Hellenistic religions

With the expansion of Christianity into the Hellenistic world either to Jews or increasingly to Gentiles, there were various reasons why the Christian message that spread, for example by Paul, met the needs of the Hellenistic Age and world. There was no lack of religions, but there was a crisis of upheaval, unrest, and uncertainty and a desire to escape from mortality and the domination of unbending fate. There was also a desire to win personal knowledge of the universe and a dignified status within it—i.e., a religious identity crisis. City-states with their cults of civic gods were unstable, because men changed from place to place and the gods of the city were distant from individual needs and anxieties. After Alexander’s conquests, the resulting religious syncretism did not meet individual needs and longings that were increasingly becoming conscious. Many Gentiles turned to Judaism, at least as “god fearers,” and later to Christianity. There were also “mystery religions,” the secrets of which were known only to the initiate, which may have arisen from Eastern fertility cults with their dying and rising gods and were transformed in the Hellenistic Age to cults of a saviour god whose dying and rising gives personal immortality. Such mystery cults often provided meaningful relationships with fellow initiates.

Astrology

There were elements in the Greek world that may have come from the East, partly Egyptian and Babylonian, which gave rise to astrology. The basic conviction of astrology was that the heavenly bodies were deities that in a direct way control life and events on earth. An older idea of tychē, or “fate,” originally signified the chance element in the universe, a capriciousness that increased insecurity. Astrology transformed this into a fate or destiny in which everything is strictly regulated by celestial deities. Man’s problem, then, is that of finding security from overwhelming powers outside human control. One way is to “read a horoscope.” Because the heavenly deities are systematic and orderly according to astronomic observation, this order and regularity can be exploited to see how and in what way events will happen and can perhaps be used or avoided. Another way is to deal with such forces through magic. From the Hellenistic period many magical papyri with formulas for dealing with sicknesses, demons, and other adverse forces have been found. Magic attempts to manipulate and control what affects the world by a kind of participation in the event.

Philosophical solutions

Solutions were also sought in philosophy. Socrates, a 5th-century-bce Greek philosopher, was largely concerned with the search for the “good,” the good life. After Plato and Aristotle, however, philosophical systems sought to supply man’s longing for inward security and stability. These were sought not by an in-depth understanding of reality but by ad hoc constructions—a new dogmatism for providing infallible plans and attaining immediate security—that the age demanded. Those philosophies were crude constructions that gave shelter and were defended by an unyielding dogmatism as absolute truths; if they were proved false, they would remove their promised security. Epicureanism, founded by the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270 bce), was basically a philosophy of escape, and its goal was serenity and tranquillity, a negative concept characterized by absence of fear, pain, and struggle. Fate, providence, and the afterlife were eliminated to deny the anxieties they provoked in terms of control, reward, or judgment. Epicurus attempted to meet this crisis by adopting a completely material view of the universe, including the soul, and thereby eliminating interference by deities both in life and after death. He did believe in the gods; but they, too, lived in their own perfect tranquillity, away from the universe. The Epicurean was both self-reliant and at peace with the absence of pain. There was also emphasis on friendship and the development of close communities.

Zeno, a 3rd-century-bce philosopher, was the founder of Stoicism. Stoicism was a rule of life that held that all reality was material but was animated by a rational principle that was at the same time both the law of the universe and of the human soul. The wise man then could accept and learn to live a life in conformity to this permeating reason without letting anything affect him. He responded to duty and accepted it.

Cynicism was a philosophy that maintained a cosmic view of life with a method of dealing with crisis by reducing man’s needs to a minimum. Later in the Hellenistic period, a group of Stoic–Cynic preachers arose and, in New Testament times, wandered around calling men to repent and change their lives from sin to virtue.