The Legacy of Greece: Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield
Philosophy
The Legacy of Greece: Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield
Greece -- Civilization
Among those elements which are not Greek, the first place must be given
to the original Gospel, of which I have said nothing yet. Our records of
the Galilean ministry, contained in the three synoptic Gospels, were not
compiled till long after the events which they describe, and must not be
used uncritically. But in my opinion, at any rate, the substance of the
teaching of Christ comes out very clearly in these books. No Hellenic
influence can be traced in it; there is not even any sign of the
Hellenized Judaism which for us is represented by his contemporary
Philo. But neither is it possible to call the Gospel Jewish, except with
many qualifications. Christ came before his countrymen as a prophet; he
deliberately placed himself in the line of the prophetic tradition.
Like other prophets of his nation, he did not altogether eschew the
framework of apocalyptic which was at that time the natural mould for
prophecy. But he preached neither the popular nationalism, nor the
popular ecclesiasticism, nor the popular ethics. His countrymen rejected
him as soon as they understood him. The Gospel was, as St. Paul said, a
new creation. It is most significant that it at once introduced a new
ethical terminology. The Greek words which we translate love (or
charity), joy, peace, hope, humility, are no part of the stock-in-trade
of Greek moralists before Christ. Men do not coin new words for old
ideas. Taken as a whole the Gospel is profoundly original; and a
Christian can find strong evidence for his belief that in Christ a
revelation was made to humanity at large, in which the religion of the
Spirit, in its purest and most universal form, was for the first time
presented to mankind. This revelation has to a considerable extent
passed into the common consciousness of the civilized world; but its
implications in matters of conduct, individual, social, and
international, are still imperfectly understood and have never been
acted upon, except feebly and sporadically. It is a reproach to us that
the teaching of Christ must be regarded as only one of many elements
which make up what we call Christianity. The Quakers, as a body, seem to
me to come nearest to what a genuinely Christian society would be.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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