An Atheist's Guide to the Bible
Hellenism
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Alexander the Great, regarded by some as the greatest general who has ever lived, had conquered almost the entire known world by the age of 30. This stupendous achievement left a vast swathe of territory under the rule of Greek-speaking imperialists. In the fashion of later European empires their chief weapon was not their army but their invasive culture.
Alexander and his successors founded cities in which they settled new populations intent on spreading the Greek, or Hellenic, way of life across their new territory. The culture formed in this way is known as Hellenism. It centred around education, the gymnasium, civic duty and the ideals of classical philosophy.
In practice, the regimes of Alexander's successors also borrowed much from the deeply-rooted autocratic traditions of empire across the Near East, Persia and Central Asia. The people of Judaea in particular struggled hard against the domination of the Seleucid emperors who ruled Palestine.
Nevetheless, the impact of a common culture and a shared language (koine Greek) across much of the eastern Meditteranean cannot be underestimated. Classical Greek philosophical thinking, stemming from Plato and the Academy, was fused with Eastern mystery cults and the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism. Out of this blend (syncretism is the technical term) came many new religious systems, notably Neo-Platonism and Gnosticism.
More significantly still for our story, the fusion of Jewish monotheism and Greek philosophy proved especially fertile. The writer Philo of Alexandria in the first century (he was a contemporary of Jesus), developed the idea of the Logos or Word of God as the immediate creator of all things. His ideas are reflected in the Gospel of John.
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