Clivedurdle

Double whammy - Persians add in the temple ritual stuff and educate the leaders to write their books, the Greeks come along and attempt to modernise things by going anti-circumcision, anti sacrifice, building gymnasiums, start the pharisees with their humanist traditions and arguably are the reason why stuff like the sermon on the mount is so full of greek philosophical ideas.

Traditionalists win though, and later on another set of traditionalists build this little judaism when most Jewish people are spread out all over the place in Alexandria, Babylon etc.

Anat

Clivedurdle, how much specific Greek influence do you see in TaNaKh? There are a few Greek words in Daniel, there's the David vs Goliath duel. I understand the genre of 'young captive who is successful in a foreign royal court' (Joseph and Daniel) may have been Greek in origin? But Abraham's roots were placed in Ur, not Alexandria (let alone anywhere in Greece proper. The creation myths are closer to Babylonian rather than Greek ones. Do you see Greek influence on beliefs described in TaNaKh?

DCHindley

Whaaa?

The Persians in that period were Zoroastrians. They did not sacrifice animals, only made fire offerings and drank Hoama or each others' Hoama piss. Hmmm. Anyways, they were in control of Babylon for less than a year before shipping the Jews back to Judea. Not much time to eddycate them, was it? FWIW, the Persians were also pragmatists and let the subject peoples alone when it came to their preferred religious expressions. There are countless edicts where the Persian rulers pay respect to the national gods of their subject peoples. They did not force their religion on others.

The Babylonians on the other hand had them for 50+ years, so if any eddycating was being done it was from them. I am pretty confident that the Jewish elite classes, which were the only ones to be deported, had a certain degree of cultural sophistication and were quite literate. What surprises me is how little Babylonian religion seemed to have infiltrated Jewish scriptures. If anything, the educated among the former elites exiled to Babylon maintained their own scriptures or traditions as best they could, modifying them and reforming them to "explain" their current predicament. Babylon became a crucible for chemical change.

Now the popular culture in Judea did become influenced by Persian ideas. Only the creme de la creme of the deported elites managed to keep some status due to their quick wits or just sheer ability, and these were selected to be sent back by the Persians as their puppet leaders. The majority of the former elites still remaining in Babylon after these returns had lost their status and were nobodies there. It is nobodies who pick up popular culture the best, and this would have been Persian culture. As these low status exiles managed to find their way back to the homeland, they brought these Persian ideas with them. Why didn't they do kind of cultural absorbtion in Babylonian times? They did yet know they were low status exiles until they were left out of the returns. It's the kids who don't get picked for intramural teams who go out and become derelicts, not the ones who can make jump shots and touchdowns.

DCH

While Greeks though circumcision was "barbaric" (it wasn't just Jews, but many Arabs, Itureans, and Egyptians also practiced it), the Greeks also made all sorts of animal sacrifices. A popular thing to do, if you had money, was to offer a hecatomb, a sacrifice of 100 cattle to the gods Apollo, Athena, and Hera.

Ljoilae

I think you're confusing the Christian textual basis and the Jewish one. For a time the most popular version of the Hebrew bible was the Septuagint which is in Greek - because most of the Jews had started speaking Greek.. the Septuagint is even the Old Testament still used by Eastern Orthodox Christians. But in about the first century the Jews redacted their old testament and IIRC they threw out the Septuagint.

Or maybe I got it wrong... I really don't think any of the textual basis the Jews go on anymore though goes through any Greek versions.