Methodological Note

Summary of the Ancient World

The Greek mind invents gadgets for us - and the Jewish mind invents intellectual property (Source)

What is Western culture? The Greco-Jewish culture. Of all the ancient world, which was much more culturally diverse than today (due to geographical fragmentation), these are the two most significant cultures, by a considerable margin, and the only ones we read today. These are the two independent eigenvectors that span the space of the Western culture matrix, and all the rest are just linear combinations of them. All the empires of the ancient world (and even Rome) didn't really change much, apart from being carriers for the spread of cultures, and so were the religions (as Rome was to Greece, so was Christianity to Judaism). All the endless wars and politics of the kingdoms did not change anything essential in culture, and therefore the history of governments and battles is not interesting (there is no generalization but a game of random, exhausting and boring moves. And so it is today, by the way). Even the most "decisive" battles did not change the development of the cultures themselves so much, for example, Athens' defeat to Sparta did not prevent the Platonic Academy and the peak of philosophy, and not even the second Athenian Empire, until internal cultural decline. And even if Persia (God forbid) had won, the Golden Age would not have been prevented (and in general, Persians like Persians - they only want money and taxes, and don't interfere. The background to Cyrus's declaration and the famous tolerance of the Persian Empire is the mercantile view of the world). Even the Roman destruction only accelerated internal processes in Judaism (for example, Christianity). If so, two phenomena need to be explained in the creation of Western culture.

Why are they ancient? The greatest creations are also the first, because these are the eigenvectors that spanned the space around them, and also because of the greatest time distance within a given cultural space, which creates an alienation that stretches the boundary of meaning towards the past - but does not break it (still within the system). This is a description of the situation that was created, but the deeper explanation - the creator - is not spatial but temporal: After all, learning starts somewhere, it does not exist in a neutral empty space, and that's where the learning began. Learning is always specific - leading precisely this line and not another (out of all possible lines) - and therefore when cultural learning began, it started from a certain, specific, special point: from a certain culture. That's where we started.

Hence the great importance of the starting point from which each stage in the subsequent learning process emerges, and in fact, it establishes the learning process itself. Different learning could have developed in completely different directions, to the extent that we are unable to imagine them, because we are trapped within a specific line of learning and history. "History" is not the verbal documentation but the learning process, and therefore history did not really start from the "invention of writing" but from the establishment of the learning systems we are in. Egypt and Mesopotamia are still prehistoric from our perspective, and not part of our story. Learning is what created culture, and before culture there was development, but not learning. Therefore, there is no truly objective, general or neutral learning (as sometimes science, technology or mathematics are perceived, as if they are not dependent on the starting point and would have brought the world to the same place, because we cannot imagine a different development in them, precisely because learning in them is very difficult). Learning is always within a specific system, with a specific past and specific development: cultural learning. That's why Athens and Jerusalem are important.

The very existence of human cultural diversity around the world shows us the great difference between independent lines of learning, which do not converge to the same learning. If not for Western culture that took over everyone, the Chinese and Indians and pre-Columbian cultures would have reached completely different cultural worlds. But after all cultures were connected, perhaps only aliens can demonstrate to us a culture fundamentally different from us, because all cultures have learned from Western culture much more than they learned from themselves. The influence in space is much stronger and faster than the influence in time - it is easier to transfer and communicate than to learn and develop: translation in language is faster than creation in learning. And today when everyone is in the same system, cultural unification is taking place, which can be compared to the fragmentation in the ancient world: everyone is less special today. The convergence of the world stems from language and not from learning. Fortunately, we have at least two ancient cultural sources that began to learn in parallel (and not by chance), and not just one.

What was not special about the Greeks and Jews? What preceded them, and the non-cultural plane during the cultural flourishing. There was nothing special about the Greek and Canaanite gods or the cults and myths (and therefore they are not interesting - Greek myths are endless and random telenovela combinations, to which Judaism opposed), and also not in the international relations of their time. It was not Macedonia that made Greece important, but the opposite (the Persians also conquered the entire space), and it is clear that the Jews had zero military capability. The Greeks and Jews simply documented for us an interesting world for us but typical of the Iron Age and Late Bronze Age, which occupied them greatly, but should not particularly interest us, beyond dealing with them themselves (that is - dealing with what is special about them).

