Greece

• Greek religion › promised salvation from disharmony

5:4.5All re­li­gions teach the wor­ship of De­ity and some doc­trine of hu­man sal­va­tion. The Bud­dhist re­li­gion promises sal­va­tion from suf­fer­ing, un­end­ing peace; the Jew­ish re­li­gion promises sal­va­tion from dif­fi­cul­ties, pros­per­ity pred­i­cated on righ­teous­ness; the Greek re­li­gion prom­ised sal­va­tion from dishar­mony, ug­li­ness, by the re­al­iza­tion of beauty; Chris­tian­ity promises sal­va­tion from sin, sanc­tity; Mo­hammedanism pro­vides de­liv­er­ance from the rig­or­ous moral stan­dards of Ju­daism and Chris­tian­ity. The re­li­gion of Je­sus is sal­va­tion from self, de­liv­er­ance from the evils of crea­ture iso­la­tion in time and in eter­nity.

• Greek religion › based on beauty

5:4.6The He­brews based their re­li­gion on good­ness; the Greeks on beauty; both re­li­gions sought truth. Je­sus re­vealed a God of love, and love is all-em­brac­ing of truth, beauty, and good­ness.

• Greek religion › watchword was “know yourself”

5:4.8The Greek re­li­gion had a watch­word “Know your­self”; the He­brews cen­tered their teach­ing on “Know your God”; the Chris­tians preach a gospel aimed at a “knowl­edge of the Lord Je­sus Christ”; Je­sus pro­claimed the good news of “know­ing God, and your­self as a son of God.” These dif­fer­ing con­cepts of the pur­pose of re­li­gion de­ter­mine the in­di­vid­ual’s at­ti­tude in var­i­ous life sit­u­a­tions and fore­shadow the depth of wor­ship and the na­ture of his per­sonal habits of prayer. The spir­i­tual sta­tus of any re­li­gion may be de­ter­mined by the na­ture of its prayers.

• Greek religion › beliefs › matter as shadow of spirit

12:8.16The brighter the shin­ing of the spir­i­tu­al­ized per­son­al­ity (the Fa­ther in the uni­verse, the frag­ment of po­ten­tial spirit per­son­al­ity in the in­di­vid­ual crea­ture), the greater the shadow cast by the in­ter­ven­ing mind upon its ma­te­rial in­vest­ment. In time, man’s body is just as real as mind or spirit, but in death, both mind (iden­tity) and spirit sur­vive while the body does not. A cos­mic re­al­ity can be nonex­is­tent in per­son­al­ity ex­pe­ri­ence. And so your Greek fig­ure of speech—the ma­te­rial as the shadow of the more real spirit sub­stance—does have a philo­sophic sig­nif­i­cance.

• Greek history › art and genius was direct legacy of Adamson and Ratta

77:5.10This cen­ter of civ­i­liza­tion was sit­u­ated in the re­gion east of the south­ern end of the Caspian Sea, near the Kopet Dagh. A short way up in the foothills of Tur­kes­tan are the ves­tiges of what was one­time the Ad­am­son­ite head­quar­ters of the vi­o­let race. In these high­land sites, sit­u­ated in a nar­row and an­cient fer­tile belt ly­ing in the lower foothills of the Kopet range, there suc­ces­sively arose at var­i­ous pe­ri­ods four di­verse cul­tures re­spec­tively fos­tered by four dif­fer­ent groups of Adam­son’s de­scen­dants. It was the sec­ond of these groups which mi­grated west­ward to Greece and the is­lands of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean. The residue of Adam­son’s de­scen­dants mi­grated north and west to en­ter Eu­rope with the blended stock of the last And­ite wave com­ing out of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, and they were also num­bered among the And­ite-Aryan in­vaders of In­dia.

• Greek history › some Andites entered Europe via

80:4.1While the And­ites poured into Eu­rope in a steady stream, there were seven ma­jor in­va­sions, the last ar­rivals com­ing on horse­back in three great waves. Some en­tered Eu­rope by way of the is­lands of the Aegean and up the Danube val­ley, but the ma­jor­ity of the ear­lier and purer strains mi­grated to north­west­ern Eu­rope by the north­ern route across the graz­ing lands of the Volga and the Don.

• Greek history › settled by 375 Adamsonites ca. 10,000 B.C.

80:7.3Al­most two thou­sand years af­ter the set­tle­ment of Crete a group of the tall de­scen­dants of Adam­son made their way over the north­ern is­lands to Greece, com­ing al­most di­rectly from their high­land home north of Mes­o­po­ta­mia. These pro­gen­i­tors of the Greeks were led west­ward by Sato, a di­rect de­scen­dant of Adam­son and Ratta.

80:7.4The group which fi­nally set­tled in Greece con­sisted of three hun­dred and sev­enty-five of the se­lected and su­pe­rior peo­ple com­pris­ing the end of the sec­ond civ­i­liza­tion of the Ad­am­son­ites. These later sons of Adam­son car­ried the then most valu­able strains of the emerg­ing white races. They were of a high in­tel­lec­tual or­der and, phys­i­cally re­garded, the most beau­ti­ful of men since the days of the first Eden.

• Greek history › art and genius was direct legacy of Adamson and Ratta
• Greek history › art and science from Mesopotamia, Adamsonites
• Greek religion › source of mythological traditions

80:7.5Pres­ently Greece and the Aegean Is­lands re­gion suc­ceeded Mes­o­po­ta­mia and Egypt as the Oc­ci­den­tal cen­ter of trade, art, and cul­ture. But as it was in Egypt, so again prac­ti­cally all of the art and sci­ence of the Aegean world was de­rived from Mes­o­po­ta­mia ex­cept for the cul­ture of the Ad­am­son­ite fore­run­ners of the Greeks. All the art and ge­nius of these lat­ter peo­ple is a di­rect legacy of the pos­ter­ity of Adam­son, the first son of Adam and Eve, and his ex­traor­di­nary sec­ond wife, a daugh­ter de­scended in an un­bro­ken line from the pure Nod­ite staff of Prince Cali­gas­tia. No won­der the Greeks had mytho­log­i­cal tra­di­tions that they were di­rectly de­scended from gods and super­hu­man be­ings.

• Greek history › hordes of inferior slaves

80:7.6The Aegean re­gion passed through five dis­tinct cul­tural stages, each less spir­i­tual than the pre­ced­ing, and ere­long the last glo­ri­ous era of art per­ished be­neath the weight of the rapidly mul­ti­ply­ing mediocre de­scen­dants of the Danu­bian slaves who had been im­ported by the later gen­er­a­tions of Greeks.

• Greek history › in 5000 B.C., purest Adamite strains were in

80:7.9By 5000 B.C. the three purest strains of Adam’s de­scen­dants were in Sume­ria, north­ern Eu­rope, and Greece. The whole of Mes­o­po­ta­mia was be­ing slowly de­te­ri­o­rated by the stream of mixed and darker races which fil­tered in from Ara­bia. And the com­ing of these in­fe­rior peo­ples con­tributed fur­ther to the scat­ter­ing abroad of the bi­o­logic and cul­tural residue of the And­ites. From all over the fer­tile cres­cent the more ad­ven­tur­ous peo­ples poured west­ward to the is­lands. These mi­grants cul­ti­vated both grain and veg­eta­bles, and they brought do­mes­ti­cated an­i­mals with them.

