Greece

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GREECE represents in English the Latin word Gr?scia, which is derived from Gr?ci. This name Gr?ci properly belonged only to a small tribe of Greeks, who lived in the north-west of Greece; but as this tribe was apparently the first to attract the attention of Rome, dwelling as it did on the other side of the Adriatic from Italy, the name came to be applied by the Romans to the whole race. The term Gr?cia, when used by Romans, is equivalent to the Greek name Hellas, which is still used by the Greeks to describe their own country. In ancient times Hellas was frequently used in a wide sense to include not only Greece proper, but every settlement of Greeks outside their own country as well. Thus a portion of the Crimea, much of the west coast of Asia Minor, settlements in Cyrene, Sicily, Gaul, and Spain, and above all the southern half of Italy, were parts of Hellas in this wide sense. Southern Italy was so studded with Greek settlements that it became known as Magna Gr?cia. After the conquests of Alexander the Great, who died 323 B.C., all the territory annexed by him, such as the greater part of Asia Minor, as well as Syria and Egypt, could he regarded as in a sense Hellas. Alexander was the chief agent in the spread of the Greek civilization, manners, language, and culture over these countries. The dynasties founded by his generals, the Seleucids and Ptolemys for example, continued his work, and when Rome began to interfere in Eastern politics about the beginning of the 2nd cent. B.C., the Greek language was already firmly established in the East. When, about three centuries after Alexander?s death, practically all his former dominions had become Roman provinces, Greek was the one language which could carry the traveller from the Euphrates to Spain. The Empire had two official languages, Latin for Italy and all provinces north, south-west, and west of it; Greek for all east and south-east of Italy. The Romans wisely made no attempt to force Latin on the Eastern peoples, and were content to let Greek remain in undisputed sway there. All their officials understood and spoke it. Thus it came about that Christianity was preached in Greek, that our NT books were written in Greek, and that the language of the Church, according to all the available evidence, remained Greek till about the middle of the 2nd cent. A.D.
As Galilee was thickly planted with Greek towns, there can be little doubt that Jesus knew the language, and spoke it when necessary, though it is probable that He commonly used Aramaic, as He came first to ?the lost tribes of Israel.? With St. Paul the case was different. Most of the Jews of the Dispersion were probably unable to speak Aramaic, and used the OT in the Greek translation. These would naturally be addressed in Greek. It is true that he spoke Aramaic on one occasion (Act_21:40) at least, but this occasion was exceptional. It was a piece of tact on his part, to secure the respectful attention of his audience. Probably only the inhabitants of the villages in the Eastern Roman provinces were unable to speak Greek, and even they could doubtless understand it when spoken. The Jews were amongst the chief spreaders of the language. Some of the successors of Alexander esteemed them highly as colonists, and they were to be found in large numbers over the Roman Empire, speaking in the first instance Greek (cf. Act_2:9). When they wrote books, they wrote them in Greek: Philo and Josephus are examples. It is not meant that Greek killed the native languages of the provinces: these had their purpose and subsisted.
The name Hellas occurs only once in the NT (Act_20:2). There it is used in a narrow sense of the Greek peninsula, exclusive even of Macedonia: it is in fact used in the sense of Achaia (wh. see).
A. Souter.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909


Greece. The histories of Greece and Palestine are little connected with each other. In Gen_10:2-5, Moses mentions the descendants of Javan as peopling the isles of the Gentiles; and when the Hebrews came into contact with the Ionians of Asia Minor, and recognized them as the long-lost islanders of the western migration, it was natural that they should mark the similarity of sound between Javan and Iones. Accordingly the Old Testament word which is Grecia, in Authorized Versions Greece, Greeks, etc., is in Javan, Dan_8:21; Joe_3:6, the Hebrew, however, is sometimes regained. Isa_66:19; Eze_27:13.
The Greeks and Hebrews met for the first time in the slave-market. The medium of communication seems to have been the Tyrian slave-merchants. About B.C. 800, Joel speaks of the Tyrians as, selling the children of Judah to the Grecians, Joe_3:6 and in Eze_27:13, the Greeks are mentioned as bartering their brazen vessels for slaves. Prophetical notice of Greece occurs in Dan_8:21, etc., where the history of Alexander and his successors is rapidly sketched. Zechariah, Zec_9:13, foretells the triumphs of the Maccabees against the Greco-Syrian empire, while Isaiah looks forward to the conversion of the Greeks, amongst other Gentiles, through the instrumentality of Jewish missionaries. Isa_66:19. The name of the country, Greece occurs once in the New Testament, Act_20:2, as opposed to Macedonia. See Gentiles.