Thus, for example, despite their power in the consciousness of the time, the military method and the pagan method are not interesting, because they are in fact not methods and not learning-based, but merely development. All the transformations of myth and cult in Greece and the entire ancient world from one god to another are in the realm of fashion (random drift), and do not accumulate into learning (this is exactly what Judaism changed). Because contrary to what we imagine, religiosity in the ancient world was not fixed and rigid but rather too dynamic and innovative. Religious creativity is the deep nature of human religiosity, with constant new spiritual fashion and new mystery (just like in our days). In this, there is no difference between religious creativity and political creativity, which are constant white noise (since time immemorial): a sea of changing waves, like in a non-learning language system (Facebook for example).

So the question is: When did the Greeks become Greeks? What made the Jews Jews? Why them, of all the ancient world? What is the meaning of their temporal proximity? The connection and common root for both of them (perhaps even for Rome) are the Phoenicians, and in particular - the Phoenician script, from which both the ancient Hebrew script, which is a consonantal script, and the Greek script, which is the first script in the world to separate consonants from vowels, emerged. In other words: both cultures were pioneers of alphabet and writing. There is even a vague but deep connection between the combinatorial-logical idea in the separation of consonants and vowels and the Greek world (the extreme is in the organizational ability of Latin, which became European), a world in which countless combinations and symmetries were examined, and against it the concise Jewish condensed frugality of the aleph-bet script, which created one big porcupine story and not countless small foxes.

From the Greek side, the method of free combination was at the basis of the tremendous and abundant Greek creative power, with a speculative ability that was also at the basis of science (and not an empirical method) and at the basis of philosophy and mathematics in their beginnings and also at the basis of constant speculative governmental and political experimentation (including colonization), and even in the very abundance of creative fields, different myths (connected in a network and not in a big story) and different polis cities. From the Jewish side, the method of striving for summary, shortening and condensing of meaning created convergence to one great god, one great creation, one great prophet, one place, one people, one book, that is, created a method of stubborn centralization. Hear, O Israel: The Lord is One. And every word is precious. The alphabet and not the script was the important invention, because not the ability to preserve and manage and control and communicate was important (as in Egypt and Babylon), but rather the ability to innovate easily and to impart innovation easily - that is, to create learning. Not the very ability to communicate and preserve language was important, but the creation of a learning system.

We would not remember Sparta without Athens, because there were many other militaristic societies in the ancient world. Although Homer, who is the first certain achievement that distinguishes Greece from any other culture, certainly comes from the Peloponnese, he was preserved only because of his writing in Athens, to prevent his rapid forgetting (probably about a hundred or at most two hundred years after him). And so we would not remember the kingdom of Israel without Jerusalem. That is: we are clear about the central points from which learning was created, both in space and time - the 8th century BCE and the beginning of the Archaic period in Greece, and the Israeli period quite parallel to it in the Land of Israel - both after the vacuum and decline between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, and not in the great centers of Mesopotamia and Egypt, but close to them (and to a large extent: between them. If on land - Israel - and if at sea between Asia Minor and Egypt).

What happened then in Greece - and why? Certainly a prerequisite was the creation of a network, which requires both fragmentation (geographical by nature, both in the mountainous land and in the gulf sea, with about 1,500 different poleis) and connectors between the nodes (and therefore land fragmentation alone is not enough, sea is needed), and there is no doubt that the most suitable place for this in the world is the Mediterranean Sea, and within it Greece. That is: decentralization must exist - but within one cultural system (and we can see this in the pan-Hellenic institutions and centers, such as Delphi and Olympia, not to mention the common language). Therefore, commercial cultures, with all the exchange of ideas, are better for learning than warlike or centralized and "strong" empires. Money is natural to the network than the sword. But why don't we remember the Phoenicians, the Philistines (Sea Peoples) or the creative and imaginative Minoans? What happened in Greece that didn't happen in other network systems?

