"Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists." Review.

In that context, I forgot the paragraph that Vincent Cook has on his site Epicurus.net about "Epicurus and The Judeans" (for some reason I can't reach the site this morning, so this is the archive.org link) -

Epicureanism and the Judeans

In the Talmudic Mishnah, one of the authoritative documents of Rabbinical Judaism, there is a remarkable statement in the tractate Sanhedrin that defines the Jewish religion in relation to Epicureanism:

“All Israel has a share in the world to come, as Isaiah said: And all of your people who are righteous will merit eternity and inherit the land. And these are the people who do not merit the world to come: The ones who say that there is no resurrection of the dead, and those who deny the Torah is from the heavens, and Epicureans (‘Apikorsim’).”

Modern Jews use “apikoros” as a generic term for an unbeliever, but the authors of the Talmud were clearly singling out followers of Epicurus. In effect, this statement is saying that all of Israel will enjoy eternal life except those who get corrupted by Epicurus or certain characteristic Epicurean beliefs (namely, Epicurean denials of an after-life and of divine providence). This peculiar hostility towards Epicureanism is all the more remarkable for the fact that this particular statement was later taken to be the basis for speculation about the meaning of Jewishness among Rabbis of the Middle Ages, the most famous of whom, Moses Maimonides, explicitly continued the Jewish tradition of denouncing Epicureanism late in the 12^th century A.D.

Antiochus IV

The origins of this anti-Epicurean element of Jewish thought can be traced to the 2^nd century B.C., when the Seleucid monarch Antiochus IV Epiphanes embarked on a military campaign against Egypt in an attempt to conquer his Ptolemaic rival. Judea had the misfortune to be located between the Seleucid heartland of Syria and Ptolemaic Egypt, and the Judeans were divided into pro-Seleucid and pro-Ptolemaic factions. At this time, the hereditary Zadokite priesthood had been deeply influenced by Greek culture, adopting doctrines that tended to discount the conservative oral tradition and deny some of the more superstitious beliefs then current, notably the belief in bodily resurrection. At the time of Antiochus's campaign, the Zadokite high priest was a pro-Ptolemaic partisan.

Antiochus, anxious to secure Judea in connection with his Egyptian expedition and to create a more culturally-unified empire, had the Zadokite high priest removed and founded a Greek-style Gymnasium in Jerusalem. Antiochus was sympathetic to Epicureanism (albeit not acting in accord with Epicurus's injunctions to avoid politics), so his attempt at a forced hellenization of Judea was closely linked to Epicureanism in the minds of the Judean patriots. Another factor was that Epicureans were prominent in the hellenized cities of Galilee, creating a rivalry between Epicureanism and the traditional religion among the northern Judeans. Antiochus's provocations brought about a strong nationalistic reaction, which exploded into violence when a rumor of Antiochus's death reached Judea. While the rumor was false, nonetheless the Hasmonean leader Judas Maccabeus was ultimately successful in his revolt against the Seleucids.

After the Hasmoneans consolidated their power, a rather delicate situation developed with respect to the priesthood. The hereditary successors to the priesthood had had their legitimacy fatally undermined by their hellenizing tendencies and their close association with the foreign Ptolemaic monarchy. The party of the “separatists” (the Pharisees), prevented the Zadokite legitimists (the Sadducees) from reassuming control of the temple in Jerusalem, while some of the Sadducees set up a rival temple in the Egyptian city of Leontopolis.

To further complicate matters, Judea later became a client state of Rome, and the Romans installed their own Jewish rulers and Sadducee priests. Not only were they opposed by the Pharisees, other anti-foreign religious factions arose during the late Hasmonean period (early 1^rst century B.C.) to challenge the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Samaritans (a regional offshoot of Judaism whose followers had established their own center of worship on Mount Gezzerim), their adherents questioning the necessity for temple ritual and priestly authority altogether. One of these dissident groups called themselves the “keepers” (Nazarim) of divine wisdom. These Nazarim, or Nazarenes, taught that righteousness towards others along with frequent rituals of baptism and anointment and a ritual eucharist for the dead was sufficient to place oneself in accord with God without the traditional temple ceremonies. After the Roman conquest of Judea, the Nazarene cults became one of the focal points of resistance to Roman and Herodian rule, as both the Pharisees and Sadducees were co-opted by the Herodian monarchy that had been installed by the Romans.

