ROUGHLY EDITED COPY
NEW TESTAMENT INTRODUCTION
NTQ06
AUGUST 2004
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CAPTION FIRST, INC.
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This test is being provided in a rough-draft format.
Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in
Order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a
totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
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>> PAUL: Professors, my name is Paul. I keep coming across
the terms Hellenism and Hellenistic. Do these terms refer to a
particular culture, to a particular history, or something else?
How does a pastor's awareness of Hellenism enrich his
understanding of the New Testament?
>> DR. JEFF OSCHWALD: Well, we could, of course, begin with a
simple check of the dictionary to see how these terms are
defined. And there we would probably find something like
Hellenism, ancient Greek character, ideas, or civilization, or
too, the assimilation of Greek speech, ideas, and culture as by
the Romans or the Jews of the *Diaspora. For Hellenistic Age we
would probably find a definition, the period that began with the
conquests of Alexander the Great and ended 300 years later.
Characterized by the spread of Greek language and culture
throughout the near east.
In his classic study, Hellenistic civilization, W.W. Tarn
admits knowing exactly how these terms are used is not quite so
simple. And I think that gets to the heart of your question,
Paul.
Tarn says that some authors use Hellenism to designate a new
culture made up of Greek and eastern or Oriental elements.
Others use the term to designate the extension of Greek culture
to Orientals, people living in the near east.
Still, others use Hellenism to designate the continuation of
that pure line of older Greek civilization. And finally, some
use the term to denote a civilization modified by these new
conditions.
Tarn concludes that all of these theories contain a truth,
but that none of them represents the whole truth. In the study
of the civilization of this period, then, Hellenism becomes a
convenient label for the civilization of the three centuries
during which Greek culture radiated far from the homeland.
No general definition will cover all of the phenomena that
need to be taken into consideration as we look closer at these
background centuries to the New Testament period.
Although we really could properly divide this Hellenistic Age
into two different periods, a beginning creative, or flourishing
phase, and then a later phase when that creative impulse seems
to have been exhausted. There are certain features of the age
that are true throughout.
Let me briefly summarize Tarn's description in this age, Tarn
notes that the idea urges of inhabited world as a whole. A
world that is the common possession of civilized men. For the
use of this world there was developed a form of Greek that we
know as Koine Greek, the common speech. At this time, Greek
might take a man from Marseilles in France all the way to India,
or from the Caspian Sea clear down to the cataracts of the Nile.
Nationality falls into the background as this new-shared
language, and the education that it made possible promote a new
sense of a common culture in cities throughout the empire,
regardless of what nation they're located in.
Particularly, the upper classes in Rome and Asia come to feel
that Greek culture is a thing that a man must have at least in
external behavior. Commerce is also internationalized. Tarn
says, "Thought is as free as it was not to be again until modern
times." Now, here I suspect Tarn may be romanticizing a little
bit. Morality is a matter of science and not a question of
religious or social authority.
The personality of the individual is also given free scope,
and yet, it was an age when even in its most creative period it
could not be said that every fruitful idea was Greek. This
culture shows significant influence from people coming from
these new areas of Greek influence.
At the same time, and so that we don't begin to think too
much in modern terms of this period Tarn remind us that it was a
world empty of machines, but full of slaves.
Although this narrow definition of the Hellenistic Age would
not include the New Testament period proper, the lasting effects
of this age continued long after the *Solusits were replaced by
the Romans. For example in Acts 6 there is mention of
Hellenistic Ages, a group of Christians who perhaps spoke only
Greek and seemed to have been acculturated to Greco-Roman
civilization.
But more important than improving our ability to understand
certain details of the New Testament is the way an understanding
of the Hellenistic background of the New Testament shapes the
thought world of many of the New Testament's characters.
Especially significant from a conceptual point of view is the
idea I just mentioned of one inhabited world, and the way that
New Testament authors will both use and then transform this
concept.
In addition, we can see the gracious Providence of God ways
and means for the spread of the Gospel of his son who at the
right time was born of a woman, born to be our redeemer.
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*
*
This test is being provided in a rough-draft format.
Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in
Order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a
totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
*
*
*
*