Historical events and Greek philosophy have mutated the original Hebraic

message of the Bible resulting in what is called Christian doctrine, expressed in most

mainstream churches such as the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Protestant

churches. These and other churches may have their differences in dogma but there are

some key beliefs that all these churches embrace that are far from what Jesus Christ

taught. An example of the corruption of the teachings of Christ is the belief that there is

life after death. One of the main events that started this decline from the true message of

the Bible happened when the Greeks conquered Judah, 390 years prior to the coming of

the Christ. Historically biblical scholars have applied their preformed beliefs to the

scriptures in result corrupting its message. These events and ideas corrupted the doctrine

of Christ and turned it into the mess of confusion we see today.

Most of the destruction of the true Christian doctrine began before Christ even

walked the earth, when Alexander the Great conquered the Middle East. Alexander not

only wanted to rule the world but thought of himself as a missionary of the Greek culture.

He wanted to marry the Greek culture and any foreign culture together. 1 After Alexander

died his empire was split into four regions ruled by his generals. In 175 B.C. and up till

163 B.C. Antiochus 4th Epiphanes, the ruler of the Judean area, began a determined drive

to thoroughly Hellenize (to make Greek in form or culture) Judea. The Maccabean revolt

was started, not against Hellenism in general but against pagan worship, when Antiochus

attempted to force pagan worship. The fact that Hellenistic practices remained as a

permanent feature in Judaism after the revolt also gives evidence that the revolt was not

against Hellenism in general. Greek influence was so strong that 40 percent of the pre-70

A.D. burial inscriptions in Jerusalem are in Greek. 2 During this time it appears there were
prevailing feelings of loneliness among the masses and a growing search for true

companionship of intimate contact with deity and with other humans, for happiness in the

present, and for security after death. From this void sprung numerous cults, including

mystery religions, claiming to offer various kinds of help, saviors, relationship with both

other humans and gods. 3 The sects we see in the New Testament, the Pharisees and

Sadducees, also were created during this time.

People were so familiar with taking religions and integrating them in with their

own, they didn’t hesitate to do it with Christianity many centuries latter, when Christ was

preaching around 30 A.D. and when Paul was spreading the gospel of Christ. Peter the

Apostle writes of this “But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there

will be false teachers among you, who secretly will bring in destructive heresies, even

denying the Master who bought them, bringing on themselves swift destruction. And

many will follow their pernicious ways, and because of them the way of truth will be evil

spoken of.” Jude also speaks of this occurrence, “Dearly loved friends, I had been

eagerly planning to write to you about the salvation we all share. But now I find that I

must write about something else, urging you to defend the truth of the Good News. God

gave this unchanging truth once for all time to his holy people. I say this because some

godless people have wormed their way in among you, saying that God’s forgiveness

allows us to live immoral lives. The fate of such people was determined long ago, for

they have turned against our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” 5

This “Hellenism” of the church continued all the way until the third century, by

then the church had no resemblance of what it was during the first century. One of the
beliefs that was affected by this was the belief that the dead are not dead but in fact alive

some where else. The former Jacques Ellul, a French sociology professor, states:

A familiar example of the mutation to which revelation was subjected is its

contamination by the Greek idea of the immortality of the soul. I will briefly

recall it. In Jewish thought death is total. There is no immortal soul [note that

evangelical, "Bible-believing" Christians nevertheless subscribe to belief in the

immortal soul], no division of body and soul. Paul’s thinking is Jewish in this

regard. The soul belongs to the "psychical" realm and is part of the flesh. The

body is the whole being. In death, there is no separation of body and soul

[churches constantly maintain the opposite point of view!]. The soul is as

mortal as the body. But there is a resurrection. Out of the nothingness that human

life becomes, God creates anew the being that was dead. This is a creation by

grace; there is no immortal soul intrinsic to us. Greek philosophy, however,

introduces among theologians the idea of the immortal soul. The belief was

widespread in popular religion and it was integrated into Christianity, but it is a

total perversion . . . All Christian thinking is led astray by this initial mutation that

