CHAPTER 2 -
HISTORY UNTIL THE GREEKS

We will now go through history to see how the three philosophical paradigms and personality archetypes - religious, scientific, and barbarian - have interacted with each other for thousands of years.

The Bible

An important source of insights regarding Man's early culture is the Bible. Whether you see the Bible as divinely inspired (religious perspective), or interesting history and mythology (scientific perspective), we can learn a great deal about Man's early cultural perspectives from the Bible.

The first book of the Bible, Genesis, suggests that early Man was primarily wedded to the barbarian philosophy.  It tells the story of Cain who kills his brother when he felt strong, uncontrolled emotions of jealousy.  The next several generations until the flood were selfish, criminal, and barbaric.  The Bible says:

"The wickedness of man was great in the earth, and the imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually (Genesis 6:5)...And the earth was corrupt before God and the earth was filled with violence (6:11)...The imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth (8:21)."

One doesn't get the impression that the religious and scientific perspective were in great abundance at this time, but rather that the barbarian creed of 'might makes right', and 'satisfy your desires to the hilt' were predominant.

The Bible then describes a flood that, from the Bible's perspective, was meant to wipe away these undesirable characters.  Noah and his three sons, Shem, Yephet, and Cham, and their wives survived the flood.  As we said before, tradition has it that this was the beginning of the three philosophies we have mentioned. 

Shem was religious and wanted to understand and follow God's ways. The word 'Semitic' comes from his name.  Yephet has come to be associated with the scientific mind.  He had a son named Yivon, who's name is similar to and is associated with the Ionian peninsula of Greece that became the progenitor of the scientific viewpoint. (Dostoevsky's character representing the scientific viewpoint is similarly named Ivan). And Cham is described as someone who either can't or doesn't want to control his emotions and actions. His descendants included Mitzrayim, the ancient name for Egypt, and Canaan, whose descendants were the barbarous and idol worshipping tribes occupying the part of the Middle East that came to be known as Canaan.

The Bible tells a story about the three sons of Noah.  After the flood, Noah raised grapes, made wine, and one night got inebriated and fell asleep.  While Noah was in this deep sleep, Cham did something terrible to his father, that the Bible doesn't spell out.  The Talmud offers two opinions as to what Cham did: either he sodomized his father (somewhat barbaric), or he castrated his father (extremely barbaric).  When Noah awoke, he realized what Cham had done to him, and angrily cursed him for his heinous behavior.  He then turned to his other two sons, and made the following prediction:

"God will enlarge the domain of Yephet, and he will live in the tents of Shem".

Many interpreters of the Bible explain this enigmatic prophesy as follows: Yephet and Shem will follow their separate, but worthwhile, paths.  Yephet will develop science and art, while Shem will develop religion, with the 'tents of Shem' referring to houses that God is worshipped in.  Noah is foreseeing that both Yephet and Shem will do quite well, expanding their relative domains, but in the end Yephet will reconcile his worldly wisdom with the spiritual wisdom of Shem, and come to live in the tents of Shem. 

The scientist will point out that this prediction merely shows the religious bias of the Bible.  But the religious person not only sees this as divinely inspired prophesy, but looks forward to the day that the scientist will stop belittling religion and join him in his house of worship.  (The barbarian thinks both the scientist and religious person are ridiculous to be thinking about such things when they could be pursuing wine, women, and song, or their contemporary counterparts of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll).

Jews vs. Barbarians

The Bible then tells us how Abraham, a descendant of Shem, formulated and promulgated the religious point of view, the concept of Monotheism that maintains that there is one God and that we should serve Him and do what God wants. The first five books of the Bible, called the Pentateuch, describe how Abraham's descendants, Isaac, Jacob, and the rest of what became the Jewish people became slaves in Egypt and were then liberated to receive a revelation at Mt. Sinai of what God wanted them to do.

At Mt. Sinai they received commandments that forbade, for example, barbarian behavior such as killing, stealing, and committing adultery. People are commanded to treat each other well, to create a society with social justice and harmony:

"Justice, justice shall you follow."

