Oh please. I was talking about the New Testament which is not part of the Septuagint. You seem to have a very shallow and heavily stereotyped knowledge of the scriptures and ancient cultures. You jump from me mentioning that the NT was composed in Greek to the Septuagint, a translation into Greek of earlier scriptures ... I guess you leaped to the first thing you could think of involving Greek and scriptures.
That the Septuagint is the "oldest true" text is just a supposition on your part, not established fact. We don't have copies of the Septuagint that go back any farther, or even as far, as the existing Massoretic texts. And obviously the Hebrew text existed before the Greek translation. As to which text tradition is "genuine", the Septuagint or the Massoretic Hebrew, thanks to Dead Sea scroll discoveries, we know there were variant Hebrew texts of the scriptures now known as the Old Testament in the 1st century. One of these has been handed down as the Massoretic text, another seems to have been the source for the translation into Greek thats been handed down as the Septuagint. There was at least one other variant text. None of these variants have differences that are very profound though.
Greek was the working language of the empire
The eastern half of the empire, at least, which had earlier been part of Alexander's empire and the successor Hellenistic empires.
Latin was lacking in depth & subtlety ....the Romans were great as builders , militaristic and applied practical governing , not so great in theology or philosophy.
I would agree Roman culture was a step down from the Greek ... after all, Roman cities were known for colosseums where humans and animals fought to the death, while Greek cities had theaters where plays were performed and gynmasiums where athletic games were played. I think you should support that claim that the Latin language is lacking in depth or subtlety. I'm pretty sure scholars would dispute that.
In Hellenistic thought begins the idea of the "Logos" with Heraclitus around 500-400bc and this starts the idea that there is a beautiful reasoned & running "Divine Law " permeating all Nature & the Universe and later with Plato's idea of that Logos embodied in a "Oneness" that is all good .
Yes, intelligent design goes back to the ancient Greeks.
Then later still you have the appearance of the "Christos" who is that embodiment in human form of the Logos & that Oneness linked syncretically
with Judaic Messiah prophecy that becomes "The Christ in Jesus".
Yes, the Gospel of John identifies the Logos with Jesus.
This why its so humorous to hear greggie talk about "New Age" religion , for all the deepest ideas of God, the person of God , theology & cosmology in Christianity were first generated centuries before & completely incorporated to the greatest extent even present day Christianity ....from a blending of Judaic & Hellenistic thought.
Yet, you despise Christianity while idealizing the ancient Greeks.
I would argue Christians adopted elements and ideas from Greek culture and improved on the culture. Christianity eventually did away with slavery and infanticide which was common in the pre-Christian Hellenistic cultures. Christian scholars preserved the writings of the ancient Greeks, the only reason you even know anything about them. While Christians persecuted heretics, that is also an inheritance from the Greeks. Socrates after all was killled for his impiety, Aristotle was driven from Athens for the same reason, and as I pointed out recently the great mathematician, Pythagoras, had a student put to death for mathematical heresy. |