The network language is only the infrastructure on which learning is built. Because Greekness is network learning, which is opposed to centralized Jewish learning. Israel is the center of gravity, and the very narrow connection - the bottleneck - between the two parts of the Fertile Crescent, while Athens was the hub of the Greek network (although many of the beginnings of Greek philosophy, science and mathematics were actually in the Ionian periphery, especially the eastern one, of Athens in the colonies). In Israel and Sinai, the transition, confrontation, fertilization and mating between the two wings of the Fertile Crescent took place, in its narrowest part, and therefore all the flow concentrated through them, and there the script (Proto-Sinaitic) was created, and according to tradition: the Torah from Sinai. The Torah itself notes its influences as a people coming from both Mesopotamia and Egypt. The cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia were more institutional, and only the synthesis that deviated from both governmental centers created a less governmental and institutional and more transferable script: the alphabet. And indeed from it we see all the development of writing, in learning that occurred rapidly.

What actually distinguishes between learning and development (even today most people are part of the world's development and not its learning)? A. Acceleration: We see that learning creates even more learning, because the method spreads, and therefore we suddenly see a period of cultural explosion and a "golden age". B. Continuity and transitivity: Learning is a process that continues in space and time, and is not confined to a specific culture, and therefore the cultural method does not die when the culture itself dies. A culture can sleep and development simply ends - so learning is noticeable especially when the system breaks. C. Method: Learning has an internal (and sometimes deep) logic called method, while development is open to any external wind, therefore learning has a direction - and an interesting story.

The Jewish method, which grew from the more centralized continental ancient world in its nature, connects everything to the big story: when it encounters new external knowledge, it connects it to the big idea, and within it, it innovates from the center outward, in a process of building bodies of knowledge that grow organically. Therefore, it opposes authority except for the prophet and the Torah - a direct connection to the source and the central - and develops through learning from the source (hence: monotheism), and this is the famous Torah study, which is passed on and developed throughout the generations. The very idea and name of the Torah means instruction through a book, which became possible after the alphabet. Therefore, learning from the book became the central ideology in Judaism, and the development of the book in a learning manner - the central enterprise (in both senses).

In contrast, the Greek method takes place within a system where there is not necessarily a center but competition and freedom, and therefore it is a world of ideas and not a world of the idea. The Greek method strives for exploration of possibilities, hence the governmental decentralization to citizen rule (democracy) and the multiplicity of competing stories and descriptions, leading to disintegration and fragmentation (which did not happen to Judaism). The new writing serves the Greeks for the transmission of ideas and dialogue within the system - it's like a communication protocol that enables a network - and therefore it is much more fragmentary. If we take centralizing tendencies like monism (which indeed came from Thales from the more eastern side), we will see the huge gap - especially in the learning process - from monotheism, where a unified tradition of organic development in stages is not created, but a tradition of disagreement and dialogue between stages. These are two different forms of learning, which were purer before they met each other in the Hellenistic world.

Even Greek mathematics from the classical period is a very wide collection of scattered mathematical achievements and mostly not an organized mathematical theory. The same is true for Greek science from the classical period, where a unified system of comprehensive scientific theory did not develop, as in modern science, but many possible theories (some comprehensive in themselves) and scattered achievements that mostly did not accumulate. And when it did happen, in the Hellenistic world in Alexandria, Ptolemy's incredibly complex patchwork model is an example of failed descriptive accumulation without a comprehensive explanation. On the other hand, Euclid is a more successful example, but still a collection of results without the structure of a modern mathematical theory. The source of the idea of proof - the Greek invention that created mathematics - is in the geometric construction stages, that is, as a collection of tricks, and therefore the Greeks did not reach the algebraic generalization of unknowns, and remained in the more concrete geometric and arithmetic. Therefore, Greece did not manage to reach a scientific revolution, despite a very wide and scattered (too much?) variety of achievements (often individual). The Greeks, of course, dealt with generalization and rules, but in general, what they lacked was *learning* of generalization (and therefore the generalizations were actually too wild: everything is water, the world of ideas), and this is when a system of learning rules is the essence of science, and also of Jewish learning (which created law from details and examples and interpreted the details of history while aspiring to broad rules and lessons - the biblical historiosophical enterprise).

