Episode #37   The Birth of Atheism

In this episode, Rabbi Reinman describes the early origins of Greek culture, its eventual arrival at atheism and the development of Greece as a powerful imperial force.

Who were the Greeks? The Greeks call themselves Hellenes after a mythological figure named Hellen from who they believe they are descended. The Romans called all of them Greeks after the Graikos, a small tribe who lived in southern Italy, and that name stuck with them. According to Jewish tradition, they are called Yevanim, descendants of Yavan, one of Noah’s grandsons. The Ionians, one of the major Greek tribes, still carry that name, Yavan being expressed as Ion in the vowel-rich Greek language.

The Greeks were late to join the civilized societies of the Imperial Quadrant. After they emigrated from Mesopotamia in very deep antiquity, they established settlements on the numerous Cycladic islands of the Aegean Sea,[1] on the Greek mainland and along the western coast of Asia Minor on the fringes of the Hittite Empire. The settlements grew into independent city-states governed by minor kings. The city-states sometimes fought each other and sometimes joined forces against common enemies.

The Greek cities prospered. Although the rocky soil of the Greek mainland and islands was not very fertile, the irregular coastlines provided many natural harbors. The Greeks built trading ships and a navy and grew in power and wealth, but they were culturally backward.

They probably had some familiarity with the writing of their trading partners, but they had no developed writing of their own, except for a primitive form called Linear B used for administrative and business records. They had no written histories, poems, religious texts or literature of any sort. Their awareness of their own history consisted of a blend of oral traditions and myths.

The seminal event of Greek civilization and culture was the Trojan War, which loomed large in the Greek collective memory. For a long time, modern scholars believed there was no place called Troy, that there had never been a Trojan War. Archaeologists in the nineteenth century, however, discovered the incinerated ruins of the city of Troy dating back to about 1200 b.c.e. Apparently, there had been a city called Troy, and apparently, there had been a war that devastated it. But without contemporaneous written records, the memory was preserved only by oral repetition, and as it was told and retold over the centuries, it acquired many layers of myth.

In about 800 b.c.e., at about the time Solomon was ascending the throne of the Kingdom of Israel, a Greek teller of folk tales named Homer appeared on the stage of history. The Greeks had recently adapted the Phoenician alphabet to their own language, and Homer used it to write an epic poem describing the conquest and destruction of Troy. The book was called The Iliad, and it turned out to be one of the most influential books in history.

According to the Homeric story, a Trojan prince named Paris carried off Helen, wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta. In outrage, a group of minor Greek kings, headed by Agamemnon, King of Mycenae and brother of Menelaus, organized an expedition to rescue Helen and take vengeance upon the Trojans.

The climactic events described in The Iliad are set in the tenth and final year of the siege of Troy. The cast of characters is almost equally divided between members of the human race and members of the god race; some characters are offspring of cohabitation between humans and gods, further blurring the line of demarcation between the human race and the god race. All these characters maneuver and fight against each other on and off the battlefields, and the result is a sweeping tale of bravery, prowess, courage, cowardice, loyalty, passion, treachery, adultery, pride, greed, honor and disgrace.

Homer’s story was a work of genius, a literary masterpiece remarkable for its style, poetic forms, imagination, characterization and close examination of the human experience in the realm of the gods. It was such a rich mother lode of literary material that it formed the basis for much of future Greek and Roman literature. Most notably, Aeschylus and Euripides drew on it for their tragedians in later periods, and Virgil, the leading Roman dramatist, wrote a sequel in Latin called The Aenid.

The Iliad has come to be recognized as the first outstanding work in the history of secular literature, for although the gods figure prominently in the story, the poem was never considered sacred writing in any way. Homer had created a new, written art form, and although there was also artistry in oral storytelling, the structured composition of the written poem was a superb new creation, an enduring work of art.

But even more than inaugurating a distinguished literary tradition, The Iliad had a profound although exquisitely subtle impact on Greek society, an impact that was probably not fully appreciated at the time. Until then, the Greeks had lived under the subjugation of the imaginary god race, much in the manner of Mesopotamia, Egypt and most other societies of the ancient world. Homer’s works, however, implanted the germ of a new thought in the Greek mind. Although the god race was certainly more powerful than the human race, which of the two was actually superior? Had the gods ever written a poem? Had they built beautiful buildings? And who decided what the gods did or said in the seminal legends of the Trojan War? Was it the gods themselves, or was it Homer, the human manipulator of the gods?

