Provocateur

Glen Bowersock

• BuyRome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilisations by Martin Goodman
  Allen Lane, 638 pp, £25.00, January 2007, ISBN 978 0 7139 9447 6

One of the most famous questions in the vast literature of the Fathers of the Early Christian Church is Tertullian’s ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’ The fusion of Greek philosophy with Jewish scripture in the formation of Christian theology was a problem for the new religion, which emerged in the Greek language through the gospel narratives and the letters of Paul. Christians had access to the Jewish Bible through the Greek translation known as the Septuagint – so called because it was said to have had 70 translators. A Christian who was also an eloquent Latin rhetorician, as Tertullian was, would have felt obliged to confront the primacy of Greek in the construction of Christianity, particularly at a time when Platonic language and ideas had begun to infect the thinking and the prose of such writers as Justin and Clement. Tertullian consoled himself by replying to his own question: ‘Our instruction comes from the porch of Solomon.’ So much for Athens.