"Love your neighbor as yourself."

"Do not take vengeance."

"Do not afflict any widow or orphan".

 As for the descendants of Cham who were living in Egypt and Canaan, the Bible says: "After the doings of the land of Egypt where you lived, shall you not do, and after the doings of the land of Canaan, where I bring you, shall you not do. (Leviticus 18:24)"  The Jews were admonished to turn away from those barbarian and decadent ways, and to be exemplars of the religious perspective and by example spread religion as a way of life and thought. They were told, "You shall be for Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."

According to the Bible, restraining the barbarian impulse clearly depends on the fear and love of an almighty and pervasive God:

"What does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep for your good the commandments of the Lord." (Deuteronomy 10:12)

The next 19 books of the Bible describe what the Jewish people did in the next 1000 years as they gradually spread out in the land of Canaan, that became known as Israel.  They had many successes maintaining the religious viewpoint and fighting the barbarian viewpoint.  About 450 years after entering Israel, Kind David conquered Jerusalem and his son Solomon built a glorious temple in which to worship God. There were many great writings, such as the book of Psalms, that became part of the Bible.

There were also times of backsliding when they were seduced by the attractions of the barbarian philosophy.  Some kings after Solomon reverted to pagan ideas. Prophets were constantly railing against the temptations of the barbarian way, with varying success.  For example, the prophet Eliyahu had a showdown with the idol worshippers on Mt. Carmel, and in the end prevailed, proclaiming: "The Lord, He is God".  There was even one king, Menassah, who during his 50 year reign outlawed the teaching of the Jewish religion and permitted only the worship of idols that were accompanied by orgies led by male and female prostitutes.

The Talmud says that this first temple was destroyed by the Babylonians after standing for 410 years because the Jews weren't strong enough in battling the barbarian viewpoint, and giving into 'killing, sexual immorality, and idol worship.'

This marks the end of the first major confrontation between two of the three main philosophies, the battle between the religious and barbarian philosophies. The religious viewpoint scored some points, and managed to spread its philosophy to some extent in the ancient world, but the barbarian viewpoint was also very popular and was often on the offensive.   

After 70 years of exile in Babylonia, Ezra returned to Israel with his fellow Jews, and built the second temple.  This brings us to about 350 years before the common era, and is where the 24 books of the Bible end their narrative. From here on, we have many reliable historical sources that describe the rise of the scientific perspective as espoused by the Greeks, and the confrontations they had with the barbarian and religious philosophies.

Greeks vs. Barbarians

Starting around 2500 years ago and lasting about 200 years, the Greek city states in the Ionian peninsula saw a great flowering of the human mind and spirit.  The Greeks produced, in that short time, some of the great works in literature, mathematics, and philosophy. It reached its apogee in Athens, with the philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. 

Socrates frequented the public places of Athens and, as recorded by his student Plato, espoused that people should examine everything, especially their own lives, with the clear and focused light of reason.  He maintained that Man has been given the great gift of mind to use relentlessly in the pursuit of wisdom and clarity.  All assumptions must be examined in the pursuit of truth.

"There is only one good,  knowledge, and one evil, ignorance."

"The life which is unexamined is not worth living".

He recognized that there is a strong tendency in man to be selfish, hedonistic, and barbaric, and that "Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live."  But if a person examines himself and inquires about all he doesn't know, in time he will become educated and enlightened and have the strength to overcome the baser aspects of his being. 

Many of his countrymen advocated that hedonism was really the better way.  As Epicurus said: "Pleasure is the beginning and the end of living happily."

But we see Socrates in the Platonic dialogues, overcoming through vigorous examination, the arguments of those who maintain that it is more practical to be unvirtuous, and proving that virtue and truth are the better way and can be attained through reason.  "If we lack understanding of the beautiful and good, though we learn all else to perfection, it profits us nothing."

But alas, those with more barbaric inclinations sentenced Socrates to death for spreading seditious ideas among the young.  Naturally, Plato and Aristotle were concerned with how to establish governments that were virtuous and just.

