Note 1 — Chapter IV · RELATIVE FREETHOUGHT IN ISRAEL

The highest of all the ancient civilizations, that of Greece, was naturally the product of the greatest possible complex of culture-forces;1 and its rise to pre-eminence begins after the contact of the Greek settlers in Æolia and Ionia with the higher civilizations of Asia Minor.2 The great Homeric epos itself stands for the special conditions of Æolic and Ionic life in those colonies;3 even Greek religion, spontaneous as were its earlier growths, was soon influenced by those of the East;4 and Greek philosophy and art alike draw their first inspirations from Eastern contact.5 Whatever reactions we may make against the tradition of Oriental origins,6 it is clear that the higher civilization of antiquity had Oriental (including in that term Egyptian) roots.7 At no point do we find a “pure” Greek civilization. Alike the “Mycenæan” and the “Minoan” civilizations, as recovered for us by modern excavators, show a composite basis, in which the East is implicated.8 And in the historic period the connection remains obvious. It matters not whether we hold the Phrygians and Karians of history to have been originally an Aryan stock, related to the Hellenes, and thus to have acted as intermediaries between Aryans and Semites, or to have been originally Semites, with whom Greeks intermingled.9 On either view, the intermediaries represented Semitic influences, which they passed on to the Greek-speaking races, though they in turn developed their deities in large part on psychological lines common to them and the Semites.10