Smith's Bible Dictionary
By Dr. William Smith.Published in 1863


Only occasionally does the Bible mention Greece by that name, though it frequently mentions parts of Greece. The ancient land of Javan, for instance, was possibly part of Greece (Gen_10:4; Isa_66:19; Eze_27:13). In local language, Greece was Hellas, and Greeks were Hellenes.
Greece’s influence on the world of the New Testament came through events resulting from the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC. Yet, though there was a Greek Empire, there was no ‘official’ Greek nation. The country known today as Greece consisted in those times of various separate states. The most important of these was the northern state of Macedonia, which was the centre of the Greek Empire (Act_16:12; 2Co_8:1; see MACEDONIA). In New Testament times the region referred to as Greece was the southern part of the Greek peninsular known as Achaia (Act_19:21; Act_20:1-2; see ACHAIA).
The Greek Empire
The rise of Greek power in the pre-Christian era was rapid and spectacular. Alexander the Great, having come to power in Macedonia in 336 BC, rapidly overran what remained of the Persian Empire, and within a few years ruled a region that stretched from Greece to India (Dan_8:5-7; Dan_8:20-21; Dan_11:2-3).

Wherever they went, the Greeks established their rich culture. The Greek language became the most widely spoken language throughout the Empire, Greek architecture spread through the building of magnificent cities, and Greek philosophy changed the thinking of people everywhere (1Co_1:20-22). The Greeks brought progress to those they governed, and provided a standard of education, entertainment, sport and social welfare that their subjects had not known previously. Those who accepted this Greek culture were regarded as civilized; all others were regarded as barbarians (Rom_1:14).
Alexander, however, died while at the height of his power (323 BC), and within a short time his vast empire was divided among his generals (Dan_8:8; Dan_8:22; Dan_11:4). By 301 BC the main divisions were a western sector based on Greece, and two eastern sectors based respectively on Syria to the north and Egypt to the south.
At first Israel fell within the Egyptian sector and enjoyed a period of relative peace. During that time a group of seventy Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek. This translation is known as the Septuagint (after the number of translators) and is usually referred to by the symbol LXX. In New Testament times both Jews and Christians used the Septuagint as well as the Hebrew Old Testament (see SEPTUAGINT).
Greek rulers in the Egyptian sector gave themselves the name Ptolemy. Some of the later Ptolemies became hostile to the Jews, but conditions worsened further when the Syrian sector conquered Egypt and brought Israel under its control (198 BC; Dan_11:14-16). Greek rulers in the Syrian sector were known as the Seleucids, after the name of the king who founded the dynasty. Most of the kings gave themselves the name Antiochus, after Antioch, the capital of the Seleucid kingdom that the founder of the dynasty built in 300 BC (Act_11:20; Act_13:1; see ANTIOCH IN SYRIA).
Greek influence in Israel
After more than a century of Greek rule, Israel was feeling the heavy influence of Greek customs and ideas on the traditional Jewish way of life. Divisions began to appear among the Jewish people. Some Jews welcomed this Greek influence, even in their religion, because in this way they were able to win political favours from the Greek rulers and so gain important positions in the Jewish religious system. Other Jews firmly opposed all Greek influence, particularly Greek political influence in Jewish religious affairs.
When fighting broke out in Jerusalem between rival Jewish factions, the Seleucid king (Antiochus IV Epiphanes) welcomed the opportunity to deal with the Jews. He invaded Jerusalem, slaughtered all Jews who resisted, made others slaves, burnt the Jewish Scriptures, forced Jews to eat forbidden food and compelled them to work on the Sabbath day. Worse still, he set up a Greek altar in the Jewish temple, then took animals that the Jews considered unclean and sacrificed them to the Greek gods. To the Jews this was ‘the awful horror’ (GNB), ‘the abomination that makes desolate’ (RSV) (Dan_11:31). But Antiochus failed to realize that the Jews would not stand idly by and allow him to destroy their religion.
