Modern-Day Astronomy Reflects Back to Ancient Greek and Roman Religious Beliefs Affecting Judaism

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

                                         Planet Earth or Mt. Olympus of a far-away planet?  

                                                  

The USA has a Space Force.  Our Air Force pilots believe they have encountered UFO's on flights.  Our children learn in school that besides the moon, there are planets such as our Earth, and beyond us there are others .                                   

The order of the planets in the solar system, starting nearest the sun and working outward is the following: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and then the possible Planet Nine.  Some of these names come from ancient Greek gods that were adopted by the Romans who changed their names to Roman ones.   They all travel on their own highway in the sky near or far from the sun.  

They all lived on Mt. Olympus.  Mount Olympus was the mythical home of the 12 gods in Ancient Greek history. In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the twelve Olympians are the major deities of the Greek pantheon, commonly considered to be Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Hephaestus, Aphrodite, Hermes, and either Hestia or Dionysus.

According to the myth, the mountain was created after the Titanomachy, an epic battle between the young Olympians gods and the Titans. When the Olympian gods won the battle, they created their new majestic home – Mount Olympus.  One could think of it as one of our planets that the Greeks were not aware of.  However, they most likely looked up to the sky and imagined Olympus being high in the sky, among or on one of the stars that they saw.  What is it?  A planet looks like a star to us that doesn't twinkle?                                       

  Unlike stars, planets don't twinkle. Stars are so distant that they appear as pinpoints of light in the night sky, even when viewed through a telescope. Because all the light is coming from a single point, its path is highly susceptible to atmospheric interference (i.e. their light is easily diffracted).  They may have noticed that some stars didn't twinkle.  Real stars can look like constellations that the ancients named.  

                                                                           

Ancient Greek theology was polytheistic, based on the assumption that there were many gods and goddesses, as well as a range of lesser supernatural beings of various types. There was a hierarchy of deities, with Zeus, the king of the gods, having a level of control over all the others, although he was not almighty. They depicted Zeus as looking like the typical Greek man with perfect physique.  Each god was responsible for certain tasks.  

Greek Gods

Greek Name	Roman Name	Occupation
Zeus	Jupiter	Captain of Gods
Poseidon	Neptune	God of the Sea
Hades	Pluto	God of the Underworld
Hera	Juno	Goddess of Marriage/Queen of Gods
Hestia	Vesta	Goddess of the Hearth/Home
Ares	Mars	God of War
Athena	Minerva	Goddess of Education/Science/Virginity
Apollo	Apollo/Sol/Pheobus	God of Sun
Artemis	Diana	Goddess of the Hunt/The moon
Aphrodite	Venus	Goddess of Love/Beauty
Hermes	Mercury	God of Commerce/Speed
Hephaestus	Vulcan	God of the Forge/Fire
Eros	Cupid	God of love
Persephone	Proserpina	Unwilling bride of Pluto Goddess of spring
Dionysos	Bacchus	God of wine/God of revelry
Demeter	Ceres	Goddess of earth and Harvest

They would meet daily in Zeus palace in the Pantheon, to discuss the fate of the mortals.  So they controlled the mortals' lives.  Below the Pantheon was Zeus’ Throne – known today as Stefani – from where he would rule both gods and men, hurling thunderbolts to those who disobeyed him.  Take one more step and people believed that bad things that happened to them were punishment from the gods, like the thunderbolts.

This is a list of some of the notable offspring of a deity with a mortal, in mythology and modern fiction. Such entities are sometimes referred to as demigods, although the term "demigod" can also refer to a minor deity, or great mortal hero with god-like valour and skills, who sometimes attains divine status after death.                                            

                          Achilles, played by Brad Pitt for movie

• Achilles: son of the sea nymph Thetis (daughter of sea god Nereus), and Peleus, king of the Myrmidons, an ancient Thessalian Greek tribe in mythology. 
• Actaeon: son of Aristaeus and Autonoë, Boeotian prince who was turned into a stag by Artemis and torn to pieces by his own hounds.
• Aeacus: son of Zeus and Aegina who was the daughter of a river god. He was the father of Telamon and Peleus and grandfather of Ajax and Achilles.
• Aeëtes: son of Helios. He was the king of Colchis and played a key role in the story of the Argonauts. His daughter Medea married the famous hero Jason.
• Aeneas: Trojan hero, son of Aphrodite, goddess of love and Prince Anchises. He fled to Italy and became the ancestor of Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome.
• Amphion: son of Zeus and Antiope, and twin brother of Zethus.
• Arcas: son of Zeus and Callisto, a nymph and minor goddess associated with Aphrodite.
• Aristaeus: son of Apollo and Cyrene, a Thessalian princess. He was a shepherd who was made a god after inventing skills such as cheese-making and bee-keeping.
• Asclepius: son of Apollo and Coronis, who achieved divine status after death. He became such a great healer, that he could bring back the dead. Zeus killed him for this, but raised him from the dead as the god of healing and medicine.

The point is, they believed that a man could be half-god, a demi-god.  Most of earth was populated by people holding polytheistic beliefs. 

1. 
                          Moses and the 10 Commandments

Along came the ancient Israelites who learned a different way of thinking about gods.  They believed in only one unseen G-d and they were not to create statues or pictures of their G-d like the Greeks and Romans did. They had arisen out of Ur of the Chaldees on the Euphrates River south of Babylon,  which was polytheistic and moved westward to Canaan for a new beginning.  

