Plato’s Gift to Christianity Archive

Reading Jerry Dell Ehrlich’s book Plato’s Gift to Christianity is likely to be an eye-opening experience. This underrated book is a paradigm shift no less than that found in science by the shift to the Copernican over the Ptolemaic worldview. Erlich sets out to answer a simple fundamental question: “Why, if Jesus and all the disciples were Jewish, is the entire New Testament written in Greek?” And “why within 100-years of Jesus’ reported religious ministry were all the leaders of the Christian Church Greek speaking?”
Erlich’s answers to these questions are compelling. Imagine if a group connected with “Hispanics For Jesus” wrote the Christian scriptures in modern day twenty second century North America. Imagine if all the names of the Hispanic characters in such scriptures had Americanized names, such as “Josh,” “Pete,” “Andre,” “Bart,” “Thad,” and so on. Imagine for a moment that even though Hispanic writers wrote such scriptures that they wrote them in modern day Americanized English. Imagine if the central Hispanic character in such scriptures was a real estate developer or architect who was educated or at least heavily exposed to the classical religious thinking of John Wesley in American schools. Then suppose that sometime in the distant future the American Empire declines and is replaced by, say, the Hispanic Empire and the Spanish language that existed beforehand. Then imagine that thousands of years after such a person lived, in say the year 4,000 or 5,000 A.D., scholars and religious followers erroneously claim this central religious figure was a descendent in a long line of Hispanic prophets.
The above watered-down story is something like what Ehrlich convincingly documents only in great depth in his book. The Christian figure Jesus was a “Hellenized” or Greek Jew, not a Palestinian Jew. Ancient Palestine was a Greek State or occupation. The names of Jesus’ family and his Disciples are mostly Greek. The Herodian dynasty ruled Palestine from 37 BC to AD 70, with the life of Jesus exactly at the peak of this 107-year dynasty. The lineage of Herod the Great had mainly Greek names, his wives had Greek names, and Herod’s grandfather was a Greek General or “Strategos.” An overwhelming number of the names in the Christian New Testament are Greek, not Jewish or Palestinian. The occupational work of Jesus as a reported carpenter would have not occurred in Galilee, but in the City of Sepphoris, built during the years of Jesus’ life by Herod Antipas, the Greek son of Herod the Great. In Sepphoris, a 4,000 seat theater was built in which Greek plays were performed and Greek philosophy was taught. The very word “synagogue” is a Greek word. And since Jesus is reported on nine occasions by his disciples to have read from the Jewish scriptures in the synagogue, and the Jews in Palestine mostly used Septuagint Greek, he must have known Greek. Jesus is referred to as a “teacher” over 50 times in the Christian Gospels. But in the entire New Testament only three Aramaic expressions are attributed to him and everything else is in Greek.Ehrlich has no agenda to promote in his book. It is refreshingly devoid of trying to question or support the veracity or integrity of the Christian scriptures. Neither does it cast any aspersions on “the historical Jesus.” After spending about two thirds of the book on documenting the “Hellenization” of the Christian scriptures and Jesus, in the remainder he addresses the issue of the influence of the theology of the Greek philosopher Plato on Christianity. Ehrlich even reminds us that Thomas Jefferson wrote a small book entitled The Philosophy of Jesus where he tried to distill the unpolluted teachings of Jesus from “Platonist” elements. Ehrlich is an apparent devout Christian and his deep appreciation for Greek theology and the Christian scriptures comes through in his book. But the book is not an apology or an attack on Christianity. The Christian scriptures are full of references of people who had eyes and ears and didn’t see or hear. This book is like the parable of applying clay to the eyes of blind men and suddenly they could see the world, or see it differently, for the first time. Highly recommended.