by
Damien F. Mackey
“King Arius [Areus] of Sparta to Onias the High Priest, greetings. We have found a document
about the Spartans and the Jews indicating that we are related and that both of
our nations are descended from Abraham”.
I Maccabees 12:20-21
According
to this famous letter sent by king Arius of the Spartans to the Jewish High
Priest, Onias, as recorded in the First Book of Maccabees, the Spartans, likewise,
were of the stock of the great Hebrew
patriarch Abraham.
This
information has caused scholars to search avidly for a connection between the
two nations.
Amongst
the conclusions at which scholars arrive, the Spartans arose from Abraham’s
wife Keturah, or they were from the sea-faring tribe of Dan, or from the
warrior tribe of Gad.
Or,
according to Steve Collins (and others), the Spartans were of the fierce tribe
of Simeon (“The Missing Simeonites”): https://stevenmcollins.com/articles/the-missing-simeonites/
The Spartans themselves declared that they
were a fellow tribe of the Jews and corresponded with an ancient Jewish High
Priest about their relationship. The book of I Maccabees14:16-23 records this
correspondence, which includes this statement:
"And this is the copy of the letter which the Spartans sent: The Chief
magistrates and the city of the Spartans send greeting to Simon, the chief
priest, and to the elders and the priests and the rest of the Jewish people, our
kinsmen." (Emphasis added.)
Notice the Spartans called the Jews "our
kinsmen." The Spartans did not proclaim themselves to be Jews, but rather
that they were "kinsmen" to the Jews (i.e. members of one of the
other tribes of Israel). That the Spartans acknowledged a common ancestry with
the Jews of the tribe of Judah gives powerful weight to the assertion that they
were Israelites who migrated to Greece instead of the Promised Land. The
Spartan culture is most like that of the tribe of Simeon, most of which
apparently left the Israelite encampment in the Wilderness after a Simeon
prince was executed by a Levite.
There is a third group of wanderers in ancient
history which manifested a Simeonite/ Israelite ancestry, but this column is
now long enough. The story of another band of Simeonites who struck out on
their own in the world will be told in a future column. ….
[End of quote]
Coin depicting King Areus I of Sparta
Collins will also tell of these interesting points by Professor Jones:
.... The Book, Sparta, by A.H.M. Jones, a
Professor of Ancient History at Cambridge University, noted several things
about Sparta. He states the Spartans worshipped a "great law-giver"
who had given them their laws in the "dim past" (page 5 of his book).
This law-giver may have been Moses.
Professor Jones also noted the Spartans
celebrated "the new moons" and the "seventh day" of the
month" (page 13). Observing new moons was an Israelite calendar custom,
and their observance of "a seventh day" could originate with the
Sabbath celebration. Prof. Jones also notes, as do other authorities, that the
Spartans were known for being "ruthless" in war and times of crisis.
This sounds exactly like the Simeonite nature, which was given to impulsive
cruelty, as the Bible confirms.
Interestingly, Prof. Jones writes that the
Spartans were themselves divided into several "tribes" which
constituted distinct military formations within the Spartan army (pages 31-32).
At the Jewish site: https://www.mayimachronim.com/when-jews-and-greeks-were-brothers-the-untold-story-of-chanukah/
which gives the article, “When Jews and Greeks Were
Brothers: The Untold Story of Chanukah”, the question is asked: “Incredibly,
the Spartan king suggests that the Spartans are descendants of Abraham, too!
Where does this bizarre belief come from?” It proceeds from there to consider
various possibilities, noting Hebrew and Spartan similarities:
Greek Sons of Abraham
Sometime in the 2nd century BCE lived a Greek historian and
sage named Cleodemus, sometimes referred to as Cleodemus the Prophet. He also
went by the name Malchus which, because of its Semitic origins, makes some
scholars believe he could have been Jewish. Cleodemus wrote an entire history
of the Jewish people in Greek. While this text appears to have been lost, it is
cited by others, including Josephus (Antiquities,
i. 15).
