I agree it existed and I also agree the KKK exists today.
Starting from the Macabees until about the 4th century the mainstream Jewish view was to have as little as possible to do with anything Greek or anyone else. The stories of the two cultures living nextdoor but rejecting each other are almost comical. One Rabbi would go through a baptism like cleansing if he heard Greek because he feared spittle from a Greek would end up on him. One Jewish man was condemned by the community leaders for wearing a Greek style shoe in the marketplace. People who intermarried could be excuted. Jewish males who didn’t circumcise were hung. Greek philosophy was considered so heretical the very word in English for betrayal of the faith comes from that period (Epicuris -> Epicurean -> Apecoris -> Apostate). The only religious Jews we have any record of studying Greek thought were elderly scholars, presumably because there was less concerns of them becoming heretics.
Just imagine Pat Robertson running a culture for 300 years and you wouldn’t be far off. This was a deeply isolationist culture that looked at anyone assimilating or even just curious as a direct threat. And in case you want to know how we know this it is because they kept records of their religious tyranny. This is the nice version of the story! Who knows how much more horrible and repressive it really was.
In this environment we are supposed to believe an illiterate from the backwards area would not only have access to Plato but know how to convert it into a faith?
Instead what is far more likely was that people who did know of Plato’s work gradually moved the needle generation by generation. Turning a Messianic Jew into a Greek.
I agree it existed and I also agree the KKK exists today.
Starting from the Macabees until about the 4th century the mainstream Jewish view was to have as little as possible to do with anything Greek or anyone else. The stories of the two cultures living nextdoor but rejecting each other are almost comical. One Rabbi would go through a baptism like cleansing if he heard Greek because he feared spittle from a Greek would end up on him. One Jewish man was condemned by the community leaders for wearing a Greek style shoe in the marketplace. People who intermarried could be excuted. Jewish males who didn’t circumcise were hung. Greek philosophy was considered so heretical the very word in English for betrayal of the faith comes from that period (Epicuris -> Epicurean -> Apecoris -> Apostate). The only religious Jews we have any record of studying Greek thought were elderly scholars, presumably because there was less concerns of them becoming heretics.
Just imagine Pat Robertson running a culture for 300 years and you wouldn’t be far off. This was a deeply isolationist culture that looked at anyone assimilating or even just curious as a direct threat. And in case you want to know how we know this it is because they kept records of their religious tyranny. This is the nice version of the story! Who knows how much more horrible and repressive it really was.
In this environment we are supposed to believe an illiterate from the backwards area would not only have access to Plato but know how to convert it into a faith?
Instead what is far more likely was that people who did know of Plato’s work gradually moved the needle generation by generation. Turning a Messianic Jew into a Greek.