The biblical G-d found in the Old Testament is pictured with no body, no family, and no human needs.  All depend on Him and He on nothing.  In due course, all the great feats of nature and life that man experienced the divine power were related to the one G-d; the creator.  G-d was ambivalent, majestic and condescending, terrible and kind, destructive and loving, punishing and forgiving.  Man can feel lowly and humble in his presence, but man also seeks His nearness and the closest possible communion with Him.  G-d is transcendent and non-human, but at the same time is intensely personal and voluntaristic.  It is His will or "word" which in relation to nature, is called  Creation.  

The Greek Civilization and their religious beliefs, called Hellenization,  entered the periphery of Judaism when Alexander the Great, and he was such a great man that the Jews had loved him too, in the 4th century BCE when he conquered the lands of the Middle East.  Hellenism spread from the Mediterranean to the Middle East.  Judea was surrounded by a ring of Hellenized cities while at the same time, Jews were traveling outside of their homelands and expanding their businesses into these Hellenized areas.                              

This Jewish Diaspora was expanding fast into Egypt, Cyrenaica (Cyrenaica is the eastern coastal region of Libya. Also known as Pentapolis in antiquity, it formed part of the Roman province of Crete and Cyrenaica, later divided into Libya Pentapolis and Libya Sicca. During the Islamic period, the area came to be known as Barqa, after the city of Barca.), Syria and Asia Minor; places all becoming Hellenized. 

 By the 3rd Century BCE, the Jews of Egypt had adopted  Greek and the Septuagint translation of the bible had been finished. Septuagint, abbreviation LXX, the earliest extant Greek translation of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew. ... Given that the language of much of the early Christian church was Greek, many early Christians relied on the Septuagint to locate the prophecies they claimed were fulfilled by Christ. 

Bad feelings developed between the  2 groups of Jews now living in Jerusalem; the traditional Jews  and the Hellenized Jews who were led by the TOBIADS (a rich but petty prince in Transjordania who married the sister of the high priest, Onias II. They were the cause of a political party of Hellenizers, ended by the Hasmoneans)  bought on  ANTIOCHUS IV EPIPHANES.  

Being Roman, he tried to suppress Judaism.  That brought on the HASMONEAN REVOLT which is our Chanukah story with the Jewish leader Judah Maccabee.                             

John Hyrcaanus and Alexander Yannai broke the power of the Greek cities of Judah,  but later these were restored and strengthened by Roman intervention aided by the Herod rulers.                             

                                                 Hillel

By the Mishnaic period 1st century BCE to 217 CE (The period of the Tannaim, also referred to as the Mishnaic period, lasted about 210 years. It came after the period of the Zugot ("pairs"), and was immediately followed by the period of the Amoraim ("interpreters"). This was when  the teachers, Hillel and Shammai died and ended with the generation after Rabbi Judah Ha-Nasi.   Jewish material life in Judea, which had now been renamed as Palestine as well by the Romans in 135 CE, was predominantly hellenistic, although hellenization had ceased to be the political program of any Jewish faction. 

                                              

This was also the time when the Romans had invaded and were occupying  the land,, especially Jerusalem.  Jews were in a panic, and their religion was in question.  Small groups were forming and living monastic lives in search of their meaning.  Life was in an uproar.  Christianity had been born during this period.  So now, not only Greeks, but the  Romans and Christianity have knocked on the door of Judaism

demanding to be let in.                                                                        

                                 
 Both the Mishnah and the Talmud contain hundreds of Greek words which had become absorbed into Hebrew and Aramaic and tomb inscriptions were in Greek.  In a few cases, Jewish scholars fell away from Judaism under the influence of Greek philosophy.  

Outside of Judah, meaning the Diaspora, Judaism was first tolerated by the Greeks, and the organ of Jewish religious and juridical autonomy, the politeuma , essentially Greek in form, was recognized by the hellenistic kings:  however, Jews had recourse to the Greek courts and used that often.  Their aspirations to Greek gymnasium education and Greek citizenship caused a violent civil struggle in Egypt which only ended with the revolt of 117 CE.  

 Jewish contacts with Hellenism gave rise to a variegated Judeo-Hellenistic literature,.   One school advocated a Greco-Jewish rapprochement and held Greek philosophy to be Jewish in origin.  The writings were propagandist, apologetic, literary, historical, and ethical.  The leading authors were Philo and Josephus. Josephus is quoted so much, being a Jewish general caught by the Romans and given the chance to live IF he write the history of them in accordance with how they saw it-that is, for Roman consumption.  He could have even been on their side, anyway. like we have the left and the right in politics.    There were also translations into Greek of works of the Apocrypha and Apocalypse, while synagogue decoration and architecture were influenced by Greek art.  In turn, the Greeks were learning a little about Judaism and Jewish monotheism.  This did become a problem when so many Romans wanted to convert, and the Romans put an end to Jews accepting this.  Now Judaism was in competition with polytheism and the Romans didn't allow this to happen.

The Jewish rejection of  polytheism while the Greek city was bound up in it,, prevented the Jews a general acceptance into Greek life despite the assimilation that had been happening.  Jewish life indeed was influenced by Hellenization, but was still able to remain fundamentally apart.

                                               

           Solomon's Temple 920 BCE to 70 CE, lasted about 1,000 years

By 70 CE, the Romans had burned down Jerusalem and the Temple within it.   They built a pagan Temple over the Jewish one.  Much later, after 620 BCE, the Muslims built their mosque over the Roman Temple, the Mosque of Omar.  

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-resources/why-do-stars-twinkle/#:~:text=Unlike%20stars%2C%20planets%20don't,their%20light%20is%20easily%20diffracted).

https://nabilnakkash.tripod.com/greekgods/id9.html