GREEK WRITERS AND PHILOSOPHERS IN PHILO AND JOSEPHUS: A STUDY OF THEIR SECULAR EDUCATION AND EDUCATIONAL IDEALS. By ErkkiKoskenniemi. Studies in Philo of Alexandria, 9. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Pp. x + 352. $166.00.

In the thousand years before the rise of Islam, two radically diverse conceptions of what it means to say that a law is divine confronted one another with a force that reverberates to the present. This book untangles the classical and biblical roots of the Western idea of divine law and shows how early adherents to biblical tradition—Hellenistic Jewish writers such as Philo, the community at Qumran, Paul, and the talmudic rabbis—struggled to make sense of this conflicting legacy. This book shows that for the ancient Greeks, divine law was divine by virtue of its inherent qualities of intrinsic rationality, truth, universality, and immutability, while for the biblical authors, divine law was divine because it was grounded in revelation with no presumption of rationality, conformity to truth, universality, or immutability. The book describes the collision of these opposing conceptions in the Hellenistic period, and details competing attempts to resolve the resulting cognitive dissonance. It shows how Second Temple and Hellenistic Jewish writers, from the author of 1 Enoch to Philo of Alexandria, were engaged in a common project of bridging the gulf between classical and biblical notions of divine law, while Paul, in his letters to the early Christian church, sought to widen it. The book then delves into the literature of classical rabbinic Judaism to reveal how the talmudic rabbis took a third and scandalous path, insisting on a construction of divine law intentionally at odds with the Greco-Roman and Pauline conceptions that would come to dominate the Christianized West. This book sheds critical light on an ancient debate that would shape foundational Western thought, and that continues to inform contemporary views about the nature and purpose of law and the nature and authority of Scripture.

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Dialogue In Christian And Secular Education

10.2986/tren.100-0045 ◽

1968 ◽

Author(s):

Mary A. LEE

Keyword(s):

Secular Education

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Going Through Hell; ΤΑΡΤΑΡΟΣ in Greco-Roman Culture, Second Temple Judaism, and Philo of Alexandria

Journal of Ancient Judaism ◽

10.30965/21967954-00403004 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 4 (3) ◽

pp. 352-378

Author(s):

Clint Burnett

Keyword(s):

Second Temple ◽

Second Temple Judaism ◽

Jewish Literature ◽

Ancient Greek ◽

Philo Of Alexandria ◽

Second Temple Period ◽

Greco Roman ◽

Literary Sources ◽

Roman Culture ◽

Greek Myths

This article questions the longstanding supposition that the eschatology of the Second Temple period was solely influenced by Persian or Iranian eschatology, arguing instead that the literature of this period reflects awareness of several key Greco-Roman mythological concepts. In particular, the concepts of Tartarus and the Greek myths of Titans and Giants underlie much of the treatment of eschatology in the Jewish literature of the period. A thorough treatment of Tartarus and related concepts in literary and non-literary sources from ancient Greek and Greco-Roman culture provides a backdrop for a discussion of these themes in the Second Temple period and especially in the writings of Philo of Alexandria.

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