary title of Augustus by a senate that still pretended to hold the reigns of power over an imaginary republic.  Augustus Caesar also maintained this fiction, allowing all of the old republican offices to remain, but tacitly keeping all of the most important powers to himself.  He called himself “Imperator” – or “emperor” in our language - but in his time the word was much less ostentatious – or odious  - meaning only that he was commander-in-chief of all of Rome’s legions.  Nevertheless, it was indeed an empire that Augustus and his successors controlled – a world empire that included Greece, Egypt, Europe, and a tiny province named Judea.  And it was during Augustus’s reign that a child would be born in Judea who would be destined to create a world empire of his own.

            After its conquest by Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C., the land of Palestine continued to be controlled by foreign powers, beginning with Alexander’s Macedonians, followed by the Egyptians, and then the Syrians.  When the Syrian king, Antiochus IV, attempted to destroy the Jewish religion in 168 B.C., the people revolted and regained their independence under the leadership of the Maccabees.  But the successors of this priestly family proved to be almost as despotic as the former foreign overlords, causing a break-up of the nation into rival factions.  The Romans, under Pompey, gained control of Palestine in 63 B.C. when one of these factions appealed to him for assistance.  Palestine was made part of the Roman province of Syria, and the province was divided into separate districts for administrative purposes, including Judea, Samaria, and Galilee – three names that would be forever remembered among practitioners of the new religion that would spring up there under Roman rule.  The first governor of Judea was Herod the Great, whose father, a descendant of the Maccabees, had been a collaborator of Pompey during the Roman general’s invasion of Palestine. 

            At first, life under Roman rule was peaceful and not oppressive.  Even as it moved into its imperial phase of government, the Roman attitude towards religion continued to be one of qualified toleration.  Its subjects could freely worship any god of their choice and practice any form of religious worship, whether the religion was one that had been established in their native land, or one that was encountered either in or beyond the empire’s borders after joining the Roman family of nations.  In fact, in the Roman Empire there was a proliferation of gods, goddesses, cults, and religious practices that came from many different nations, and spread throughout the land with the movements of the peoples that practiced them.  Even the Romans themselves fell under the sway of a foreign religion – that of the Greeks – and came to identify their traditional gods with deities in the Greek pantheon.  The Roman goddess Juno was identified with Hera, Rome’s Jupiter with Zeus, Mars with Ares, and so on.  Mystery cults, originating from Greece, Persia, and other lands, also flourished.  The empire was literally a marketplace of religious ideas.  Rome’s attitude of toleration was only abandoned if it was perceived that the practitioners of a religion posed a threat to the established order.  And it was here that the Judeans eventually ran into trouble with its conquerors.

            According to the Jewish historian Josephus, who lived during the first century of the Roman empire, among the various sects that existed in Judea, three of the most significant ones were the Sadducees and Pharisees, immortalized in the New Testament, and a more mysterious and otherworldly sect known as the Essenes.  The Sadducees, while tending to adopt a more cooperative attitude to the foreign powers that ruled over Judea, were more orthodox and traditionalist in their religious attitudes.  Many of their members claimed direct descent from Zadok, King Solomon’s high priest.  They did not believe in the immortality of the soul and resurrection after death.  But it was the Sadducees who acted as temple priests, officiating over traditional religious ceremonies.  The Pharisees, on the other hand, were of a more nationalist and independent spirit, and some may have had strong sympathies with resistance movements against the foreign powers that controlled their land and its people.  However, unlike the Sadducees, they had adopted some rather untraditional beliefs, such as the resurrection of the body after death, a future day of judgment, and eternal punishment for evildoers.  The Sadducees seemed to have lived up to the bad reputation that they have been saddled with in the New Testament, with their self-righteous behavior, obstinate dogmatism, and frequent displays of contempt for others outside their circles.  But the Pharisees as a class were unfairly portrayed.  As the spiritual forefathers of the Jewish rabbi, or teacher, they were friends of open, reasoned discourse, careful study, and the search for truth.  In the days of the Maccabees, the Sadducees and Pharisees had often been in open conflict with each other, but by the time of the Roman Empire, they had settled into an uneasy coexistence.  The Essenes were a much more militant and puritanical sect, who believed in the imminent approach of the Messiah, who would usher in a final conflict between the “sons of light” and the “sons of darkness”.  They practiced an austere, monastic existence, living in remote, closed communities away from the cities, in the desert and on the shores of the Dead Sea.

Crassus Plundering the Temple

            The renewed strivings of the Jewish citizens of Palestine for independence had been provoked by the greed and brutality of Roman generals, governors, and soldiers who occupied the land.  Crassus, the Roman general who had been part of the first triumvirate with Caesar and Pompeii, may have gained much of his wealth by looting Jerusalem’s temple treasures.  And thousands of Jewish farmers were driven into ruin because of the empire’s heavy taxes.  Those who could not pay were often compelled to sell members of their own family into slavery.  And those who dared to resist faced that most odious Roman punishment, crucifixion.  It was from the ranks of the dispossessed farmers that a new breed of Jewish revolutionary was born, the Zealot, or Sicarii.  Their numbers grew to the thousands, forming a permanent guerilla band that harassed the Roman armies and kept the land in a permanent state of turmoil.  Most of the Judeans, of course, did not choose the path of violent resistance, but in the face of a growing struggle with what was perceived to be an evil empire, the messianic spirit grew among the masses, and with it, that belief – already held by the Essenes – that a new age was about to come into being, in the wake of one final, apocalyptic war.  And with this belief, there was the hope, and often the expectation, that a deliverer would appear to lead the ranks of the just in this final conflict.

            And it was in the midst of these troubled times that Jesus of Nazareth was born, that central figure of the Christian faith, who would spend his short life preaching, healing the sick, and gathering a band of devoted followers who would carry on his inspiring message of hope, redemption, and universal love long after he had departed.  We are of course back once again in uncomfortable territory as we attempt to look at the origins and influence of Christianity with the eye of an impartial and detached observer, because Christianity continues to be a dominant force in our culture and civilization, and has been for nearly two thousand years.  But just as we did with the Jewish Tanakh (Christian Old Testament), we have to say from the start that the Christian New Testament, in the version that survives today, is not without its contradictions and inconsistencies.  We are provided, for example, with two genealogies of Jesus, one from the gospel of Matthew, the other from the gospel of Luke, which are supposed to demonstrate that he is a direct descendant of King David, in accordance with earlier biblical prophecies about the Messiah.  And while the thoroughness of these genealogies is not unimpressive – the one in Luke traces Jesus’ ancestry all the way back to Adam – they are inconsistent with each other.  Even worse, they trace the link to King David through Joseph, but as the gospels tell us, Joseph was not even Jesus' actual father.  The accounts of his birth in Matthew and Luke also differ in the details.  In Matthew’s version, Joseph and Mary flee to Egypt, after Joseph is warned in a vision that Herod intends to kill the child, but according to Luke, the couple returned directly to Nazareth, where the child was brought up.  But when it is remembered that the earliest gospel was probably written forty years after Jesus’ crucifixion, we can perhaps forgive some discrepancies in the tales of his life.

Jesus Giving the Sermon on the Mount

            And what was the message and mission of Jesus during his lifetime?  He railed against religious hypocrisy, pride, and an excessive adherence to the letter of the law, if it is being violated in spirit.  He said that the two greatest commandments were to love God with all one’s heart, and to love one’s neighbor – even if that neighbor is a stranger or enemy.  He cautioned against the snares of wealth, and pride, and getting caught up in the mundane cares of this life.  In his parables, he compared the blessed to a crop yielding a good harvest, or servants enriching their master through the skillful management of his investments, while the wicked were plants that had failed to sprout, or servants who had failed to increase the wealth that had been left in their care by the master.  His teachings and his parables portray a loving God, capable of forgiveness, but also committed to justice.  Each human being has an opportunity to serve God, and provide an abundant return to the Creator by following Christ and obeying his teachings, but for those who reject this offer, God in turn will reject them in the final day of reckoning.

