“…Indeed almost all the Jewish characters of the New Testament Jesus, the Apostles, Caiphas, Herod, the Pharisees are a unique subset of Greek-fluent Jews… largely at odds with the majority largely Anti-Hellenist Jews behind the Maccabean revolt and others throughout the period…”
“…But here’s the thing… England produced one Shakespeare that fundamentally reinvented the entire conception of human existence at a political, sociological, and psychological level (and probably several more, but its hard to judge these things less than 300 years out)… The Greeks had a dozen within a little over a century, and disproportionately from one city-state of 40,000 people…”
On Ancient Athens and the invention of the Human
By Anarchonomikon – Kulak – substack
I’m taken aback whenever the Nietzschean question of Judeo-Christian vs. Greco-Roman Classicism comes up:
You’ll immediately get people reenacting the Sopranos Jewish Sub-plot and says like Areil the orthodox jew: “Yet here we are. Where are {Greco] Romans now?”
Umm… Look in a mirror.
And indeed, if you think you might blak, merely read fiction written before Shakespeare like Le Morte de Arthur, The Greek Tragedies, or Beowulf, and compare those stories with works from the 18th century or late 20th century (and not the garbage coming out of woke publishers today)… there is no comparison, the types of characters they create the things they do with them, how those characters conceive of themselves, the subtle dramas that play out, the personal psychological tragedies and triumphs, the self-awareness… So much of it is precedented in Shakespeare and nowhere before him.
Did he invent “The Human”? Certainly for a good percentage of definitions people might offer if asked to define what makes a character or even someone else “Human” as opposed to a psychopath or basketcase or space alien.
The entire field of Psychology and psychoanalysis is basically one long game to try and trick people into giving a shakespearean monologue so that the contradictions and emotions they feel mid-monologue can be assigned Shakespearean significance. YES, your wife and daughter are paying through the nose so they can LARP an experience they could get at a community theatre class for free… and also so they can fry their brain with SSRIs instead of Alcohol and Cocaine like Dr. Freud would recommend.
But here’s the thing… England produced one shakespeare that fundamentally reinvented the entire conception of human existence at a political, sociological, and psychological level (and probably several more but its hard to judge these things less than 300 years out)
The Greeks had a dozen within a little over a century, and disproportionately from one city state of 40,000 people.
Such that Not only are the works they put out more similar to fiction and non-fiction works being published today than anything produced before them many of these works written in ~400bc are more similar to a new book you’d pick up off the shelf than a lot of histories and works written in 800 or even 1300 AD! in Pre-Renaissance European states.
This is why there was such a premium on upper-class Ancient Romans learning Greek, because you could jump thousands of years in sophistication by being able to engage with greek texts…
This is also probably one of the Major Reasons why Christianity captured so much of the ancient world’s lower classes, Galilee being know at the time as “Galilee of the Gentiles” specifically because so much of the priestly and Merchant class there was uniquely fluent in Greek. Indeed 70% of Jewish funerary inscriptions found in the region were written in Greek.
Indeed almost all the jewish characters of the new testament Jesus, the Apostles, Caiphas, Herod, the Pharisees are a unique subset of Greek-fluent Jews… largely at odds with the majority largely Anti-Hellenist Jews behind the Maccabean revolt and others throughout the period.
The oddness of the New Testament to modern readers compared to other Greek and Latin texts of the period is in many respects an affectation of older Hebrew and Aramaic style which you can see in the old testament. A pantomime of a tone whilst keeping it readable… Such a literary affectation will be familiar to anyone who’s read the book of Mormon…
A work written by a 19th century New Englander from upstate New York, who never learnt Aramaic, but according to LDS doctrine, translated the Book of mormon from lost gold plates written in Aramaic with the help of sacred miraculous seer stones.
That’s maybe an unfair comparison… The Apostles almost certainly individually spoke Aramaic and/or Hebrew… Although maybe accented or with Hellenic pretensions which might enrage a Maccabean.
But the point is much of the New Testament’s awkwardness and alien biblical-ness… is actually an artifact of the Apostles trying to hold onto an Archaic Jewish style that even to them probably felt fairly awkward being so used to conducting themselves in Greek.
It’s not Tony’s response “you’re looking at them Asshole” that’s laughable, though it is a little funny (as if Italian American mobsters from Sicily are a special continuation of the spirit of SPQR)
It’s Ariel’s Question that’s laughable! He’s a Roman!
A larger percentage of Ariel’s own dialogue in that scene, an orthodox Jew, originates Greek and Latin than Hebrew, Aramaic or indeed Yiddish… indeed all his dialogue that doesn’t originates in Greek, Latin or a successor romance language, orginiates in Germanic languages…
Seriously go read A passage from the new testament, and then read One from Caesar’s Gaelic Wars, or Thucydides history of the Peloponnesian Wars, or even Herodotus.
This effect will not have the power if you do not pick out the texts passages and translations yourself.
.
Here’s John 1 (70 ad) in the 2001 English Standard Version translation considered widely accurate, and accessible, whilst maintaining it’s poetry:
And here is Thomas Hobbes’s 1629 Translation of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War (404 bc)
Again this is Thucydides translated by Hobbes, not Hobbes commenting on Thucydides…
I checked. I double Checked. I triple checked. EVERY DAMNED TIME YOU HAVE TO CHECK!
That convention of narrating in the third person will get you Every. Single. Time. it is UNCANNY. Like something out of House of Leaves designed to mess with the reader and screw up your sense of time and space.
No matter the Greek or Latin work I CONSISTENTLY have to stop and check that I’m actually reading the translation instead of a preface, or introduction, or article written by some Englishman in the 19th century or 1970s or 2005. I often have to check that I’m even reading the right book, and that in some slightly changed title “The Anabasis of Alexander” vs. “The Campaigns of Alexander”, “Thucydides’ History of the Peloponesian War” Vs. “The History of Thucydides”, I haven’t picked up the wrong book and now am reading a work written by some professor at Stanford.
The Greeks are us. We are Greeks. We’ve always been the Greeks… That’s the Twilight Zone twist!
Who wrote this crap article that calls Jesus a “character in the New Testament?”