• Greek history › hordes of inferior slaves

80:7.13The Greeks were not only great teach­ers and artists, they were also the world’s great­est traders and col­o­niz­ers. Be­fore suc­cumb­ing to the flood of in­fe­ri­or­ity which even­tu­ally en­gulfed their art and com­merce, they suc­ceeded in plant­ing so many out­posts of cul­ture to the west that a great many of the ad­vances in early Greek civ­i­liza­tion per­sisted in the later peo­ples of south­ern Eu­rope, and many of the mixed de­scen­dants of these Ad­am­son­ites be­came in­cor­po­rated in the tribes of the ad­ja­cent main­lands.

• Greek religion › beliefs › defilement arose from pork, garlic, and menstruating women

84:4.8The so-called mod­esty of women re­spect­ing their cloth­ing and the ex­po­sure of the per­son grew out of the deadly fear of be­ing ob­served at the time of a men­strual pe­riod. To be thus de­tected was a griev­ous sin, the vi­o­la­tion of a taboo. Un­der the mores of olden times, ev­ery woman, from ado­les­cence to the end of the child­bear­ing pe­riod, was sub­jected to com­plete fam­ily and so­cial quar­an­tine one full week each month. Ev­ery­thing she might touch, sit upon, or lie upon was “de­filed.” It was for long the cus­tom to bru­tally beat a girl af­ter each monthly pe­riod in an ef­fort to drive the evil spirit out of her body. But when a woman passed be­yond the child­bear­ing age, she was usu­ally treated more con­sid­er­ately, be­ing ac­corded more rights and priv­i­leges. In view of all this it was not strange that women were looked down upon. Even the Greeks held the men­stru­at­ing woman as one of the three great causes of de­file­ment, the other two be­ing pork and gar­lic.

• Greek religion › beliefs › 30 stones reverenced

85:1.3All an­cient clans and tribes had their sa­cred stones, and most mod­ern peo­ples man­i­fest a de­gree of ven­er­a­tion for cer­tain types of stones—their jew­els. A group of five stones was rev­er­enced in In­dia; in Greece it was a clus­ter of thirty; among the red men it was usu­ally a cir­cle of stones. The Ro­mans al­ways threw a stone into the air when in­vok­ing Jupiter. In In­dia even to this day a stone can be used as a wit­ness. In some re­gions a stone may be em­ployed as a tal­is­man of the law, and by its pres­tige an of­fender can be haled into court. But sim­ple mor­tals do not al­ways iden­tify De­ity with an ob­ject of rev­er­ent cer­e­mony. Such fe­tishes are many times mere sym­bols of the real ob­ject of wor­ship.

• Greek religion › annual ritual bathing

85:4.1Man­kind has wor­shiped earth, air, wa­ter, and fire. The prim­i­tive races ven­er­ated springs and wor­shiped rivers. Even now in Mon­go­lia there flour­ishes an in­flu­en­tial river cult. Bap­tism be­came a re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial in Baby­lon, and the Greeks prac­ticed the an­nual rit­ual bath. It was easy for the an­cients to imag­ine that the spir­its dwelt in the bub­bling springs, gush­ing foun­tains, flow­ing rivers, and rag­ing tor­rents. Mov­ing wa­ters vividly im­pressed these sim­ple minds with be­liefs of spirit an­i­ma­tion and super­nat­u­ral power. Some­times a drown­ing man would be re­fused suc­cor for fear of of­fend­ing some river god.

• Greek religion › beliefs › weak men have weak souls

86:4.8Al­most ev­ery group had a dif­fer­ent idea re­gard­ing the des­tiny of the ghost soul. The Greeks be­lieved that weak men must have weak souls; so they in­vented Hades as a fit place for the re­cep­tion of such ane­mic souls; these un­ro­bust spec­i­mens were also sup­posed to have shorter shad­ows. The early And­ites thought their ghosts re­turned to the an­ces­tral home­lands. The Chi­nese and Egyp­tians once be­lieved that soul and body re­mained to­gether. Among the Egyp­tians this led to care­ful tomb con­struc­tion and ef­forts at body preser­va­tion. Even mod­ern peo­ples seek to ar­rest the de­cay of the dead. The He­brews con­ceived that a phan­tom replica of the in­di­vid­ual went down to Sheol; it could not re­turn to the land of the liv­ing. They did make that im­por­tant ad­vance in the doc­trine of the evo­lu­tion of the soul.

• Greek religion › beliefs › in 3 souls

86:5.17The chil­dren of Bado­nan de­vel­oped a be­lief in two souls, the breath and the shadow. The early Nod­ite races re­garded man as con­sist­ing of two per­sons, soul and body. This phi­los­o­phy of hu­man ex­is­tence was later re­flected in the Greek view­point. The Greeks them­selves be­lieved in three souls; the veg­e­ta­tive resided in the stom­ach, the an­i­mal in the heart, the in­tel­lec­tual in the head. The Es­ki­mos be­lieve that man has three parts: body, soul, and name.

• Greek religion › beliefs › in oracles

90:2.8The Greeks be­lieved in the ef­fi­cacy of orac­u­lar ad­vice, the Chi­nese used magic as pro­tec­tion against demons, shaman­ism flour­ished in In­dia, and it still openly per­sists in cen­tral Asia. It is an only re­cently aban­doned prac­tice through­out much of the world.

• Greek religion › influence › of Amenemope

95:4.4Amen­emope func­tioned to con­serve the ethics of evo­lu­tion and the morals of rev­e­la­tion and in his writ­ings passed them on both to the He­brews and to the Greeks. He was not the great­est of the re­li­gious teach­ers of this age, but he was the most in­flu­en­tial in that he col­ored the sub­se­quent thought of two vi­tal links in the growth of Oc­ci­den­tal civ­i­liza­tion—the He­brews, among whom evolved the acme of Oc­ci­den­tal re­li­gious faith, and the Greeks, who de­vel­oped pure philo­sophic thought to its great­est Eu­ro­pean heights.

• Greek religion › influence › of Ikhnaton

95:5.14Al­though the ef­fort of this Egyp­tian ruler to im­pose the wor­ship of one God upon his peo­ple ap­peared to fail, it should be re­corded that the reper­cus­sions of his work per­sisted for cen­turies both in Pales­tine and Greece, and that Egypt thus be­came the agent for trans­mit­ting the com­bined evo­lu­tion­ary cul­ture of the Nile and the rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion of the Eu­phrates to all of the sub­se­quent peo­ples of the Oc­ci­dent.

• Greek history › naval invasion of Egypt

96:3.5But Moses was not dis­cour­aged; he bided his time, and in less than a year, when the Egyp­tian mil­i­tary forces were fully oc­cu­pied in re­sist­ing the si­mul­ta­ne­ous on­slaughts of a strong Libyan thrust from the south and a Greek naval in­va­sion from the north, this in­trepid or­ga­nizer led his com­pa­tri­ots out of Egypt in a spec­tac­u­lar night flight. This dash for lib­erty was care­fully planned and skill­fully ex­e­cuted. And they were suc­cess­ful, not­with­stand­ing that they were hotly pur­sued by Pharaoh and a small body of Egyp­tians, who all fell be­fore the fugi­tives’ de­fense, yield­ing much booty, all of which was aug­mented by the loot of the ad­vanc­ing host of es­cap­ing slaves as they marched on to­ward their an­ces­tral desert home.