            But to understand how the legacy of Jesus and his teachings led to modern Christianity, we must understand the persons who tried to shape that legacy, and principal among these were two who, while both claiming to have seen a personal vision of Christ, had never been his followers during his lifetime.  One of these was James, who is identified as the brother of Jesus in the New Testament.  Now this in itself became something of a problem for latter-day Christians, after Mary’s role as the virgin mother of God grew in importance.  To many Christians, it is unacceptable to believe that Mary ever had conjugal relations with her husband – that her virginity was permanent – and that Jesus could never have had natural siblings.  James is explained away as a cousin, a half-brother, or perhaps just a very close friend.  And it is probably for this reason that James has become something of a shadowy figure in modern Christianity, although in the book of Acts and in the epistles it is clear that his role as a leader of the new movement was initially a pivotal one.  James was a member of the Jewish community in Jerusalem, and in his eyes the followers of Jesus were still Jews.  Some have suggested that the Jerusalem Christians may have even been part of the resistance movement against Rome, and point out that a name like Simon Zelotes, one of the original apostles, hints at a revolutionary undertone.  But while James and his supporters may well have been sympathetic to the enemies of Rome, it is doubtful that they were ever anything but pacifists.  Their hope was in the kingdom of God to come, when the wrongs of this world would be righted, and evil conquered for all time.  James’s authority over the followers of Jesus was unquestioned in Jerusalem, but ultimately his vision would yield to that of a very powerful rival, the apostle Paul. 

                                                          Missionary Journeys of St. Paul

            Paul had been born outside of Judea, in the city of Tarsus, in the southwestern coast of what is today the country of Turkey.  It is not unlikely that during his time there he had been exposed to many of the other religions that flourished in the Roman Empire – the mystery cults, like that of Dionysus, which celebrated the death and rebirth of a god - and the Persian belief in a divine struggle between the powers of good and evil, truth and falsehood.  Paul was a Roman citizen, but by his own account a faithful Jew, trained as a Pharisee.  Like James, Paul believed in the resurrection of Jesus, in his imminent return, and in the Holy Spirit, that divine comforter bequeathed by Jesus to his followers, which empowered them to heal the sick, cast out demons, prophesize, and speak in tongues.  But in just about all other matters of faith they were diametrically opposed.    His vision of the new Christian movement was one that would include gentiles as well as Jews, even if this meant discarding many of the traditions and requirements that defined what it meant to be a Jew.  For Paul, Rome was not the enemy, and to be a faithful citizen was not a contradiction to being a good Christian.  The political struggle in Jerusalem and the rest of Judea was not his struggle.  In fact, given Rome’s policy of tolerance toward religious sects that did not embrace political opposition to the empire, it is very likely that Paul’s followers went to great lengths to set the Christian movement apart from other Jewish sects by emphasizing the Christian’s unquestioning allegiance to Rome, “giving unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”.  Was Paul then an agent of Rome, a collaborator with Roman authorities or perhaps their puppets among the Sadducees and other ruling families in Judea, sent to subvert this new movement, as some of his fiercest critics suggest?  Anyone who reads Paul’s writings with an unbiased eye must come away convinced that he was sincere in his religious convictions.  He may have been an opportunist, in many ways, but his ultimate end was the successful establishment of the new faith.  One senses from reading the story of his adventures, and his own epistles, that he was not always the easiest person to get along with, and that it might have been easier to love him at a distance than to like him up close.  He himself admitted that he could make a poor impression in person, and to convey his message he relied heavily on his writing, and on emissaries like Timothy and Titus to speak on his behalf to the new congregations that were forming throughout the empire.  Did Paul attempt to create a new religion out of an artificial synthesis between the Judaism of his heritage and the religions prevalent among the Greek-speaking peoples of the Roman Empire – twisting the sayings of a Galilean prophet to suit his ends?  Many of his critics would have us believe this, but Paul’s own actions and writings suggest otherwise.  He was opposed to what he perceived to be an excessive ritualism and adherence to the law in Judaism, but he just as strenuously opposed the Greek idea of initiation, passing through a series of stages or degrees to develop a better understanding of and closer connection to the divine.  For Paul, conversion was a simple, single act, that required no further stages or revelation of deeper mysteries – it was faith, not knowledge or endurance or ritual, which led to salvation.  Paul may have been pragmatic, and political, but he was also a radical.  The passion of his convictions, the power of his thought, and his eloquent defense of the simple virtues of faith, hope and charity survive in the thirteen short letters of his that are now part of the New Testament.  And his legacy is nothing short of remarkable, when one realizes that on any Sunday morning, in just about every city in the civilized world, there are at least a dozen churches or meeting places where passages from the writings of this irascible Jewish tentmaker are read out loud, expounded upon, and tapped as a source of ongoing inspiration.  That is a fame and posterity that would be beyond the wildest dreams of any writer, philosopher, poet, or prophet - of any age.

St. Paul Preaching at Athens

            But if it had been a conscious decision of Paul’s followers to try to secure the existence of the new movement by distancing themselves from the Jews, the result was less than successful, and would lead to terrible consequences.  In the eyes of the Romans, the early Christians were just another Jewish sect, and their leader, Jesus, a claimant to a crown that could only be perceived as subversive to the empire.  Only Caesar was the supreme ruler, and there could be no king of Judea who was not Caesar’s vassal.  The fact that Jesus’ brother, James, became his successor in the new movement must have made it seem even more obvious to the Romans that this was an attempt to create a new dynasty, a line of kings linked by a common family.  According to early church history, after James’s death the Romans systematically hunted down and killed every known relative of Jesus.  Clearly, this was no idle threat to them.  Meanwhile, Jerusalem fell to Roman armies, and its temple was destroyed.  While members of the new Christian faith were persecuted and martyred throughout the empire, within Palestine, the Judeans would once again see a foreign power attempt to destroy their national identity, as Roman legions decimated the land, and crushed the last remnants of revolt.  Both Jews and Christians would survive, and their respective faiths would evolve and develop in the crucible of persecution and social ostracism.  But for the Christians, the struggle would end in 313 AD, when a Roman emperor, Constantine would choose the Christian cross as his standard of battle, and accept the Christian faith as his religion.  Within a few generations, Christianity would become permanently established as the official religion of Rome.  And Rome’s emperors would be just as thorough and unforgiving in rooting out the perceived enemies or rivals of Christianity, as it had been centuries earlier in trying to root out the Christians themselves.  The Christian religion now had a church hierarchy, and an official canon of books to make up its own bible.  And by this time, any negative reference in these books to the Romans, or Roman leadership, or the abuses of the empire, had been removed.  In its place, a new villain, a new enemy had been inserted, the Jewish scribes, Pharisees and high priests, and, by implication, the Jews themselves.  Moses had created a new religion by leading a revolt against the Egyptian Empire; Christianity had secured a permanent existence not by revolting against, but by enduring the Roman Empire, and through its endurance, conquering it.  Yet for the Christians, this new Promised Land would be a blessing and a curse.  For the many that followed the simple teachings of Jesus, and the inspired verses of Paul, faith, hope, charity and a vision of a universal brotherhood realized itself in the families, farms and simple villages that abounded with the faithful.  On the other hand, the new power of the church gave free reign to the ambitious, the prejudiced, the hateful, and the ignorant, allowing them to persecute with an unbridled violence those who they branded as enemies of the elect: the pagan practitioners of the old Greek and Roman faiths, the Christian heretics, and the Jews.  But while Rome’s power was great, it was not unlimited.  At the reaches of its territory, a new power was growing in strength, threatening to bring down the empire itself.  These were the Germans: the Goths, Vandals, Franks, and Saxons.  And in a remote island at the fringes of the empire, a Celtic chieftain, loyal to Rome, would find fame and immortality in taking a last stand against the German onslaught.  His name was Arthur.

Moses the Lawgiver

[The following is Episode 5 of my 16-part documentary series entitled Larger than Life, about the role that beliefs play in shaping the events of our civilization.]

