/lit/ - Literature

Here's an interesting tidbit. This is an example of a Hellenistic Jewish Synagogue, I forget if this one is bc or ad, but it's supposed to be representative of a long lasting trend.
It's depicting the Exodus story of Moses being put in the river to save him from Pharaohs decree to kill every first born Hebrew, and the very daughter of Pharaoh finding Moses in the river and adopting him. It looks for all the world like Greek Christian Iconography, because it essentially is. Jew + Greek.
The Jews for a long while really like Hellenistic culture, they even named their sons after Alexander in thanks that he didn't storm though and destroy Jerusalem (just conquered and wanted tribute, but let them be Jewish).
They like them so much that the Jewish men would compete in the naked games and try and hide their circumcision by performing a crude surgery to extend a bit of skin from the penis to look like a foreskin (because the Greeks thought circumcision was a mutilation of the beautiful human form).

>>22262994
>Degenerate
It became degenerate, even that is an overstated simplistic tale to explain its collapse (more so for the Romans but whatever). But at their height they were the absolute epitome of civilization. If you are holding onto a Christian tradition, it is 100% the product of the melding of two cultures, Jerusalem and Athens. Hellenistic thought can not be understated in the formation of the church, even in the very earliest stages.
Even PRIOR to Christ Israelites were fascinated and held in high esteem the Greek culture. Picrel is a mural in a Synagogue that looks for all the world like Greek art, and therefore Christian Iconography (it's depicting Moses being picked up in the Nile by his surrogate mother). The Israelites would even perform the nude athletic events with the Greeks (and were mocked for their circumcision, as a solution Jewish men would perform a crude surgery to have a flap of skin pulled out in order to look like a foreskin).
The Jews wrote the old testament in Greek, and then the New Testament itself was written in Greek.
You can not separate Christianity from Hellenistic culture, it simply never existed outside of it.