• Greek history › hordes of inferior slaves

98:1.1The Salem mis­sion­ar­ies might have built up a great re­li­gious struc­ture among the Greeks had it not been for their strict in­ter­pre­ta­tion of their oath of or­di­na­tion, a pledge im­posed by Ma­chi­venta which for­bade the or­ga­ni­za­tion of ex­clu­sive con­gre­ga­tions for wor­ship, and which ex­acted the prom­ise of each teacher never to func­tion as a priest, never to re­ceive fees for re­li­gious ser­vice, only food, cloth­ing, and shel­ter. When the Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ers pen­e­trated to pre-Hel­lenic Greece, they found a peo­ple who still fos­tered the tra­di­tions of Adam­son and the days of the And­ites, but these teach­ings had be­come greatly adul­ter­ated with the no­tions and be­liefs of the hordes of in­fe­rior slaves that had been brought to the Greek shores in in­creas­ing num­bers. This adul­ter­ation pro­duced a re­ver­sion to a crude an­i­mism with bloody rites, the lower classes even mak­ing cer­e­mo­nial out of the ex­e­cu­tion of con­demned crim­i­nals.

• Greek history › Aryan invaders nearly destroyed Salem teachings

98:1.2The early in­flu­ence of the Salem teach­ers was nearly de­stroyed by the so-called Aryan in­va­sion from south­ern Eu­rope and the East. These Hel­lenic in­vaders brought along with them an­thro­po­mor­phic God con­cepts sim­i­lar to those which their Aryan fel­lows had car­ried to In­dia. This im­por­ta­tion in­au­gu­rated the evo­lu­tion of the Greek fam­ily of gods and god­desses. This new re­li­gion was partly based on the cults of the in­com­ing Hel­lenic bar­bar­ians, but it also shared in the myths of the older in­hab­i­tants of Greece.

98:1.3The Hel­lenic Greeks found the Med­i­ter­ra­nean world largely dom­i­nated by the mother cult, and they im­posed upon these peo­ples their man-god, Dyaus-Zeus, who had al­ready be­come, like Yah­weh among the henothe­is­tic Semites, head of the whole Greek pan­theon of sub­or­di­nate gods. And the Greeks would have even­tu­ally achieved a true mono­the­ism in the con­cept of Zeus ex­cept for their re­ten­tion of the over­con­trol of Fate. A God of fi­nal value must, him­self, be the ar­biter of fate and the cre­ator of des­tiny.

• Greek religion › intelligent Greeks never regarded Greek gods seriously

98:1.4As a con­se­quence of these fac­tors in re­li­gious evo­lu­tion, there pres­ently de­vel­oped the pop­u­lar be­lief in the happy-go-lucky gods of Mount Olym­pus, gods more hu­man than di­vine, and gods which the in­tel­li­gent Greeks never did re­gard very se­ri­ously. They nei­ther greatly loved nor greatly feared these di­vini­ties of their own cre­ation. They had a pa­tri­otic and racial feel­ing for Zeus and his fam­ily of half men and half gods, but they hardly rev­er­enced or wor­shiped them.

• Greek religion › absence of priests and sacred scriptures freed minds

98:1.5The Hel­lenes be­came so im­preg­nated with the an­ti­priest­craft doc­trines of the ear­lier Salem teach­ers that no priest­hood of any im­por­tance ever arose in Greece. Even the mak­ing of im­ages to the gods be­came more of a work in art than a mat­ter of wor­ship.

• Greek religion › mythology more aesthetic than ethic

98:1.6The Olympian gods il­lus­trate man’s typ­i­cal an­thro­po­mor­phism. But the Greek mythol­ogy was more aes­thetic than ethic. The Greek re­li­gion was help­ful in that it por­trayed a uni­verse gov­erned by a de­ity group. But Greek morals, ethics, and phi­los­o­phy pres­ently ad­vanced far be­yond the god con­cept, and this im­bal­ance be­tween in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual growth was as haz­ardous to Greece as it had proved to be in In­dia.

• Greek religion › did not promise salvation or quench spiritual thirst, therefor perished

98:2.1A lightly re­garded and su­per­fi­cial re­li­gion can­not en­dure, es­pe­cially when it has no priest­hood to fos­ter its forms and to fill the hearts of the devo­tees with fear and awe. The Olympian re­li­gion did not prom­ise sal­va­tion, nor did it quench the spir­i­tual thirst of its be­liev­ers; there­fore was it doomed to per­ish. Within a mil­len­nium of its in­cep­tion it had nearly van­ished, and the Greeks were with­out a na­tional re­li­gion, the gods of Olym­pus hav­ing lost their hold upon the bet­ter minds.

98:2.2This was the sit­u­a­tion when, dur­ing the sixth cen­tury be­fore Christ, the Ori­ent and the Lev­ant ex­pe­ri­enced a re­vival of spir­i­tual con­scious­ness and a new awak­en­ing to the rec­og­ni­tion of mono­the­ism. But the West did not share in this new de­vel­op­ment; nei­ther Eu­rope nor north­ern Africa ex­ten­sively par­tic­i­pated in this re­li­gious re­nais­sance. The Greeks, how­ever, did en­gage in a mag­nif­i­cent in­tel­lec­tual ad­vance­ment. They had be­gun to mas­ter fear and no longer sought re­li­gion as an an­ti­dote there­for, but they did not per­ceive that true re­li­gion is the cure for soul hunger, spir­i­tual dis­quiet, and moral de­spair. They sought for the so­lace of the soul in deep think­ing—phi­los­o­phy and meta­physics. They turned from the con­tem­pla­tion of self-preser­va­tion—sal­va­tion—to self-re­al­iza­tion and self-un­der­stand­ing.

98:2.3By rig­or­ous thought the Greeks at­tempted to at­tain that con­scious­ness of se­cu­rity which would serve as a sub­sti­tute for the be­lief in sur­vival, but they ut­terly failed. Only the more in­tel­li­gent among the higher classes of the Hel­lenic peo­ples could grasp this new teach­ing; the rank and file of the progeny of the slaves of for­mer gen­er­a­tions had no ca­pac­ity for the re­cep­tion of this new sub­sti­tute for re­li­gion.

• Greek religion › intelligent Greeks never regarded Greek gods seriously

98:2.4The philoso­phers dis­dained all forms of wor­ship, not­with­stand­ing that they prac­ti­cally all held loosely to the back­ground of a be­lief in the Salem doc­trine of “the In­tel­li­gence of the uni­verse,” “the idea of God,” and “the Great Source.” In so far as the Greek philoso­phers gave rec­og­ni­tion to the di­vine and the super­fi­nite, they were frankly mono­the­is­tic; they gave scant rec­og­ni­tion to the whole galaxy of Olympian gods and god­desses.

98:2.5The Greek po­ets of the fifth and sixth cen­turies, no­tably Pin­dar, at­tempted the ref­or­ma­tion of Greek re­li­gion. They el­e­vated its ide­als, but they were more artists than re­li­gion­ists. They failed to de­velop a tech­nique for fos­ter­ing and con­serv­ing su­preme val­ues.

98:2.6Xeno­phanes taught one God, but his de­ity con­cept was too pan­the­is­tic to be a per­sonal Fa­ther to mor­tal man. Anaxago­ras was a mech­a­nist ex­cept that he did rec­og­nize a First Cause, an Ini­tial Mind. Socrates and his suc­ces­sors, Plato and Aris­to­tle, taught that virtue is knowl­edge; good­ness, health of the soul; that it is bet­ter to suf­fer in­jus­tice than to be guilty of it, that it is wrong to re­turn evil for evil, and that the gods are wise and good. Their car­di­nal virtues were: wis­dom, cour­age, tem­per­ance, and jus­tice.