                Long ago, when Agamemnon and his armies fought against the powerful city of Troy, the exploits of the Greek warriors were preserved in verses that were memorized and recited to later generations, among peoples who had no other connection to this ancient time.  To these later peoples, the tales provided a context for their lives, a history, a connection to the gods, and a common heritage.  The tales found expression in poetry, and song, and in a new medium unlike anything the world had seen before, the theater, in the plays of Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles.  But before the walls of Troy fell, another great conflict, playing itself out in the land of Egypt, would be immortalized in the writings, songs, and verses of distant generations, centuries removed.    The outcome of this drama would also create a context for living, a heritage, and a connection to one, special god, who would assume a role in our civilization unlike any before or since.  The drama was a slave revolt, the outcome, freedom, and its hero, a man named Moses.

            In the first four episodes of this series, “Larger than Life”, we have looked at the earliest civilizations, in Sumer, Egypt, Crete, and Greece, and at some of the myths that gave their peoples a sense of meaning and common destiny in their lives.  It was easy to listen to these with amusement, fascination, and even a little condescension, but now, in Episode 5, as we turn our attention to the Hebrews, we are crossing the threshold into what might be a little less comfortable territory.  It will not be as easy to be so detached, or so impartial, or so bemused, as we listen to some of the stories that many of us still teach to our children for religious inspiration, or as we talk about that God of the Hebrews which is the same one that many if not most in our society pray to today.  Like the legendary ether that physicists once believed surrounded us, an invisible substance that serves as a medium for light waves to travel through, the religious traditions of the Bible permeate our culture, and we are immersed in them.  It is difficult – it might even be impossible – for us to step out of them and examine them with an impartial eye.  Even those who claim to be free of our religious traditions often demonstrate by their ill-disguised hostility toward anything religious that they are not really free of them at all.  As we discovered at the end of the last episode, it is true that many of our ideas about reality, about truth, and about morality have been passed down to us by the ancient Greeks.  But people tend to be much more sensitive talking about their religious views than their philosophical ones.  That’s what makes this a touchy subject, but also a fascinating one, and an important one, if we wish to learn how our beliefs shape our destiny.  Who is this God of the ancient Hebrews that holds such power over our lives, how did we find Him, or, perhaps it should be asked, how did He find us?

            The story of the Hebrew God is preserved for us in a collection of books that comprise the Jewish Tanakh, and Christian Old Testament.  This Bible, as we know it, offers us a complete history of our existence, from the time that its god created the world, through its own version of the flood legend, and on through the rise and fall of many empires.  Now as a history of the world, it presents us problems even in the opening chapters.  As Clarence Darrow, in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial, pointed out, the biblical account of the beginnings of humanity runs into difficulties almost immediately, with the story of Cain, the first child of Adam and Eve, who leaves his family, settles in the land of Nod, and takes a wife.  One is compelled to ask, as Clarence Darrow did: if Adam and Eve were the first human beings, and Cain was the firstborn of this first family, then how could he find people in a distant land and among them a woman to marry?  But nevertheless, in our civilization, the Bible has long been accepted as the history of humanity, just as the ancient Greeks had accepted Homer’s epics as a record of the history of their own ancestors.  It has only been since the age of Charles Darwin, about one hundred and fifty years ago, that the historical accuracy of our Bible has been questioned by the population at large.

            But let’s look at the Bible from another perspective.  How does it differ from the accounts of creation that we have encountered in the civilizations of the Sumerians, the Egyptians, and the Greeks?  And how does its god differ from the gods of those other lands? 

            The first thing that impresses us is that the act of creation in this Bible is a purposeful event.  The God of the Hebrews creates His universe through design, and intention, not through accident or chance.  There is no account of a conflict between gods, or of the creation of the universe as an accidental consequence of this conflict, or of humanity as the result of an unintended or arbitrary act.  The Hebrew god creates the universe, and the earth, methodically, by design, and the creation of humanity is a culmination, or at least a final act, of this design.  This God is like an artisan, or architect, framing the universe according to a preconceived plan.

            It’s any wonder, then, that in such a clockwork universe anything could go wrong, but it does, and man is responsible.  And what is this terrible thing that man does, that upsets the divine order of things?  He crosses a boundary that has been set upon him by his god – he tastes of a fruit that has been forbidden to him.  And what is it about this seemingly harmless act that brings down divine anger?  According to the Bible, God says:

            “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil. . .”

and it adds that, to prevent man from gaining even more power, by eating of the tree of life and gaining immortality, God casts him and his descendants out of the Garden of Eden forever.  But this is only God’s final curse on Adam and his descendants for his transgression, for earlier we are told that from this time forward women will bring forth their children in sorrow, and men must work the ground, fighting thorns and thistles, to make their bread. 

            Three times in the book of Genesis – the book that tells the story of mankind’s earliest days – God curses the human race by bringing new hardships or difficulties to its members.  The second such curse comes upon Cain, after he murders his brother Abel.  God asks Cain, “Where is thy brother?” and Cain replies, “I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper?”  Upon charging Cain with his crime, God punishes him by saying:

            “And now art thou cursed upon the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand; when thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.”

            The third curse falls on mankind when it attempts to build the famous Babel tower, whose pinnacle would reach unto heaven.  God prevents its completion by confounding the languages of mankind, causing the peoples to disperse.  The reason for this interference is explained when the Bible quotes God as saying:

                “Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”

            In all three instances: Adam and Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit, Cain’s murder of his brother Abel, and the building of the Babel tower, man’s transgression appears to be that he was moving too close to God, gaining or usurping powers that God reserved for himself.  By eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve were gaining access to knowledge that had been God’s exclusively, and had he not stopped them, they would have gained the gift of immortality as well.  When Cain murdered his brother Abel, he usurped God’s power of life and death over mankind.  And by building the Babel tower, mankind was demonstrating its intent to transcend and overcome any limits imposed upon it, by reaching heaven itself, God’s private domain.  And in each of these three instances God’s response was to make life a little more difficult for man, by making the environment more hostile, or by saddling him with more extreme physical limitations.  Now on the surface, these divine acts seem to suggest a very petty God, even a petulant one.  Is the Hebrew God different from the gods of the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Greeks only because of his extreme jealousy and intolerance - of the rival power of men and other gods alike?  If we take a closer look, we will find some much more profound differences.  But before examining this god of the Hebrews more closely, it would be helpful to take a look at the Hebrews themselves.

            Their origins are obscure.  In the Bible, we are told that Abraham came from the city of Ur, in the land of the Sumerians, and migrated with a band of family and followers westward to Palestine, where his grandson Jacob eventually settled and established himself as the patriarch of a new people, the Israelites.  But tales of Abraham, his son Isaac, and grandson Jacob were not only passed on among the Israelites – the names appear in the mythology of the Midianites, and the Amorites: two other ancient nomadic peoples who lived in the region of Palestine.  Among these and other tribes who lived in the land, a number of gods were worshipped, in many different forms: the dragon, the sun, the moon, and the sphinx.  One tribe worshipped the image of a bull, a practice that may have been passed on from distant ancestors or relatives from the kingdom of Minos on Crete.  Another worshipped Nehushtan, the serpent god, while yet another was loyal to a very powerful and jealous god of high and remote places who was the enemy of Nehushtan.  It was this god of the desert and the mountains who would be remembered as forming a covenant with Abraham and his descendants, while the serpent, like the Egyptian god Osiris’s enemy Set, would survive as a demonic entity, the first enemy of the Hebrew God mentioned in the Bible.