Spoils from the Jerusalem Temple

The historical significance of these intricacies of ancient Judean politics is that the Pharisees are the direct ancestors of modern Rabbinical Judaism, while the Nazarene movement spawned two religions that have survived to modern times, the Mandaean and the Christian. The founding of these two Nazarene religions was attributed to John the Baptist and Jesus, respectively.

The Talmud is derived from the Pharisaic oral tradition, so the Talmud passage quoted above can be explained as a Pharisaic attack on the Sadducees by comparing some of the distinctive Sadducee beliefs to those of the hated Seleucid defiler of the Temple. It seems that the Sadducees could never quite live down the charge of having sold out to the Seleucids and the Romans, as they disappeared shortly after the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple in 70 A.D. and the genealogical records for proving their Zadokite ancestry (the last remaining basis for Sadducee legitimacy) along with it. Today, the memory of the Maccabean revolt against Antiochus survives in the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah, and the legacy of the factional conflicts of the Hasmonean period lives on in the separate religions of the Jews, Mandaeans, and Christians and in the Talmudic denunciation of Epicureanism.

No I don't recall seeing that -- if you come across it please post - I will google too.

Simple to find - I will see if there is a better version - http://www.thinkatheist.com/group/atheists…-by-christopher

The eminent heads of Italy were discussing around the welcoming table of Medici for the purpose to reconcile Plato and Jesus. They were dreaming of a religion that unites Christian morality and Greek Philokalia. For all this world, after Alexandrian era, Epicurus was a scandal, such a scandal was for being someone reasonable and to believe in the things that catches with his hands and the right judgments of his conclusions. Epicurus contemporaries were buried him already under calumny, slander and filthy perversions. His extensive work was neglected, lost and we owe in luck the few precious pieces that survived. Hidden for centuries like a spark in ashes were helpful as tinder when the crew of time arrived. The research and understanding have renovated his luminous figure, his genuine Greek figure, and inspired by his luminous physiognomy we restore the antiquity as it was in reality. (Excerpt from the book by the Professor of Philosophy Charalambos Theodoridis entitled "Epicurus - The True Face of the Ancient World")

"These are the kinds of results we would get from our statistical survey of the population of Greece as regards the disappearance of the Hellenic element and the influence of the Jewish culture. Superficially, on the documents and in name only are we Greeks. But underneath, in our very essence and our animate matter, we are Jews. And we should not be deceived by the simplistic arguments promoted by various priests and preachers that, supposedly, Christianity is one thing, Judaism another. Or that Orthodoxy is one thing, Roman-Catholicism another. Such claims are but fraudulent sophistries and overstretched naiveté. All those that insist upon such foolishness, are like those who claim that whores are different from hookers. But they both work in brothels. That a long distance runner is different from a discus thrower. But they are both athletes. That there are differences between a lymphoma, leukaemia and laryngeal cancer. But they are all cancers of some sort. Malignant blemishes that ended the lives of Cavafy and Freud. We modern Greeks resemble our ancient ancestors only in form. But the mass, this m the physicists talk about, is utterly Jewish. And the space, the spatium or this s the physicists talk about, within which the de-Hellenisation of the Greeks took place, is Christian Byzantium. And the time, the tempus or the t the physicists talk about, within whose duration the process of Jew-ification of the Greeks took place, stretches from the time of Emperor Theodosius until this very day.

Theodosius destroyed temples, ravaged ancient statues, closed down stadiums, theatres, Greek schools. All the sources that were the lifestream of the Hellenic way of life. This is why he is remembered as “the Great”. Which is the way his predecessor, Constantine, is also remembered. The Caesar who murdered his own wife and son. And they were first called “Great” by those who also called “Great” the Emperors Athanasius, Basil and all their ilk. Destroyers, forgers, vandals of the Hellenic idea. But there is another voice, persistently whispering from the shadows, that all the brutalities the Christians inflicted upon the Greeks mean nothing in the end for those that did not become Jewish-Greeks but remained Hellenic-Greeks. It rises from a distant place and is only heard by a few:

Just because we tore their statues down,

and cast them from their temples,

does not mean that the gods are dead.

