The Archaic Greeks and Hebrews, two nations of people with very distinct worldviews, were driven to make sense of their vast ever-changing world while trying to survive it. The earlier ancient Hebrews lived nomadically, facing turmoil and enslavement. The Archaic Greeks, coming out of an isolated dark age, began to civilize and grow. Despite having over a millennia difference between their emergences, the need for social and political structure stood paramount. The key differences between the cultures are the way they interpreted and used their separate religions, governed themselves, and created a standard by which to live by.
An important note of the differences in religions of the Greeks and Hebrews are their origins. The Hebrews, being monotheistic, praised a single spiritual god that is believed to be the creator and controller of all. In the book of Genesis, the Holy Scriptures of the Hebrews, god creates the universe, Earth, man and woman, and every living thing. “Cursed be the ground because of you … until you return to the ground- for from it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”(Gen. 3, line 51) God spoke this to Adam and Eve after they ate from the tree of knowledge, which god had forbidden them from eating. The Hebrews believed that all of god’s intentions are good, yet every peril they experience is due to their own disobedience, for they now know the difference between good and bad. The Greeks on the other hand believed that many immortal physical gods walked the earth, each having a specific power or duty that usually explained a natural phenomenon. In comparison to the Torah, there is no written scripture on how the Greeks believed they came to be since stories of their gods were passed ...
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...o I have created…’” (Gen. Ch 6, line 12) God tells this to Noah, explaining that he will end the lives of all in order to cleanse the land. The Hebrew belief that their god had the power to end all forced the people to be fearful and respect their covenant with the lord.
In conclusion the apparent differences between the two cultures tend to be mainly in their religious beliefs, but these values and beliefs spread wide affecting all aspects of life. The Greeks believed in fate that could not be changed by a god, while the Hebrews believed that god made your fate. Greek culture produced strong independent men focused on conquering, and the Hebrew pushed conformity and trying to maintain peace. The Hebrew connection with their god is a far reaching more spiritual experience, while the Greeks felt connections with their gods through physical means.
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The ancient Greeks practiced a religion that was in effect, a building block to many ensuing pagan religions. This religion revolved around their reverence to the gods. Essentially, the Greeks worshipped numerous gods, making their religion polytheistic. They believed that exercising the opportunity to choose between a wide array of gods to worship offered them a great sense of freedom that they treasured. After all, the Greeks were known for their intellectual distinction of which their means of worship played a huge part. Each city-state, or polis, thus had an affiliated god who protected and guided its residents. Within a given polis, the belief in common gods unified the people. Ultimately, the Greeks yearned for this unity and order in the universe, which is a characteristic that is not unlike that of people today. It might seem contradictory that they believed in many gods and sought organization at the same time, for larger numbers are inherently unstable. But, to the god-fearing Greeks, each god represented a different facet of life that together upheld an organized universe if each of these gods was properly appeased. To satisfy these gods, the Greeks participated in activities such as prayer and sacrifice and erected divine temples and centers for oracles in honor of specific gods. There is evidence of this institutionalization early on in the reign of the Olympian gods, thus forming the Olympian religion.
In Genesis God has become tired of the sinful earth. As he watches earth he speaks to Noah, “…behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth”
The Hellenistic period, whose beginning was marked by the death of Alexander the Great, lasted from 323 BCE until 31 BCE with the death of Anthony and Cleopatra in Egypt marking its end. This period saw Greek influence spread throughout Mediterranean Europe and the Near East.
Separated by language, history and several hundred miles of the Mediterranean Sea, two of the world's greatest cultures simultaneously matured and advanced in the centuries before the birth of Christianity. In the Aegean north, Hellenic Greeks blossomed around their crown jewel of Athens, while the eastern Holy City of Jerusalem witnessed the continued development of Hebrew tradition. Though they shared adjacent portions of the globe and of chronology, these two civilizations grew up around wholly different ideologies. The monotheistic devotion of Judaism that evolved in the Hebrew lands stood in stark contrast to the Greek worship of polytheistic Olympians, a religion that often tended more towards the rational and philosophic than the longstanding Jewish piety.
In addition to having with different languages, customs, and traditions, ancient Greeks, Hebrews, Middle-easterners or Romans have very different beliefs about the divine. For example, Old Testament is monotheistic, while Gilgamesh outlines many deities. Both texts have fundamental links in the relationships between deities and mankind, and the idea of knowledge. The Bible and Gilgamesh are literary texts that conjunctively parallel and contrast each other in various aspects such as wisdom. Knowledge is a prominent characteristic that is central in Gilgamesh and Genesis which builds a link between omniscient divine and mortals, but also distinction of power.
In Genesis there is a much more acceptable reason for God to eliminate mankind. The humans are so wicked and evil that "It repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart" (Gen. 6:6). He says: "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth. . . " (Gen.
