Western comes from Greek ?

[kryszcztov]

My general idea of the western civilization is that it mainly comes from the Roman Empire, which itself inherited from both the Greek culture and the Judeo-Christian culture. Since the Judeo-Christian culture here is mainly about those two religions, what I believe in is that Ancient Greece is the cultural root of our civilization. In my mind, "culture" encompasses not only scientific developments, but also literature, music, rites, food habits, clothing, social life, political environment, and much more... without forgetting language. This is partly why I'm so fond of Ancient Greece, but here is a question :

Is it possible to claim that our civilization doesn't only come from the Greco-Roman world, but also from other civilizations like Ancient Egypt, Babylon, Carthage, or maybe the Celts ? Of course all of those great cultures gave us something, but can we claim that we come from Ancient Egypt because much work done by the Egyptians was transmitted to the Greeks ? Note that it isn't my opinion (that we come from Ancient Egypt).

 

[jonatas]

I think we cannot isolate any one culture (ie. Greece, Rome) and say, this is the foundation for everything. With regards to Greece, it really has deep connections with the Levant, so much so that I can't imagine Greece or Hellenism (which was very present in Egypt and throughout the Eastern Med anyway) without understanding the context of the Near East and Egypt . It doesn't make any sense to isolate Greece from its historical context.

Have you ever tried reading some of Constantine Cavafy's writings? He really brings to life the historical sensation of Hellenism in Egypt, and Hellenism's connection to the Levant.

 

[Dolemitetornado]

I think "Western" civilization has to be understood as not only a combination of a: Greaco-Roman heritage and b: Judeo-Christian heritage, but also c:Temperate European heritage. The Slavs, Celts, Germainics, etc etc, form a major portion of the "Western" world today. I think the influence from these non-literate cultures are more subtle, but for me its just not feasible to see the temperate Europeans who have played such a major role in Western culture, as blank slates that have had the J-C, and G-R heritage compleatly overwhelming them.

 

[Companiero]

Anyone care to draw the border line for the Western civilization?

 

[YNCS]

The Urals?

I agree that Western Civilization is a very broad term. Australia and New Zealand are Western, but Indonesia, just north of Australia, is not. Does Japan have a Western Civilization? Of course not, but Japan displays many of the traits we take for granted as being Western, i.e., technologically advanced, industrialized, stable form of government, etc.

 

[MCdread]

I think the main foundations are greco-roman and judeo-christian, but there are of course elements that we can track back to Babylon, Persia, Egypt, anatolyan peoples like the hittites, obviously the Celts, Germanic, slavic and other european tribes, etc.
But if I had to pick a place and time to say mark the beggining of the west, I'd say it was classical Greece.

 

[SeleucusNicator]

Well, of course; you come from a culture that is a direct descendent of Rome.

It may sound silly, but it's not at all a flame. Non-Romance cultures, such as, say, the English-speaking culture, borrowed a lot of technical words, philosophical ideas, architectural ideas, etc. from the Greeks during the later half of the second millenium. Romance cultures, on the other hand, never had to do this much, because their predecessors, the Romans, had done the same. So they got both their Greek and their Latin from the same source.

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

My general idea of the western civilization is that it mainly comes from the Roman Empire, which itself inherited from both the Greek culture and the Judeo-Christian culture. Since the Judeo-Christian culture here is mainly about those two religions, what I believe in is that Ancient Greece is the cultural root of our civilization. In my mind, "culture" encompasses not only scientific developments, but also literature, music, rites, food habits, clothing, social life, political environment, and much more... without forgetting language. This is partly why I'm so fond of Ancient Greece, but here is a question :

Is it possible to claim that our civilization doesn't only come from the Greco-Roman world, but also from other civilizations like Ancient Egypt, Babylon, Carthage, or maybe the Celts ? Of course all of those great cultures gave us something, but can we claim that we come from Ancient Egypt because much work done by the Egyptians was transmitted to the Greeks ? Note that it isn't my opinion (that we come from Ancient Egypt).