Over the ensuing centuries, it began to dawn on the Greeks that Homer had captured the gods and imprisoned them in his epic poem, establishing once and for all that the most wondrous inhabitant of the earth was man, with his inventiveness and his creative genius. Of course, man still had to maintain a bond with the gods. His devotional impulse demanded it. He also needed to appease the gods in order to avoid their deadly fury, but that did not make man inferior to the gods.

In its infancy, this radical new idea was little more than a subliminal feeling, but it quickly sank roots into the rocky Greek soil. The next two centuries saw the Greeks emerge gradually from under the thumb of the god race and drink deeply of the wine of freedom.

Until then, the typical king of the Greek city-state had ruled by the authority of his alleged descent from Zeus, “the father of gods and heroes,” and although he traditionally consulted with the tribal chieftains and nobles, the king was the supreme military commander, chief magistrate and high priest. In the post-Homeric period, however, the independent spirit of the little city-states was increasingly channeled into a newfound desire for political rights and freedoms, and the role of the kings went into sharp decline.

In one city-state after another, wealthy landowners seized power and restricted the kings to ceremonial and religious functions, but aristocratic rule did not last. Pressure from merchants and the lower classes resulted in the emergence of enlightened tyrants who deposed the aristocrats and enacted reforms. They taxed the aristocrats, stimulated trade and manufacturing, patronized the arts and spent lavishly on civic beautification projects that employed the poor. Ultimately, the tyrants were themselves overthrown, and a system of elections and limited government spread across the land.

The Greek city-states had prepared themselves to become masters of their own destiny, but their destiny proved exceedingly difficult to master. With new governments sensitive to the needs of all the people, the city-states became attractive places to live, and foreigners and Greeks from outlying districts streamed into the cities, swelling their populations to the point of crisis.

The city-states reacted by restricting citizenship and the right to vote to those whose parents had been citizens. Protecting the precious privileges of the citizens, however, was not enough to make the hungry underclass disappear. Some pressure was relieved by a new wave of colonization that spawned independent daughter cities across the northern rim of the Mediterranean basin. The most important of these were Byzantium in Asia Minor, Marseilles in what is now France, Syracuse on the island of Sicily and Naples (Neapolis / New City) in southern Italy, which came to be called Greater Greece (Magna Graecia).

Mostly, however, the Greek city-states dealt with their internal pressures by warring with each other constantly, either individually or in ever shifting regional alliances. Slowly but inexorably, the city-states of Sparta and Athens emerged as the principal contestants for the Greek soul. In Sparta, principal city of the Dorian Greeks, the liberated spirit of man was poured into a collective mold. Man could free himself from the domination of the gods, but only as a monolithic state, a whole greater than the sum of its parts. The affairs of state were in the hands of all hereditary citizens who chose a representative assembly, but important decisions were made by a five-man council with dictatorial powers.

Military power was the ideal towards which Spartan society strove. All male citizens were drafted during childhood and trained to be obedient cogs in the state military machine, while the disenfranchised majority of the population labored as serfs to support the soldier-citizens; education was limited almost exclusively to physical training and fighting ability. As a result, Sparta began to conquer its neighbors, oppressing and exploiting the captive populations, until most of the Peloponnesian Peninsula in southern Greece was under its dominion.

Athens, the principal city of the Ionian Greeks, went in the opposite direction. Athens became a center of free enterprise and robust economic growth in which individualism was encouraged and nurtured, although the system of limited representation still favored the aristocracy.

In 721 b.c.e., a reformer by the name of Draco codified and recorded Athenian law for the first time, thereby extending protection to all citizens. In 594 b.c.e., Solon enacted further reforms, including the abolishment of debtor enslavement. In 546 b.c.e., Pisistratus instituted land reform, breaking up the great estates and giving more citizens economic independence. And in 508 b.c.e., Cleisthenes reorganized the government, creating a popular assembly of all the citizens which convened monthly to vote on all legislation and policy. Under this system of full and direct democracy, Athens became the richest city-state in Greece, a thriving commercial and cultural center with a strong navy and vital overseas interests, the intellectual capital of the Greek world.

But while the Greek city-states sought their own destiny in the isolation of their mountainous peninsula, the rising power of the Persian kingdom spread into Asia Minor, overwhelming the Greek city-states along the western coast. The Persians then pushed across the Hellespont (Dardanelles) into Europe, seizing control of Thrace, a semi-barbaric land roughly corresponding to present-day Bulgaria. The Persians were on the doorstep of Greece, but for decades, the Persian colossus and the apprehensive Greeks eyed each other warily without resorting to war.