            While it is difficult to untangle the earliest history of the Hebrews from other nomadic tribes that lived in the region of Palestine, there is evidence that a people calling themselves the Israelites were definitely living in the region around 1220 B.C., at about the time that the combined armies of Greece were at war with Troy.  Earlier in the century, two waves of invasions had occurred in that part of the world.  From the northwest, a horde that the Egyptians called the “sea peoples”, some of whom would later be called by other peoples the Philistines, moved through the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea, until they were stopped at Egypt.  And from the desert in the southeast, semi-nomadic tribes migrated into Palestine, Syria, northern Mesopotamia, Assyria, and Babylon, overwhelming the native inhabitants with innovative weapons that they had acquired from other peoples: iron from the Hittites, and horses and chariots from the Egyptians.  It was from among this second group of invaders that the people calling themselves the Israelites appeared.  They were a confederation of tribes, claiming a common ancestry, and a shared history, which included a remarkable tale about a man named Moses.

            Who Moses actually was, we may never know for sure, but there is no reason to doubt that he really existed.  Was he, as the Bible tells us, born to Hebrew slaves, spared from the pharaoh’s decree of death to all infant male children of the slaves when his sister hid him in a reed basket?  According to this account, Moses was discovered by the pharaoh’s daughter, raised in the Egyptian royal household, and could have continued to live a privileged existence, until a random but violent act of sympathy for his own people forced him to renounce his adopted birthright and flee from Egypt.  While in exile, he is said to have encountered that mysterious mountain and desert god of the Hebrews, who entrusted him with a very special mission and calling: nothing less than to win the complete liberation of his enslaved people from the Egyptians. 

Moses Leading the Exodus

            The name, “Moses”, is actually Egyptian, not Hebrew, and it is interesting to note that many members of the tribe that he was supposed to belong to, the Levites, also had Egyptian names.  This may have been what prompted no less a scholar than Sigmund Freud to suggest that Moses actually was an Egyptian, a nobleman raised in the household of Akhenaton: that pharaoh who unsuccessfully tried to get his people to worship one god above all others.  According to Freud’s account, Moses left Egypt after Akhenaton’s untimely death, taking with him followers from among the Semitic tribes that lived in the kingdom so that he could continue the late pharaoh’s religious practices in some other land.  After a time, Freud suggests, these tribes revolted against Moses, substituting one of their own principal gods for the Egyptian one that Moses tried to impose upon them.  But most scholars believe that a slave revolt against the Egyptians is a much more likely scenario, and that, whatever his ties to the Egyptian people and their royal household, Moses was the leader of this revolt.  We then must ask, when did it happen, and who was the pharaoh who actually played the role of arch-villain in this great drama?  Suggested dates for the exodus from Egypt have ranged from 1491 B.C. to 1290 B.C, with 1320 having a high likelihood of being the correct one.  If the exodus did happen in 1320 B.C., then Ramesses II was the oppressor of the Hebrews, and the revolt occurred under the reign of his son, Merneptah.  Ramesses II certainly fits the profile of the pharaoh described in the biblical book of Exodus.  He had a passion for building that rivaled that of the Egyptian kings who built the massive pyramids more than a thousand years before, but Ramesses II’s passion was directed toward the construction of a great palace, statues, and temples.  To supply the labor that he required, Ramesses used slaves, which by now had become a fixture in Egypt, but he used more slaves than any other pharaoh before him.  And he had no scruples about where to get them – whether they be war captives, neighboring tribes, slaves purchased in foreign auction markets, or even Egyptians driven into bondage because they couldn’t pay their debts.  Ramesses didn’t care – he had to build.  Ironically, if it was posterity that he was hoping for, he got it, but not in the way that he desired or expected, because he and his son may very well have been responsible for one of the greatest revolts in human history.

Ramesses II

            (It should be mentioned that those who subscribe to a more literal interpretation of durations and ages presented in the Bible place the exodus from Egypt much earlier, in the 15^th century BCE, during the reign of Thutmose II and/or his son, Thutmose III.)

            But Moses did more than lead his people to freedom.  He led them to, or led them back to, their God, and established a code of conduct and special relationship with the creator that would define them as a people forever more.  The ancient land of Palestine was resettled, or rather re-conquered, as the Hebrews came into conflict with the native Canaanites, and another people, the Philistines, who may very well have been distant relatives of the people of Crete, from the land of King Minos.  And while King Minos punished his enemies with the Minotaur, the Philistines held the Hebrews in check with their own brand of monster, a giant named Goliath.  We know from the Bible that Goliath’s slayer was destined to become the land of Israel’s greatest king, David, whose fame would only be rivaled by his son, Solomon.  Israel had by now become more than a people and a nation, it had become a kingdom, with all of the glories, and the pitfalls, that kingdoms face.  For with power comes the temptation to abuse it, to become haughty, and to become irreverent or even forgetful of the things that one once held sacred.  Many of Israel’s kings succumbed to this temptation, as did many of their subjects, and out of the midst of this heresy came a new figure that would loom large in the history of Israel: the prophet. 

            While Moses had established a priestly line that began with his brother Aaron, the true spiritual descendants of Moses were the prophets.  Like him, they received their calling directly from God, rather than from a hereditary birthright, or special training.  They were often simple men, poor, not from the privileged ranks of society.  Unlike the high priests in Egypt, who were part of an aristocratic caste that often exercised great control over the king, the prophets shunned lives of luxury and had to shout to be heard, and they cried out on behalf of the poor and the oppressed, often denouncing their king.  Three of the greatest of these prophets who lived during Israel’s golden but decadent age were Elijah, Amos, and Hosea.  For Elijah, the sins that offended God were the iniquity of King Ahab and his queen Jezebel, and the idolatrous worship of other gods that was being practiced in the temples during their reign.  Amos and Hosea railed against King Jeroboam II, and his abuse of the poor and downtrodden.  When the kingdom later fell to the Assyrians, Hosea declared that this was nothing less than a manifestation of divine punishment for its sinful practices.  And like Elijah, Hosea identified idolatry as one of Israel’s most grievous sins, comparing the nation and its relation to God with that of an unfaithful wife to her husband.

            By Hosea’s time Israel was actually two kingdoms, not one, because after the reign of King Solomon the northern part of the nation had broken away and, with the help of the Egyptians, declared its independence.  This northern kingdom continued to call itself Israel, while the southern kingdom, which the Bible tells us consisted mainly of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, adopted Judah as its name.  But around 720 B.C. Israel suffered a devastating downfall as Assyrian invaders conquered the land, deported many of its inhabitants, and repopulated it with immigrants from Mesopotamia.  Here began the legend of the “lost ten tribes of Israel”, those unfortunate victims of the Assyrian invasion, forced to give up their national identity and live in a strange land, never to return.  Judah also surrendered to the Assyrian conquerors, but was allowed to retain its independence.  And it was now in the land of the Judeans where the prophets would continue to raise their angry voices, beginning with the greatest of them all, Isaiah.

The Prophet Isaiah

            Isaiah was actually born into an aristocratic family, but like the prophets that came before him, he expressed God’s indignation against mistreatment of the poor.  “Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed;” he said, “To turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless!”  Isaiah also echoed the warnings against idolatry made by the other prophets, convincing his king to drag the images of idols out of the temple at Jerusalem.  And if there was ever any doubt before his time, Isaiah makes it clear to his people that their god is not only supreme, he is the only god – there are no others to compete with him for worship or adoration.  Through the prophet’s voice, the creator declares: “Is there a God beside me?  yea, there is no God; I know not any.”  Isaiah’s message was reinforced by the later prophets - Habakkuk and Jeremiah principal among them.  And Habakkuk and Jeremiah also made it clear that the god of the Jews was not confined to a temple, or a place – His presence is universal.  But through Jeremiah’s prophecies it is stressed that while this God transcends borders and boundaries He is still a personal God, and while His power is supreme, so is His capacity for mercy, as in these lines:

“. . . I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.  And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

            But even the remnant of God’s followers in Judah could not escape divine judgment, as warned by the prophets.  The rural inhabitants of that land continued to worship other gods, including a mother goddess, Ashoreh, a divine consort who held an equal place in the hearts of many to the reigning god of their ancestors.  In 640 B.C. their king, Josiah, who feared that his subjects could not fend off the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian nations that threatened their independence, took a radical step.  With the aid of his priests, he set about to rally his people behind the worship of a single god.  In 622 B.C. some of these priests claimed to make a momentous discovery, a lost scroll hidden away in the temple at Jerusalem.  We know that scroll today as the book of Deuteronomy, a retelling of the story of Moses, complete with a code of laws that banned the worship of other gods in the hilltops and other remote regions of Judah.  Josiah sent troops to these pagan temples, where the temples were destroyed, and its priests killed.  It was now that monotheism would gain its strongest foothold in Judah.

