Greek Education among Early Jews

Jewish families in the upper strata of society who socialized with Greeks and Romans of equal status had to be conversant in Hellenistic culture. Provincial grandees had to exhibit a certain degree of Greek literary and philosophical knowledge to be accepted by their peers. Such Greek education would start with children receiving instructions in reading Homer by their Greek-educated enslaved pedagogues. Once they had mastered the basics, they could continue to learn grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy at a more advanced level. Greek intellectuals had established themselves in Roman Palestine and elsewhere in the western parts of the Middle East in the first centuries CE. They taught circles of students and developed school traditions. Members of the Herodian family, Justus of Tiberias, Flavius Josephus, and the later Jewish patriarchs can be considered representatives of such an empirewide Greek education, which could be combined, if desired, with Jewish, Torah-based learning.