comes through Greek philosophy and Near Eastern cults. . . Belief in the soul’s

celestial immortality arose in the second half of the fifth century B.C. on the basis

of astronomy. Pythagorean astronomy radically transformed the idea of the

destiny of the soul held by Mediterranean peoples . . . . It substitutes the notion of

a soul of celestial substance exiled in this world. This idea completely

contaminates biblical thinking, gradually replaces the affirmation of the

resurrection, and transforms the kingdom of the dead into the kingdom of God6
Lutheran scholar Dr. Paul Althaus compares what the New Testament writers wrote to

what is believed now:

The hope of the early church centered on the resurrection of the Last Day. It is

this which first calls the dead into eternal life (I Cor. 15; Phil 3:21). This

resurrection happens to the man and not only to the body. Paul speaks of the

resurrection not ‘of the body’ but ‘of the dead.’ This understanding of the

resurrection implicitly understands death as also affecting the whole man.... Thus

the original Biblical concepts have been replaced by ideas from Hellenistic,

Gnostic dualism. The New Testament idea of the resurrection which affects the

whole man has had to give way to the immortality of the soul. The Last Day also

loses its significance, for souls have received all that is decisively important long

before this. Eschatological tension is no longer strongly directed to the day of

Jesus’ Coming. The difference between this and the Hope of the New

Testament is very great. 7

The hope of the Old Testament is the same as the Hope of the New Testament. So, when

a book in the Old Testament states that there is nothing after death that idea stays true all

the way up through the New Testament. The Old Testament book of Job poetically states

there is nothing after death, “But man dies and is cut off; and man expires, and where is

he? As the waters fail from the sea, and a river falls away and dries up, so man lies down

and does not rise. Till the heavens are no more, they shall not awake, nor be awakened

out of their sleep.” 8

When people impose their own ideas into the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament)

and the letters of Paul (New Testament), Christ’s doctrine becomes distorted. How are we
to believe what they say about the scriptures? Someone cannot begin to interpret the

Bible through a screen of his or her own preconceived conclusion. N.H. Snaith, a biblical

scholar states:

Our position is that the re-interpretation of Biblical theology in terms of the Greek

philosophers has been both widespread throughout the centuries and everywhere

destructive to the essence of the Christian faith.... There have always been Jews

who sought to make terms with the Gentile world, and it has in time meant the

death of Judaism for all such. There have been Christians from the beginning who

have sought to do this. ... Neither Catholic nor Protestant theology is based on

Biblical theology. In each case we have a domination of Christian theology by

Greek thought. 9

The Hebrew Scriptures were written by Hebrews and hence require Hebraic thinking to

interpret them.

Another view most present today is the thinking that the New Testament is to be

interpreted with a Greek mindset and the Old Testament with a Hebraic mindset. That is

not the case. Jesus Christ was a Jew. He taught to the Jews and lived among them. To

think you need to interpret his words or the writings of his followers without a Hebraic

mindset would be a mistake. John Bright, professor of Hebrew at Union Theological

Seminary in Virginia, observes:

Christ came, indeed, to announce the decisive redeeming act of God, and to

perform it. But he did not come to inform Judaism of a new and unknown God.

The New Testament, then, does not present us with a new religion which we may

study for itself alone. We must express ourselves guardedly here, for the Christian
 church was not, or did not long remain, a Jewish sect. On the contrary, it emerged

as a separate entity which moved ever farther from Judaism, and, in the course of

time, it developed its own peculiar doctrines and sacraments, traditions and

ceremonies. Judaism and Christianity early became two distinct, if closely related,

religions. Yet we must not forget that Jesus and his early disciples were all Jews.

And it is clear that Jesus did not intend to found a new religion. His mission was

precisely to ‘the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ (Matt. 10:6, 15:24). He did not

come to destroy Israel’s faith and supersede it with another, but rather to bring it

to its fulfillment (Matt. 5:17). Nor did his disciples intend to found a new religion.