Anyone who recoils from what Christianity did to the Greek world does not understand its importance for modern development and the advantages of the unified approach to meaning (and explanation) over the limitations of Greek dispersion (and description), which eventually reached excessive extremes in the Middle Ages. This text is, for example, an example of Jewish learning, as it seeks the big idea and generalization at the expense of unorganized details, because learning needs generalization even if generalization always comes (mathematically) at the expense of discrimination. Modern, Western development is a combination of the ability to start from the details with the ability to give them a systematic and comprehensive framework, which is empirical science, or alternatively the framework of the novel in literature, or alternatively the framework of the modern democratic state that has fixed rules of the game, or alternatively the modern economy where the market allows competition within a shared and stable framework. Therefore, the West is the synthesis between Greece and Judea, and this was actually the achievement of modernity, after excessive swings towards Judaism (Middle Ages) and excessive swings towards Hellenism (Renaissance).

Even Talmudic and diasporic Judaism - the one known to us today as Judaism - is already a synthetic Hellenistic Judaism and not biblical. It contains within it a paradoxical combination of unitary learning and dispersed learners - hence the special Jewish "disagreement". Only in this form could Judaism survive at all after the collapse of the center - known as the destruction - but it paid for its Hellenistic development with the loss of the continuation of the great learning historical narrative: in the sealing of the Bible. The dispersed and fantastic midrash is already a Hellenistic genre.

The peak of Greek literary development was the invention of comedy in the classical period, which is the mother of all human fantastic literature (as opposed to mythical). Classical comedy was a mature Greek development, later and more democratic than tragedy (and its great writer, Aristophanes, is later than the three great tragedians), because it is an open form, in which more freedom is possible in content, internal connections, integration of fantastic elements, breaking the theatrical framework itself (addressing the audience) and playfulness. This is in contrast to tragedy, which is a closed form, dealing with a closed mythical corpus, with internal necessity, around the moral-religious law, and therefore closer to the Bible than comedy, and even Homer (in which the connections between elements are in a freer, almost associative design, including arbitrariness stemming from polytheism, and the greatness is not in the big plot but in the local description within the text - and in the general ethos that arises from it incidentally).

But if we compare tragedy to the Bible, we will see the difference between the development of a networked myth and a myth with historical development. The common side is the miss in sin, which recurs again and again in the Bible and in tragedy (and to a lesser extent in Homer). It is the basis for creating mythical tension - between man and god - and activates in the viewer the mechanism of regret, which is a powerful neurological learning mechanism (if only...). But the design of the miss in the Bible is concentrated around the command of God, which is what interests the biblical writer, who always turns to the center and source of the one meaning, while the design in tragedy is concentrated on man and his motives and his awareness and his punishment - after committing the sin or mistake (therefore Jonah is the most tragic book in the Bible and so are the stories of Saul and Ahab). We find here the difference between learning from a teacher - which is the source of the need for the monotheistic god - and self-learning and independent learning (decentralized and privatized), which is the source of Greek humanism (which was extremized in the Western one), where even the god himself is human, because man - the individual - is the source of meaning (and especially in art). The idea of atoms and the idea of individualism both stemmed from the Greek world, built on particulars, and therefore in it the horizontal plane in the network - the connection between man and his fellow - was the main meaning (and the main sensational sin). This is in contrast to Judaism, which saw even the realm of interpersonal relationships as stemming from the vertical plane between man and God, which is the center of meaning in it (and therefore there is no need for a particularly sensational sin at the interpersonal level, because God himself is the sensational: any sin against him is a sensational betrayal). So is the regulated Jewish sexuality, which was compared in the Bible to monotheism, deeply opposed to the networked Greek pederasty, which was created to create horizontal learning relationships between individuals (and therefore homosexual), and integrated a boy into the network of men (because women were not part of the learning, that is, the network - they were not individuals at all).