            But Josiah’s hopes that a unified people under one God would prove victorious over their enemies was dashed in 609 B.C., after a bold attack led by the king against the Egyptian-Assyrian alliance was repelled, and the king himself was killed in the battle.  Like Akhenaton of Egypt, Josiah’s death seemed to portend a failure of this noble experiment, as the kings who followed him restored the worship of Ashorah and the other tribal gods.  It was now left to the prophets to warn of the consequences of their actions.  Jeremiah declared that the Judean people’s idolatry would be punished by exile, and his prophecy was soon fulfilled by the Babylonians.  Under their king, Nebuchadnezzar, they invaded Jerusalem, plundering the temple and the palace treasures.  And just as the Assyrians had done to the inhabitants of Israel, the Babylonians carried off the people of Jerusalem and resettled them in a distant land.  It seemed that the destruction of the Hebrews was complete, their culture and history doomed to extinction, a fate common to many peoples of that age who had fallen to the sword of invasion.  But here the story takes a strange and remarkable turn.

            In Babylon, the Judean exiles found solace in the writings that they had taken with them, the stories of their past, and of their relationship with their God.  The tale of their bondage in Egypt took on special significance, as did the assurances by God that repentance for their sins, and return to the old ways of worship, would bring divine mercy, protection, and liberation.  In this, their darkest hour of despair, was formed the beginnings of a faith that would forever define them as a people, and in this faith was the stirrings of a new religion, Judaism.

Persian King Cyrus

           

            When the Persians, under King Cyrus, conquered the Babylonians in 538 B.C., the Judean captives were freed and allowed to return to their homeland.  But after decades of exile, the land to which they returned was not a hospitable one.  The repatriated Jews set about rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem until conflicts between them and the new inhabitants of the surrounding countryside brought the work to a standstill.  And then, eighty years after their return, a Jewish scribe named Ezra was sent by the Persian king Ataxerxes to restore order to Jerusalem.  Ezra was accompanied by other Jewish scribes from Babylon who carried with them a document that would change the history of the world.  It was the first edition of the Bible.  Ezra read what we now know as the first five books of the Bible, or Pentateuch, to the people of Jerusalem, the book that would become their Torah.  It contained the account of creation, of Noah and the flood, of Abraham’s covenant with God, of Moses and the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, and a codification of the laws that were established by God for his people.  After reading the entire work, Ezra asked the people to sign a contract, binding them to live by the laws of the Torah.  It was a landmark event for the history of Judaism, and for religion.  The laws and precepts of God were made manifest to all who encountered the Torah, and they were binding upon all who chose to live by them.  There were no hidden mysteries, or elite priesthoods to whom only certain knowledge or divine secrets were accessible.  The wisdom of the Torah was available to any who sought it, whether they be king, priest, laborer, or slave.

             

Ezra Reading the Torah

            The people of Judah would lose their political independence to other conquerors and foreign powers in the centuries to come, beginning with the Macedonians under Alexander the Great, followed by their successors the Seleucids, and then the Roman Empire.  And while their attempts to regain political independence were marred by violent reprisals and tragedies, their identify as a people, cemented by their special relation with the Hebrew god, endured and solidified as the empires to which they were subject rose and fell.

            And so we come back to God.  What is really so special about this God of the Hebrews, this God of the Jews, this God who is now worshiped by the majority of our Western civilization?  To understand Him a little better, it might help to take a closer look at the characters of the Bible who served Him.  Because here we find heroes very different from those of the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Greeks.  These heroes were not simply brave, or strong, or bold, like a Gilgamesh or Achilles.  They were compassionate, and often challenged their God on behalf of their fellow human beings.  When God announced to Abraham his plan to destroy the city of Sodom for the iniquity of its people, Abraham pleaded for mercy, extracting a promise that if only ten righteous persons could be found inside of it, then the city would be saved.  Similarly, when God threatened to destroy the Israelites for making an idol of a golden calf, Moses interceded for them, arguing that it was in the Creator’s own best interest to forgive them, so that He would not be remembered as delivering them out of Egypt in vain.  Finally, Moses offered his own life, saying, “Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin - ; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of the book which thou hast written.”  And centuries later, King David would make a similar plea, when an angel was prepared to destroy the city of Jerusalem, as punishment for David’s sin of carrying out a census against God’s will.  “Let thy hand, I pray thee, Oh Lord my God, be on me, and on my father’s house;” cried David, “but not on thy people, that they should be plagued.”  The appeals of these men are a far cry from the utterance of Cain that so offended the Creator: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” for clearly, the heroes of the Bible were their brothers’ keepers.

            In many ways, Moses was the archetype of the biblical hero.  He was called by God to perform a great service, although, as Moses himself protested, there seemed to be others better suited to the task at hand.  But just as with Jonah, another prophet who was initially reluctant to answer the call, God insisted upon His choice.  For Moses, as for the people that he was destined to lead, the call was an invitation, or rather a command, to find a new freedom.  Many centuries after Moses lived, in faraway Greece, the philosopher Socrates told a parable about prisoners in a cave.  Having been bound inside of this cave for their entire lives, with only a fire providing light for them to see, the only images that played before their eyes were shadows that were cast by the flame upon objects outside of their field of vision.  One day, a prisoner freed himself from the cave, and stumbled out onto the bright world beyond.  After eventually adjusting his eyes to the new world in front of him, he returned to the cave and attempted to describe what he had seen to the fellow prisoners.  But they took him to be a madman, because they were incapable of understanding what he described to them, and his own disorientation as he attempted to readjust himself from the world of light back to the darkness of the cave only confirmed their suspicions.  In many ways prophets such as Moses are like this man.  Having been shown a new vision of the future, they struggle to share it with their people, and lead them out of the cave of their prior existence out into the freedom of a richer life.  But God’s calling, and the invitation to freedom that he expresses through his prophets, is wrought with real and imagined dangers and pitfalls.  There is safety, and security, in slavery and in darkness.  Many times, during their journey through the desert, the Israelites yearned for their previous life in Egypt, where, in spite of the indignities suffered, at least there was a steady food supply and a familiar existence.  They questioned if this new life of freedom was worth the struggle and the uncertainty.  One can understand their confusion, and their frustration, because this revolution was unlike any other that had ever been recorded in history.  It was not a revolution from, but a revolution for.  The bonds of an external taskmaster were cast aside, but in their place, a personal commitment was made to a new code of laws and principles that were based upon a special relationship with God.  The freedom that had been fought for and won was not the reckless freedom of a child who has broken away from his parents, but rather the demanding independence of one who has attained adulthood.  The Israelites’ fight for freedom, and the new challenges that accompanied it, is an allegory for any person who casts off the shackles of a comfortable and smothering existence to answer a calling that will lead them to their true identity.