• Greek religion › absence of priests and sacred scriptures freed minds
• Greek religion › thought contrasted to that of Hebrews

98:2.7The evo­lu­tion of re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy among the Hel­lenic and He­brew peo­ples af­fords a con­trastive il­lus­tra­tion of the func­tion of the church as an in­sti­tu­tion in the shap­ing of cul­tural prog­ress. In Pales­tine, hu­man thought was so priest-con­trolled and scrip­ture-di­rected that phi­los­o­phy and aes­thet­ics were en­tirely sub­merged in re­li­gion and moral­ity. In Greece, the al­most com­plete ab­sence of priests and “sa­cred scrip­tures” left the hu­man mind free and un­fet­tered, re­sult­ing in a startling de­vel­op­ment in depth of thought. But re­li­gion as a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence failed to keep pace with the in­tel­lec­tual prob­ings into the na­ture and re­al­ity of the cos­mos.

98:2.8In Greece, be­liev­ing was sub­or­di­nated to think­ing; in Pales­tine, think­ing was held sub­ject to be­liev­ing. Much of the strength of Chris­tian­ity is due to its hav­ing bor­rowed heav­ily from both He­brew moral­ity and Greek thought.

98:2.9In Pales­tine, re­li­gious dogma be­came so crys­tal­lized as to jeop­ar­dize fur­ther growth; in Greece, hu­man thought be­came so ab­stract that the con­cept of God re­solved it­self into a misty va­por of pan­the­is­tic spec­u­la­tion not at all un­like the im­per­sonal In­fin­ity of the Brah­man philoso­phers.

• Greek religion › orgiastic plunge into mystery cults

98:2.10But the av­er­age men of these times could not grasp, nor were they much in­ter­ested in, the Greek phi­los­o­phy of self-re­al­iza­tion and an ab­stract De­ity; they rather craved promises of sal­va­tion, cou­pled with a per­sonal God who could hear their prayers. They ex­iled the philoso­phers, per­se­cuted the rem­nants of the Salem cult, both doc­trines hav­ing be­come much blended, and made ready for that ter­ri­ble or­gias­tic plunge into the fol­lies of the mys­tery cults which were then over­spread­ing the Med­i­ter­ra­nean lands. The Eleusinian mys­ter­ies grew up within the Olympian pan­theon, a Greek ver­sion of the wor­ship of fer­til­ity; Diony­sus na­ture wor­ship flour­ished; the best of the cults was the Or­phic broth­er­hood, whose moral preach­ments and promises of sal­va­tion made a great ap­peal to many.

• Greek religion › advanced ethical system practically without Deity

98:2.11All Greece be­came in­volved in these new meth­ods of at­tain­ing sal­va­tion, these emo­tional and fiery cer­e­mo­ni­als. No na­tion ever at­tained such heights of artis­tic phi­los­o­phy in so short a time; none ever cre­ated such an ad­vanced sys­tem of ethics prac­ti­cally with­out De­ity and en­tirely de­void of the prom­ise of hu­man sal­va­tion; no na­tion ever plunged so quickly, deeply, and vi­o­lently into such depths of in­tel­lec­tual stag­na­tion, moral de­prav­ity, and spir­i­tual pov­erty as these same Greek peo­ples when they flung them­selves into the mad whirl of the mys­tery cults.

98:2.12Re­li­gions have long en­dured with­out phil­o­soph­i­cal sup­port, but few philoso­phies, as such, have long per­sisted with­out some iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with re­li­gion. Phi­los­o­phy is to re­li­gion as con­cep­tion is to ac­tion. But the ideal hu­man es­tate is that in which phi­los­o­phy, re­li­gion, and sci­ence are welded into a mean­ing­ful unity by the con­joined ac­tion of wis­dom, faith, and ex­pe­ri­ence.

• Greek religion › was trivial and venal

98:3.2In the great mono­the­is­tic re­nais­sance of Mel­chiz­e­dek’s gospel dur­ing the sixth cen­tury be­fore Christ, too few of the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies pen­e­trated Italy, and those who did were un­able to over­come the in­flu­ence of the rapidly spread­ing Etr­uscan priest­hood with its new galaxy of gods and tem­ples, all of which be­came or­ga­nized into the Ro­man state re­li­gion. This re­li­gion of the Latin tribes was not triv­ial and ve­nal like that of the Greeks, nei­ther was it aus­tere and tyran­ni­cal like that of the He­brews; it con­sisted for the most part in the ob­ser­vance of mere forms, vows, and taboos.

• Greek history › influence on Rome

98:3.3Ro­man re­li­gion was greatly in­flu­enced by ex­ten­sive cul­tural im­por­ta­tions from Greece. Even­tu­ally most of the Olympian gods were trans­planted and in­cor­po­rated into the Latin pan­theon. The Greeks long wor­shiped the fire of the fam­ily hearth—Hes­tia was the vir­gin god­dess of the hearth; Vesta was the Ro­man god­dess of the home. Zeus be­came Jupiter; Aphrodite, Venus; and so on down through the many Olympian de­i­ties.

• Greek religion › absence of priests and sacred scriptures freed minds

98:6.1Prior to the com­ing of the mys­tery cults and Chris­tian­ity, per­sonal re­li­gion hardly de­vel­oped as an in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tion in the civ­i­lized lands of North Africa and Eu­rope; it was more of a fam­ily, city-state, po­lit­i­cal, and im­pe­rial af­fair. The Hel­lenic Greeks never evolved a cen­tral­ized wor­ship sys­tem; the rit­ual was lo­cal; they had no priest­hood and no “sa­cred book.” Much as the Ro­mans, their re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions lacked a pow­er­ful driv­ing agency for the preser­va­tion of higher moral and spir­i­tual val­ues. While it is true that the in­sti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion of re­li­gion has usu­ally de­tracted from its spir­i­tual qual­ity, it is also a fact that no re­li­gion has thus far suc­ceeded in sur­viv­ing with­out the aid of in­sti­tu­tional or­ga­ni­za­tion of some de­gree, greater or lesser.

• Greek religion › influence › on Christianity

98:7.107. The philo­sophic thought of the Hel­lenis­tic peo­ples, from Alexan­dria and An­ti­och through Greece to Syra­cuse and Rome. The phi­los­o­phy of the Greeks was more in har­mony with Paul’s ver­sion of Chris­tian­ity than with any other cur­rent re­li­gious sys­tem and be­came an im­por­tant fac­tor in the suc­cess of Chris­tian­ity in the Oc­ci­dent. Greek phi­los­o­phy, cou­pled with Paul’s the­ol­ogy, still forms the ba­sis of Eu­ro­pean ethics.

• Greek religion › distinction between inanimate and animate

103:6.10Early man did not dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween the en­ergy level and the spirit level. It was the vi­o­let race and their And­ite suc­ces­sors who first at­tempted to di­vorce the math­e­mat­i­cal from the vo­li­tional. In­creas­ingly has civ­i­lized man fol­lowed in the foot­steps of the ear­li­est Greeks and the Sume­ri­ans who dis­tin­guished be­tween the inan­i­mate and the an­i­mate. And as civ­i­liza­tion pro­gresses, phi­los­o­phy will have to bridge ever-widen­ing gulfs be­tween the spirit con­cept and the en­ergy con­cept. But in the time of space these di­ver­gen­cies are at one in the Su­preme.

