Jewish Paideia in the Hellenistic Diaspora: Discussing Education, Shaping Identity.

Abstract

While the integral role of paideia in Greek, Roman, and early Christian history has been widely recognized, the place of paideia in Jewish thought and the resultant influence on late antique Christianity, and thus on Western education as a whole, has been largely neglected. This study examines the theories of ideal Jewish education from three contemporaneous, but unique Diaspora Jews—Philo of Alexandria, the pseudonymous author of the Wisdom of Solomon, and Paul of Tarsus—particularly in light of the role of the Greek Septuagint translations. The purpose is not to locate a unified concept of Jewish Hellenistic paideia, but to allow the views of each author to stand on their own. The diverse educational theories all developed out of a complex amalgam of Jewish and Greco-Roman influences, brought together and reimagined thanks to the Septuagint and the consistent use of paideia as a translation for the Hebrew musar. The translators of the ancient Hebrew scriptures handed down to future generations a textbook and a teacher, a lens through which later Jewish thinkers could merge and morph ancestral traditions with contemporary Platonic and Stoic philosophy in the creation of new and innovative paideutic concepts. With their textbook in hand, these authors would deploy their ideal notions of paideia as a means of contemplating on and shaping the self and Jewish identity. Paideia, then, becomes the mechanism by which the most highly valued constituents of Jewish ethics and culture are formed and employed. The diverse developments in Jewish education explored reveal the varied dynamics both within the Jewish community and between the Jews and the wider cultural world. Paideia became the perfect surrogate, a common, universal good which could touch on every facet determinative in the construction of the self.