Greeks

The Greeks were not only great teachers and artists, they were also the world’s greatest traders and colonizers. 80:7.12-13

In the Urantia Book

Greeks an Christianity

• Jesus said: “The Jews have extolled goodness; the Greeks have exalted beauty; the Hindus preach devotion; the faraway ascetics teach reverence; the Romans demand loyalty; but I require of my disciples life, even a life of loving service for your brothers in the flesh.” 191:5.3
• The backbone of the early Christian church consisted of Christianized Greek proselytes to Judaism. 195:3.6
• Greek believers carried Christianity to whole Roman Empire 195:0-1

Mentioned Greeks

• Some Greeks mentioned in The Urantia Book:
• * Alexander the Great, the Macedonian king and conqueror 133:5.1
• * Pindar, poet 98:2.5
• * Xenophanes, poet and philosopher 98:2.6
• * Anaxagoras, Pre-Socratic philosopher 98:2.6
• * Aristotle, the great philosopher 98:2.6 121:6.3
• * Plato, the great philosopher 92:5.12 98:2.6
• * Rodan of Alexandria, an unknown Greek philosopher 160:0.1
• * Sato, leader of Adamsonite settlers, and ascendant of Greeks 80:7.3-4
• * anonymous Greeks whom Jesus met:
• * a physician in Rome 132:4.5
• * a contractor and builder in Corinth 133:4.6
• * the mistress of inn in Corinth 133:4.8
• * a philosopher staying in the same hostelry in Athens 133:5
• * an old philosopher in Ramah 146:3.1-2 148:8.2
• * a group of inquiring Greeks in Jerusalem 174:5

Intellectual progress and stagnation

• The ancient Greeks, having preserved the traditions of Adamson’s teachings, were among the first to recognize that all disease is the result of natural causes. 90:3.9 90:4.9
• The early Chinese and the Greeks treated women better than did most surrounding peoples. 84:5.6
• both the Greeks and the Romans favored monogamous marriage. 83:6.3
• The fact of evolution is not a modern discovery; the ancients understood the slow and evolutionary character of human progress. The early Greeks had clear ideas of this despite their proximity to Mesopotamia. 74:8.5
• The Greek mind was willing to borrow new and good ideas even from the Jews. 195:1.3
• In Palestine, human thought was so priest-controlled and scripture-directed that philosophy and aesthetics were entirely submerged in religion and morality. In Greece, the almost complete absence of priests and “sacred scriptures” left the human mind free and unfettered, resulting in a startling development in depth of thought. But religion as a personal experience failed to keep pace with the intellectual probings into the nature and reality of the cosmos. In Greece, believing was subordinated to thinking; in Palestine, thinking was held subject to believing. In Palestine, religious dogma became so crystallized as to jeopardize further growth; in Greece, human thought became so abstract that the concept of God resolved itself into a misty vapor of pantheistic speculation 98:2.7-9
• Since the Greeks were not much interested in the philosophy of self-realization and an abstract Deity, they turned to mystery cults, such as the Eleusinian mysteries, the Dionysian nature worship, and the Orphic brotherhood 98:2.10
• No nation ever attained such heights of artistic philosophy in so short a time; none ever created such an advanced system of ethics practically without Deity and entirely devoid of the promise of human salvation; no nation ever plunged so quickly, deeply, and violently into such depths of intellectual stagnation, moral depravity, and spiritual poverty as these same Greek peoples when they flung themselves into the mad whirl of the mystery cults. 98:2.11

Bible parallels

Passages that the paragraphs cited above parallel, quote or reinterpret, from Duane Faw’s Paramony cross-references. Hover a reference to read it.

• Peace be upon you 191:5.3 — Jn 20:21a.
• Great commission 191:5.3 — Mt 24:14; Mt 28:19-20a; Mk 13:10; Mk 16:15; Lk 24:47; Jn 17:18; Acts 1:8b.
• So send I you 191:5.3 — Jn 17:18; Jn 20:21b.
• When Spirit comes 191:5.3 — Acts 2:1-4.
• Baptized with Spirit of Truth 191:5.3 — Acts 1:5.
• Tarry here 191:5.3 — Lk 24:49.
• Many mansions 133:4.6 — Jn 14:2. *City of God*: Heb 11:10. *Temporal versus spiritual*: Mt 6:19-20; Lk 12:21; 1 Ti 6:17; 1 Jn 2:15-17.
• Sons of the Most High 133:4.8 — Ps 82:6.

Where it appears

Greeks is linked in 108 paragraphs of the text; the first 40 are listed.

See also

• Greece

What links here