This is Cavafy, dear reader, not some miser. Not some invented god. And the poem is called Ionian. It is not called Cherubicon. The dissolution and extinguishing of the classical Greek by Jewish-minded Christians lasted from the time of Theodosius until the time of Empress Eudoxia. Up to 843AD, with the official restitution of the icons. This holiday in the Orthodox calendar is celebrated annually since then, at the beginning of Spring! It is a grandiose celebration attended by state officials and foreign dignitaries. Viewed from a positive perspective, it symbolizes the triumph of Christianity. But viewed from its negative perspective, it represents the utter destruction of everything Greek. It is the tombstone of the Hellenic idea. The last stand of the moderate “Greek” against the Asian monstrosity was through Leo III, the Isaurian. He got up one morning and realized that half the population of the empire had taken up the cloth and were having a splendid time. Then, like Jesus at the temple, he began what came to be known as the Iconomachy. That story reached its sad conclusion with the light defeated and darkness triumphant. With the Sunday of Orthodoxy and the appearance of the modern Greek identity. So Greeks only by name and superficially. And Jews to the bone, the blood, the heart, the intestines and the bile. Herein lies the key, the reason and the cause of the national schizophrenia".

An excerpt from the book "Gemma", by Dimitris Liantinis and as translated from greek into english, by Yannis Tsapras.

Quote from Daniel

a happy accident of chance

Same comment on this as before in my reference to A.A. Long. I think it is a common theme among religious opponents of Epicurus that they like to attribute the fact of life to "chance" rather than to the natural properties of the elements. "Chance" seems to carry a derogatory weight that they like to exploit.

Quote from Daniel

the command of God not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil

Even if the heavens were to open and Jesus were to appear to me personally I would never buy that this was a legitimate position for "God" to take.

Very interesting quotes.

Got to hand it to this guy that I think he's as wrong as he can be, but he follows ever wrong lead to its logical conclusion!

Death is not only an issue of Christians et.al, it is an issue of Greeks too. However, the Greeks in the basis of their culture, art, and philosophy they faced and this issue with dignity and bravery, and in accordance with the natural phenomena. Always, in greek tragedies and myths, there is a redemption and a victory for the human against to what provokes to him pain, fear, and confusion. And of course this is evidenced by Epicurean philosophy too.

Here is an excerpt from the book "Gemma" by Dimitris Liantinis that is explained those myths in the bible, and on how the natural became unnatural.

"The fourth chapter of Genesis is the story of Death. It is the tragedy of Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus. It is the fratricide of Cain and Abel. It is the fratricide of Polyneikes and Eteokles. Man was warned that if he tasted the fruit of knowledge, he would know death : “for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”– Genesis 2, 17 . And the threat, that was erstwhile issued by god to the splendidly naked creatures, soon materialized. They ate on Friday and died on Saturday. Since the subject of the third chapter of Genesis was knowledge, by necessity the subject of the fourth would be death. The two brothers, agricultural farmers, offer the first produce of their toils to mother nature as a grateful sacrifice. Abel presents a white lamb while Cain brings some fruits of the soil. Nature turns an attentive ear and listens to Abel's song but silently disregards Cain's plight. Abel's flock grows larger while Cain's fields grow parched. The hapless brother grows jealous of the prosperous one. “Let's go out to the field”, he tells him. While there, he lifts a large rock and brings it down forcefully on his brother's head. The head cracks in two. Blood and brains spill to the ground. The body collapses like a tree and falls flat in a single movement. Abel's eyesight is quickly fading. He turns to address his brother for the last time: - “Why did you slay me brother? I will never see the birds and the sun again. Never again will a maiden pour water over my hands at the spring. My child and my sheep will never know my caring touch again. Never again! You hear me? Nevermore!”

