5) Two cultural inheritances

History perhaps shows why Zechariah used the term 'sons of Yavan', as the culture was so dispersed that people not genetically descended from Yavan (from the Hellen tribes), were called Hellenised. They were not Hellen (Greeks), but were sons by a cultural inheritance.

That Zechariah uses the term 'sons of Zion' as a pair with 'sons of Yavan', is another pointer to the term not being related to a genetic descent but to a cultural inheritance. For of course Zion is a place and so the sons are not by descent but must therefore be the inhabitants. But Zion is an idea not a place. The sons of Zion were those who took on the Jewish hope, thinking and culture.

But the history of the dominance of the Hellenistic culture did not stop, as it went on to dominate three cultures, the Byzantine, Catholic and Muslim. Byzantine culture was centred at Constantinople which had been the heart of the Classical Greek empire, and though they saw themselves as a continuation of the Roman empire, in the 7th century they made Greek their official language, retained the learning and metaphysics of classical Greek writers and were seen by others as the Empire of the Greeks. The Catholic culture inherited the culture of Greece through the original Hellenistic influence on Rome. The Arab culture not only had the inheritance of Seleucids, but in the 8th century they translated the works of Ptolemy and other Greek philosophers into Arabic. Greek thought was learnt by Muslim scholars who saw the Classical ideas as theories requiring further inquiry.

During this time the Jewish people were dispersed in the Greek speaking Byzantine empire, and the Latin speaking Catholic West. A clear division was attempted, with many restrictions of Jews, so that sons of Zion remained separated from the sons of Greece.

Though the Jewish people were often repressed, Jewish study, tradition and culture remained very strong and it was dispersed over a great area. In parallel, though dominant, ironically, Classical Greek learning made little progress (except in Arab lands where they assumed it could be wrong) and the culture gradually declined.

But this situation was changed by the 17th century Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment

The term 'the Enlightenment' refers to an era from Britain's Glorious Revolution of 1688 (where the parliament removed the Catholic monarch to establish Protestant rule), to the French Revolution of 1789. In this era many philosophies emerged that were often contradictory. There was a revival or the learning of the sons of Greece, in France. Holland and England.

Some trace the origin of the Enlightenment to Descartes' 1637 Discourse on the Method. Descartes approach came from late Aristotelianism, the 16th century revival of Stoicism and Augustine. In other words Descartes was a son of Greece, as were those who followed him.

Others consider the Enlightenment had origins in the ideas of Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), a Dutch Jew. He both opposed Descartes' mind–body dualism, and Greek influenced Christian ideas. However, he also, as the Classical Greeks did, rationalised and denied the culture of the sons of Zion. This revival of the Hellenistic culture, just as it had in the days of the Maccabees, found Jewish people who became Hellenists.

Arcade in Denmark from late 1800's

Not seen in much official history was another event. The mass of publications by the Unitarians, Socinians and the study of Jewish works led to a few people aligning themselves with Zion by placing value in Jerusalem as a 'sign' of the presence of God.

Curiously, the result of a revival of the original culture of the Yavan/ Hellen which valued diverse human thinking, was that from this time some people had more freedom to chose to be either a son of Greece or a son of Zion.

The great Classical Revival of the mid-1700's to today

The Enlightenment brought to the fore the study of ancient Greek Classical works in popular culture from Russia, to Scandinavia, to Holland and England. In England, especially, to be 'educated' came to mean one had and education in the 'Classics', by which they meant Classical Greek writings. In the expansion of the English language after 1600 many of the new words had Greek origins. Today though only 5% of English words are from Greek directly, about 25% have Greek origins. Ironically, Greek inspired words for scientific and technological items in English have gone back into Greek as new words.

Church in Helsinki

Philosophers and historians from both England the Continent were finding in Greek culture and ideas the origins of what they called 'Western' civilization. Some wrote that the beginning of scientific thinking was in Greek knowledge. Others wrote that the origin of 'Western' philosophy was in Greek Philosophy.

The result was a new era of Greek art and architecture. There came to be more Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns outside the former Greek Empire than in it. One reason for this was the removal of them from Greece to put in museums, the other was the prolific construction of Greek inspired edifies, from banks to Parliament buildings and even churches.

In more practical terms this was the era of Democracy in politics, which was undoubtedly a Greek idea. Revolutionary France, and the Greek culture inspired Thomas Jefferson who was an author of the Declaration of Independence (1776). From his stay in Paris he brought back an appreciation of the classical style and a belief that Greek style most represented American democracy. His influence ensured that the style became that used for Federal buildings, and therefore, that the United States became associated with Classical Greek Culture.

Court House in St Louis USA

By the 20^th Century from Finland to Australia, from Greece to America, Classical Greek ideas were considered the foundation of Western Culture, and their art and architecture had been re-created in the modern world. The influence of the Greek inspired Western Culture was increased by the post WW2 influence of the United States on the world. In the 1980's a later, smaller, revival in Classical culture occurred in art, writing, fashion and buildings, which affected the United States and Britain and other nations exposed to their culture. The sons of Greece (Yavan, Hellen) can now be found throughout the Western world.

Crematorium in Sweden

The revival of the sons of Zion from mid-1700's to today

Paralleling the revival of Classical Greek culture, especially with its emphasis on human reasoning, was another, that of the number people willing to elevate the thinking of the Bible in general and some few who accepted the idea of elevating Zion specifically. It was so distinctive a phenomena that United States historians called them Great Awakenings (1730-55, 1790-1840, 1850-1900, with a smaller one about 1960-1980). The Great Awakenings were associated with awareness of Messiah's second coming. The 1857–1860 revival in America, Canada, Ireland, and Great Britain which spread even to Australia and New Zealand, was a time when people began studying their Bibles at home. Some understood that the return of Jews to Zion was a sign for the second coming of Christ. The 1800's saw a parallel growth in political Zionism amongst Jews. The numbers of the sons of Zion grew from about 1960 with the fulfilment of prophecy in the unlikely acquisition of Jerusalem by Israel.

Classical Vienna

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