Why Greece?

Tamzen and I have talked of taking a big vacation to a foreign country for several years. We considered several options like Thailand, Italy, Israel, and the British Isles. In the end we decided on Greece.

I think for me the big interest was history. The different civilizations of Greece go back five or six thousand years. It is true that Egypt and Mesopotamia are older, but there is something different about the history of the Greeks. I think the difference between Egypt and Mesopotamia and Greece is the Greeks are great storytellers. Reading Egyptian

and Mesopotamian history is tedious, mostly centering around dynasties and accomplishments. For the most part it's boring. We know Pharaoh Whoever conquered this or that tribe of people, but we are not given any interpretation, only bare facts. One is reminded of Percy Shelly's poem Ozymandias, which describes a traveler to Egypt who encounters the statue of a long dead Egyptian Pharaoh; inscribed on the pedestal are these words:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

The traveler then looks around and sees nothing but ruins. We know Ozymandias was a great king; perhaps he built things or he conquered many people, yet we really do not care because nothing of the significance of his accomplishments remains.

The Greeks, on the other hand, left behind many stories that let us understand their significance. I am a great lover of stories. At an early age I loved learning about the different Greek myths. What young boy could not love the story in the Odyssey where Odysseus and his crew are trapped in the cave of the Cyclops, and so he ties his men underneath the Cyclops' giant sheep and then stabs him in the eye? The Cyclops, unable to see, has to feel around to try to capture Odysseus' men, but all the Cyclops feels are his sheep; Odysseus and his men escape.

The ancient Hebrews were also great tellers of stories. Their entire history is the story of God's acts within their history. Israel's stories have significance like the Greeks' stories. When Moses confronts Pharaoh, he is not doing so just as an oppressed person who is tired of being oppressed. Moses is the leader of a people Yahweh has chosen for His own, whom He has ordained to be a great people and through whom He will bless all the nations. It is the story of Yahweh's selection of Abraham and his descendants that makes Moses more than just a leader of an oppressed socioeconomic group.

I think it is interesting that the Hebrews and the Greeks are both such good storytellers. Most of the time the Hebrews and the Greeks are viewed as the two great conflicting strains in Western thought. Perhaps it's because they so well represented their ideals and history in stories that the conflict between Athens and Jerusalem is such a subject of debate and interest.

I first became fascinating by Greek philosophy while in college. During my freshman year I took a class in world literature and read "The Apology of Socrates." I expected

the work to be difficult to read and unapproachable. But I was

amazed at how the story was about justice, virtue, and freedom. The same issues we struggle with today were represented in this story by Plato telling about the trial of a bothersome philosopher that took place 2400 years ago. Far from being unapproachable, the story read almost as something that could have, with different details, taken place in modern times. We have such a notion of progress in the Western world, yet when it comes down to it we still have not solved the old problems. The only difference is we have microwave ovens and iPods . . . but fundamentally little progress.

I have always had a great love of the book of Ecclesiastes. It is certainly the most "philosophical" book of the Hebrew Bible. Quoheleth (the preacher) says:

"What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun."

The ancient Greeks struggled with a great many issues and wrote fascinating stories to describe them. As represented by

one of their own —Diogenes, who searched with a lamp in the daytime looking for truth—the Greeks struggled to find wisdom. Because there is nothing new under the sun, their search is still our search and that is why they continue to fascinate me despite the fact that their civilization long ago passed away.