LIBROS EN ESPAÑOL

The Mission of Ancient Greece and the Advent of Christ

From the Introduction:

Confronted with the multitude of publications devoted to the legacy of Hellas, one might ask why a new book about Hellenic culture should be written. When Emerson said: “Every man passes personally through a Grecian period,” he expressed the conviction that our whole modern civilization is inseparably connected with the heritage of ancient Hellas and that every new generation is challenged to build up its own view of antiquity. The justification for a new study of ancient Hellas lies in the attempt to find a method which can lead to a deeper understanding of history as a whole.

Why is this ever recurrent yearning for a renaissance of Greece so deeply rooted in our minds and so indisputable a factor in our education? With the exception of the structure of our modern economic life and the trend of our technical inventions, the main achievements in the field of our knowledge and in the creation of our art are rooted in the genius of Hellas. The Hellenes discovered the reign of the human being by means of knowledge based on the intellect born of their consciousness.
“Know Thyself” was incised on the pronaos of the temple at Delphi. Later Protagoras announced: “Man Is the Measure of All.” And at the height of Greek thinking, Aristotle called the human being the dearest friend of the gods and concluded: “We must make ourselves immortal!”

Thus this fundamental challenge of self-knowledge ran through all stages of Greek life, and the history of Hellas was a thousandfold response to it. Everything which the Hellenes originated was centered around man’s search for self-knowledge and his discovery of himself.

Keywords: teaching, Hellenic culture, Prometheus, the Children of Deucalion, Greek history, Apollo. Orpheus, the Odyssey, Platonism, Aristotle