Page 14 - Boca ViewPointe - September '19

Page 14, Viewpointe September 2019

Book Review

From Ritual And Superstition synagogue, as well as the evolution of the Biblical opera

To Literature, Science And was fostered in the Babylonian diaspora, in connection to
and remembrance of their forsaken homeland.
Philosophy According to Jewish tradition, Ezra the Scribe re-authored
the Bible after the Jews were permitted by the Persian
Maria Michela Sassi. The Beginnings of Philosophy King Cyrus to return to Palestine in 536 B.C.E. But the
in Greece, trans. Michele Asuni. Princeton: Princeton text of the Bible continued to evolve with a confluence to
University Press, 2018. Greek thought; like remembering and perpetuating history
John Barton. A History of the Bible, The Story of the World’s undertaken by Herodotus, the schools of disputations like the
Most Influential Book. Great Britain: Viking/Penguin, 2019. Academy and the Lyceum which would become the mainstay
and likely impact on Judaism and Jewish Thought of Rabbinical hermeneutics (schools of Hillel and Shammai),
and Plato’s attempt to describe utopian society as the torah
By Dr. Ronald J. Meyers is, in one sense, a blueprint for this goal, governed by the
Socratic and Micahian ethical Idea of the Good. Judaism
The philosopher Karl was aware of developing science, but there was a red line.
Jaspers, in his 1949 work, without reference to religion or mythology, drawing upon Sassi suggests the Jewish philosophy was proscribed by the
Vom Ursprung und Ziel the advanced knowledge of Egypt and Babylonia. It is Solomonic teaching, “the summit of knowledge is fear of
der Geschichte (The Origin noteworthy that the Babylonian conquest followed by exile the Lord.”
and Goal of History), first in 586 B.C.E. brought Jews into greater proximity with The authoritative Biblical text was redacted in the third
identified and described advanced Babylonian thought and science but also with century in Alexandria, Egypt by seventy two Jewish scholars,
the Axial Age from the the pre-Socratic philosophers in neighboring Ionia. The called Septuagint, in Greek, the lingua franca of gentiles and
eighth to the third century Babylonians, like the Egyptians, had an advanced civilization Jews at the time. Yet Judaism would maintain a bias toward
B.C.E. as a great age of with laws (Code of Hammurabi), advanced architecture Hellenism and its secularism. The contemporaneous Greek
intellectual enlightenment. (Hanging Gardens of Babylon) and literature (Epic of philosopher Epicurus, who taught that the natural world
Then the wisdom of the East from China, Asia, and India Gilgamesh). The Babylonian studied the heavens, utilized existed without deity, would find its representation in Jewish
converged with the wisdom of the west at the time, in Persia, mathematics and created a calendar which was absorbed into teaching as “apikoros” with dual meanings of heretic and
Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and the Hebrew Biblical Judaism. Though the identification of the week marked by the ignoramus.
writings. The ages of Confucius, Buddha, Solon, Ezra, six days of Creation followed by the seventh day, Sabbath,
Plato and Socrates set the table of intellectual thought and where God rested, seems to have been a Jewish innovation. Dr. Ronald J. Meyers, Emeritus Professor, pursued studies
philosophy, as well as shaped our empirical understanding of Professor Sassi stresses the fertilizing influence of the at the Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Seminaries in New
these diverse societies and cultures extending to our modern Ionians, and correctly, I believe, links their interest in the York, later taught, lectured and wrote on Biblical and Greek
world. origin of the cosmos from water, air, spirit to the Biblical Literature as part of his curricular assignments. rmeyers@
Those of us who enjoyed a humanistic education in the account of creation. It is thought that the institution of the esu.edu. 
latter half of the last century usually were introduced not only
to Existentialism, the dominant philosophic movement of the
time, but also to the pre-Socratic philosophers whose gnomic
statements and fragments laid the ground and planted the seed
of the monumental achievements of Greek and later Roman
philosophy. It is pleasant for me to return and reexamine a
view of this achievement.
Professor Maria Sassi of the University of Pisa offers
a lucid account and interpretation of this narrative, which
she describes as transition from Ritual and Superstition to
Literature, Philosophy and Science. The dominant influence
of these pre-Socratic philosophers reflected both an elevated
respect for knowledge and rudimentary scientific instruments
to accomplish geometric measurements to describe the Servicing PETS of Boca Raton
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writing. Writing would enable generations to communicate “Caring is our Specialty”
more effectively with each other and retain more of the
wisdom of the past; not so efficient in the preservations of Complete medical, Surgical and Dental
oral traditions which had been rendered for millennia. In this Facility SPA Bath & Grooming
regard, the writings of Greece and Judaism, coincidentally
in the kindred alphabets of Greek and Hebrew, perhaps
represented the most abundant and significant genres and
texts of the axial age.
Professor John Barton, a professor at Oxford and Anglican Norbert Graber, R. Ph.
priest, argues that based on linguistic and archaeological and Lynn Graber, R. Ph.
evidence, the Hebrew Bible was an anthology of writings
undertaken over the course of centuries, if not millennia.
Originally expressed in oral tradition, Jewish writing and
literacy evolved from the beginning of the first millennia
with the Psalms attributed to David and the Proverbs and
Song of Songs to Solomon. The Psalms continued to be
composed, poems of praise, probably performed even with
musical accompaniment as part of the ritual sacrifice in the
temple service.
Homer and Hesiod in the eighth century represented the
theology of the past. They recognized the omnipotence of
the Greek gods on Olympus and ascribed human behavior
as determined by this influence, indeed coincidental in the
Canaanite and Eastern religions. In Homer’s telling, the
god Apollo caused a plague within a Greek army because
of personal slight. And Athena favored favorable outcomes
for her son Odysseus, while her father Zeus’s wife Hera set
stumbles for him because of her domestic quarrels with her FREE
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