            And so how is this God of the Jews different from the gods and goddesses of Sumer, and Egypt, and Greece?  Perhaps at first there was no difference, with the exception that this curious god of the desert and high places had little tolerance for rivals.  But this exception would become very important, as the concept took shape in the minds of the Hebrews that there was only one god, one creator.  Certainly any god that was willing to share his or her place on the altar with others could not become this supreme deity.  Only the jealous god could fit this role.  But even then, the way that this supreme being was perceived among his followers changed and evolved over time.  Like the gods of other cultures, it seemed that he could be fickle, vindictive, and prone to fits of anger.  His followers prayed to him for victory over enemies, although at times it was hard to see how the cause of one side was more or less just than the other.  But by the time of the prophets, if not much earlier, it was clear that this was a moral god, one who did not tolerate iniquity, injustice, or lack of compassion toward others.  This could not be any clearer than in the book of Job.  When Job, a righteous man, appears to have suffered from divine punishment, a bitter debate ensues among him and his comrades.   Clearly God is the only being in the universe that is above the law, and is not bound by it.  And yet, it is inconceivable to them that God would ever be anything but righteous.  Unable to resolve this paradox, Job’s friends are forced to conclude that Job must have done something to be responsible for his punishment.  Only in the Bible could such a profound debate and wrenching conflict regarding the motives of God be possible.  Had this been a Sumerian, or Greek, or even Egyptian myth, it would not have been at all unusual for a mortal man to suffer from the arbitrary wrath of a divine being.  Nevertheless, other cultures have had moral gods as well, including ones such as Osiris who reward righteous behavior and punish evildoing.  There is one final, profound development in the character of the Hebrew god that would set him apart from being a mere national divinity, one who looks out for his people and answers their prayers.  At first, of course, this is exactly the way that most of his followers perceived him.  In their times of trouble, either individually or as a nation, their hope was that their God would deliver them, at some future time.  But this view underwent a subtle change.  Eventually, it was not the mission of God to create a better world for his people, but the mission of his people to bring about God’s holy kingdom.  In the pages of Genesis, man had been cursed for trying to become too much like God by usurping His powers.  But elsewhere in the Tanakh (Christian Old Testament), man is instructed on how he can properly move closer to his God, become more like Him, and even approach the gates of Heaven.  It is by answering God’s call to a new and sometimes terrifying freedom, obeying the divine commandments, practicing compassion, and becoming your brother’s keeper.

Job

            After Alexander the Great’s armies conquered Judea, the Jews encountered the philosophies and religions of the Greeks.  The new ideas intrigued, inspired, and sometimes tempted them, as the people of Judea found themselves exposed on a daily basis to the culture of Hellenism.  Similarly, the Greeks were fascinated by the religion of the Jews and how it starkly contrasted with their own.  These worlds would continue to co-exist and occasionally intermingle until being thrown together even more forcibly as a new rising power conquered them both.  That power was Rome, and in the wake of its conquests, a new religion, born out of the clash of cultures between the Jews and the Greeks, would be born.

Troy

[The following is Episode 4 of my 16-part documentary series entitled Larger than Life, about the role that beliefs play in shaping the events of our civilization.]

            It was a battle fought more than three thousand years ago, in a small coastal city in Asia Minor, but it is still remembered to this day.  Two great peoples clashed in a fierce struggle that lasted for more than ten years, and the fate of an entire kingdom lay in the balance.  On the one side, a confederation of kings, joined by their common desire to exact vengeance on a single enemy, and on the other side, a mighty sea power, its capital guarded by impregnable walls and the desperate resolve of its citizens to defend it to the bitter end.  Great heroes on both sides faced each other in combat, their swords clanging violently on massive shields, drawing strength from a bitter rage and unyielding determination that both inspired them and goaded them, driving them on relentlessly to fight or to die.  War chariots raced across the battlefield, in a flurry of arrows, battle cries, and screams of anguish.  It was said that at times so many died that the sheer number of their bodies clogged up entire rivers.  It was even said that the gods themselves joined in the battle, fighting alongside their mortal allies.  History had never seen a war like this one.  And its outcome would shape the course of civilization.  What brought the armies of so many countries together into such a cataclysmic conflict?  It was not the desire for conquest, or wealth, or revolution.  Tradition tells us that the war was fought over a woman, Helen.  Hers was “the face the launched a thousand ships”, and their common destination, the land where two great powers would clash and ultimately shape their destinies, was Troy.

            Two hundred years before the battle of Troy, a great empire met its downfall.  This was the Minoan Civilization, based on the island of Crete that had dominated the seas for hundreds of years before succumbing to a series of natural disasters.  The Minoans had gained their wealth and power through trade and commerce, not through war or conquest, but even before their civilization collapsed, powerful rivals were rising up in nearby Greece.  The Mycenaeans had migrated into the Greek mainland around 2200 B.C.  In contrast to the Minoans, they were a militaristic people, and their societies were organized around small, highly fortified citadels.  Each city, or acropolis, as it was called, was led by a king who served as both military leader and high priest.  The Mycenaean peoples made up a warlike society that was constantly engaged in small-scale feuds and raids.

Although their belligerence may have distinguished them from the Minoans, the Mycenaean peoples, like the Minoans, were also culturally advanced.  The people practiced a high degree of craftsmanship, particularly metalwork, and engaged in extensive trade.  They were literate, and used the same alphabet that had been adopted by later Minoan society.  Perhaps not coincidently, the Mycenaean civilization reached its peak at the same time that Minoan civilization went into decline - about 1400 B.C.  Its cultural predominance lasted approximately 200 years until the civilization ended abruptly around 1200 B.C. – right around the time, as a matter of fact, that the battle with Troy was supposed to have taken place.  Historians believe that this abrupt end came about as the result of invasion or internal revolution.  But there is little that we can learn of this people through the fragments of pottery and remnants of writing that have been unearthed in excavated ruins.  Their story comes to us from a different source.

When the Mycenaean era ended, no civilization arose to fill the void.  In fact, the entire region went into a general decline, known as the Dark Ages.  This decline affected all areas of culture, including technology, architecture, and art.  The people even forgot how to read and write.  Perhaps more significantly, the general population declined.

            While we don’t know what exactly caused the Dark Ages, it is known that two large-scale migrations were occurring at this time.  From the north of Greece, a relatively uncivilized Greek people known as the Dorians moved overland to the south.  This migration in turn pushed the existing population, called Ionians, from northern Greece into Attica, a region in the southeastern part of Greece that would later become the site of Athens.  The Ionians also migrated off the mainland, across the neighboring islands and onto the coast of Asia Minor.  Only one significant technical advance occurred during this time - the replacement of bronze by iron as the principal metal. 

For these new Greeks who came to dominate the land during the Dark Ages, history began in the year 776 B.C., a year remembered by them as when the first Olympic games were ever held.  This was their “0 AD”, and all important events in their memory were marked off of this date.  By 750 B.C., writing had been reintroduced, but events preceding this era were only dimly remembered by the Greeks, and survived as legends, myths, poems, epics, and songs.  Two men who lived at the beginning of the new age attempted to preserve this prehistoric legacy in poems and verses.  They were Homer and Hesiod.

Homer

            Homer, according to Greek tradition, was a blind poet who lived in the eighth century B.C.  He is credited with composing two epic works of poetry, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which described events during and immediately after the Trojan War.  His works were regarded by Greeks of later generations as authoritative sources on theology, tradition, ancient history, and morality.  They were regularly copied, memorized, recited, and alluded to by the poets, singers, dramatists, and intellectuals of classical Greece.  The Homeric hero served as a model for all young men growing up in Greek city-states.  In a very real sense, the Iliad and the Odyssey together were revered as a sort of bible by the ancient Greeks.  Hesiod was also a poet, and his verses covered many subjects, ranging from practical advice on how to live a successful life in his Works and Days, to a great epic called the Theogony that recounts the origins of the gods, the creation of the universe, and other mythical tales.