Cleodemus commented on Abraham’s marriage
to Keturah (typically identified with Hagar), and their children. This is
recorded in Genesis 25, which begins:
And Abraham took another wife, and her name
was Keturah. And she bore him Zimran, and Yokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and
Ishbak, and Shuach. And Yokshan begot Sheva and Dedan. And the sons of Dedan
were Ashurim, and Letushim, and Leumim. And the sons of Midian were Ephah, and
Epher, and Chanokh, and Avidah, and Elda’ah. All these were the children of
Keturah. And Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac, while to the sons of the
concubines that Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts, and he sent them away from Isaac,
while he was still alive, to the east country.
Abraham had six children with Keturah, from
which came at least seven grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren which
the Torah names explicitly. The Torah then makes it clear that Abraham gave
everything that he had to Isaac—including the Covenant with God and the land of
Israel—while the others received gifts and were sent away from the Holy Land.
Cleodemus suggests that Epher (or another
child named Yaphran), the great-grandson of Abraham, migrated to Africa—which
is where the term “Africa” comes from! (This is particularly interesting
because Epher was the son of Midian, and Tziporah the wife of Moses was a
Midianite, and is described as a Cushite,
or African/Ethiopian.) Cleodemus states that Epher, Yaphran, and Ashurim
assisted the Greek hero Hercules in one of his battles. Following this,
Hercules married one of their daughters—a great granddaughter of Abraham—and
had a son with her. This son was Diodorus, one of the legendary founders of
Sparta!
It appears that the Spartan king Areus was
aware of this possible historical connection, and accepted it as fact. This
connection may explain why the Spartans were so similar to ancient
Israelites. (Others have suggested that because the Israelite tribe of
Shimon—known for being fierce warriors—did not receive a set portion in the
Holy Land, many of them moved elsewhere and ended up in Sparta, or ended up in
Sparta after being expelled from Israel by the Assyrians alongside the other
lost tribes.) In his book Sparta,
renowned historian Hugo Jones writes that the Spartans held in the highest
regard a certain ancient law-giver, much like Moses the law-giver of Israel.
Mackey’s comment: For more on this “certain ancient law-giver
[Lycurgus], much like Moses the law-giver of Israel”, see my article:
Moses and Lycurgus
The article continues:
The Spartans celebrated new moons (Rosh Chodesh), and unlike their
Greek counterparts, even a seventh day of rest! Of course, the Spartans
themselves were very different from other Greeks, particularly those in Athens,
whom Sparta often battled. The Spartan form of government was different, too,
not an Athenian-style democracy but a monarchy that governed alongside a
“council of elders”, much like Israel’s king and Sanhedrin.
Perhaps most similarly, the Spartans were
known for their “stoic” way of life. The later Greek school of stoicism was
modeled on the ancient way of the Spartans. This meant living simply and
modestly, being happy with what one has, and most importantly, putting mind
above body, and logic above emotion. This almost sounds like something out of Pirkei Avot, and is a teaching echoed across Jewish texts both ancient and modern.
In fact, when Josephus tried to explain who the rabbis were to his Roman
audience, he said that they were Jewish stoic philosophers!
Bust of Zeno of Citium (c. 334-262 BCE), founder of the Athenian school
of Stoicism. Zeno taught that God permeates the whole universe, and knowledge
of God requires goodness, fortitude, logic, and living a life of Virtue.
Gideon and Leonidas
Undoubtedly, the most famous story of the
Spartans is the Battle of Thermopylae.
Mackey’s comment: For my Jewish version of the real “Thermopylae”, the
Battle that changed the world, see my series:
https://www.academia.edu/34747621/Thermopylae_changed_nothing._Part_Three_Based_on_the_Book_of_Judith_Drama
The article continues, adding the further biblical elements of Gideon
and his 300, Mordecai from the Book of Esther, and the Maccabees:
Around 480 BCE, the Persian emperor Xerxes
invaded Greece with a massive force. Xerxes first sent messengers to the Greek
city-states to offer peaceful surrender. According to the historian Herodotus,
Sparta’s king Leonidas told the messenger: “A slave’s life is all you
understand, you know nothing of freedom. For if you did, you would have
encouraged us to fight on, not only with our spear, but with everything we
have.” Spoken like a true Maccabee.