Plato in The Republic, and Aristotle in The Politics, discuss what form of government best keeps the barbaric impulses of man at bay.   They agree that the way to battle man's dangerous barbaric tendencies is with education and a just state.  Barbarian tendencies, they felt, could be overcome with education in the path of virtue and an enlightened and strong government.

As Aristotle says: "It is the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.  The beginning of reform is... to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more. " (emphasis ours)

Jews vs. Greeks

At the tail-end of Greece's golden age, Philip of Macedonia consolidated the Greek city states, and had Aristotle tutor his son Alexander.  Alexander the Great, as he came to be known,  extended the Greek empire to much of the known world.  When Alexander entered Jerusalem, there was excited expectation from both Greeks and Jews that the two enlightened peoples would become allies in their fight against barbarism. 

The Talmud says that when Alexander saw the Jewish High Priest who officiated over the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, Alexander got off his horse and paid homage to him, saying he had seen the High Priest many times in his dreams (though they had never met before), and the High Priest had been an inspiration to him in winning his battles.  In honor of the Greeks, the Jews that year named all their sons Alexander.

Such a philosophical alliance made sense, because both Jews and Greeks believed in marshaling the higher faculties in people to overcome their common enemy, the barbarian without and within.  Both had learned from experience the tremendous destructive potential of the barbarian, who's selfishness, lack of self-control, and professed aggressive means could destroy society.

But over the next hundred years, the philosophical alliance soured. The Greeks started to ridicule the Jewish religion and put idols in the Temple.  The Hashmoniam family of Jewish Priests raised an army, defeated the Greek army, and pushed them out of Israel.  The holiday of Chanukah commemorates this victory, and how they cleaned the Temple of idol worship, and lit the holy menorah (a candelabra with oil) in the Temple that had been left unlit since the Greeks had taken over the Temple.

What had gone wrong?  It turned out there were important philosophical differences between the Jews and Greeks, that can be summarized as follows:

The Jews start with the axiom that there is an all powerful God Who revealed His will at Mt. Sinai, and the Bible is a record of that revelation. Judaism is therefore God centered, and claims that Man overcomes his barbarian tendencies through a fear and love of God and by following His commandments. This includes those commandments that don't seem to make sense to us, because they are assumed to spring from a Higher Wisdom.

The Greeks, on the other hand, claim they start with no axioms, and begin with the mind of Man and a clean slate, and say 'Let's see what is true through examination'.  They appreciated the ethical imperatives of the Bible, but they were highly skeptical of a revelation of God at Sinai, because it couldn't be proved.  They took from Judaism what they felt made sense, and threw the rest out as possible superstition.   The Greeks focused on Man rather than God, and on reason rather than belief.  The Greeks were also skeptical of the whole concept of a spiritual world that is the domain of holiness and God, but rather focused on the physical world because they claim we must use our physical senses to gather information that we then analyze with reason to see what is true and false.  They maintained that belief in a spiritual world must take a back seat until it is proven.

We'll give two examples that exemplifies the rift between the Jews and Greeks.  First, the Bible mentions:  "Bid them that they make throughout their generations fringes in the corners of their garments." (Numbers 5:38)  This refers to the strings attached to the four corners of the shawls that Jews pray in.  The Greeks applied the 'light of reason' to this idea, and rejected it  - as well as most of the religious rituals mentioned in the Bible - as making no sense.

Second, the Greeks regarded homosexuality as the 'highest form of love', and most adult males - including the great philosophers - had boy lovers.  The Jews said that the Bible clearly prohibits homosexuality as an 'abomination', and therefore was wrong for people to do.

In short, the Jews determined what was right and wrong by looking in the Bible.  The Greeks determined right and wrong through reason.  Therefore, they came to different conclusions in many areas. In the end, the Jews felt the Greek attitude was in many ways profane and unholy, and the Greeks ridiculed the Jewish 'superstitions'. 

Even though the Hashmonains threw the Greeks out of Israel, this philosophical confrontation continued to rage within Israel.  History showed that the Greek philosophical attack weakened the Jewish people, and is given as one of the major reasons that the second Temple fell to the Romans 200 years later.