• Greek religion › beliefs › triad gods

104:0.3As a con­se­quence of these nat­u­ral as­so­ci­a­tions in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, the triad made its ap­pear­ance in re­li­gion, and this long be­fore the Par­a­dise Trin­ity of De­i­ties, or even any of their rep­re­sen­ta­tives, had been re­vealed to man­kind. Later on, the Per­sians, Hin­dus, Greeks, Egyp­tians, Baby­lo­ni­ans, Ro­mans, and Scan­di­na­vians all had triad gods, but these were still not true trin­i­ties. Triad de­i­ties all had a nat­u­ral ori­gin and have ap­peared at one time or an­other among most of the in­tel­li­gent peo­ples of Uran­tia. Some­times the con­cept of an evo­lu­tion­ary triad has be­come mixed with that of a re­vealed Trin­ity; in these in­stances it is of­ten im­pos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish one from the other.

• Greek language › widespread in times of Jesus

121:1.1Je­sus did not come to this world dur­ing an age of spir­i­tual deca­dence; at the time of his birth Uran­tia was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing such a re­vival of spir­i­tual think­ing and re­li­gious liv­ing as it had not known in all its pre­vi­ous post-Adamic his­tory nor has ex­pe­ri­enced in any era since. When Mi­chael in­car­nated on Uran­tia, the world pre­sented the most fa­vor­able con­di­tion for the Cre­ator Son’s be­stowal that had ever pre­vi­ously pre­vailed or has since ob­tained. In the cen­turies just prior to these times Greek cul­ture and the Greek lan­guage had spread over Oc­ci­dent and near Ori­ent, and the Jews, be­ing a Lev­an­tine race, in na­ture part Oc­ci­den­tal and part Ori­en­tal, were em­i­nently fit­ted to uti­lize such cul­tural and lin­guis­tic set­tings for the ef­fec­tive spread of a new re­li­gion to both East and West. These most fa­vor­able cir­cum­stances were fur­ther en­hanced by the tol­er­ant po­lit­i­cal rule of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean world by the Ro­mans.

• Greek language › widespread in times of Jesus

121:1.52. The Gre­cian lan­guage and cul­ture—and phi­los­o­phy to a cer­tain ex­tent.

• Greek language › spoken by better strata of Jews in times of Jesus

121:6.2In the days of Je­sus three lan­guages pre­vailed in Pales­tine: The com­mon peo­ple spoke some di­alect of Ara­maic; the priests and rab­bis spoke He­brew; the ed­u­cated classes and the bet­ter strata of Jews in gen­eral spoke Greek. The early trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures into Greek at Alexan­dria was re­spon­si­ble in no small mea­sure for the sub­se­quent pre­dom­i­nance of the Greek wing of Jew­ish cul­ture and the­ol­ogy. And the writ­ings of the Chris­tian teach­ers were soon to ap­pear in the same lan­guage. The re­nais­sance of Ju­daism dates from the Greek trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures. This was a vi­tal in­flu­ence which later de­ter­mined the drift of Paul’s Chris­tian cult to­ward the West in­stead of to­ward the East.

• Greek language › translation of Hebrew scriptures into Greek

123:0.3Through­out the two years of their so­journ at Alexan­dria, Je­sus en­joyed good health and con­tin­ued to grow nor­mally. Aside from a few friends and rel­a­tives no one was told about Je­sus’ be­ing a “child of prom­ise.” One of Joseph’s rel­a­tives re­vealed this to a few friends in Mem­phis, de­scen­dants of the dis­tant Ikh­na­ton, and they, with a small group of Alexan­drian be­liev­ers, as­sem­bled at the pala­tial home of Joseph’s rel­a­tive-bene­fac­tor a short time be­fore the re­turn to Pales­tine to wish the Naz­a­reth fam­ily well and to pay their re­spects to the child. On this oc­ca­sion the as­sem­bled friends pre­sented Je­sus with a com­plete copy of the Greek trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures. But this copy of the Jew­ish sa­cred writ­ings was not placed in Joseph’s hands un­til both he and Mary had fi­nally de­clined the in­vi­ta­tion of their Mem­phis and Alexan­drian friends to re­main in Egypt. These be­liev­ers in­sisted that the child of des­tiny would be able to ex­ert a far greater world in­flu­ence as a res­i­dent of Alexan­dria than of any des­ig­nated place in Pales­tine. These per­sua­sions de­layed their de­par­ture for Pales­tine for some time af­ter they re­ceived the news of Herod’s death.

• Greek language › Jesus spoke

123:2.14Though Joseph was now as­sum­ing the di­rect re­spon­si­bil­ity for Je­sus’ in­tel­lec­tual and re­li­gious ed­u­ca­tion, his mother still in­ter­ested her­self in his home train­ing. She taught him to know and care for the vines and flow­ers grow­ing about the gar­den walls which com­pletely sur­rounded the home plot. She also pro­vided on the roof of the house (the sum­mer bed­room) shal­low boxes of sand in which Je­sus worked out maps and did much of his early prac­tice at writ­ing Ara­maic, Greek, and later on, He­brew, for in time he learned to read, write, and speak, flu­ently, all three lan­guages.

• Greek language › translation of Hebrew scriptures into Greek

123:3.1Al­ready, with his mother’s help, Je­sus had mas­tered the Galilean di­alect of the Ara­maic tongue; and now his fa­ther be­gan teach­ing him Greek. Mary spoke lit­tle Greek, but Joseph was a flu­ent speaker of both Ara­maic and Greek. The text­book for the study of the Greek lan­guage was the copy of the He­brew scrip­tures—a com­plete ver­sion of the law and the proph­ets, in­clud­ing the Psalms—which had been pre­sented to them on leav­ing Egypt. There were only two com­plete copies of the Scrip­tures in Greek in all Naz­a­reth, and the pos­ses­sion of one of them by the car­pen­ter’s fam­ily made Joseph’s home a much-sought place and en­abled Je­sus, as he grew up, to meet an al­most end­less pro­ces­sion of earnest stu­dents and sin­cere truth seek­ers. Be­fore this year ended, Je­sus had as­sumed cus­tody of this price­less man­u­script, hav­ing been told on his sixth birth­day that the sa­cred book had been pre­sented to him by Alexan­drian friends and rel­a­tives. And in a very short time he could read it read­ily.

• Greek language › Jesus spoke

123:5.1Je­sus was now seven years old, the age when Jew­ish chil­dren were sup­posed to be­gin their for­mal ed­u­ca­tion in the syn­a­gogue schools. Ac­cord­ingly, in Au­gust of this year he en­tered upon his event­ful school life at Naz­a­reth. Al­ready this lad was a flu­ent reader, writer, and speaker of two lan­guages, Ara­maic and Greek. He was now to ac­quaint him­self with the task of learn­ing to read, write, and speak the He­brew lan­guage. And he was truly ea­ger for the new school life which was ahead of him.

