mountainman

Greetings to the Opinionated and others,

It occurs to me that within the history of "early christian origens" a great deal of chronological significance is to be placed upon an epoch that is often described as "The Fall of the Temple". Traditionally this has been viewed as the fall of the Jewish temple. However, after hundreds of years of archaeological discoveries we can be fairly certain that there was in place during this same period (and after it) a massive network of Panhellenic temples within the Roman Empire.

I have two questions, but they must be prefaced with the statement that I think the New Testament was written in Greek for the Greek literate class of the Roman Empire - that it was not (originally) written in Hebrew for the Hebrews. While the fall of the Jewish temple obviously had a great deal of importance for the Hebrews, it may have not had the same significance for the Greeks. And obviously the reverse is also true. The fall of the Greek Panhellenic temples had little significance for the "early christians".

Here are the two questions:

(1) What is the relative significance within the Roman Empire of the fall of the Jewish temples when compared to the relative significance within the Roman Empire of the fall of the Panhellenic temples.

(2) Why does the Gnostic literature refer to the destruction of the Panhellenic temples, and not the Jewish temple?

If anyone can shed any light on these two questions I would be appreciative.

Thanks and best wishes,


Pete


PS: Thanks also to Philosopher Jay and aa5874 in another thread
that I did not want to tangentiate from
"He's Not There" to "The Temple is Not There".