You have to be careful about your use of the term "Judeo-Christian." This term didn't even exist until about 200 years ago, because Christianity was at odds with Judaism for most of history, and would disavow all connections with it, despite the obvious link. Christianity also persecuted Jews for most of its history as well. So for this reason, I believe it's disingenuous to claim a "Judeo-Christian" heritage of any kind.

Nearly all of the West's cultural institutions come from ancient Greek ones, including education, the arts, literature, and science. The Romans adopted all of these when they conquered the Greeks. The only thing they added was their brand of administration. The easiest evidence for this applies to the Roman religion. Roman gods were once distinct from Greek gods, but after contact with the Greeks, they gradually transformed all of their gods into Greek versions of the same, so that each god was the same as the Greek with simply another name. However, even the Greeks didn't live in a vacuum, and they inherited some cultural values from other civilizations just the same. The Babylonians, for example, were expert mathematicians of their own day, and much of their work was inherited by Greeks.

It's unnecessary to claim singular descent from one culture. Nothing exists in a vacuum. The most you can say is that MOST of the West's cultural legacy is Greek.

 

[jonatas]

You have to be careful about your use of the term "Judeo-Christian." This term didn't even exist until about 200 years ago, because Christianity was at odds with Judaism for most of history, and would disavow all connections with it, despite the obvious link. Christianity also persecuted Jews for most of its history as well. So for this reason, I believe it's disingenuous to claim a "Judeo-Christian" heritage of any kind.

I would say that Christianity itself arose as a mix of Hellenism with Judaism, at least that was certainly the cultural context of the NT.

 

[jonatas]

what I believe in is that Ancient Greece is the cultural root of our civilization.

Again, I want to emphasize, why are we separating Greece for its relationships with other Eastern civilizations, like the Phonecians, Egyptians, Hittites etc.... ? These other civilizations were extremely wealthy, powerful and sophisticated and many of them predate Greece. Greece existed in the cultural sphere of the Mediteranean, and especially in the Eastern Med. It interacted and lived with levantine and mediterranean civilizations. Certainly the idea of civilization itself is not solely a Greek invention. Greece came of age surrounded by these other cultures, and was surely influenced by them and part of them as well.

In some ways I would say the Greeks arrived on the scene after the Phonecians, and to give another example to think about, remember the Minoans, who I guess we might consider proto-Greeks, had a important relationship with Egypt..... I don't think we should underestimate the importance of the Mediterranean context when considering Greece.

 

[Greek Stud]

Another distinction I see as a Greek, is that Greek has a different meaning than Hellenic. The Roman word Greca, where Greek is derived from, refers to a smaller area of Hellenes. The Aetolian, Ionic, Cycladic and Doric Greeks are usually refered to as the fathers of Hellenism. In English, Greek and Hellenes are inseparable so this concept may be harder to distinguish.

From what I've researched, the Greek DNA would stem from the Aetolian, Ionic, Cycladic, Doric and Mycenae peoples. I have read theories that Greeks are Egyptian, Phoenician, and Celtic. They have some validity, but no concrete proof can ever be made because the Minoan Civilization proves that the people of Greece had strong trade relations with larger Super Powers. So they could have borrowed culture, given culture, or simply improved upon culture in different instances.

Hellenes of today also distinguish themselves as a Hellenic culture and some as a Roman (Byzantine) Culture. We have documents for our property rights (invalid today) as my family members being Romanoidos (or Roman). In Turkish it is Rum, in Greek you can also say Romanoi, Greek Jews are Romanoites, and Illyrians became Lateinos (not Hispanic).