On the contrary, they broke with Judaism only when forced to,[when the Jew

wanted the Christians to help fight the Romans] and then with the greatest

reluctance. Indeed it is the insistence of the New Testament writers that it is they

who have the true Judaism and the true fulfillment of Israel’s hope. In spite of the

fact that, as the church had to adapt its message to the Gentile world, new

terminology and new forms of expression were developed; the New Testament

cannot be understood in isolation, but only in the light of all the hope of Israel.

The two Testaments are organically linked to each other. The relationship

between them is neither one of upward development nor of contrast; it is one of

beginning and completion, of hope and fulfillment. 10

Dr. Marvin R. Wilson, a Biblical professor of Gordon College in Mass., also states:

Are we to understand the Bible chiefly through the eyes of Hellenism (Greek

thought and culture) or through the eyes of Judaism (Hebrew thought and

culture)? Obviously, the last question focuses on the New Testament. Most
 scholars affirm an essentially strong Jewish background to Gospel studies and to

the life and teachings of Jesus. But scholars debate widely the background of the

writings of Paul…However, scholars have marshaled considerable material to

oppose the popular position that early Christianity was a syncretism faith which

borrowed its essential beliefs from Hellenistic philosophy or religion. Indeed,

today convincing evidence challenges the earlier widespread belief that Paul’s

writings bear the distinctive mark of Platonism. 11

Pastor David Watson comments on the mindset of the New Testament writers:

The modern English Christian gives a meaning to the words of the New

Testament different from that which was in the minds of the Jewish writers. Greek

was the language they used to convey the universal Christian message, but their

mode of thinking was to a large extent Hebraic. For a full understanding it is

necessary for the modern Christian not only to study the Greek text, but to sense

the Hebraic idea which the Jewish writers sought to convey in Greek words. 12

The shift of thinking in Hebraic terms to Greek thinking in the first century most

likely happened around 67 A.D. During that time the Jews started a revolt and wanted the

Christians to join in the fight against the Romans. The Christians refused to fight, as that

would be disobeying one of Christ’s commands. As a result the Christians moved their

“base of operations” from Jerusalem to Pella in Perea. Until this time Christianity was

just thought of as a Jewish sect. Wilson also states on what happened as an outcome of

this separation:

The Church became vulnerable to these heresies by cutting itself off from the very

root that nourished its beginnings. John Spong has pointy and succinctly
 explained the effect: ‘When Christianity severed itself from Judaism the Christian

faith itself became distorted.’ We are still reaping the results of this severance

today. Westerners have often found themselves in the confusing situation of

trying to understand a Jewish Book through the eyes of Greek culture…

According to Hebrew thought there was neither cosmological dualism (the belief

that the created world was evil, set apart from and opposed to the spiritual world)

nor anthropological dualism (soul versus body). To the Hebrew mind a human

being was a dynamic body-soul unity…Gnosticism (a widespread sectarian

heresy against which certain New Testament writings such as Colossians and 1

John seem to have been written) viewed matter itself as being evil. Much of

Gnosticism was influenced by Platonic dualism and was ascetic in nature.

Gnosticism taught that salvation is the escaping of the body by esoteric

knowledge (the Greek term gnosis means knowledge) rather that something

presently to be enjoyed in this world. Gnostics tended to treat their bodies

austerely. 13

In order to learn the true doctrine Jesus Christ preached, we need to interpret the

message with Hebraic thought and not with predefined notions.

Interpreting the scriptures without a Hebraic mindset and applying the Bible to

someone’s personal, predetermined notions contaminates the true Gospel with pagan

concepts born out of pagan philosophy. The belief that the dead are not dead but in fact

alive some where else is just one concept. “Jesus Christ as God” and “once-saved always

saved” are just two more non-Biblical concepts that have influenced the Church.

Tolerance of new forms of religion, formatting Christianity into creeds and more
corrupted the true message of the Bible and distorted it into what we have today, a

mixture of forms of Christianity all saying they have the one way to eternal life. When all

they have is a religion of religions and not the Christ’s true doctrine.