Resistance to Greek domination
The Jews’ fight for religious freedom began through the zeal of an aged priest named Mattathias. He and his five sons (known as the Maccabees, after Judas Maccabeus, his son and the group’s leader) escaped from Jerusalem, prepared a small army, and after about three years overthrew the pro-Greek party of priests. They then cleansed and rededicated the temple, restoring it to their people for traditional Jewish worship (165 BC). From that time on the Jews celebrated the event in the annual Feast of Dedication (Joh_10:22).
Such an astonishing victory encouraged the Maccabees (also known as the Hasmoneans, after their old family name) to keep fighting till they had won political freedom as well. But the religiously strict Jews, who opposed Greek political interference in the Jewish religion, likewise opposed the Maccabees’ drive for political power. Eventually these opposing viewpoints produced two parties that divided the Jewish people, the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The Sadducees wanted political power, but the Pharisees were content with religious freedom (see PHARISEES; SADDUCEES).
In spite of this opposition, the Maccabees carried on the war and after twenty years won political independence (143 BC). However, the Jews were now clearly divided. On one side were the pro-political priests and leaders, who were rich, powerful and favoured by the Hasmonean rulers. On the other side were the anti-political traditionalists, who were poor, powerless and favoured by the common people. The Jews were free of Greek rule, but they were weakened by internal divisions and within eighty years they fell to Rome (63 BC).
New Testament times
Though the Romans had succeeded the Greeks as rulers of the region, Greek was still the most widely spoken language. It was the common language of the Roman Empire as it had been of the Greek Empire (Joh_19:20; Act_21:37; Rev_9:11; see HELLENIST). Because one language was spoken everywhere, Christianity could spread more quickly (Act_14:1; Act_19:10).
Greek was also a rich language, able to express fine differences of thought and meaning. It was well suited to be the language of the New Testament, through which God revealed and preserved the teachings of the Christian gospel.
The New Testament records that many people of Greek origin became believers in Jesus and were active in Christian service. As early as the time of Jesus, certain Greeks had become interested in the new teaching that Jesus brought (Joh_12:20). In the period covered by the book of Acts, Greeks in different places responded to the preaching of the apostles (Act_14:1; Act_17:4; Act_17:12; Act_17:34; Act_18:4) and churches were established throughout Greece itself, both in Macedonia and in Achaia (Act_16:12; Act_17:1-4; Act_17:10-12; Act_18:1-4; see ATHENS; BEREA; CORINTH; PHILIPPI; THESSALONICA). Sometimes the name ‘Greek’ was used as another name for Gentiles in general (Mar_7:26; Act_19:17; Rom_1:16; Rom_10:12; Gal_3:28).
Bridgeway Bible Dictionary by Don Fleming
PRINTER 1990.


The relations of the Hebrews with the Greeks were always of a distant kind, until the Macedonian conquest of the East: hence in the Old Testament the mention of the Greeks is naturally rare.
The few dealings of the Greeks with the Hebrews seem to have been rather unfriendly, to judge by the notice in Zec_9:13. In Joe_3:6, the Tyrians are reproached for selling the children of Judah and Jerusalem to the Grecians: but at what time, and in what circumstances, must depend on the date assigned to the book of Joel [see JOEL]. With the Greeks of Cyprus or Chittim, the Hebrews were naturally better acquainted; and this name, it would seem, might easily have extended itself in their tongue to denote the whole Greek nation. Such at least is the most plausible explanation of its use in 1Ma_1:1.