Hellenic culture shares all that Alexander the Great conquered. Greeks recognize Alexander as Greek because never in the history of the world has a Royal family seeked Imperialistic Glory for another culture. But the nations he conquered mixed with the values of Classical Greece and created a new era of Hellenism. So this would include the fact the Phoenicians exchanged their language with Greeks, Jews had a long standing brotherhood with Hellenic culture (Alexandria, Constantinople), Egyptian culture was preserved and lived beside Hellenic culture, and the strong similiarities between Persian culture and Hellenic culture. Babylon was viewed more foreign than the others. Their great acheivements were not ignored; but the exchange between Babylonians with Greeks is mysteriously different than the exchange between Egyptians and Greeks.

Greeks today are taught the language of Ancient Greek 5 days a week, where as in the 1990s they were only taught 3 days a week.

The EU has also begun funding of a sculpting school on the island of Tinos, to reintroduce stone and marble sculpting which ended in the Roman (Byzantine) Empire for Christian beliefs of separating the image from the God/Goddess. Greeks had a hard time of letting go of Paganism.

Since Greeks that experienced the Renaissance only lived in Italy, the boost in funding the arts of Greece is going to come late as it has already started. Hellenism in its ancient form is experiencing a small Renaissance, hopefully it will become much larger than what it is in Greece today. Infact, the Greek-American Diaspora are considered to carry stronger Hellenic traditions than the actual Greeks themselves. The main reasons for this are: failing to acheive the Megali Idea, Slavs claiming rights to the Macedonian Identity, and American Policy concerning Turkey's invasion of Cyprus, cooperation with America for Turky claiming the Aegean Sea.

 

[Plotinus]

I would say that Christianity itself arose as a mix of Hellenism with Judaism, at least that was certainly the cultural context of the NT.

That was part of the cultural context of the New Testament, but Christianity certainly was not a result of Judaism mixing with Hellenism. It appeared as an offshoot of Judaism - Judaism which had, to some degree, been influenced by Hellenism, certainly, but there's nothing about Christianity which is any more "Hellenic" than there is about the forms of Judaism which remained non-Christian. Of course, both Judaism and Christianity then developed in a Hellenistic world.

However, it's also worth remembering that only part of Christianity - and Judaism - in the subsequent centuries developed in a Greek-Roman setting. In Jesus' day there were probably more Jews in Persia than anywhere else, and Christianity developed in Edessa, Persia and beyond, as well as in Rome and Alexandria.

On the subject of the thread, I agree with DolomiteTornado. I think that the claim that Western civilisation comes simply from Rome and Greece is, in part, the result of selective education in nineteenth-century public schools, when everyone learned Latin and Greek as if those are the sole foundations of modern civilisation. Far less emphasis was placed on our northern European heritage. That's not to say that the classical civilisations are not enormously important, as clearly they are. But why assume that the Iliad, for example, has played a greater role in our culture than Beowulf? Moreover, most of our political institutions have far more to do with Germanic and Scandinavian culture than classical. Parliaments have more to do with institutions like the Witan or the Thing, rather than the Roman Senate. Indeed, they evolved from feudal-type societies, based around land ownership and aristocracy, which are thoroughly northern and not classical.

 

[kryszcztov]

Many answers...

- Yes, it is true that we cannot reduce the Western heritage to Ancient Greece, like I said. The problem is to determine if our culture has the Greek one as its main root.

- I believe it's necessary to seperate Greek and Hellenistic cultures, as the former is what Greece had achieved by Alex's reign, whereas the latter defines how Greek and oriental cultures melted into each other. Here I'm speaking of Greek culture mainly, and what was achieved in say Alexandria later (a city with strong Greek influence, unlike other eastern places in former Alex's Empire).

- The Western culture is too broad to be uniform. That's why the European unification is a very interesting process. So we have to find what we all share in common, and I think it has to be found in Ancient Greece. But Northern influences exist, no doubt. Is it as strong as the Greco-Roman influence ?

- I quite don't care that Jews and Christians didn't get along each other well for so long. The fact is, the Jews have the Torah, and the Christians have the Bible. It is a fact that the Bible has an "Old Testament", which encompasses (more or so ?) the Torah. Jesus was Jew. We can speak of a Judeo-Christian heritage, may it please people or not. But we could reduce to Christian influence if you want ; after all, this is the religion that was so deeply introduced in the Western world. I just wanted to give credit to the Jews for a good part of the Christian religion.