In the conquered Greek cities of Asia Minor, however, accustomed as they were to the new political freedoms, the Persian yoke proved unbearably oppressive, and unrest seethed along the western coast. Finally, in 499 b.c.e., the district of Ionia revolted with the support of Athens and Eretria on the mainland. The Persians crushed the Ionian revolt in 494 b.c.e., but for them, it was the last straw. The intervention of the mainland Greeks was intolerable. There was no choice but to vanquish this upstart European rival.

The first Persian assault on the Greek mainland was a seaborne punitive attack directed at Athens. In 490 b.c.e., a Persian fleet landed an army near Marathon on the coast of Attica and prepared to march on Athens. The Athenians appealed to the other city-states for help, but because of inter-Greek squabbling, none was forthcoming. Nonetheless, the Athenian army was able to defeat the Persians on the battlefield and win a temporary respite from Persian imperial pressure.

For the next ten years, both sides prepared for the inevitable second round. With its prestige gained by the military victory at Marathon, Athens was able to rally the other cities around its banner. At a congress in the city of Corinth, Athens, Sparta and many other cities agreed to set aside their differences and form a defensive league against Persia.

In 480 b.c.e., a Persian army crossed Asia Minor into Thrace and marched through Macedonia and Thessaly towards the heart of the Greek mainland. At the same time, a large Persian fleet stationed itself off the coast of Attica to provide military support and provisions for the Persian land forces. A small Spartan squadron tried to block the Persians at the mountain pass of Thermopylae, but the Persians overwhelmed them and flooded into central Greece. Athens was evacuated just before the Persians captured and laid waste to the city.

But the battle was not over. The Athenian navy dealt the Persian fleet a crippling blow near the island of Salamis off the coast of Attica, forcing it to return to Asia. Without the support of its fleet, the Persian army was defeated by a combined Greek force at Plataea. The Persian army withdrew in disarray from Europe, and the Ionians in Asia Minor seized the opportunity to revolt again. The combined Greek forces then pursued the retreating Persians, and by 478 b.c.e., the Greek cities in Asia Minor had been liberated.

The Greek forces had won a glorious victory. The Persian presence in the Aegean area had been reduced, and the Greeks had established themselves as a formidable power in the arena of world affairs. The greatest beneficiary of the Greek victory was Athens, which emerged as the dominant power on the peninsula, converting the defensive league by force of arms into an Athenian regional empire and imposing its own democratic system and cultural institutions on the other cities.

Intoxicated with its new sense of invincibility, Athens embarked on a golden age in which the cultural seeds planted by Homer finally came into full harvest. Under the leadership of Pericles, the riches of the Athenian Empire were poured into architectural projects, such as the Acropolis and the Parthenon, and the patronage of the arts. Greek literature, which had been largely restricted to epic and lyric poetry, began to develop new forms. The art of drama was born with the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides and the comedies of Aristophanes, many of which borrowed heavily from the Homeric themes of the Trojan War. Sculpture entered a new phase of exquisite grace and perfection that virtually deified the human form.

During this time, the Anshei Knessess Hagedolah, the Men of the Great Assembly, meeting in Jerusalem, put an end to the devotional drive in the human psyche, as described in Chapter 36. Not only were the Jewish people liberated from this overpowering drive, all of humanity was also liberated.

The eminent Greek thinkers who lived at this time, such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, suddenly found themselves at an ideological crossroads. They could now contemplate the paramount questions of existence and reality with their intellect alone, unhindered by a need for a divine connection.

The mythological explanations of the universe were easily abandoned. Two pathways were now open to them. They could recognize the infinite God of creation and the transcendent spiritual world. They could seek to discern His purpose in creation and His expectations of humankind.

Or else, they could deny that He exists, and if He does somehow exist, He has no role in the affairs of the world in any meaningful way. They could see the world as essentially material in which even the human spirit and morality are material forms.

They chose the pathway of atheism. Even Aristotle, who accepted the existence of God, contended that the universe had always existed and that God had no effect on it. Greek atheism, although it took many forms over the years, was a complete rejection of the Jewish idea, which places God at the pinnacle of the universe. In the Jewish view, people only exist to serve His purposes. The Greek idea places the human being at the pinnacle of the universe. God, even if He exists, is not involved.

The Greek philosophers now turned their attention to an examination of the natural world, leading to remarkable advances in mathematics and science and the growing conviction that the onslaught of the human intellect was irresistible. Man was indeed the true master of the world; nothing stood higher than human creativity and human intelligence.

