Literature and history dot come. Oh, Hello and

episode 40 Helenism and the birth of the self.

This particular show is going to be almost entirely a history program.

When I decided to do literature and history, I knew that this episode was one of the most important programs I wanted to record.

I knew it would be a complex story and that it would need to be foregrounded with a lot of

literary and religious history from the ancient world.

We have been through that foreground now.

And we're ready to talk about a transition that I believe was, maybe after the birth of writing the most far-reaching change in

human history. This change in a sentence was an evolution from community-based religions and localized governments

and toward intercontinental capitalism and religions focused on the self, religions that centered on the individual, individual ethics, and individual

salvation over and above one's role in his or her local community. The Hellenistic period, or the three

three centuries before the birth of Christ gave rise to an era in which we are

still living today, particularly in countries historically tied to Judaism, Christianity, and

Islam.

And I would like to begin telling you this story, the story of how this change happened in the middle of things.

On perhaps a cloudy afternoon in early December of 164, B.C. in the city of Jerusalem with a single object, an ivy-reathed wand. You're going to be. In the books of Maccabees in the Bible we hear about a violent conflict centered in Jerusalem, a conflict that came to a head in the

mid-160s, B.C. E.

Jerusalem at this time was a subject kingdom.

Jerusalem's imperial overlords were the Salukids,

the descendants of one of Alexander the Great's successors.

The Salukid capital, Antioch, was a little over 300 miles up the eastern Mediterranean

coast from Jerusalem, and so Jerusalem's doings were always under very careful supervision.

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