The writer of Genesis then says that lightning struck Cain's forehead and forever marked him as a murderer. But it was not lightning. It was that Nevermore! It was the last words uttered by Abel that became a wrinkle of death and marked his brother's brow. It is the same wrinkle we all carry on our brow from Cain's time and forever after. It is the knowledge of death. Among all things that live, animals, birds, plants, reptiles, stars, the knowledge of death is unique to humans. It is the heavy ransom with which we bought our intelligent consciousness. Our cognitive understanding.

Millions of humans had perished before Abel but did not know that they were dying. Just like the fish, birds, plants, reptiles, stars, die without such knowledge. They did not know that they were dying because they lived in the paradise of ignorance of the animal. Death arrived on this world with Cain. And the knowledge of death is a most costly comprehension. The billowing cloud brings rain to the thirsty plains and snow to the mountaintops. The cloud of Cain summoned and unleashed the lightning of terror in human existence. Its unworldly radiance that engulfed the land of our story became a vast cloak of blood. I mean that this Nevermore! It was the last words uttered by a dying Abel, was to become for humans the locus of the most savage terror concerning their dialectical relationship with death. The physical knowledge that by dying, man is lost forever, never to live again, sowed in his existence a horrible fear.

Forever! and Nevermore! Two phrases whose volume displacement has an absolute value. Their predetermined destiny is to be used by man solely for the definitive fact of death. Man could not bear this horrible fear in the face of death. He could not find the presence of mind to conquer it. To admit it and acknowledge it. To submit gracefully and with dignity to this relentless rightful force of nature. He wavered. And he wavered exactly at this crucial moment. So, the trophy was seized by death. Man started to flee and death took up the chase. And the poor sod is still running to escape. Distraught, blind and light-footed. He seeks, having lost his way, a safe place to hide. The only safety he finds is in caves and earthly habitations. These are muddy holes and rocky ravines, avalanches and landslides that bring him tumbling down to the unkempt basements of his sentiments and feverish imagination. These are lands hidden away in the darkness of existence, thousands of miles deep and far from the blazing troposphere of our logic. So that we can no longer hear Abel's lightning. The deafening sound of that Nevermore!

To conceal and escape from the horrible terror of death, man invented the gods and religions. And life after death. This first and foremost. Belief in the afterlife is the suspension system, the backbone of all religions. Find me a single religion whose founder did not construct its edifice upon the foundation stone of belief in the afterlife and I will gladly demonstrate how this religion doesn't have a single follower, not even its own founder. I am not talking about Buddha here because nirvana is abandonment, not virtuous pride.

Through gods and religions, all the dirty laundry of human history came into being and found their way into the light. Clergies, synagogues and catechism. Opium for the masses, dementia and fanaticism. Congealing theological hatred, odium theologicum. And alongside the unsightly shape and rotting flesh of all related offices. Like a malignant carcinoma and a parasite. The alleged holy visions, demonic possessions and exorcisms. And at its highest echelons you'll find the institutes of ignorance and the brilliant academies of darkness. The theological colleges and the holy Synod. It was through gods and religions that all the dirty laundry of human history found their way into the light.

From Aeschylus and “ἐλευθεροῦτε θεῶν τε πατρῷων ἓδη”[*] to the crosses of the Crusaders, to Hitler's Swastika and the recent Jihads against the American “infidels” during the Gulf Wars. In this mutation of human nature, the mark of Cain is much worse than the mark of Onan. Because here the derailing of the natural to the unnatural has to do with a perversion of the mind, of the spirit, and of core values. It is the counterfeiting of the entire history of civilization. Both are evils, but the venom of the viper is much more dangerous than the sting of a bee! For when all is said and done, Onan's brand set man off on a hunt for endurance and pleasure. But with Cain's mark man became the prey of fear and his own cowardice. With Onan, man casts himself off the rock while singing. With Cain, he sinks wailing in the mire". (Dimitris Liantinis “Gemma”)

[*] Paean as sung by the Greeks in the battle of Salamina (Aeschylus Persians 402-5).