Therefore, the Greek is required to "know thyself" while the Jew is required to "know thy God", because the Greek is required for independent learning of his own and while every Jew is required to learn the Torah (these two learning ideas, which seem trivial to us today, were revolutionary innovations then). The mature Greek tragedy increasingly focuses on the tragic man, who is one who has not learned about himself and his limitations and fate (hubris is the state of lack of learning) and in tragedy he learns this. That is, tragedy presents to the viewer a process of learning - hence the catharsis (the satisfying learning clarification). And the man in the Bible is one who has not learned to listen to God and therefore is punished, or one who has learned and therefore receives reward, and thus presents to us the process of his learning of the divine order in history - which is also our learning (the humanity of a character stems from the fact that it learns, and not just develops. Learning is what creates the literary identification mechanism, which is built on the learning mechanism that activates our brain, because we learn together with the character. And therefore - even the biblical characters are human). That is: the learning of the Greek hero is concentrated in his particular case, and the learning of the Jews is concentrated in the general law (and therefore it is also general learning - of a people). Therefore, every Greek mythological hero has his personal tragedy, while in the Bible the heroes change but the big story remains - and continues. To be continued - praise to God who fills the world.

From the independent ethos relying on itself and from itself (and therefore speculative by nature) of Greek learning, a rationalistic form of learning developed (as opposed to empiricist and experimental). Indeed, the greatest and most mature Greek achievements - still studied today - are in very abstract and idealistic thinking: in philosophy (Plato and Aristotle) and in mathematics (Euclid and Archimedes) and in theater (an almost abstract genre in an artificial structure, what is now called: theatrical), and architecture is also, of course, of an artificial and ideal structure (realism was not the ideal of Greek sculpture but beauty, according to ideal conventions, hence the impressive abdominal muscles). This philosophy, which learns through reason itself independently, was itself a further extremization of decentralization, out of opposition to rhetoric and the democratic crowd, and this is the reason that its natural continuation was precisely in the Cynics and the Stoa, who dealt with the private self, with the Hellenistic disintegration. Jewish learning was historical and traditional learning in time, and therefore continued in it, while Greek learning was learning of exploration of possibilities in the system space, and therefore disintegrated with its progress, when the independence of the vertices was stronger than the unifying dialogical connections in the network. This is the danger in a network as opposed to one strong line, which is why our very Greek era, which denies the need for Jewish learning, will again pass the pendulum swing that defines the West.

We see how the structure of the system, on which learning is overlaid, creates different learnings (and how one can thus analyze learning systems - and even entire cultures - and establish a field of methodologism). In fact, the importance of democracy was not as a better form of government than others, not in foreign policy and not even in domestic policy (demagogues), but in being an infrastructure for learning. In the ancient world, only a very small ruling elite participated in cultural creation, while in democratic Athens this elite expanded to several tens of thousands, which made it possible to create a learning cultural system (by the way, even today. It's not certain that Western democracy is efficient precisely as a form of government, but its importance is in the internal freedom for citizens, which is more important for prosperity than anything the state government does or doesn't do. Like in Athens, democracy mainly empowers individuals, who are the producers of culture). On the other hand, the Jewish ideology of learning from a book ("Torah") created the possibility for continuous and accumulating cultural learning, and so the book was perfected over generations, until the book became a creation of the entire nation and not of an individual. We don't have here any specific generation that created the learning, and therefore it is much harder for us to trace its development (which is much more organic and unitary), which lasted (!) dozens of generations, and thus managed to contain a large group of participants in the cultural system, but in a much less synchronic way than Athens, and much more diachronic. If the algorithm of the Greek method was exploration, then the algorithm of the Jewish method was optimization (and therefore dealt with the one creation). This is the difference between breadth-first search and depth-first search - the two basic search algorithms.