            The names of the Greek gods and goddesses are still familiar to us today - Zeus, Hera, Athena, Aphrodite (called Venus by the later Romans), Apollo – and in the stories handed down to us of their adventures, we see parallels to the myths of the Sumerians and Egyptians.  We learn that Zeus, for example, rose to power by overthrowing an older generation of gods, called the Titans, of whom his own father, Cronus, had been the most powerful.  And, just as we found in the myths of Sumer and Egypt, there is evidence that this revolution in heaven mirrored events on earth, in this case the appearance of the Dorian invaders, whose personal gods and goddesses displaced those who had been worshiped by the peoples that the Dorians had conquered or driven out.  There is even another flood legend.  In the Greeks’ version, Zeus became displeased with human treachery, and sent the devastating flood, but not before Prometheus, the Titan who had created mankind, warned Deucalion and his wife to build an ark.  As the rains subsided, the ark settled upon Mount Parnassus and, upon hearing the advice of an oracle, Deucalion and his wife threw stones over their shoulders.  The stones that he threw became men, the stones that she threw became women, and their son became the leader of a new race of people, separate from the rest of barbarian humanity, called the Hellenes.  Hellenes, by the way, is what the ancient Greeks called themselves – the word “Greek” comes down to us from the Romans, who called them “Graeci”.  Needless to say, another parallel between the gods of the Greeks and those of the Sumerians and Egyptians is that they had very human qualities – they could be petty and cruel, jealous, greedy, impetuous and spiteful.  They had very human personalities, but superhuman powers.  And, according to legend, it was because of them that the Trojan War started.

            We are told that the Trojan War, like many great sagas, began with a wedding - the wedding of King Peleus of Pthia and Thetis, a goddess.  The ceremony was not immodest, including as it did the cream of nobility both in Peleus’s kingdom and in neighboring kingdoms, as well as virtually all of the gods.  Only one of the immortals was not invited - Eres, the goddess of strife.  Angered by this slight, and true to her name, Eres resolved to introduce some trouble into the gathering.  She inscribed the phrase "For the fairest" on a golden apple and rolled the apple into the middle of the wedding reception.  Three goddesses lunged for the apple: Hera, the queen of the Gods, Athena, the goddess of war and wisdom, and Aphrodite, the goddess of love.  They began to quarrel among themselves over who was truly worthy of this prize and its flattering inscription.  It was resolved that a beauty contest should be held, with a human judge selecting the winner.  A young prince of Troy, named Paris, was selected for this task.  It was doomed to create trouble, because whomever he picked, there would be two very unhappy and very powerful losers. 

The Wedding of Thetis and Peleus . . . 

. . . and a Wedding Crasher

            But Paris didn’t shrink from his obligation.  He was young, vain, and not unappreciative of the finer qualities of the female sex.  But the goddesses made his task a little more challenging.  Each offered him a bribe in return for his vote: Hera pledged him an empire over Asia and the furthest reaches of Europe, Athena promised to put him at the head of a great army which would conquer Greece, and Aphrodite offered him the most beautiful woman on earth.  Now Paris, being a young man, preferred love to power, and he accepted Aphrodite's bribe.  Aphrodite kept her promise, but the result was disaster for Troy.  The most beautiful woman in the world was Helen, who happened to be already married and, even worse, married to a king - Menelaus of Sparta.  But this didn’t deter Paris.  With Aphrodite's aid he removed Helen from Menelaus's palace and took her back to Troy.  By accepting Aphrodite's bribe, Paris would cause his people to face the wrath of Menelaus, the Spartans, the Greek kingdoms which would ally themselves with Sparta, and two very angry and very powerful goddesses, Hera and Athena.

Paris Judges a Beauty Contest

            The Greek alliance was formed under the leadership of Agamemnon, older brother of Menelaus and king of the Mycenaens.  The combined Greek forces gathered at the port of Aulis, but their fleet of one thousand ships was detained by the absence of favorable winds.  Agamemnon learned through his prophet Calchas that the goddess Artemis was holding back the winds - she was displeased with him for reneging on an earlier pledge that he would sacrifice to her the finest thing that had been produced in his household.  She wouldn’t allow the ships to sail until he sacrificed that finest thing, which – much to the distress of Agamemnon – was his oldest daughter, Iphigenia.  Reluctantly, he complied, and told his wife Clytemnestra to send their daughter to Aulis.  Naturally she wished to know the reason.  Agamemnon explained that Iphigenia was going to be married to Achilles, the son of King Peleus, that King whose wedding had caused the war with Troy.  Clytemnestra was overjoyed at the news, but her joy turned to horror when she learned of the true fate of her daughter.

Principal Locations and Characters in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey

            Homer's Iliad describes important events that occurred over the span of a few days in the Trojan War.  When the epic begins, the war has been going on for nine years.  The Greeks have not been able to overcome Troy's walled defenses, and have had to content themselves with raids upon neighboring villages allied to Troy.  Tempers are running high on both sides of the war, morale is low, and the Greek forces face a new threat that has come upon them in the form of a devastating plague.  A prophet learns that the god Apollo is responsible for the plaque - he has learned that Agamemnon, during one of the Greek raids, has abducted the daughter of one of Apollo's high priests.  The prophet trembles at bringing this news to Agamemnon, but Achilles urges him on, and promises his support.  Agamemnon doesn’t take the news well.  In a display of ill grace, he reluctanctly agrees to send the girl back to her father, but only on the condition that he will take Achilles' war prize instead - a beautiful young woman named Briseis.

            It’s only with the help of Athena that Achilles restrains himself from killing Agamemnon on the spot, but his anger doesn’t pass.  He removes himself and his fellow countrymen, the Myrmidons, from the battle.  He appeals to his mother, the goddess Thetis, for aid in getting redress from Agamemnon for his insult.  Thetis, in turn, carries the plea to Zeus, king of the Gods, reminding him that Achilles is fated to die in this war, and insisting that he deserves at least to die with honor.  Zeus sympathizes with her appeal and her son's plight, and resolves to restore honor to him by turning the tide of battle against the Greeks, which will in turn force Agamemnon to repent for his rash actions and beg Achilles for assistance.

            The Trojans do gain the upper hand in battle - at one point even chasing the Greeks back to their ships - and Agamemnon sends messengers to Achilles' tent with a personal apology and a plea for him to reenter the battle.  Achilles refuses.  The Greeks continue to suffer heavy casualties.  At last, Achilles' close friend Patroclus cannot bear to watch his fellow soldiers being slaughtered in the battle any longer.  He pleads with Achilles to lend him his armor and let him lead the Myrmidons back into battle.  After Achilles reluctantly agrees, Patroclus and his countrymen enter the battle and fight valiantly.  The tide of battle appears to be turning again, in favor of the Greeks, until Patroclus himself is killed at the hands of Hector, brother of Paris and the greatest warrior on the Trojan side.  Achilles, horrified and grief-stricken at the sight of his dead comrade, enters the battle with a vengeance, killing so many Trojans that their bodies actually clog a river.  But Achilles doesn’t end his killing frenzy until he at last confronts Hector and exacts retribution for the death of his close friend.  Not content with merely killing Hector, Achilles ties his body to the back of his chariot and drags it around the battlefield.  The Iliad ends with King Priam of Troy entreating Achilles to return the body of his son to him; Achilles agrees, the two men weep over the tragedy of the war, and a temporary armistice is declared so that the Trojans can give Hector a proper funeral and burial.

            According to legend, Achilles was himself slain shortly after the death of Hector by Hector’s brother Paris.  Now Paris didn’t have Hector's valor or courage, but he was an excellent marksman with a bow - he managed to murder Achilles by lodging a poison-tipped arrow in Achilles’ famous vulnerable heel.  The death of Achilles did not prevent the fall of Troy.  Its walls remained impregnable until a clever scheme devised by Odysseus put Greek soldiers inside.  The soldiers were hidden inside of a huge, wooden horse, which was left on a plain of the battlefield.  When the Trojans discovered the horse, they also found that the Greeks had apparently departed in their ships, leaving only one soldier behind.  This soldier explained to the Trojans that the large horse was an idol dedicated to Athena - an oracle had told them that its possessor would be the victor in this great war.  After some discussion, and against the advice of Laocoon, a Trojan priest - the one who said that famous line, "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts!" - the Trojans decided to bring the horse within their walled city.  That night, the Greek soldiers came out of the horse and opened the city gates, where their comrades, who had returned in their ships under cover of darkness, were waiting.  Troy was defeated and sacked.  All of its adult males (except a few who escaped) were killed, the women and children were taken as slaves, and the city itself was burned to the ground.

