Problems in Greek history

by J. P. Mahaffy

Plotinus.

The deeper philosophy of these centuries, that attempt to fuse the metaphysics of heathendom and Christendom which is called Neo-Platonism,—this too was created and circulated by Greek writers and in Greek; so that though Hellas was laid asleep, and her independence a mere tradition, her legacy to the world was still bearing interest one hundredfold.

Theological Greek studies.

The writers who have dealt with this great and various development of later Hellenism are either the historians of the Roman Empire—especially Duruy, who has kept up the thread of his Greek History in his popular History of Rome—or the theologians. The latter have a field so specially their own, and the literature of the subject is so enormous, that the mere historian of Greece and the Greeks must content himself with the pagan side. To touch even in a general way, as I have

hitherto done, upon the many controversies that now arise concerning Greek life and thought would here be impossible.

§ 86. But there is one important point at the very outset of the new departure into Christianity upon which I would gladly save the reader from a widely diffused error.

Have the Greeks no share in our religion?

It has been long the fashion—since the writings of Ernest Renan it has been almost a commonplace, to say: that while modern Europe owes to the Greeks all manner of wisdom and of refinement, in politics, literature, philosophy, architecture, sculpture, one thing there is which they could not impart to us,—religion. This deeper side of man, his relation to one God, his duty and his responsibilities beyond this ordinary life, we owe not to the Greeks, but to the legacy of the Semitic race. To the Jews, we are told, are due all the highest, all the most serious, all the most elevating features in modern Christianity.

Or is it altogether Semitic?

Is this true? Is it the case that the Greeks were, after all, only brilliant children, playing with life, and never awaking to the real seriousness of the world's problems? There has seldom been a plausible statement circulated which is further from the truth. However capital the fact that the first great teacher and revealer of Christianity was a Jew, however carefully the dogmas of the Old Testament were worked up into the New, Christianity, as we have it historically, would have been impossible without Hellenism.