Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Hellenistic Jews inhabited a world dominated by Greek culture. Whether they dwelled in Alexandria, Cyrene, Antioch, Corinth, or even Palestine, they encountered (indeed became) Greek-speakers, gained exposure to Greek social and political institutions, and, at least among the educated classes, acquired a deep familiarity with Greek literature. Greek was the language of diaspora Jews everywhere in the Mediterranean (and a good number in Palestine too). As late as the fourth and fifth centuries ce the Jews of Rome still composed their epitaphs in Greek, a remarkable testimony to the tenacity of Hellenism in the far-flung communities of the Hebrews. The lure of Greek culture did not entail “assimilation,” a loaded and deceptive term. Jews retained their traditions, their distinctive traits, and their history. They simply found ways to express them in Greek. The surviving examples of Jewish writing in that language (and we have just a fraction of the corpus) show a command of Hellenic literature but also a drive to convert it to Jewish ends. Translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, begun possibly as early as the third century bce , emblematizes this process. The tale of that event as recorded in the Letter of Aristeas may be a fantasy. But the translation is a fact. The creation of the Septuagint probably did not come about on the initiative of the librarian in Alexandria or ... log in or subscribe to read full text