Hellenistic Judaism
The Hellenistic Judaism was a movement in the Greek-speaking Jewish Diaspora that tried the Hebrew-Jewish folk religion in the language and culture of Hellenism to translate and thus as a religion beyond a single ethnic group to establish.
Fonts
The most important sources can be found in the writings of Philo of Alexandria and in Flavius Josephus in the 1st century AD as individual authors. In addition, the so-called Apocrypha are very revealing for the history and theology of Hellenistic Judaism. The so-called pseudepigraphs should also be mentioned .
history
Due to the eventful history of the fertile crescent , the Israelites were militarily defeated several times on the Syro-Palestinian land bridge. Subsequently, parts of the population were deported. It showed in the Babylonian exile from 587 to 538 BC That Judaism could continue to exist independently of the land of Israel and the shrine in Jerusalem .
According to the Cyrus cylinder from 538 BC. BC not all Israelites returned, the Jewish diaspora ("dispersion") was born. During the time of the Diadochi there were repeated conflicts between the Jews with their striving for autonomy and the Hellenistic rulers, which repeatedly led to the persecution of the Jews. The books of the Maccabees tell of it. This ensured that Jewish communities not only survived in Babylon , but established themselves all over the Mediterranean.
Since the 3rd century BC The diaspora community in Egypt grew strongly. One of the most important centers was Alexandria in the Nile Delta. The Jews felt like the Greeks as colonists and therefore also strived for the civil rights of the Greeks in order to participate in the urban privileges. They did not succeed completely, but they enjoyed a privileged legal status of a religio licita with limited community self-government. However, they thereby attracted the hatred of the largely disenfranchised rural Egyptian population. Jerusalem and its temple continued to be the religious center of the Jewish community. To the annoyance of the local authorities, they paid the temple tax there.
In Alexandria, Judaism tried to formulate its worldview in Greek and in the context of Greek philosophy. The most important milestone is the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, the Septuagint .
At the same time, Judaism had to defend itself against the allegations of being an Eastern superstition and a primitive nomadic religion. An important mediator between Jewish law and Greek thought was, after precursors such as Aristobulus and Pseudo-Aristeas , at the beginning of the 1st century AD Philo of Alexandria . He represented Judaism as a time-honored religion, which, through its monotheism, was more in line with the Aristotelian or Platonic philosophy than the polytheistic Olympus. Philo tried to portray the laws, which were sometimes difficult to convey, as moral and virtuous , terms that were known to the Greeks and had a positive connotation. So Philo put the emphasis on the term "circumcision of the heart" mentioned in the 5th book of Moses ( Dtn 30.6 EU ), i. H. the vices and instincts, for the sake of self-control and the promotion of virtue.
Another important author at the end of this century was the Jewish general and historian Joseph ben Mathitjahu , later known as Flavius Josephus. He, too, had the goal of defending Judaism against ancient prejudices and portraying it as a virtuous religion. He wrote his history of Judaism from its beginnings to its present in the sense of a Hellenistic-enlightened way of thinking.
In addition, various writings have survived that have an ethical-moral character (e.g. the saying poem of Pseudo-Phokylides ) or also appear speculative- apocalyptic . Sometimes both are mixed together. It can be seen that the Hellenization of Judaism was not undisputed. Many authors considered these compromises with the zeitgeist to be an apostasy from the right faith and reckoned with a judgment of God over his people.
Hellenistic Judaism not only received criticism from non-Jewish contemporaries, but also won a large number of sympathizers (so-called Eusebes or God-fearing people) and converts (so-called proselytes ), also in wealthy and educated circles. The threshold for conversion was lower for women than for men who (for reasons that were quite obvious under the hygienic conditions at the time) shrank from circumcision and remained in sympathetic status.
It is not finally clear how Hellenistic Judaism lost its importance and ultimately perished. The emerging Christianity , which is also a synthesis of Judaism and Hellenism, probably played an important role in this. It is no coincidence that the still Jewish theologized “Yeschua the Messiah” became the Greekized “ Jesus Christ ”. In any case, it is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles that Christian missionaries like Paul often worked in circles of sympathizers and proselytes. The renunciation of circumcision, which was pushed through within Christianity against some resistance, certainly turned out to be a success factor.
Official Judaism, for its part, increasingly distanced itself from its Hellenistic branches, forbade the use of the Septuagint, and withdrew entirely to its Hebrew and Aramaic traditions. Practically all Hellenistic-Jewish writings have only come down to us in Christian manuscripts and codices.
It is possible that a part of Hellenistic Judaism has also merged into Gnosticism , which has taken up and processed some Hellenistic-Jewish ideas.
theology
In Hellenistic Judaism, it is important to confess to “one God” (εἷς θεὸς heis theos ). This attempted on the one hand to make the central precept of Jewish monotheism (1st Commandment and Shema Yisrael ) heard and on the other hand to connect it to Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics , which also deal not with many gods but with a divine idea or an immobile mover.
Reason ( logos ) and wisdom (sophia) also played a central role in Jewish-Hellenistic thought, and are not understood as human characteristics but as emanations (effects) of God.
In addition, ethics was characterized by relatively abstract virtue and morality. This initially countered hostility that defamed Judaism as fundamentally immoral or misanthropic, but also made the Jewish Torah, which is rich in ritual and people-specific regulations, understandable and practicable for ordinary Hellenistic citizens.
See also
literature
swell
- Werner Georg Kümmel (Gegr.), Hermann Lichtenberger (Hrsg.): Jewish writings from Hellenistic Roman times . Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 1973ff. (6 vols., Here especially vol. 6).
Secondary literature
- Gerhard Delling : The encounter between Hellenism and Judaism. In: Rise and Fall of the Roman World . Vol. II 20.1 (1987), pp. 3-39.
- Markus Sasse: History of Israel in the Second Temple Period. Historical events , archeology, social history, religious and intellectual history. Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 2004, ISBN 3-7887-1999-0 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Erik Peterson : "Heis Theos". Epigraphic, formal history and religious history studies on the ancient “One God” acclamation . Echter Verlag, Würzburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-429-02636-3 .