Jewish culture and ancient Greek culture complement each other and develop in a spiral, thanks to the 4,000-year diaspora of the Jews.
The encounter, conflict, exchange, mutual learning and integration of different cultures are the unavoidable historical process and common law of the development of human culture, and in this process, the cultural forms of each other will change to varying degrees, so as to promote the exchange, development and progress of world culture.
One of the important factors driving the encounter and exchange of different cultures is the human diaspora activities, and the culture of the diaspora has naturally become an important specimen for the international academic community to investigate the relationship between different cultures.
The Bible records the earliest migration of the Jews from the 19th to the 18th century B.C.E., when Abram and his family left their homeland in the valley of the two rivers and settled in Canaan.
After several thousand years of history, the Jewish diaspora has been formed.
The forced and martyred diaspora groups of other ethnic groups due to war, slave trade, colonial rule and other factors, such as the black diaspora, the Chinese diaspora, the Arab diaspora, the Armenian diaspora, the Indian diaspora, etc., are collectively referred to as the classical diaspora because of the ups and downs of the fate similar to that of the Jewish diaspora.
With the deepening of globalization, there have been more immigrants from all over the world, and some of the immigrants from their own countries have also emerged, and the reasons for the migration of these diasporas have been very different from those of the classical diaspora, which is called the modern diaspora and the global diaspora.
Diaspora have formed various new ethnic groups or categories in the dual cross-border and multi-cross-border living conditions, and created a unique mixed diaspora culture, but in the past, diaspora research in the academic community was not independent or systematic, and most of them belonged to the fields of migration studies, ethnological studies, sociological studies, cultural studies, and anthropological studies.
The term "diaspora" originally referred specifically to the Jewish diaspora, which has become the consensus and common knowledge of Chinese and foreign historians.
The Oxford Concise English Dictionary emphasizes the addition of the definite article "the" before the capital "Diaspo⁃ra", the first of which is: "The Diaspora of Jews in the Gentile Diaspora between the 8th and 6th centuries B.C.E."
According to the English-Chinese Dictionary edited by Lu Gusun, "Diaspo⁃ra" has four meanings: (1) the great diaspora of ancient Jews after they were expelled from their homeland by the Babylonians, (2) the Jews who did not live in Palestine as mentioned in the Old Testament, (3) the Diaspora Jews in the diaspora, and (4) the Jewish communities abroad.
All of these terms refer specifically to the Jews. In 1997, American scholars Quam Anthony Appiah, Henry Louis Apiah The Dictionary of Global Cultures, edited by Jr. Gates et al., argues that "Diaspora" refers to the expulsion of Jews from their homeland in 586 B.C., and also refers to the Jewish diaspora outside Israel, and is closely related to Jewish Zionism.
These interpretations and studies point to the different stages of the Jewish diaspora history, and it is necessary to make a relatively complete definition and explanation because of the lack of a division of the complete history of the Jewish diaspora, and it is inconvenient to examine the relationship between Jewish culture and other cultures as a whole.
During the 4,000-year-long diaspora, the Jewish diaspora continued to expand, from the beginning of West Asia to Egypt and the Mediterranean, from southern Europe to the whole of Europe, from the Near East to the Far East, from Asia to the Americas, all over the world, forming a variety of large and small Jewish communities.
The foreign cultures that the Jews came into contact with earlier were ancient Egypt and ancient Greek cultures, and they lived in the two ancient civilizations for a long time, combining Jewish culture with local culture, forming a "double helix" development model of complementarity, mutual verification, mutual learning and intertwining, which made the "two Greek" (Hebrew and ancient Greek) traditions organically combined, creating a far-reaching Western culture and Jewish culture.
The "Double Helix" is the work of contemporary American Jewish diaspora scholar Stephen J. B. Borman used a metaphor in his study of the relationship between Greek Jews, Byzantine Jews, and the cultures of the diaspora, which vividly expresses the state of two cultures as two spirals intertwined and mutually influencing.
The formation, survival and development of the Jewish diaspora culture is a miracle in the history of human culture, as well as an extraordinary and tragic historical and cultural event.
"The society and nation of the Jews is an unusual society and nation, formed through thousands of years of development and integration, and more importantly, unlike all other peoples, the Jewish nation has not lived together for nearly two thousand years, but has been a people scattered among the peoples of the world.
As a dispersed and pluralistic people influenced by different cultures and traditions, it is undoubtedly natural for it to exhibit cultural complexity and variety".
The common diaspora experience and encounters between Jews and Greeks made it easier for them to learn from each other Xi learn from each other, learn from each other, and adapt to each other's cultures, resulting in benign cultural consequences, which presented a "double helix" development model, which continued to have a positive impact on later Western and Jewish cultures.
"Over the past three thousand years, Jews and Greeks have influenced each other. Both cultures produced groundbreaking ideas that continued to have an impact on the people who came under their double helix, such as Greek nationalism influencing the Slavs in the Balkans, and Jews and Jewish nationalism influencing the local Arabs.
They alternately commented on each other's ideas, such as the possibility that Western civilization could be interpreted or over-interpreted on the literal and artistic levels of two cultures, which have been so interconnected for the past two millennia, that they have almost never been separated except in the first primitive periods."
The spiral of the two cultures lasted for two or three thousand years, and the Greek culture stimulated the Jewish culture and promoted the development of the Jewish culture, and the Jewish culture also promoted the progress of Western culture.
This interconnected cultural development model, in which you have me, and I have you, without losing their own uniqueness, provides an important reference for the exchange, reference, integration, recreation, and reproduction between different national cultures, and also has profound enlightenment for how to deal with the relationship between different national cultures in the era of globalization.