- It is true that the Romans took so much Greek influence as theirs, this is why we talk about a Greco-Roman influence. The Romans added many things themselves, so we have to give them credit for that too. But I'm searching for the roots.

More to come.

 

[Rambuchan]

Have a look at the Phoenicians, Persians and Egyptians for where the Romans and Greeks sought inspiration in planting their roots.

 

[Companiero]

You all talk about "West", but I'd like to see one to define it. I asked once, i'm not gonna push it. So heres my view on the matter.

I dont see the point in defining a broader areal of Western civilization without setting the exact criterias first. Is it religion, government, philosophy, history, arts, sciences, geography and in what way all of these define "Western" legacy? In my mind, for every one of these categories, there are different divisions among the West, so its a little unreal to take Greek culture as the founding core. I'd speculate that this 19th century idea rose because the Greeks were the first civilized people in Europe, and their heritage, (a huge one and amazingly influential) were the first civilization marks native to Europe. But, as a matter of fact, Greeks themselves were part of the Mediterranean cultural complex and shared their identity with other non-European peoples, while the majority of present Europeans were running around wearing animal skins. Greeks exchanged many ideas with Middle Eastern cultures of the time, and certainly Hellenism even pushed this exchange further, to the extent that at the time when Christianity first appeared there was little sense talking about a seperate Greek and other Middle-Eastern cultures. Hellenistic culture consisted not only of, just the opposite, it included the Greek heritage, along with other Middle-Eastern ones.
Furthermore, early medieval Europe was nothing like the Hellenistic world, and a completely different set of values determined its identity, which resembled a dogmatic Judeo-Northern mix. It was only until the Renaissance and the Enlightment that the philosophical basis of Ancient Greece were redescovered and implemented to the degree to really affect people's lives. Not surprisingly, this was a period when religion in Europe slowly began to lose its prime, and imo as a result of that, Western civilization came to be defined as it is today. In this sense, secularism, division of church and state, rationalism and empiricism, rather than dogmatism is what gave the West its core identity, and allowed arts and sciences to freely develop and shape Western identity even further.
During this astonishing civilizational advances in the West, the Middle-Eastern Hellenistic heritage has been shaped by a different ideology, that of Islam. Its relatively stronger grasp over most areas of life (especially in the later period, which lasted till recently) has conditioned the Middle East to take on a paralel path to that of Europe, diverging from the common Hellenistic heritage.
In the end, can one logically ask the question: Is Greece the birthplace of the West? I dont think so. The West is defined as they themselves choose to. The Greek cultural achievements arent Western, they belong to the world. It's up to every person and every nation to choose whether they want to adopt and follow those ideals or not. If West means to embark on such a quest and take it a step further, than so be it. The West stretches from where the sun of freedom sets to the place where the last person is warmed by its rays.

 

[Greek Stud]

Agreeing with what Companiero says, I want to add that: During the Middle Ages, Hellenism was changing in the same ways that the rest of Europe was changing. For example, I have collections of Byzantine Greek music that uses the same sounds and music as Renaissance Music. And when the Middle Ages brough Europe behind, even the Byzantines had to rediscover lost knowledge. Such as technologies, city planning, and inventions. Byzantine Rome was also involved with all the Christians Wars against each other. In fact, had our churches not fought each other, the landscape of present Greece would have different boudaries. Hellenism under Rome was suppressed, but exchanges in the Far East technology may have shaped the culture much differently.

Byzantine Rome and the Hellenic conservatism, that would have survived had the Norman Franks not plundered Constantinople in the Crusades, was approaching technology in the same way the Orient, specifically China was. Historians theorize that from looking at the Cappadocian underground cities, the 1,000 Churches of Armenia, and the monastaries of Greece, they believe the culture was gearing towards what you would imagine Tibet to be like, in the religious since.