The messenger then told Leonidas and his
men to bow down, to which Leonidas, like his historical contemporary Mordechai,
said: “We bow down before no man.” Later, when the Persian boasted that his
empire was the wealthiest in the world, with gold reserves the likes of which
Leonidas could only dream of, Leonidas replied: “Ares is lord. Greece has no
fear of gold.”
This statement almost makes Leonidas seem
like a monotheist. Indeed, the Spartans worshiped Ares—the god of war—above all
others. Interestingly, the Torah commonly describes Hashem in similar military
terms, like a great warrior riding a merkavah
or chariot, as a “God of Legions” (Hashem
Tzva’ot), and even as a “Man of War” (Ish Milchamah, see Exodus 15:3). Of course, the Spartans
had their abominable statues and idols, which is perhaps the greatest
distinction (and a critical one) between them and ancient Israel.
‘Gideon choosing his men’ by Gustav Doré.
God told Gideon to choose worthy soldiers based on the way they drank from a
spring. Those that went on their knees and bent over to drink were
disqualified. Those three hundred who modestly took cupfuls to their mouth were
selected. (Judges 7:5-7)
King Leonidas went on to assemble just
three hundred brave men to face off against the massive Persian invasion.
Although they ultimately lost, the Spartans fought valiantly, inspired their
fellow Greeks, and did enough damage to hamper Persian victory. This story of
three hundred, too, has a Biblical parallel. The Book of Judges records a
nearly-identical narrative, with the judge Gideon assembling three hundred
brave men and miraculously defeating a massive foreign invasion.
Which came first? The earliest complete
Greek mythological texts date back only to the 3rd century BCE. By then, the Tanakh had long been completed, and in that
same century was first translated into the Greek Septuagint. It isn’t hard to imagine Greek scholars and
historians of the 3rd
century getting their hands on the first Greek copies of Tanakh and
incorporating those narratives into their own. In fact, the Greek-Jewish
philosopher Aristobulus of Alexandria (181-124 BCE) admitted that all of Greek
wisdom comes from earlier Jewish sources. The later Greek philosopher Numenius
of Apamea said it best: “What is Plato but Moses speaking Greek?”
Mackey’s comment: Hooray! At last a right perspective – the pagan
Greek story influenced by the Jewish one, and not the other way around as is usually
suggested.
The article continues:
Yafet and Iapetus
The similarities between Greek myth and
more ancient Jewish texts are uncanny. Hercules was a mighty warrior whose
first task (of twelve) was to slay a lion, like the mighty Shimshon who first
slays a lion in Judges. Deucalion survives a great flood that engulfs the whole
world as punishment from an angry Zeus. Like Noah before him, Deucalion has a
wife and three sons, and like Noah, Deucalion is associated with wine-making
(the root of his name, deukos).
Pandora’s curiosity brings about evil just like Eve’s, while Asclepius carries
a healing serpent-staff like Moses. Aristophanes even taught that Zeus first
made man as male and female in one body, and later split them in half, just as
the Torah and Talmud do.
Roman mosaic of Hercules and the Nemean Lion, and a Roman fresco of
Samson and the lion, from the same time period.
In Jewish tradition, the Greeks come from
the Biblical Yavan, son of Yafet (or Yefet or Japheth), son of Noah (Genesis
10:2). Yavan is the same as the Greek Ion (or Iawones), one of the Greek gods,
and Ionia, referring
to one of its most important regions, and the dialect of the great Greek poets
Homer and Hesiod, as well as the scholars Herodotus and Hippocrates. Meanwhile,
the Greeks worshipped Iapetus (same as Yafet) as a major god. Iapetus was the
father of Prometheus, the god who supposedly fashioned man from the mud of the
earth. So, not surprisingly, the Biblical Yavan and Yafet are firmly in the
Greek tradition as well.
….
On Chanukah, we celebrate the Jewish
victory over the Seleucids. Not of the Greeks as a whole, but of a relatively
small faction of Syrian Greeks, far from the Greek heartland which always
enjoyed a good relationship with Israel, starting with Alexander the Great and
through to the Spartans and Maccabees.
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