General Biblical Archaeology Discussion Topics

Archaeologists, Scholars & Other Personalities

http://forum.bib-arch.org/archaeologists-scholars-and-other-personalities/cyrus-gordon/15/?wap2

Ancient Near Eastern influence on Greek writings (and vice versa) has been studied in such detail.
Edwin M. Yamauchi, states, “Though we cannot uncritically accept all the stories which ascribed a Near Eastern
inspiration for the various Greek philosophers of Ionia, a careful study of both the historical situation and of the
respective texts of the west and of the east, convinces M. L. West that the traditions of such borrowing are sound in the
case of the following 6th-cent. BC philosophers: Pherecydes, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus”
M. L. West “Daniel and Contacts between the Aegean and the Near East Before Alexander,” EQ53.1
[1981]: 47. Greece and Babylon: Early Contacts between the Aegean and the Near East (Grand Rapids:
Baker, 1967), 85; Persia and the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 379–94;“Greece and Babylon
Revisited,” in To Understand the Scriptures: Essays in Honor of William H. Shea (David Merling;
Berrien Springs, MI: Institute of Archeology/Horn Archaeological Museum, 1997), 129–55; The East
Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1997); Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971);
Peyton Randolph Helm, “ ‘Greeks’ in the Neo-Assyrian Levant and ‘Assyria’ in Early Greek Writers,”
(Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1980);
Robert Mondi, “Greek Mythic Thought in the Light of the Near East,” in Approaches to Greek Myth (ed.
L. Edmunds; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 142–98.
Scholars have given these relationships their own titles: Hellenosemitica and Hellenorientalia leading to what
Burkert calls an “Orientalizing Revolution.”
Walter Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution–The Near Eastern Influence in the Early Archaic Age
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
C. Lambrou-Philippson, Hellenorientalia: The Near Eastern Presence in the Bronze Age Aegean, C.
3000–1100 B.C. (Göteborg: Aström, 1990)
While some scholars have drawn unsubstantiated conclusions and ignored the archaeological evidence to focus on
mythological-etymological arguments there is still a number of scholars who have put forth reasonable arguments
for the Hittite influence on Greek culture following archaeology.
However, the mythological-etymological heritage provides an avenue for the influence to be more enduring than just
material remains.
James D. Muhly, review of Michael C. Astour, Hellenosemitica, an Ethnic and Cultural Study in West
Semitic Impact on Mycenaean Greece, JAOS 85.4 (1965): 585–8;
Edward Ullendorff, “Ugaritic Studies within their Semitic and Eastern Mediterranean Setting, ”BJRL 46
(1963): 236–49.
Michael C. Astour, Hellenosemitica: An Ethnic and Cultural Study in West Semitic Impact on Mycenaean
Greece (2nd ed.; Leiden: Brill, 1967).
Michael Astour was a student of Cyrus H. Gordon and classmate of Edwin M. Yamauchi. He had an influence on
Martin Bernal, a professor of political science at Cornell and the grandson of the Egyptologist Alan Gardiner.
Bernal was also influenced by another of their classmates, David Owen. However, Bernal in his series, Black Athena,
goes far beyond the evidence.
Edwin M. Yamauchi, “Martin Bernal’s Black Athena Reviewed,” JAC 14 [1999]: 145–52.
Some of Cyrus H. Gordon’s parallels have been criticized but as Yamauchi [who is one of his students] points out,
“Though he may be proven to be mistaken in some details, surely Professor Gordon is correct in emphasizing the
common background of Greek and Near Eastern cultures. With publication of more data, scholars like Walcot are
beginning to realize the great debt that Greek religion owed to Semitic sources.”
Edwin M. Yamauchi, “Daniel and Contacts between the Aegean and the Near East Before Alexander,”
Evangelical Quarterly 53.1 (January-March 1981): 45–46;
Peter Walcot, Hesiod and the Near East (Cardiff: University of Wales, 1966); Éléments orientaux dans la
religion grecque ancienne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1960);Les syncretismes dans les
religions de l’antiquité (Leiden: Brill, 1975)
Geller summarizes the various influences of Mesopotamian culture on Hellenistic life by mentioning the
contributions to the Aramaic language, legal contracts, medicine, and law. He illustrates this by “considering the
continuing cultural impact of Babylonia in Hellenistic Jewish life.”
(Mark J. Geller, “The Influence of Ancient Mesopotamia on Hellenistic Judaism,” in Civilizations of the
Ancient Near East (4 in 2 vols. ed. Jack M. Sasson; Peabody: Hendrickson, 2000), 1:43
Perhaps the most obvious irrefutable example for the influence of Ancient Near East on Greek and Roman thought
is that ideas and terms from ancient Mesopotamia, were passed on through the Greeks to the Romans, are the
names of the five planets, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn plus the sun and moon. In ancient astrology,
these heavenly bodies represented the seven astral deities, which eventually gave their names in the Germanic, and
Anglo Saxon tongues to our days of the week.
Eviatar Zerubavel, “The Seven Day Circle: The History and Meaning of the Week” (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1989), 7;
Cecil H. Brown, “Naming the Days of the Week: A Cross-language Study of Lexical Acculturation,”
Current Anthropology 30.4 (1989): 536–50;
W. M. O'Neil, “Time and the Calendars” (Manchester, Mich.: Manchester University Press, 1976)