Hebraism and Hellenism reconsidered

Judaism, Spring, 1994 by Louis H. Feldman

But if so, we may ask, what is the point of the Greek tragedies that have come down to us if it is not that life is not one-sided and simple? To say, furthermore, that Hebraism lacks the sunny optimism of the Greeks and is, instead, marked with a sense of sin, is to ignore chorus after chorus in the Greek tragedies, representing, in effect, the ideal spectator and the author himself, in which we see a basically pessimistic view of life. One thinks of the last lines of the most famous play of all, Sophocles' Oedipus the King: "Here is the truth of each man's life: we must wait and see his end, scrutinize his dying day, and refuse to call him happy till he has crossed the border of his life without pain." That this was not an isolated sentiment but one widely held and influential, may be seen from its occurrence in Herodotus (1.32), who quotes it in the name of the revered wise leader Solon (Aeschylus [Agamemnon 928-929], Euripides [Trojan Women 509-510, Heracleidae 865-866, Iphigenia at Aulis 161-163, and Andromache 100-102], and Aristotle [Nicomachean Ethics 1.1100A10-11]). One thinks of the jar of the first woman Pandora, which contains all evils, and this includes even hope. One recalls, furthermore, Hesiod's formulation of the five ages of history, each worse than the preceding; contrast this with the opening chapter of Genesis, in which the phrase "And God saw that it was good" appears five times. Man is the very climax of creation, and it is after his creation that we find the phrase," And God saw everything that He had made and behold it was very good" (Gen. 1:31).

To say, with Arnold, that Hellenism, unlike Hebraism, is not primarily concerned with conduct and that the moral virtues are secondary to the intellectual, is to neglect such a passage as this in Homer's Iliad, Book 16: "Even as beneath a tempest the whole black earth is oppressed, on an autumn day, when Zeus pours forth rain most vehemently, being in wrath and anger against men who judge crooked judgments forcefully in the assembly and drive justice out, and reck not of the vengeance of the gods." The fact that this statement, in which Zeus stands for justice, appears in a simile, would seem to indicate that it is an editorial comment, so to speak, on the part of Homer. Again, at the beginning of Book I of the Odyssey, Zeus is quoted as complaining that mortals blame the gods for their afflictions, when actually it is their own failings, notably greed and folly, that are to blame. Moreover, Hesiod (Works and Days 252) asserts that thrice ten thousand watchmen of Zeus guard justice and note cruel deeds. Furthermore, he insists that Zeus with ease straightens the crooked and rebukes the proud. Surely Socrates (Plato, Apology 32A-C) showed moral courage when, as chairman for a day of the Council of Five Hundred, he defied an hysterical, unconstitutional public demand for the execution of the generals who had failed to recover the bodies of several hundred soldiers killed in a sea battle, and again when he refused to share in the policy of the Thirty Tyrants in their persecution of Leon of Salamis.