Although there is some similarity between religion in Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt, they are mostly different. For starters, Greek worshipers believed that the gods would treat them well and meet their needs if they offered them animal sacrifices and fruits of the harvest. To the Greeks, animal sacrifice was similar to prayer. It was the central ritual act in Ancient Greece especially of oxen, goats, and sheep. A sacrifice would mainly take place when someone decided that they owed something to or wanted something from a god, there was also regular times in the year meant for sacrifices. Many sacrifices were family matters, like if someone was sick, perhaps one or two chickens might be sacrificed with the family standing around, and then the family would eat the chickens for dinner. Opposite of how the Greeks, Egyptians
The Greeks in the Odyssey viewed justice as only coming from the gods. They believed the gods punished them because they have fallen out of their favor, and not because they had really done anything wrong by human standards. As Socrates later stated in the Euthyphro, what is holy, and perhaps then just, is what is “approved by the gods.” Although Socrates proved this to be wrong, it still shows the view of most Greeks. Zeus in the opening book of the Odyssey stated, “Upon my word, just see how mortal men always put the blame on us gods! We are the source of evil, so they say- when they have only their own madness to thank if their miseries are worse than they ought to be.” This shows that the Greeks feared justice; they felt it was negative and often undeserved. However, each Greek deserved his punishment because he has a hand in its reason. For example, when Odysseus’s troops killed the cattle of Helios, they deserved Zeus destroying their ships because he had warned Odysseus beforehand not to let the men eat the cattle. When the Greeks disobeyed the gods, they disrupted the right order of things, and when the gods punished them, they made the other Greeks respect them once again, and thus fixed the balance of the world.
The nature of the gods in Greek literature is far more relatable than the god of the Hebrew Bible. Where God of the Hebrew Bible acts as a watchful guide over mankind, the Greek gods often intervened in human affairs in the stories they are in and caused more trouble for mankind than assist them. Their behaviors are flawed, just as man’s behaviors are, and their actions not always made in the best interest of the entire race of mankind and more often made in selfishness. In stories like the Iliad, where man is at war with each other, each god picks a favorite whom they plan to aid throughout their battles (Homer). The gods involve themselves far more than their Hebrew counterpart, each causing more chaos and trouble for the mortal men instead of giving them any real help. While the gods favored some men, they despised others. In The Odyssey, the sequel to the Iliad, Poseidon, who despises Odysseus, makes sure to make the man’s journey home difficult, as well as the other gods who do not favor him. Athena, who favors him, aids him throughout his journey home (Homer, The
...f the divine world but the kings were in charge of vocalizing god’s wishes on earth. The most famous of these law codes was Hammurabi’s law code. The Hebrews tried to establish order by using Yahweh’s Ten Commandments and the Torah. Mesopotamian deities were hard to please and easily angered. The Mesopotamians constantly felt they were letting their gods down and usually didn’t even know the reason behind it. Hebrews had a much more forgiving god. Through texts like “The Book of Job”, it is apparent that Yahweh was a tough god but always forgiving and fair in the end. He had few demands of his people and all of them were ethical and easy to adhere to. As long as his devotees followed Yahweh’s laws, they were all capable of receiving his blessings. Through it all, it seemed that God and religion was at the center of every aspect of life in the ancient civilization.
The most significant and widespread impact of the Hebrew culture can be seen in its spread of monotheism to essentially polytheistic cultures. This theological ideal served to both lay the foundation and perpetuate the formation and evolution of the world’s three major monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Isl...
The ancient Greeks did not contribute in religion so much as the Hebrews did, their contributions were more towards writings and art, great epic poems, and democracy. Some of the greatest philosophers came from Greece, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Homer, also Greek, wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey, two of the greatest works of all time, and also some of the more accurate records we have of life in that period of time. The government of Athens became the basis for many of the governments of society today. Their idea of a government run by the people was revolutionary and quite effective; their democracy was unique in its time. The Greeks also gave us the Phoenician writing system; they also had a polytheistic religion, sacrificing things to different Gods to gain the favor, respect or merely to please that particular God. The main contribution of the Greeks was their writings, and their philosophy to modern times. The Greeks also were responsible for building a library to hold some of their greatest works in Egypt, one of the first of its kind.
To begin with, the ancient Greeks explained the creation of the universe, in particular the Earth and its elements, by a system of anthropomorphism in which their gods are human-like and are representatives of these elements. For example, Zeus is the god of heaven while Hades is the underworld lord (Hesiod, p.145). Unlike the Christians’ god who is “flawless”, the ancient Greeks’ divinities are portrayed as humans and are far from perfect. Their gods behave like ordinary people except they are immortal and have supernatural powers. Like any human being, the Greeks’ gods have love, jealousy, sadness, etc. For instance, in Euripides’ Bacchae, Zeus falls in love with Semele, which makes Hera becomes jealous and tries to kill Semele and Dionysus (Euripides, p.209). The Greeks even have a physically imperfect god, Hephaestus. This is to say that the gods’ attitude toward mortals is affected by how people treat them as the Greeks’ gods have emotions like humans.
In this case he saw hope in one person which was Noah a righteous man and told him “ The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with outrage by them, and I am now about to destroy them, with the earth.” The lord knew exactly what he wanted to do to human creatures for everything that they had done, but was delighted to see an individual that believed in his word. In result, he chose water as the instrument of punishment for a particular reasons. The water used to wipe out human creatures creates a symbolic meaning of cleansing of the earth. The idea was to use the water to wash out everything to make it pure like it ounce was before they started filling it with evil. The lord was determined to exterminate his creation of human creatures and was ready to unleash the flood. The lord said, “ For in seven days’ time I will make it rain on the earth forty days and forty nights and I will wipe out from the face of the earth all existing things that I have
...ed was a reaction of these gods. In contrast, in modern society, a very small amount of people believe in numerous gods and that every god has a specific job or role in life. Nevertheless, the religious beliefs of the Greeks then and people in modern society are similar in a way. Both societies believe that gods are the higher power in life and that they are superior to others.