• Greek language › Jesus spoke

123:5.6Next, in ad­di­tion to his more for­mal school­ing, Je­sus be­gan to make con­tact with hu­man na­ture from the four quar­ters of the earth as men from many lands passed in and out of his fa­ther’s re­pair shop. When he grew older, he min­gled freely with the car­a­vans as they tar­ried near the spring for rest and nour­ish­ment. Be­ing a flu­ent speaker of Greek, he had lit­tle trou­ble in con­vers­ing with the ma­jor­ity of the car­a­van trav­el­ers and con­duc­tors.

• Greek language › translation of Hebrew scriptures into Greek

126:5.6Fear­ing that the copy of the Greek scrip­tures might be dis­cov­ered and con­fis­cated by the tax col­lec­tors, Je­sus, on his fif­teenth birth­day, pre­sented it to the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue li­brary as his ma­tu­rity of­fer­ing to the Lord.

• Greek religion › G. had philosophy and science, but hardly a religion

130:3.5Un­der Je­sus’ di­rec­tion Ga­nid made a col­lec­tion of the teach­ings of all those re­li­gions of the world which rec­og­nized a Uni­ver­sal De­ity, even though they might also give more or less rec­og­ni­tion to sub­or­di­nate de­i­ties. Af­ter much dis­cus­sion Je­sus and Ga­nid de­cided that the Ro­mans had no real God in their re­li­gion, that their re­li­gion was hardly more than em­peror wor­ship. The Greeks, they con­cluded, had a phi­los­o­phy but hardly a re­li­gion with a per­sonal God. The mys­tery cults they dis­carded be­cause of the con­fu­sion of their mul­ti­plic­ity, and be­cause their var­ied con­cepts of De­ity seemed to be de­rived from other and older re­li­gions.

• Greek history › Corinth capital of Achaia

133:2.5They spent sev­eral days at Nicopo­lis, the city which Au­gus­tus had founded some fifty years be­fore as the “city of vic­tory” in com­mem­o­ra­tion of the bat­tle of Ac­tium, this site be­ing the land whereon he camped with his army be­fore the bat­tle. They lodged in the home of one Jer­amy, a Greek pros­e­lyte of the Jew­ish faith, whom they had met on ship­board. The Apos­tle Paul spent all win­ter with the son of Jer­amy in the same house in the course of his third mis­sion­ary jour­ney. From Nicopo­lis they sailed on the same boat for Corinth, the cap­i­tal of the Ro­man prov­ince of Achaia.

• Greek history › Athens cultural center of

133:5.1They shortly ar­rived at the olden cen­ter of Greek sci­ence and learn­ing, and Ga­nid was thrilled with the thought of be­ing in Athens, of be­ing in Greece, the cul­tural cen­ter of the one­time Alexan­drian em­pire, which had ex­tended its bor­ders even to his own land of In­dia. There was lit­tle busi­ness to trans­act; so Gonod spent most of his time with Je­sus and Ga­nid, vis­it­ing the many points of in­ter­est and lis­ten­ing to the in­ter­est­ing dis­cus­sions of the lad and his ver­sa­tile teacher.

133:5.2A great uni­ver­sity still thrived in Athens, and the trio made fre­quent vis­its to its halls of learn­ing. Je­sus and Ga­nid had thor­oughly dis­cussed the teach­ings of Plato when they at­tended the lec­tures in the mu­seum at Alexan­dria. They all en­joyed the art of Greece, ex­am­ples of which were still to be found here and there about the city.

• Greek history › Andrew crucified in Achaia

139:1.12When the later per­se­cu­tions fi­nally scat­tered the apos­tles from Je­ru­sa­lem, An­drew jour­neyed through Ar­me­nia, Asia Mi­nor, and Mace­do­nia and, af­ter bring­ing many thou­sands into the king­dom, was fi­nally ap­pre­hended and cru­ci­fied in Pa­trae in Achaia. It was two full days be­fore this ro­bust man ex­pired on the cross, and through­out these tragic hours he con­tin­ued ef­fec­tively to pro­claim the glad tid­ings of the sal­va­tion of the king­dom of heaven.

• Greek religion › beliefs › man descending from perfection to destruction

148:4.9“The Greeks and oth­ers have taught you that man is de­scend­ing from godly per­fec­tion steadily down to­ward obliv­ion or de­struc­tion; I have come to show that man, by en­trance into the king­dom, is as­cend­ing cer­tainly and surely up to God and di­vine per­fec­tion. Any be­ing who in any man­ner falls short of the di­vine and spir­i­tual ide­als of the eter­nal Fa­ther’s will is po­ten­tially evil, but such be­ings are in no sense sin­ful, much less in­iq­ui­tous.

• Greek language › translation of Hebrew scriptures into Greek

150:8.1This Sab­bath was a beau­ti­ful day, and all Naz­a­reth, friends and foes, turned out to hear this for­mer cit­i­zen of their town dis­course in the syn­a­gogue. Many of the apos­tolic ret­inue had to re­main with­out the syn­a­gogue; there was not room for all who had come to hear him. As a young man Je­sus had of­ten spo­ken in this place of wor­ship, and this morn­ing, when the ruler of the syn­a­gogue handed him the roll of sa­cred writ­ings from which to read the Scrip­ture les­son, none pres­ent seemed to re­call that this was the very man­u­script which he had pre­sented to this syn­a­gogue.

• Greek religion › G. had philosophy and science, but hardly a religion

155:1.4“In all that you do, be­come not one-sided and over­spe­cial­ized. The Phar­isees who seek our de­struc­tion ver­ily think they are do­ing God’s ser­vice. They have be­come so nar­rowed by tra­di­tion that they are blinded by prej­u­dice and hard­ened by fear. Con­sider the Greeks, who have a sci­ence with­out re­li­gion, while the Jews have a re­li­gion with­out sci­ence. And when men be­come thus mis­led into ac­cept­ing a nar­row and con­fused dis­in­te­gra­tion of truth, their only hope of sal­va­tion is to be­come truth-co-or­di­nated—con­verted.

• Greek religion › exalted beauty

191:5.3“Peace be upon you. For a full week have I tar­ried that I might ap­pear again when you were all pres­ent to hear once more the com­mis­sion to go into all the world and preach this gospel of the king­dom. Again I tell you: As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so send I you. As I have re­vealed the Fa­ther, so shall you re­veal the di­vine love, not merely with words, but in your daily liv­ing. I send you forth, not to love the souls of men, but rather to love men. You are not merely to pro­claim the joys of heaven but also to ex­hibit in your daily ex­pe­ri­ence these spirit re­al­i­ties of the di­vine life since you al­ready have eter­nal life, as the gift of God, through faith. When you have faith, when power from on high, the Spirit of Truth, has come upon you, you will not hide your light here be­hind closed doors; you will make known the love and the mercy of God to all man­kind. Through fear you now flee from the facts of a dis­agree­able ex­pe­ri­ence, but when you shall have been bap­tized with the Spirit of Truth, you will bravely and joy­ously go forth to meet the new ex­pe­ri­ences of pro­claim­ing the good news of eter­nal life in the king­dom of God. You may tarry here and in Gal­i­lee for a short sea­son while you re­cover from the shock of the tran­si­tion from the false se­cu­rity of the au­thor­ity of tra­di­tion­al­ism to the new or­der of the au­thor­ity of facts, truth, and faith in the su­preme re­al­i­ties of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Your mis­sion to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-re­veal­ing life among you; on the truth that you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall con­sist in the life which you will live among men—the ac­tual and liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing men and serv­ing them, even as I have loved and served you. Let faith re­veal your light to the world; let the rev­e­la­tion of truth open the eyes blinded by tra­di­tion; let your lov­ing ser­vice ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroy the prej­u­dice en­gen­dered by ig­no­rance. By so draw­ing close to your fel­low men in un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and with un­selfish de­vo­tion, you will lead them into a sav­ing knowl­edge of the Fa­ther’s love. The Jews have ex­tolled good­ness; the Greeks have ex­alted beauty; the Hin­dus preach de­vo­tion; the far­away as­cetics teach rev­er­ence; the Ro­mans de­mand loy­alty; but I re­quire of my dis­ci­ples life, even a life of lov­ing ser­vice for your broth­ers in the flesh.”

