And one city on that map is important in a search to understand the influence of Greek/Hellenic thought on Jewish (including Christianity) holy writings:
Miletus was a Greek coastal city on the western shores of what we know as Asia Minor. It is interesting to us because a revolution in thinking occurred here roughly at the beginning of the sixth century BCE. The revolution replaced mythos with logos. Foundation myths that had attempted to explain why the world existed, were replaced, by logos as the human rational faculty that began to look for explanations within a framework of general hypotheses. In other words, scientific rationalism began to take the place of superstition.
Robin Waterfield, in his book, The First Philosophers, The Presocratics and Sophist, (Oxford University Press, Re-issue 2009) examines what we know of the men who are said to have, as far as the west is concerned, invented philosophy and science. Among the first are Thales, Anaximenes and Anaximander, all of whom lived in Miletus. It’s also a city that, according to NT traditions, was visited by Paul. But the reason I mention it here, is that it was also a city that would have been part of the coastal trade routes and the land routes of West Asia.
Wakefield suggests that “Ideas always travels with trade.” And to him, the location of Miletus, on a trade route linked to the older cultures of Babylon, Egypt, Lydia and Phoenicia, brought mythos to Miletus, from many places. It was also wealthy, and supported a literate, leisured class who had time to think about the various creation myths that were related by travellers, and to speculate for themselves.
It is against this background that Jews redacted their holy writings.