The Greeks were eminent for their appreciation of beauty in all its varieties: indeed their religious creed owed its shape mainly to this peculiarity of their mind; for their logical acuteness was not exercised on such subjects until quite a later period. The puerile or indecent fables of the old mythology may seem to a modern reader to have been the very soul of their religion; but to the Greek himself these were a mere accident, or a vehicle for some embodiment of beauty. He thought little whether a legend concerning Artemis or Apollo was true, but much whether the dance and music celebrating the divinity were solemn, beautiful, and touching. The worship of Apollo, the god of youth and beauty, has been regarded as characterizing the Hellenic in contrast with the older Pelasgian times; nor is the fact without significance, that the ancient temple and oracle of Jupiter at Dodona fell afterwards into the shade in comparison with that of Apollo at Delphi. Indeed the Dorian Spartans and the Ionian Athenians alike regarded Apollo as their tutelary god. Whatever the other varieties of Greek religious ceremonies, no violent or frenzied exhibitions arose out of the national mind; but all such orgies (as they were called) were imported from the East, and had much difficulty in establishing themselves on Greek soil. Quite at a late period the managers of orgies were evidently regarded as mere jugglers of not a very reputable kind; nor do the Greek States, as such, appear to have patronized them. On the contrary, the solemn religious processions, the sacred games and dances, formed a serious item in the public expenditure; and to be permanently exiled from such spectacles would have been a moral death to the Greeks. Wherever they settled they introduced their native institutions, and reared temples, gymnasia, baths, porticoes, sepulchers, of characteristic simple elegance. The morality and the religion of such a people naturally were alike superficial; nor did the two stand in any close union. Bloody and cruel rites could find no place in their creed, because faith was not earnest enough to endure much self-abandonment. Religion was with them a sentiment and a taste rather than a deep-seated conviction. On the loss of beloved relatives they felt a tender and natural sorrow, but unclouded with a shade of anxiety concerning a future life. Through the whole of their later history, during Christian times, it is evident that they had little power of remorse, and little natural firmness of conscientious principle: and, in fact, at an earlier and critical time, when the intellect of the nation was ripening, an atrocious civil war, that lasted for twenty-seven years, inflicted a political and social demoralization, from the effects of which they could never recover. Besides this, their very admiration of beauty, coupled with the degraded state of the female intellect, proved a frightful source of corruption, such as no philosophy could have adequately checked. From such a nation then, whatever its intellectual pretensions, no healthful influence over its neighbors could flow, until other and higher inspiration was infused into its sentiment.
Among the Greeks the arts of war and peace were carried to greater perfection than among any earlier people. In navigation they were little behind the Tyrians and Carthaginians; in political foresight they equaled them; in military science, both by sea and land, they were decidedly their superiors; while in the power of reconciling subject-foreigners to the conquerors and to their institutions, they perhaps surpassed all nations of the world. Their copious, cultivated, and flexible tongue carried with it no small mental education to all who learned it thoroughly; and so sagacious were the arrangements of the great Alexander throughout his rapidly acquired Asiatic empire, that in the twenty years of dreadful war between his generals which followed his death, no rising of the natives against Greek influence appears to have been thought of. Without any change of population adequate under other circumstances to effect it,' the Greek tongue and Greek feeling spread far and sank deep through the Macedonian dominions. Half of Asia Minor became a new Greece; and the cities of Syria, North Palestine, and Egypt, were deeply imbued with the same influence. Yet the purity of the Hellenic stream varied in various places; and some account of the mixture it underwent will be given in the Article Hellenist.

When a beginning had been made of preaching Christianity to the Gentiles, Greece immediately became a principal sphere for missionary exertion. The vernacular tongue of the Hellenistic Christians was understood over so large an extent of country, as almost of itself to point out in what direction they should exert themselves. The Grecian cities, whether in Europe or Asia, were the peculiar field for the Apostle Paul; for whose labors a superintending Providence had long before been providing, in the large number of devout Greeks who attended the Jewish synagogues. Greece Proper was divided by the Romans into two provinces, of which the northern was called Macedonia, and the southern Achaia (as in 2Co_9:2, etc.); and we learn incidentally from Acts 18 that the proconsul of the latter resided at Corinth. To determine the exact division between the provinces is difficult; nor is the question of any importance to a Biblical student Achaia, however, had probably very nearly the same frontier as the kingdom of modern Greece, which is limited by a line reaching from the gulf of Volo to that of Arta, in great part along the chain of Mount Othrys. Of the cities celebrated in Greek history, none are prominent in the early Christian times except Corinth. Laconia, and its chief town Sparta, had ceased to be of any importance: Athens was never eminent as a Christian church. In Macedonia were the two great cities of Philippi and Thessalonica (formerly called Therme); yet of these the former was rather recent, being founded by Philip the Great; the latter was not distinguished above the other Grecian cities on the same coast. Nicopolis, on the gulf of Ambracia (or Arta), had been built by Augustus, in memory of his victory at Actium, and was, perhaps, the limit of Achaia on the western coast. It had risen into some importance in St. Paul's days, and, as many suppose, it is to this Nicopolis that he alludes in his epistle to Titus (see further under Achaia and Nicopolis).
The Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
by John Kitto.


Greece
( ῾Ελλάς), properly the country in Europe inhabited by the Greek race (1Ma_1:1); but in Act_20:2, apparently designating only that part of it comprising the -Roman province of MACEDONIA SEE MACEDONIA (q.v.). See Wetstein, Nov. Test. 2:590; Kruse, Hellas, 1:557. SEE ACHAIA.
1. Greece is sometimes described as a country containing the four provinces of Macedonia, Epirus, Achaia or Hellas, and Peloponnesus, but more commonly the two latter alone are understood to be comprised in it. We will consider it as composed of Hellas and Peloponnesus, though there seems to be no question that the four provinces were originally Inhabited by people of similar language and origin, and whose relilion and manners were alike. Except upon its northern boundary it is surrounded on all sides by the sea, which intersects it in every direction and naturally gives to its population seafaring habits. It is also a very mountainous country, abounding in eminences of great height, which branch out and intersect the lands from its northern to its southern extremity, and form the natural limits of many of the provinces into which it is divided. At the isthmus of Corinth it is separated into its two great divisions, of which the northern was called Graeca intra Peloponnesum, and the southern the Peloponnesus, now called the Morea. The mountain and sea are thus the grand natural characteristics of Greece, and had a very considerable influence on the character of its inhabitants, as is evidenced in the religion, poetry, history, sand manners of the people. The country has always been famous for the temperature of its climate, the salubrity of its air, and the fertility of its soil.
The Greek nation had a broad division into two races, Dorians and Ionians, of whom the former seem to have long lain hid in continental parts, or aon the western side of the country, and had a temperament and institutions more approaching the Italic. The Ionians, on the contrary, retained many Asiatic usages and tendencies, witnessing that they had never been so thoroughly cut off as the Dorians from Oriental connection. When afterwards the Ionic colonies in Asia Minor rose to eminence, the Ionian race, in spite of the competition of the half Doric Aolians, continued to at tract most attention in Asia.
Of the history of Greece before the first recorded Olympiad, B.C. 77,6, little that can be depended upon is known. There is no doubt, that from very remote periods of antiquity, long prior to this date, the country had been inhabited, but facts are so intermingled with legend and fable in the traditions which have come down to us of these ancient times, that it is impossible with certainty to distinguish the false from the true (Grote, Hist. of Greece, pref. to volume 1). After its conquest by the Romans, B.C. 146, Greece continued for one thousand three hundred and fifty years the either really or nominally a portion of the Roman empire. Literature and the arts, long on the decline were at length destroyed by Justinian, who closed the schools of Athens. Alaric the Goth invaded the country in the year 400, followed by Genseric and Zabei Khan in the sixth and seventh, and by the Normana in the eleventh century. After the Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204, Greece was divided into feuda principalities, and governed by a variety of Roman Venetian, and Frankish nobles; but in 1261, was the exception of the dukedoms of Athens and Nauplia, and some portions of the Archipelago, it was reunited to the Constantinopolitan empire by Michael Palaeogus. In 1438 it was invaded by the Turks, who conmpleted its conquest in 1481. The Venetians, however, were not disposed to allow its new masters quiet possession, and the country during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the theater of obstinate wars, which continued till the treaty of Passarovitz in 1718 confirmed the Turks in their conquest with the exception of Msaina, the whole country remained under their despotic sway till 1821, when the Greeks once more aroused from their lethargy, and asserted their claim to a national existence. The revolutionary struggle was continued with varied success and much bloodshed till the great European powers interfered, and the battle of Navarino, in 1827, secured the independence of Greece, which was reluctantly acknowledged by the Porte in 1829. In 1831 Greece was erected into an independent monarchy it retains its classic name, and nearly its ancient limits, comprehending the Morea, or ancient Peloponnenus, south of the Gulf of Corinth, now Gulf of Lepanto, and the province of Livadia. or the ancient Graecia principia, with part of Thessaly and Epirus, north of that gulf; besides the island of Negropont, the ancient Eubsea, and other smaller islands in the Archipelago. The Republic of the Ionian lslands, Cephalonia, Zante, Corfu, and others on the western coast of Greece, is under the protection of Great Britain.