Oh sons of the greeks,

Free your fatherland,

free your children, your wives, the temples of your fathers’ gods,

and the tombs of your ancestors,

Now the struggle is for all the things.

The essence of Aeschylus’s Paean lies in protecting family, and cult and in keeping the country, the land of the fathers, free by taking up arms in defense, and not in a war of ambition. The classical battle cry makes the defense of Greek territory a legitimate ground for “just war”, which has been key to the understanding of patriotism to the present day. The just defenders of hearth and home, of the ancestral soil that had produced and raised them, deserved victory. Such a motivation in its modern version aided in the territorial reconfiguration of Greece. Because the Greek military action was a reaction to defend Greek territory, Aeschylus’s lines also conveyed that war could have been avoided, if only the enemy had chosen to do so. Thus, the celebrated passage held the seeds to develop a public discourse on patriotic revenge, but also one on war and peace.

“Aeschylus describes the paean as a “holy cry uttered in a loud voice, a shout offered in sacrifice, emboldening to friends, and dissolving fear of the foe”. When an army marched into the battle of a navy left the harbor to wage war at sea, the men sang the paean. It was a combination of prayer, cheer, and rebel yell …Aeschylus is blunt about the paean’s terrifying effect on the Persian audience aboard ship.

Here is the Paean of the Epicureans, as said by Metrodorus :

This Saying is attributed to Metrodorus. An Epicurean leaves as little as possible to chance, to fortune, as is also discussed in Principal Doctrine 16. One does so neither by dreading, nor by worshipping fortune (as do the many), but by "anticipating" it. In a finely wrought methaphor, the author depicts such an anticipation as a barricade of sorts, the wise person having blocked every possible path of egress, keeping chance outside of his/her life. Continuing with the militant metaphor, such a person is determined not to surrender to chance under any circumstances.

An Epicurean, however, knows that before "that which is necessary" (i.e. death), we all "live in an unfortified city", as Metrodorus himself wrote in epicurean saying 31. One ought not to harbor delusions of immortality, thinking that all those fortifications against fortune will also serve in preventing death itself. Thus, when what is necessary as a law of nature comes along, one ought to remain in good cheer and high spirits. "Boldly spitting upon life" and those who cling on to in with some vain hopes of immortality (he is succumbing to this or that superstition), a true Epicurean departs from life singing a joyful paean to life, shouting out for all to hear that, yes, this life has been lived well.

Excellent points of contrast Daniel! All of these have many uses, especially in distinguishing Epicurus from Stoicism and Aristotelianism -

Quote from Daniel

"...we must also realize that Christians were not the only ones arguing from an intelligent design position. Much of what is said in this chapter of Christianity, insofar as it is based on the natural law, could be said of Stoicism and Aristotelianism as well, but historically Stoicism and Aristotelianism were influential in the long run because they supported the approach of Christianity, and therefore, Christianity took up their arguments and carried them forward..."

On the last point regarding the condemnation of suicide, it seems like he's confusing the Epicureans with the Stoics.

Epicurus' VS 38 He is a little man in all respects who has many good reasons for quitting life.

The Isonomia book that Rivelle linked to in the "Epicurus, Ionia and India" thread discusses the Athenians v the Ionians in terms of idealism v materialism. Apparently the intelligent design v natural selection debate has been around since at least 500 BC! I found the parts of the book dealing with philosophy to be a very interesting read.

Quote from elli

the book by the Professor of Philosophy Charalambos Theodoridis entitled "Epicurus - The True Face of the Ancient World")

Elli, can you please provide a link with further information about Theodoridis's book? And "Gemma" by Dimitris Liantinis?

Conducting a google search in English has thus far yielded nothing re. Theodoridis.

For Liantinis, there is more material in English. Do you have any advice regarding where to start reading etc. ?

His lecture here

http://www.liantinis.org/english/

contains much that is intriguing but also much that is rather enigmatic, and thus possibly misunderstood, for readers/listeners who do not speak Modern Greek.

FWIW I purchased Gemma here at Amazon and found it to be very good - https://www.amazon.com/Gemma-Dimitris…sr=8-1-fkmrnull