195:0.1The re­sults of Pe­ter’s preach­ing on the day of Pen­te­cost were such as to de­cide the fu­ture poli­cies, and to de­ter­mine the plans, of the ma­jor­ity of the apos­tles in their ef­forts to pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom. Pe­ter was the real founder of the Chris­tian church; Paul car­ried the Chris­tian mes­sage to the gen­tiles, and the Greek be­liev­ers car­ried it to the whole Ro­man Em­pire.

195:0.2Al­though the tra­di­tion-bound and priest-rid­den He­brews, as a peo­ple, re­fused to ac­cept ei­ther Je­sus’ gospel of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man or Pe­ter’s and Paul’s procla­ma­tion of the res­ur­rec­tion and as­cen­sion of Christ (sub­se­quent Chris­tian­ity), the rest of the Ro­man Em­pire was found to be re­cep­tive to the evolv­ing Chris­tian teach­ings. West­ern civ­i­liza­tion was at this time in­tel­lec­tual, war weary, and thor­oughly skep­ti­cal of all ex­ist­ing re­li­gions and uni­verse philoso­phies. The peo­ples of the West­ern world, the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Greek cul­ture, had a revered tra­di­tion of a great past. They could con­tem­plate the in­her­i­tance of great ac­com­plish­ments in phi­los­o­phy, art, lit­er­a­ture, and po­lit­i­cal prog­ress. But with all these achieve­ments they had no soul-sat­is­fy­ing re­li­gion. Their spir­i­tual long­ings re­mained un­sat­is­fied.

195:0.3Upon such a stage of hu­man so­ci­ety the teach­ings of Je­sus, em­braced in the Chris­tian mes­sage, were sud­denly thrust. A new or­der of liv­ing was thus pre­sented to the hun­gry hearts of these West­ern peo­ples. This sit­u­a­tion meant im­me­di­ate con­flict be­tween the older re­li­gious prac­tices and the new Chris­tian­ized ver­sion of Je­sus’ mes­sage to the world. Such a con­flict must re­sult in ei­ther de­cided vic­tory for the new or for the old or in some de­gree of com­pro­mise. His­tory shows that the strug­gle ended in com­pro­mise. Chris­tian­ity pre­sumed to em­brace too much for any one peo­ple to as­sim­i­late in one or two gen­er­a­tions. It was not a sim­ple spir­i­tual ap­peal, such as Je­sus had pre­sented to the souls of men; it early struck a de­cided at­ti­tude on re­li­gious rit­u­als, ed­u­ca­tion, magic, med­i­cine, art, lit­er­a­ture, law, gov­ern­ment, morals, sex reg­u­la­tion, polygamy, and, in lim­ited de­gree, even slav­ery. Chris­tian­ity came not merely as a new re­li­gion—some­thing all the Ro­man Em­pire and all the Ori­ent were wait­ing for—but as a new or­der of hu­man so­ci­ety. And as such a pre­ten­sion it quickly pre­cip­i­tated the so­cial-moral clash of the ages. The ide­als of Je­sus, as they were rein­ter­preted by Greek phi­los­o­phy and so­cial­ized in Chris­tian­ity, now boldly chal­lenged the tra­di­tions of the hu­man race em­bod­ied in the ethics, moral­ity, and re­li­gions of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion.

195:0.4At first, Chris­tian­ity won as con­verts only the lower so­cial and eco­nomic strata. But by the be­gin­ning of the sec­ond cen­tury the very best of Greco-Ro­man cul­ture was in­creas­ingly turn­ing to this new or­der of Chris­tian be­lief, this new con­cept of the pur­pose of liv­ing and the goal of ex­is­tence.

195:0.5How did this new mes­sage of Jew­ish ori­gin, which had al­most failed in the land of its birth, so quickly and ef­fec­tively cap­ture the very best minds of the Ro­man Em­pire? The tri­umph of Chris­tian­ity over the philo­sophic re­li­gions and the mys­tery cults was due to:

195:0.61. Or­ga­ni­za­tion. Paul was a great or­ga­nizer and his suc­ces­sors kept up the pace he set.

195:0.72. Chris­tian­ity was thor­oughly Hel­le­nized. It em­braced the best in Greek phi­los­o­phy as well as the cream of He­brew the­ol­ogy.

195:0.83. But best of all, it con­tained a new and great ideal, the echo of the life be­stowal of Je­sus and the re­flec­tion of his mes­sage of sal­va­tion for all man­kind.

195:0.94. The Chris­tian lead­ers were will­ing to make such com­pro­mises with Mith­ra­ism that the bet­ter half of its ad­her­ents were won over to the An­ti­och cult.

195:0.105. Like­wise did the next and later gen­er­a­tions of Chris­tian lead­ers make such fur­ther com­pro­mises with pa­gan­ism that even the Ro­man em­peror Con­stan­tine was won to the new re­li­gion.

195:0.11But the Chris­tians made a shrewd bar­gain with the pa­gans in that they adopted the rit­u­al­is­tic pageantry of the pa­gan while com­pelling the pa­gan to ac­cept the Hel­le­nized ver­sion of Pauline Chris­tian­ity. They made a bet­ter bar­gain with the pa­gans than they did with the Mith­raic cult, but even in that ear­lier com­pro­mise they came off more than con­querors in that they suc­ceeded in elim­i­nat­ing the gross im­moral­i­ties and also nu­mer­ous other rep­re­hen­si­ble prac­tices of the Per­sian mys­tery.

195:0.12Wisely or un­wisely, these early lead­ers of Chris­tian­ity de­lib­er­ately com­pro­mised the ide­als of Je­sus in an ef­fort to save and fur­ther many of his ideas. And they were em­i­nently suc­cess­ful. But mis­take not! these com­pro­mised ide­als of the Mas­ter are still la­tent in his gospel, and they will even­tu­ally as­sert their full power upon the world.

195:0.13By this pa­gani­za­tion of Chris­tian­ity the old or­der won many mi­nor vic­to­ries of a rit­u­al­is­tic na­ture, but the Chris­tians gained the as­cen­dancy in that:

195:0.141. A new and enor­mously higher note in hu­man morals was struck.

195:0.152. A new and greatly en­larged con­cept of God was given to the world.

195:0.163. The hope of im­mor­tal­ity be­came a part of the as­sur­ance of a rec­og­nized re­li­gion.

195:0.174. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth was given to man’s hun­gry soul.