2. The relations of the Hebrews with the Greeks were always of a distant kind until the Macedonian conquest of the East: hence in the Old Testament the mention of the Greeks is naturally rare. SEE JAVAN. It is possible that Moses may have derived some geographical outlines from the Egyptians, but he does not use them in Gen_10:2-5, where he mentions the descendants of Javas as peopling the isles of the Gentiles. This is merely the vaguest possible indication of a geographical, “locality” and yet it is not improbable that his Egyptian teachers were almost equally in the dark as to the position of a country which had not at that time arrived at a unity sufficiently imposing to arrest the attention of its neighbors. The amount aned precision of the information possessed by Moses must be measured by the nature of the relation which we can conceive as existing in his time between Greece and Egypt. Now it appears from Herodotus that prior to the Trojan War the current of tradition, sacred and mythological, set from Egypt towards Greece; and the first quasi-historical event which awakened the curiosity and stimulated the imagination of the Egyptian priests was the story of Paris and Helen. (Herodotus, 2:43, 1:52, and 112). At the time of the Exodus, therefore. it is not likely that Greece had entered into any definite relation whatever with Egypt. Withdraws from the sea-coast, and only gradually fighting their way to it during the period of the Judges, the Hebrews could have had no opportunity of forming connections with the Greeks. From the time of Moses to that of Joel we have no notice of the Greeks in the Hebrew writings, except that which was contained in the word Javan (Gen_10:2); and it does not seem probable that during this period of the words had any peculiar significance for a Jew, except in so far as it was associated with the idea of islanders. When, indeed, they came into contact with the Ionians of Asia Minor, and recognized them as the long-lost islanders of the Western migration, it was natural that they should mark the similarity of sound between יָוָן= יוֹןand ones, and the application of that name to the Asiatic Greeks would tend to satisfy in some measure a longing to realize the Mosaic ethnography.
Accordingly, the O.T. word, which in the A.Vers. is Greece, Greeks, etc., is in Hebrew יָוָן, Joavan (Joe_3:6; Dan_8:21): the Hebrew, however, is sometimes retained (Isa_66:19; Eze_27:13). In Gen_10:2 the Sept. has καὶ Ι᾿ώυαν καὶ Ε᾿λισά, with which Rosenmüller compares Herod. 1:56-58, and professes to discover the two elements of the Greek race. From Ι᾿ώυαν he gets the Ionian or Pelagian, from Ε᾿λισά (for which he supposes the Heb. Original אֵַלישָׁה) the Hellenic element. This is excessively fanciful. SEE ELISHAH.
The Greeks and Hebrews met for the first time in the slave-market. The medium of communication seems to have been the Tyrian slave-merchant. About B.C. 800 Joel speaks of the Tyrians as selling the children of Judah to the Grecians (Joe_3:6); and in Eze_27:13 the Greeks are mentioned as bartering their brazen vessels for slaves. On the other hand, Bochart says that the Greek slaves were highly valued throughout the-East (Geogr. Sac. part 1, lib. 3, c. 3, page 175); and it is probable that the Tyrians took advantage of the calamities Which befell either nation to sell them as slaves to the other. Abundant opportunities would be afforded by the attacks of the Lydian monarchy on the one people, and the Syrian on the other; and it is certain that Tyre would let slip no occasion of replenishing her slave-market. SEE TYRE.
Prophetical notice of Greece occurs in Dan_8:21, etc., where the history of Alexander and his successors is rapidly sketched. SEE GOAT. Zechariah (Zec_9:13) foretells the triumphs of the Maccabees against the Graeco-Syrian empire, while Isaiah looks forward to the conversion of the Greeks, among other Gentiles, through the instrumentality of Jewish missionaries (Isa_66:19). For the connection between the Jews and the quasi-Greek kingdoms which sprang out of the divided empire of Alexander, SEE ANTIOCHUS; SEE PTOLEMY.