When the Westphalia Treaty was signed to end the conflicts of the European Churches, ultimately leading to a Secular approach to government, although globalism is the real goal of the treaty. Hellenes that escaped the Ottoman campaign, and scholars that were allowed to leave Greece mainly settled in Italy, and are said to have been participants of the Renaissance and tried to influence the West to include the Hellenes. Unfortunately, the West lost time and time again. The Battles at Varna were the last defeats the West could take. And ultimately, Hellenism became an underground culture.

The Turkish influence on Hellenes does not operate in the same way that Oriental culture influenced Greeks. Much like the supression of the Roman Empire, Turks lowered the status of Hellenes. Priests today, instead of wearing the ornamental gold and jewelry that is the true Orthodox dress, now wear the Black gowns to mourn their people's suppressed status of slavery. Although you may find Greeks smoking Turkish Hookah or drinking coffee from Turkish innovation, these arent considered to be traditional Hellenic meritime events. Infact it is often considered to be bad cultural habits, said to be lazy cultural habits. Greeks that become lazy and dont work are told they are not Greek, they work like Turks, expecting someone else to do the work for them. So some cultural habits of today that you can say Greeks do, are not all Hellenic. And some generalizations of new culture in Hellenistic culture are obviously not always true: refering to the laziness and murderous Turks.

I believe the Hellenism is the birthplace of Western Culture. Not in the since that it is Greek, because it isnt all Greek, but that the instances of the Battle of Salamis and the focal points in European conflicts: Crusades, Cold War, World War, today's War on terrorism show that the values of the scientists of Greece are always looked at to be preserved. Their philosophies, their day to day lifestyle, and how they view the world. The studies and writings from Classical Greece seem to be the foundation of cultural life in Western Nations. Then on top of those values are stronger values of Judeo-Christian philosophies and then next would come the ideas presented in the Westphalia Treaty.

 

[Companiero]

Hellenistic culture doesnt overlap with Greek culture, it's been said couple of times already. The exchange of cultural habits, cults, rites, technologies that occured during the Hellenistic age transcends national boundaries in the sense that it created a new Hellenistic culture.
And the second part of the letter (which included the word 'murderous Turks') is not worth commenting. (btw, black gowns in orthodoxy has nothing to do with 'turkish slavery'; as a matter of fact the turks forbid the priests to wear black)

 

[Greek Stud]

Um Companiero, first I said that calling Turks murderous is wrong, read carefully before you accuse.

Second, the black gowns are exactly for that purpose. My Grandfather is an Orthodox Priest.

You might also want to check the dress of the Eccumenical Patriarch in Istanbul, Turkey. He wears black.

 

[Vrylakas]

Edith Hamilton wrote once that Western Man lives in a Jewish house with Greco-Roman furniture.

The early Greek civilizations certainly laid the groundwork for what would later become Western Civilization, as did the Roman Empire - but while they made extremely important contributions, I would be careful not to call them "Western". Both looked not to Europe or to any European peoples for their peers, they looked to the southern Mediterranean and western Asia for their cultural impulses. Neither considered themselves "European" or "Western", and neither identified with the "barbarian" peoples living around them in Europe, though we today call those barbarians Europeans.

There've been many discussions on this, one I sparked here in this thread about how, when and where the West started.

 

[Companiero]

Greek Stud, sorry about the misunderstanding, if any.

Second, the black gowns are exactly for that purpose. My Grandfather is an Orthodox Priest.

You might also want to check the dress of the Eccumenical Patriarch in Istanbul, Turkey. He wears black.

Yes, he does. But the tradition of wearing black dress predates the Turks. In fact the Turks forbid the clergy to wear black, and only allowed coloured vestments to be worn, cos the black and white were reserved for the Islamic clergy. After the independence of Greece this changed however and they got back to black, such as it is today.