- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Translators’ Note
- Introduction
-
Part I The First Mirror -
1 Waking the Dead—Greece as an Ideal and an Exemplar -
2 Hellenism and Hebraism: The Two Poles of the World -
3 Israel and Greece: Reviving a Legendary Past -
4 ‘Greek Wisdom’ as Secular Knowledge and Science -
5 Japheth in the Tents of Shem: The Reception of the Classical Heritage in Modern Hebrew Culture -
6 The Moral Dimension: Commonality and Particularity -
7 Worlds without Compromise: Reconstructing the Disparities -
8 Have Jews Imagination? Jews and the Creative Arts -
Part II The Second Mirror -
9 The Nature of the Hellenistic Mirror -
10 Judaism and Hellenism in Palestine and Alexandria: Two Models of a National and Cultural Encounter -
11 Homeric Books and Hellenistic Culture in the World of the Sages -
Part III Athens in Jerusalem -
12 Back to History: The Secularization of the Ancient Jewish Past -
13 The Children of Japheth (Aryans) and the Children of Shem (Semites): Race and Innate Nationalism -
14 The People and its Land: Country, Landscape, and Culture -
15 A ‘Polis’ in Jerusalem: The Jewish State -
16 The New Jewish Culture: Ideal and Reality - Conclusion: What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?
- Bibliography
- Index
Homeric Books and Hellenistic Culture in the World of the Sages
Homeric Books and Hellenistic Culture in the World of the Sages
- Chapter:
- (p.337) 11 Homeric Books and Hellenistic Culture in the World of the Sages
- Source:
- Athens in Jerusalem
- Author(s):
Yaacov Shavit
, Chaya Naor, Niki Werner- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
This chapter explores three different issues: how familiar the Sages were with Greek culture and through which agents of culture they learned about it, to what extent they were influenced by it or how many different elements they adopted from it, and how tolerant the Sages were regarding the use of Hellenistic elements by the Jewish public. Here, complex cultures are characterized by multifariousness and stratification. The history of culture reveals a wide diversity of needs and tendencies, expressed in the social context, and the power or weakness of the mechanism for screening and supervision to control all aspects and layers of the cultural system. Any attempt to limit the scope of Judaism as a religious way of life thus assumes that the Jews were somehow unlike all other human beings. Or, that they had the same cultural needs as all humanity, but were able to satisfy and answer these needs by themselves, being totally independent of any outside help or influence.
Keywords: Hellenistic culture, Homeric books, Greek culture, history of culture, Talmud, talmudic literature, Jewish cultural reality
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Translators’ Note
- Introduction
-
Part I The First Mirror -
1 Waking the Dead—Greece as an Ideal and an Exemplar -
2 Hellenism and Hebraism: The Two Poles of the World -
3 Israel and Greece: Reviving a Legendary Past -
4 ‘Greek Wisdom’ as Secular Knowledge and Science -
5 Japheth in the Tents of Shem: The Reception of the Classical Heritage in Modern Hebrew Culture -
6 The Moral Dimension: Commonality and Particularity -
7 Worlds without Compromise: Reconstructing the Disparities -
8 Have Jews Imagination? Jews and the Creative Arts -
Part II The Second Mirror -
9 The Nature of the Hellenistic Mirror -
10 Judaism and Hellenism in Palestine and Alexandria: Two Models of a National and Cultural Encounter -
11 Homeric Books and Hellenistic Culture in the World of the Sages -
Part III Athens in Jerusalem -
12 Back to History: The Secularization of the Ancient Jewish Past -
13 The Children of Japheth (Aryans) and the Children of Shem (Semites): Race and Innate Nationalism -
14 The People and its Land: Country, Landscape, and Culture -
15 A ‘Polis’ in Jerusalem: The Jewish State -
16 The New Jewish Culture: Ideal and Reality - Conclusion: What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?
- Bibliography
- Index