The presence of Alexander (q.v.) himself at Jerusalem, and his respectful demeanor, are described by Josephus (Ant. 11:8, 3); and some Jews are even said to have joined him in his expedition against Persia (Hecat. ap. Joseph. c. Apion, 2:4), as the Samaritans had already done in the siege of Tyre (Josephus, Ant. 11:8, 4-6). In 1Ma_12:5-23 (about B.C. 180), and Josephus, Ant. 12:4, 10, we have an account of an embassy and letter sent by the Lacedaemonians to the Jews. The most remarkable feature in the transaction is the claim which the Lacedaemonians prefer to kindred with the Jews, and which Areus professes to establish by reference to a book. It is by no means unlikely that two declining nations, the one crouching beneath a Graeco-Syrian invader, and the other beneath a Roman yoke, should draw together in face of the common calamity; or we may with Jahn (Heb. Comm. 9:91, note) regard the affair as a piece of pompous trifling or idle curiosity, at a period when "all nations were curious to ascertain their origin, and their relationship to other nations." SEE ONIAS.
The notices of the Jewish people which occur in Greek writers have been collected by Josephus (contra Apion, 1:22). The chief are Pythagoras, Herodotus, Choerilus, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Hecatseus. The main drift of the argument of Josephus is to show that the Greek authors derived their materials from Jewish: sources, or with more or less distinctness referred to Jewish history. For Pythagoras, he cites Hermippus's life; for Aristotle, Clearchus; but it should be remembered that the Neo-Platonism of these authorities makes them comparatively worthless; that Hermippus, in particular, belongs to that Alexandrian school which made it its business to fuse the Hebrew traditions with the philosophy of Greece, and propitiate the genius of Orientalism by denying the merit of originality to the great and independent thinkers of the West. This style of thought was further developed by Iamblichus; and a very good specimen of it may be seen in Le Clerc's notes on Grotius, De Verit. lit has been ably and vehemently assailed by Ritter, Hist. Philippians b. 1, c. 3. Herodotus mentions the Syrians of Palestine as confessing that they derived the rite of circumcision from the Egyptians (2:104). Bahr, however, does not think it likely that Herodotus visited the interior of Palestine, though he was acquainted with the sea-coast. (On the other hand, see Dahlman, pages 55, 56, Engl. transl.) It is almost impossible to suppose that Herodotus could have visited Jerusalemn without giving us some more detailed account of .it than the merely incidental notices in 2:159, and 3:5, not to mention that the site of Κάδυτις, or Cadytis, is still a disputed question. The victory of Pharaoh Necho over Josiah at Megiddo is recorded by Herodotus (comp. Herod. 2:159 with 2Ki_23:29 sq.; 2Ch_35:20 sq.). It is singular that Josephus should have omitted these references, and cited Herodotus only as mentioning the rite of circumcision. The work of Theophrastus cited is not extant; he enumerates among other oaths that of Corban. Chcerilus is supposed by Josephus to describe the Jews in a by no means flattering portrait of a people who accompanied Xerxes in his expedition against Greece. The chief points of identification are their speaking the Phoenician language, and dwelling in the Solymean mountains, near a broad lake, which, according to Josephus, was the Dead Sea. The Hecataeus of Josephus is Hecataeus of Abdera, a contemporary of Alexander the Great, and of Ptolemy son of Lagus. The authenticity of the History of the Jews attributed to him by Josephus has been called in question by Origen and others.
After the complete subjugation of the Greeks by the Romans, and the absorption into the Roman empire of the. kingdoms which were formed out of the dominions of Alexander, the political connection between the Greeks and Jews as two independent nations no longer existed. — Smith, s.v.
