Friday, September 30, 2011
Egyptian and Greek Influence on Jewish Religion
I finished The Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume Three: The Early Roman Period.   I particularly liked J. Gwyn Griffiths' essay, "The legacy of Egypt in  Judaism".  Griffiths asks: Why should we assume that Jews absorbed such  ideas as post-mortem judgment and messianism from the Zoroastrians in  Persia, when they could have gotten them from Egypt, for Egypt had a  belief in post-mortem judgment as well as talked about deliverers in the  last days?  Griffiths does not think that the Jews absorbed the notion  of eternal torment from Egypt, however, for the Egyptians were  essentially annihilationist regarding the fate of the wicked.  Griffiths  posits that the Jews got eternal torment from the Greeks, "since an  early Greek tradition presents Tityus, Tantalus and Sisyphus as sinners  who are tormented ceaselessly" (page 1049).
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