Clivedurdle

When the Bible was translated into the vernacular European languages from the 1300's onwards, some of the results included wide scale religious - civil wars and new religions - Protestantism in its various hues.

Did something similar happen with the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek?

I propose this happened at the Library of Alexandria, with its obvious very strong Jewish, Egyptian and Greek influences.

I think if we look we will find clear references to christianity dating back possibly to 250 BCE, but we have ignored them because they talk of annonting and messiahs..

Ellegard and Jesus 100 BCE was not looking back far enough - Christianity is a direct result of translating the Hebrew Bible into Greek.

These ideas marinaded gently over the centuries until hit by a sudden burst of heat - the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Later on, this new fangled Greek monotheism became a useful tool of Empire, and the rest they say is history!

proudfootz

I'm thinking the Septuagint is perhaps the key factor in the invention of christianity, bringing judaic ideas to a wider audience and really kick-starting helleno-judaic syncretism.

Sure, judaism has the occasional outburst of messianism and messianic candidates. But in the time period around the 1st century AD there were lots of wanna-be jews (god-fearing pagans) where such notions could really take off and metastasize.

Bingo the Clown-O

Maybe.

Maybe not.

How would you explain 4QLXXLev\b (4Q120)?

It’s Greek. It uses IAW for the divine name. Not kurios.

Emanuel Tov argues that IAW was the earliest tradition, and that kurios came later.

Yet early Christianity depended on kurios.

Didn’t it?

Bingo the Clown-O

Also, fwiw, Robert A. Kraft has argued that Deuteronomy 34:9-12 (“The Epitaph of Moses”) is evidence for early Jesus/Joshua worship.

“No prophet ever again arose in Israel like Moses”

The idea is that this is a late addition, and that whoever wrote it did so in order to snuff Jesus/Joshua worship. It’s like a polemic. It attests to the very thing it is trying to deny.

sotto voce

In what way did Greek ideas stimulate Christianity?

proudfootz

Platonism.

Paul would seem to be heavily influenced by Greek philosophy (and also a famous quoter of the Septuagint - like the later 'gospel' authors).

http://www.worldandi.com/newhome/pub...ril/mtpub2.asp

Clivedurdle

http://vridar.wordpress.com/2011/01/...s-and-gospels/

Sheshbazzar

It was via way of The LXX and Hellenist syncretisim that the Hebrew name יהושע 'Yah'Hoshea' ('Joshua') got corrupted into the meaningless and worthless Greek -sibboleth- forms of 'Jason' and 'Jesus'.
....Damned spiritual Ephraimites, doomed by their damned unfaithful Word to perish at the passages..

sotto voce

Quote, please.

proudfootz

In First Corinthians 12, Paul explains that "a body is not one single organ, but many. ... Suppose the ear were to say, 'Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body', it does still belong to the body. If the body were all eye, how could it hear? If the body were all ear, how could it smell? But, in fact, God appointed each limb and organ to its own place in the body, as he chose."
Who would dispute this marvelously enlightening metaphor? It ranges out to bring understanding to all who read it. But when we put it to the test of Hebrew or Greek origin, the piece surely belongs in the Attic column. Plato also used these same organs when he put Socrates and Protagoras in a discussion about virtue, hundreds of years before Paul developed his religion. Socrates asks Protagoras, "Is virtue a single whole, and are justice and self-control and holiness parts of it? ... as the parts of a face are parts--mouth, nose, eyes and ears." Socrates then probes into the metaphor further by asking Protagoras if they agree that each part serves a different purpose, just as the features of a face do, and the parts make the whole, but each serves a different purpose--"the eye is not like the ear nor has it the same function."
When we read Paul's proclamation in Colossians, "He is, moreover, the head of the body, the church," we are once again treated to one of Plato's figurative descriptions.

When we read Paul's proclamation in Colossians, "He is, moreover, the head of the body, the church," we are once again treated to one of Plato's figurative descriptions. When taking on this subject, Paul used ideas from the Timaeus; although it reads like veneration for Jesus of Nazareth, in reality, Paul is once again paying tribute to the principles of Plato. Here is the original: "First, then, the gods, imitating the spherical shape of the universe, enclosed the two divine courses in a spherical body, that, namely, which we now term the head, being the most divine part of us and the lord of all that is in us; to this the gods, when they put together the body, gave all the other members to be servants."

-- The article is quite long, so I only quoted a bit of it.