Man had become the new god race in the Greek mode of thought. Man was immortal, collectively if not individually; moreover, according to Plato the only true reality lay in the idea behind material things, and therefore, everything was immortal through its idea. Man had the creative genius to produce superlative literature, art and architecture; the spectacular temples and statues of the gods glorified the human race, not the god race. Man, with his intellectual faculties, could smash any barrier more effectively than the lightning bolts of some Olympian deity.

The god race had been vanquished. The higher echelons of Greek society no longer believed in the old myths. Nonetheless, the myths survived, because they were an integral part of Greek culture. The festivals, the folklore, the social customs, the literature were so intimately entwined with the mythological hierarchy that to abandon would have required the creation of a new culture.

Man stood alone at the pinnacle of the universe. The Supreme Being discerned by some philosophers was viewed as a distant Primal Cause with no involvement or interest in earthly affairs, and the god race, if it existed, was nothing more than a group of overgrown, self-indulgent brutes. Man alone deserved to be adored and worshipped. The Greeks had become their own gods, and they worshipped themselves with all their hearts and souls.

The brilliant talents of the Greeks, however, did not extend to the political arena. Despite their artistic and scientific achievements, the Greek city-states could not discover the key to peaceful coexistence. Athens continued to exert its power and influence with a heavy hand, and the other cities, deprived of their cherished independence, grew increasingly resentful of Athenian hegemony. Sparta, with the support of Corinth, fanned the hot flames of jealous hatred and plotted to undermine Athenian military power, sparking the outbreak of the Peloponnesian Wars in 431 b.c.e.

For twenty-seven years, the fortunes of war shifted back and forth between Athens with its naval supremacy and Sparta with its superior land forces. The heartland of Greece was ravaged and devastated. Ultimately, the balance was tipped in favor of Sparta when Persia sent ships and money to support the Spartan cause. Athens was defeated, and the Athenian regional empire collapsed.

In the aftermath of the Peloponnesian Wars, Sparta emerged as the dominant power of Greece in 404 b.c.e., but the Spartan hegemony lasted a mere thirty years. Thebes, with the support of Corinth and Athens, crushed the Spartans. Theban hegemony began in 371 b.c.e., at about the time the Medes and Persians were conquering Babylon and establishing the Persian Empire in Mesopotamia.[2] In 362 b.c.e., a coalition led by Athens and Sparta defeated Thebes and plunged Greece into more intercity warfare, chaos and anarchy, with no end in sight.

Greece was ripe for conquest, but the conquerors came from an unlikely direction. Imperial Persia, still smarting from the defeats of the previous century made no moves toward a new campaign against Greece. North of the Greek peninsula, however, in the kingdom of Macedonia, a vigorous new power was taking form beyond the notice of the warring Greek cities. Macedonia was a culturally backward but well-organized country, united under the ambitious King Philip II. With consummate diplomatic skill, lavish bribery and judicious military intervention, Philip annexed one city after another until most of the Greek mainland was under his control.

In a desperate effort to avert total Macedonian domination, the Athenian leader Demosthenes organized an alliance against Philip, but in 338 b.c.e., the disciplined and well-trained Macedonian army destroyed the Athenian alliance. After twenty years of clever maneuvering, Philip of Macedonia was the undisputed master of Greece.

Philip was a passionate admirer of Greek culture, and his conquest of Greece was motivated by a desire to preserve Greek culture as well as by his own personal ambition. With his customary cleverness, he welded the Greek cities into a single state with a unified army and navy, a culturally superior and militarily invincible state capable of defeating the Persian Empire and assuming the leadership of the entire Imperial Quadrant. But Philip did not live to see his global ambitions come to fruition.

In 336 b.c.e., two years after absorbing the whole of Greece into his kingdom, he was assassinated by one of his own soldiers. The next phase of his master plan was left to his twenty-year-old son and successor, who had been nurtured on the Greek modes of thought and had been tutored by Aristotle himself. The new Macedonian king’s name was Alexander.

Alexander the Great, as he came to be known, would establish the largest empire of the ancient world, an empire that would penetrate all the way into India. And he would plant the seeds of Greek culture in every place he conquered, transforming the world more profoundly than any other imperial conquest ever had or ever would.

At long last, the stage was set for the first direct confrontation between the Greek idea and the Judaic idea, a confrontation that would set in motion the forces of destiny that would thereafter govern history.

[1] Bereishis 10:5.

[2] The Persians who earlier invaded Greece were vassals of the Babylonian Empire. See Cheifetz.