195:0.18Many of the great truths taught by Je­sus were al­most lost in these early com­pro­mises, but they yet slum­ber in this re­li­gion of pa­ganized Chris­tian­ity, which was in turn the Pauline ver­sion of the life and teach­ings of the Son of Man. And Chris­tian­ity, even be­fore it was pa­ganized, was first thor­oughly Hel­le­nized. Chris­tian­ity owes much, very much, to the Greeks. It was a Greek, from Egypt, who so bravely stood up at Nicaea and so fear­lessly chal­lenged this as­sem­bly that it dared not so ob­scure the con­cept of the na­ture of Je­sus that the real truth of his be­stowal might have been in dan­ger of be­ing lost to the world. This Greek’s name was Athana­sius, and but for the elo­quence and the logic of this be­liever, the per­sua­sions of Ar­ius would have tri­umphed.

• Greek religion › philosophy aimed at emergence of individual

195:1.1The Hel­l­eniza­tion of Chris­tian­ity started in earnest on that event­ful day when the Apos­tle Paul stood be­fore the coun­cil of the Are­opa­gus in Athens and told the Athe­ni­ans about “the Un­known God.” There, un­der the shadow of the Acrop­o­lis, this Ro­man cit­i­zen pro­claimed to these Greeks his ver­sion of the new re­li­gion which had taken ori­gin in the Jew­ish land of Gal­i­lee. And there was some­thing strangely alike in Greek phi­los­o­phy and many of the teach­ings of Je­sus. They had a com­mon goal—both aimed at the emer­gence of the in­di­vid­ual. The Greek, at so­cial and po­lit­i­cal emer­gence; Je­sus, at moral and spir­i­tual emer­gence. The Greek taught in­tel­lec­tual lib­er­al­ism lead­ing to po­lit­i­cal free­dom; Je­sus taught spir­i­tual lib­er­al­ism lead­ing to re­li­gious lib­erty. These two ideas put to­gether con­sti­tuted a new and mighty char­ter for hu­man free­dom; they pre­saged man’s so­cial, po­lit­i­cal, and spir­i­tual lib­erty.

195:1.2Chris­tian­ity came into ex­is­tence and tri­umphed over all con­tend­ing re­li­gions pri­mar­ily be­cause of two things:

195:1.31. The Greek mind was will­ing to bor­row new and good ideas even from the Jews.

195:1.42. Paul and his suc­ces­sors were will­ing but shrewd and saga­cious com­pro­mis­ers; they were keen the­o­logic traders.

195:1.5At the time Paul stood up in Athens preach­ing “Christ and Him Cru­ci­fied,” the Greeks were spir­i­tu­ally hun­gry; they were in­quir­ing, in­ter­ested, and ac­tu­ally look­ing for spir­i­tual truth. Never for­get that at first the Ro­mans fought Chris­tian­ity, while the Greeks em­braced it, and that it was the Greeks who lit­er­ally forced the Ro­mans sub­se­quently to ac­cept this new re­li­gion, as then mod­i­fied, as a part of Greek cul­ture.

• Greek religion › intelligent Greeks never regarded Greek gods seriously

195:1.6The Greek revered beauty, the Jew ho­li­ness, but both peo­ples loved truth. For cen­turies the Greek had se­ri­ously thought and earnestly de­bated about all hu­man prob­lems—so­cial, eco­nomic, po­lit­i­cal, and philo­sophic—ex­cept re­li­gion. Few Greeks had paid much at­ten­tion to re­li­gion; they did not take even their own re­li­gion very se­ri­ously. For cen­turies the Jews had ne­glected these other fields of thought while they de­voted their minds to re­li­gion. They took their re­li­gion very se­ri­ously, too se­ri­ously. As il­lu­mi­nated by the con­tent of Je­sus’ mes­sage, the united prod­uct of the cen­turies of the thought of these two peo­ples now be­came the driv­ing power of a new or­der of hu­man so­ci­ety and, to a cer­tain ex­tent, of a new or­der of hu­man re­li­gious be­lief and prac­tice.

195:1.7The in­flu­ence of Greek cul­ture had al­ready pen­e­trated the lands of the west­ern Med­i­ter­ra­nean when Alexan­der spread Hel­lenis­tic civ­i­liza­tion over the near-East­ern world. The Greeks did very well with their re­li­gion and their pol­i­tics as long as they lived in small city-states, but when the Mace­do­nian king dared to ex­pand Greece into an em­pire, stretch­ing from the Adri­atic to the In­dus, trou­ble be­gan. The art and phi­los­o­phy of Greece were fully equal to the task of im­pe­rial ex­pan­sion, but not so with Greek po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion or re­li­gion. Af­ter the city-states of Greece had ex­panded into em­pire, their rather parochial gods seemed a lit­tle queer. The Greeks were re­ally search­ing for one God, a greater and bet­ter God, when the Chris­tian­ized ver­sion of the older Jew­ish re­li­gion came to them.

• Greek history › Hellenistic Empire could not endure

195:1.8The Hel­lenis­tic Em­pire, as such, could not en­dure. Its cul­tural sway con­tin­ued on, but it en­dured only af­ter se­cur­ing from the West the Ro­man po­lit­i­cal ge­nius for em­pire ad­min­is­tra­tion and af­ter ob­tain­ing from the East a re­li­gion whose one God pos­sessed em­pire dig­nity.

195:1.9In the first cen­tury af­ter Christ, Hel­lenis­tic cul­ture had al­ready at­tained its high­est lev­els; its ret­ro­gres­sion had be­gun; learn­ing was ad­vanc­ing but ge­nius was de­clin­ing. It was at this very time that the ideas and ide­als of Je­sus, which were par­tially em­bod­ied in Chris­tian­ity, be­came a part of the sal­vage of Greek cul­ture and learn­ing.

195:1.10Alexan­der had charged on the East with the cul­tural gift of the civ­i­liza­tion of Greece; Paul as­saulted the West with the Chris­tian ver­sion of the gospel of Je­sus. And wher­ever the Greek cul­ture pre­vailed through­out the West, there Hel­le­nized Chris­tian­ity took root.

195:1.11The East­ern ver­sion of the mes­sage of Je­sus, not­with­stand­ing that it re­mained more true to his teach­ings, con­tin­ued to fol­low the un­com­pro­mis­ing at­ti­tude of Ab­ner. It never pro­gressed as did the Hel­le­nized ver­sion and was even­tu­ally lost in the Is­lamic move­ment.

• Greek language › New Testament written in

195:2.7And so did these Ro­man­ized Greeks force both Jews and Chris­tians to phi­los­o­phize their re­li­gion, to co-or­di­nate its ideas and sys­tem­atize its ide­als, to adapt re­li­gious prac­tices to the ex­ist­ing cur­rent of life. And all this was enor­mously helped by trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures into Greek and by the later record­ing of the New Tes­ta­ment in the Greek tongue.

• Greek religion › beliefs › in immortality, provisionally

195:2.8The Greeks, in con­trast with the Jews and many other peo­ples, had long pro­vi­sion­ally be­lieved in im­mor­tal­ity, some sort of sur­vival af­ter death, and since this was the very heart of Je­sus’ teach­ing, it was cer­tain that Chris­tian­ity would make a strong ap­peal to them.

• Greek religion › exalted beauty

196:3.19The He­brews had a re­li­gion of moral sub­lim­ity; the Greeks evolved a re­li­gion of beauty; Paul and his con­fer­ees founded a re­li­gion of faith, hope, and char­ity. Je­sus re­vealed and ex­em­pli­fied a re­li­gion of love: se­cu­rity in the Fa­ther’s love, with joy and sat­is­fac­tion con­se­quent upon shar­ing this love in the ser­vice of the hu­man broth­er­hood.