In Reply to: alphabet soup & buddhist nuns posted by AG on January 15, 2004 at 07:54:33:
Hi Annovagrrl! By the way, happy belated birthday! I had no idea it was your birthday. Anyway, I found your statement below interesting.
"If I had the time and energy, I could make the argument that as a religion, Christianity blends Greco-Roman, Egyptian, and Hebrew spiritual traditions--maybe not alphabet soup, but something of a first century vegetable stew. The Gospel of John is clearly influenced by Aristotlian philosophical concepts about the Logos or Divine Word in a way that the synoptic gospels are not."
So true what you say about the Logos ("the Word") of John chapter one. I don't think that John, howver, was influenced directly by reading Aristotlian thought, but that he got it second-hand from the writings of Philo, a Hellenized Jew of Alexandria. Philo was something of a genius, well-versed in Greek thought, who promoted Greek education. Philo attempted a major syncretism of Jewish and Greek religious concepts, comparing Greek gods and thinking to Hebrew, to prove that Jewish moral concepts were superior to Greek.
Since Philo was one of the most respected and prolific author's of Jesus' day and his writings were in every city in John's day, I highly suspect that John picked up the concept from Philo's writings, taking it a step beyond Philo, inspired that the Logos concept applied to Jesus.
It is estimated by historians that the concept of Hebrew monotheism was so powerful in penetrating Roman thought, that by Jesus' day 1 in every 10 Romans was either a converted Jew or an uncircumcized believer.
There's nothing new about Jews and Christians borrowing worthy concepts from the Greeks. Paul repeatedly quoted Greek poets & philosophers, having had a full Greek education himself. In Acts 17:28 he quoted the Cretan poet, Epimenides' work "Cretica" as well as the Cilician poet Aratus' "Phaenomena" & Cleanthes in his "Hymn to Zeus." (Imagine Paul taking lines spoken about Zeus and applying them to Yahweh.) In Titus 1:12 Paul is again quoting Epimenides & even calls him "a prophet."