How the Jewish Bible Became Greek

A History of Mankind (158)

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With Jewish traders and priests moving back and forth between Palestine and the great cities of Egypt, including the brand new and Jewish-friendly Alexandria, Greek concepts infiltrated and contaminated Judaism like Persian ideas had before.

For example, the Jewish world – which it already had a vague notion of sub-divine spiritual beings – borrowed from Greek the terminology of “angels” and “demons,” with their elaborate hierarchies that included “archangels.” This arrangement is something that didn’t exist in the already centuries-old Jewish tradition.