The Ancient Hebrew Culture The ancient Hebrews often lived as nomads in the wilderness much like the

Bedouins of the Near and Middle East today. Their lifestyle revolved around their herds and flocks which required constant movement in search of green pastures. In the world, past and present, there are two major types of cultures: the Hebrew (or eastern) culture and the Greek (or western) culture. Both of these cultures view their surroundings, lives, and purpose in ways which would seem foreign to the other. With the exception of a few Bedouin nomadic tribes living in the Near East today, the ancient Hebrew culture has disappeared. What happened to this ancient Hebrew thought and culture? Around 800 BCE*, a new culture arose to the north. This new culture began to view the world very much differently than the Hebrews. This culture was the Greeks. Around 200 BCE the Greeks began to move south causing a coming together of the Greek and Hebrew culture. This was a very turbulent time as the two vastly different cultures collided. Over the following 400 years the battle raged until finally the Greek culture won and virtually eliminated all trace of the ancient Hebrew culture. The Greek culture then in turn influenced all following cultures including the Roman and European cultures, our own American culture and even the modern Hebrew culture in Israel today. As 21st Century Americans with a strong Greek thought influence we read the Hebrew Bible as if a 21st Century American had written it. In order to understand the ancient Hebrew culture in which the Tanakh* was written in, we must examine some of the differences between Hebrew and Greek thought. *The word Tanakh is simply another way of saying Old Testament. The word Tanakh is actually an acronym for the three divisions of the Hebrew Old Testament. The three sections are the Torah (Pentateuch or Books of Moses), Nevi'im (Prophets) & Ketuvim(Writings). Jewish philosophy (Hebrew: ( ) Yiddish: ) includes all philosophy carried out by Jews, or in relation to the religion of Judaism. Until modern Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) and Jewish Emancipation, Jewish philosophy was preoccupied with attempts to reconcile coherent new ideas into the tradition of Rabbinic Judaism; thus organizing emergent ideas that are not necessarily Jewish into a uniquely Jewish scholastic framework and world-view. With their acceptance into modern society, Jews with secular educations embraced or developed entirely new philosophies to meet the demands of a world in which they now found themselves. Medieval re-discovery of Greek thought among Gaonim of 10th century Babylonian academies brought rationalist philosophy intoBiblicalTalmudic Judaism. Philosophy was generally in competition with Kabbalah. Both schools would become part of classicRabbinic literature, though the decline of scholastic rationalism coincided with historical events which drew Jews to the Kabbalistic approach. For European Jews, emancipation and encounter with secular thought from the 18th-century onwards altered how philosophy was viewed. Oriental and Eastern European communities had later and more ambivalent interaction with secular culture than in Western Europe. In the varied responses to modernity, Jewish philosophical ideas were developed across the range of emerging religious denominations. These developments could be seen as either continuations, or breaks, with the canon of Rabbinic philosophy of the Middle Ages, as well as the other historical dialectic aspects of Jewish thought, and resulted in diverse contemporary Jewish attitudes to philosophical methods.

Philosophy in the Bible Rabbinic literature sometimes views Abraham as a "philosopher." Some have suggested that Abraham introduced a philosophy learned from Melchizedek; Some Jews ascribe the Sefer Yetzirah "Book of Creation" to Abraham.A midrash describes how Abraham understood this world to have a creator and director by comparing this world to "a house with a light in it", what is now called theArgument from design. The Book of Psalms contains invitations to "admire the wisdom of Hashem through his works"; from this, some scholars suggest, Judaism harbors a Philosophical under-current.The Book of Ecclesiastes is often considered to be the only genuine Philosophical work in the Hebrew Bible, its author seeks to understand the place of human beings in the world, and life's meaning.

Philo of Alexandria Philo attempted to fuse and harmonize Greek Philosophy and Jewish Philosophy via allegory which he learned from Jewish exegesis and the Stoics.Philo attempted to make his philosophy the means of defending and justifying Jewish religious truths. These truths he regarded as fixed and determinate, and philosophy was used as an aid totruth, and a means of arriving at it. To this end Philo chose from philosophical tenets of Greeks, refusing those that did not harmonize with Judaism such as Aristotle's doctrine of the eternity and indestructibility of the world. Dr. Bernard Revel, in dissertation on "Karaite Halacha", points to writings of a 10th century Karaite, Ya'qub al-Qirqisani, who quotes Philo, illustrating how Karaites made use of Philo's works in development of Karaism. Philo's works became important to Medieval Christian scholars who leveraged the work of Karaites to lend credence to their claims that "these are the beliefs of Jews" - a technically correct, yet mendacious, attribution.