When a beginning had been made of preaching Christianity to the Gentiles, Greece immediately became a principal sphere for missionary exertion. The vernacular tongue of the Hellenistic Christians was understood over so large an extent of country as almost of itself to point out in what direction they should exert themselves. The Grecian cities, whether in Europe or Asia, were the peculiar field for Paul, for whose labors a superintending Providence had long before been providing in the large number of devout Greeks who attended the Jewish synagogues. Greece Proper was divided by the Romans into two provinces, of which the northern was called Macedonia, and the southern Achaia (as in 2Co_9:2, etc.); and we learn incidentally from Acts 18 that the proconsul of the latter resided at Corinth. To determine the exact division between the provinces is difficult, nor is the question of any importance to a Biblical student. Achaia, however, had probably very nearly the same frontier as the kingdom of modern Greece, which is limited by a line reaching from the gulf of Volo to that of Arta, in great part along the chain of Mount Othrys. Of the cities celebrated in Greek history, none are prominent in the early Christian.times except Corinth. Laconia, and its chief town Sparta, had ceased to be of any importance: Athens was never eminent as a Christian church. In Macedonia were the two great cities of Philippi and Thessalonica (formerly called Therme); yet of these the former was rather recent being founded by Philip the Great; the latter was not distinguished above the other Grecian cities on the same coast. Nicopolis, on the gulf of Ambracia (or Arta), had been built by Augustus in memory of his victory at Actium, and was, perhaps, the limit of Achaia on the western coast (Tacitus, Annal. 2:53). It had risen into some importance in Paul's days, and, as many suppose, it is to this Nicopolis that he alludes in his epistle to Titus. SEE NICOPOLIS.
3. Among the Greeks the arts of war and peace were carried to greater perfection than among any earlier people. In navigation they were little behind the Tyrians and Carthaginians; in political foresight they equaled them; in military science, both by sea and land, they were decidedly their superiors; while in the power of reconciling subject-foreigners to the conquerors and to their institutions, they perhaps surpassed all other nations of the world. Their copious, cultivated, and flexible tongue carried with it no small mental education to all who learned it thoroughly; and so sagacious were the arrangements of the great Alexander throughout his rapidly acquired Asiatic empire, that in the twenty years of dreadful war between his generals which followed his death, no rising of the natives against Greek influence appears to have been thought of. Without any change of population adequate under other circumstances to effect it, the Greek tongue and Greek feeling spread far and sank deep through the Macedonian dominions. Half of Asia Minor became a new Greece, and the cities of Syria, North Palestine, and Egypt were deeply imbued with the same influence. SEE GREEK LANGUAGE.
The Greeks were eminent for their appreciation of beauty in all its varieties; indeed, their religious creed owed its shape mainly to this peculiarity of their mind, for their logical acuteness was not exercised on such subjects until quite a later period. The puerile or indecent fables of the old mythology may seem to a modern reader to have been the very soul of their religion; but to the Greek himself these were a mere accident, or a vehicle for some embodiment of beauty. Whatever the other varieties of Greek religious ceremonies, no violent or frenzied exhibitions arose out of the national mind; but all such orgies (as they were called) were imported from the East, and had much difficulty in establishing themselves on Greek soil. At quite a late period the managers of orgies were evidently regarded as mere jugglers of not a very reputable kind (see Demosthenes, De Corona, § 79, page 313); nor do the Greek states, as such, appear to have patronized them. On the contrary, the solemn religious processions, the sacred games and dances, formed a serious item in the public expenditure; and to be permanently exiled from such spectacles. would have been a moral death to the Greeks, Wherever they settled they introduced their native institutions and reared temples, gymnasia bathse, porticoes, sepulchers, of characteristic simphe elegance. The morality and the religion of such a people naturally were alike superficial; nor did the two stand in any close union. Bloody and cruel rites would find no place in their creed, because faith was not earnest enough to endure much self-abandonment. Religion was with them a sentiment and a taste rather than a deep-seated conviction. On the loss of beloved relatives they felt a tender and natural sorrow, but unclouded with a shade of anxiety concerning a future life. Through the whole of their later history, during Christian times, it is evident that they had little power of remorse,and little natural firmness of conscientious principle; and, in fact, at an earlier and critical time, when the intellect of the nation was ripening, an atrocious civil war, that lasted for twenty-seven years, inflieted a political and social demoralization, from the effects of which they could never recover. Besides this, their very admiration of beauty, coupled with the degraded state of the female intellect, proved a frightful source of corruption, such as a philosophy could have adequately checked. (Works expressly on Grecian mythology have been written by Le Clerc,1787; Kanne, 1805; Limmer, 1806; Hug, 1812; Völcker, 1824; Buttmann, 1828; Studer, 1830; Krische, 1840; Stuhr, 1838; Limburg-Brouwer, 1833.) SEE GREEK.

CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.





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