            Not all of the surviving Greeks would enjoy the fruits of victory.  Agamemnon returned home to a very bitter wife Clytemnestra, who, in collusion with her lover, murdered him in his own bathtub.  (She and her lover would in turn be murdered by her children Electra and Orestes as an act of retribution for their father's death.)  Odysseus did not see his home until after ten years of wandering at sea, during which time he lost his entire crew to various enemies and disasters.  Upon his return, he discovered that his home had been invaded by a company of suitors competing for the hand of his wife, Penelope.  He was not able to reclaim his home and kingdom until murdering all of the suitors with the help of his son, two loyal farmhands, and the goddess Athena.  King Menelaus, whose misfortunes had caused the war, returned to a more pleasant life than these men.  He’d originally resolved to murder his wife, Helen, after coming to believe that she had willingly joined company with Paris.  But upon seeing her after the fall of Troy, his anger disappeared, they reconciled, and then they returned together as a happy couple to Menelaus' palace in Sparta.

            By the dawn of the Greek historic age, when Homer was reciting his tales of the Trojan War, and Hesiod was describing the exploits of the gods, the Greek people were no longer ruled by kings.  Instead, each city-state was generally run by a privileged group, an elite caste of aristocrats or other powerful men who dominated their fellow citizens.  Many of these elite had gained their power through success in business and trade, rather than military victories or landholding.  Their rule gradually became more inflexible and harsh, particularly toward the poor and underprivileged, and it was during this time that slavery became common in the land of Greece.  In desperation, the people put their trust in self-proclaimed saviors – generally aristocrats themselves – who promised relief in return for loyalty.  But the relief was short-lived, for whenever a champion of the people gained enough power, he soon turned into a tyrant, occasionally benevolent, but often at least as cruel as the ruling class that he had overthrown.

            As tyranny became more intolerable among the peoples of Greece, bold new experiments in lawmaking began to appear.  Nowhere was this more true than in the two city-states that were destined to become the most important in Greece, Athens and Sparta.  In Athens, two great lawgivers, Solon, and later Cleisthenes, implemented a series of bold reforms that brought an end to slavery and relief to the poor, and introduced a new form of government that would be forever associated with Athens, democracy.  In Sparta, the legendary lawgiver Lycurgus introduced an equally bold, and much more radically unique, form of government. 

The civilization of Sparta was unlike any other in Greece.  Its people had evolved into a society of warriors.  Their ancestors, after founding the city-state of Sparta, had conquered the inhabitants in the neighboring land of Messenia.  But the Messenians were not content to remain a race of slaves, and the persistent threat of rebellion forced the Spartans to adopt a permanent military lifestyle.  Their children were trained to live the harsh and austere life of a soldier from a very early age, and were brought up to believe that there was no greater virtue than to be a fierce warrior, and to die in battle, if necessary.  Now this was hardly a land conducive to democracy, but the lawgiver Lycurgus did not believe that rule by an elite caste or by a single king was any better.  His solution was to create a government that was a mix of all three – monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy.  The Spartans were ruled by two kings, each from a different clan, and these in turn were advised by a council of elders.  But there was also a general assembly, which consisted of all males over thirty years of age.  Of all of the Greek city-states, only Sparta never succumbed to tyrants.  While its unique government may have helped to prevent this, the Spartan attitude toward money probably also made it difficult if not impossible for tyranny to arise.  Wealth was abhorred in Sparta, and the accumulation of it was actively discouraged through the use of large metal ingots as money.  With no wealthy class, and an underclass that was completely beaten and dominated, the conditions of social unrest that had led to tyranny elsewhere in Greece were held securely in check by the Spartans.

            In their ancient legends, the Athenians and Spartans had fought and defeated great powers in distant ages.  The Athenians could pride themselves in defeating the inhabitants of Atlantis, when the peoples of this legendary island nation had become arrogant and cruel.  And it was the Athenians, again, or rather their champion Theseus, who humbled the mighty King Minos by destroying his monstrous son, the Minotaur.  Finally, it was the Spartan king Menelaus who became the rallying point for a combined Greek army to invade Troy and reclaim Menelaus’s abducted wife, Helen, in the battle that was best remembered by the Greeks of later times.  But two hundred years after the death of the poet Homer, who immortalized the legend of the Trojan War, Athens and Sparta together would face a powerful empire that threatened to conquer, if not destroy, Greek civilization.  The empire was that of the Persians, and its leader, Darius I, turned his wrath upon the Greeks after discovering that they had attempted to aid some of the cities under his dominion in a revolt.  At first, he demanded tribute from the Greeks, and all of the city-states gave in to the demands of his agents, except Athens and Sparta, who killed the agents.  Enraged, the Persian king sent an invading army into Greece in 490 B.C., but the army was repelled by Athenian soldiers at the battle of Marathon, and news of the victory was delivered by a runner back to Athens, giving name to a race that is commemorated to this day.  Another Persian army was more successful, overcoming valiant resistance by the Spartans, but the tide of battle turned when the Persian fleet was destroyed by Athenian soldiers, and the invaders were again driven out of Greece.

            Together, the Athenians and Spartans had defeated the most powerful empire of their day, but in their victory lay the seeds of their own downfall.  Athens now became a great sea power, and its great navy threatened to overshadow the legendary military might of the Spartans.  As Athens became more autocratic and inflexible, seeking to exert direct control over its Greek allies and turn them into subjects rather than partners, and as Sparta grew to envy the Athenians’ growing prosperity and influence, Sparta and its allies joined in common cause to keep this rising new power in check.  Conflict ensued, culminating in the long and mutually destructive Peloponnesian War.  The result was eventual ruin for both of these great city-states. 

           

The Death of Socrates

But it was now, during Athens’ final downfall, that she produced her greatest legacy to civilization.  For it was during this time that the greatest philosopher ever known, Socrates, enthralled young listeners with his keen mind and subtle wisdom, and left a legacy that still endures.  “All I know is that I know nothing,” he claimed, but during his life he demonstrated again and again that none was wiser than he.  If philosophy was not born in Greece, it was here that it found its fullest expression.  Even before Socrates, Greek wise men had laid the foundations for a tradition of intellectual inquiry that had never before been seen in the world.  For two hundred years, men such as Thales, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, and Democritus asked simple but profound questions that cast myth aside in the search for truth.  “What is the world made of?”  “How can we know what is real and what is true?” and “How should one live one’s life?” were the types of questions that guided their speculation.  For the first time in history, human beings – their role in the universe, their capacities, and their conduct, comprised a field of study.  “Man is the measure of all things,” a Greek philosopher once said, and this was the rallying cry for the new schools of ideas.  Today we call it humanism – the belief that man can find a purpose, a destiny, and a basis for right conduct in self-examination, and not in the supernatural.  Socrates was put to death for this attitude, but his beliefs were preserved, expanded upon, and refined through the writings of his pupil, Plato, and Plato’s equally eminent pupil, Aristotle.  Aristotle, in turn, tried to impart his wisdom onto a student of a different kind, the son of a Macedonian king.  Later, this young man, who had been the student of one of the greatest philosophers of all time, would find fame of his own, not as a sage, but as a conqueror.  Alexander the Great, as we remember him today, created an empire larger than any the world had yet seen, expanding outward from Greece to Persia and even to Egypt.  And in the wake of his conquering armies, Alexander planted the seeds of Greek philosophy which he had received from his teacher, seeds which would sprout, flourish, and survive in later civilizations, long after his own empire had fallen.

Alexander the Great

The legacy of the ancient Greeks remains with us to this day.  The simple but direct questions that they asked about truth, reality, wisdom, and right conduct, as well as many of the answers that they proposed, survive in our sciences, our laws, and even our traditions.  But there is another legacy, equally powerful, equally revolutionary, that we bear, a gift to us from another ancient people.  And just as the Greeks found their identity and their destiny through the defeat of a powerful, oppressive enemy, the Hebrews would cross the threshold of history when they successfully withstood and brought down the awesome power of the Egyptians.