"Why was Astour’s work considered so...offensive? First, it offended at a formal level, because it challenged the academic hierarchy; this was a reflection of the relative power of the two disciplines. Although Classicists had previously discussed Eastern parallels to Hellenic mythology, it was entirely different and unacceptable for Orientalists to pronounce on Greece.There were also fundamental objections to the content of Astour’s work. Scholars like Fontenrose and Walcot had made broad sweeps of world mythology – including India, Iran and so on – and they gave preference, if possible, to the less offensive sources. By contrast, Astour’s derivation of Greek names from Semitic not only poached on the sacred ground of language, but also made the connections between West Semites and Greeks disturbingly close and specific. Furthermore, two of the myth cycles he treated – those of Kadmos and Danaos – were concerned with Near Eastern colonization in Greece, and he made a plausible case for their having a historical kernel of truth. The fourth section of Hellenosemitica was even more provocative in that it went into the sociology of knowledge, and its sketch of the history and ideology of Classics and Classical archaeology has been the basis of all later writings on this subject, this volume included. In doing this Astour injected relativism into subjects that had previously been impervious to the forces of probabilism and uncertainty that have transformed other disciplines since the 1890s."
"The Classical writer most often appealed to to justify slavery was Aristotle, who had argued at length in its favour. The appeal was linked to the fact that his work was shot through with the belief that Greeks were inherently superior to other peoples."
"Müller urged scholars to study Greek mythology in relation to human culture as a whole, but was adamantly opposed to recognizing any specific borrowings from the East. When it comes to higher culture, there has been an even greater reluctance to see any precise parallels."
"Most people are surprised to learn that the Aryan Model, which most of us have been brought up to believe, developed only during the first half of the 19th century. In its earlier or ‘Broad’ form, the new model denied the truth of the Egyptian settlements and questioned those of the Phoenicians. What I call the ‘Extreme’ Aryan Model, which flourished during the twin peaks of anti-Semitism in the 1890s and again in the 1920s and 30s, denied even the Phoenician cultural influence."
"This pantheism could be traced back past Spinoza to Bruno and beyond, to the Neo-Platonists and Egypt itself. The first articulate rejection of the challenge of the Radical Enlightenment—and the earliest popularization of the Newtonian ‘Whig’ scheme in science, politics and religion—was made in 1693 by Richard Bentley, Newton’s friend and a great sceptical Classicist. One way in which Bentley attacked his and Newton’s enemies was to use Casaubon’s tactics. He employed his critical scholarship to undermine Greek sources on the antiquity and wisdom of the Egyptians. Thus throughout the 18th and 19th centuries we find a de facto alliance of Hellenism and textual criticism with the defence of Christianity. The ructions caused by occasional Hellenist atheists like Shelley and Swinburne were trivial compared to the threat of Aegypto-Masonry."
"In 390 AD the temple of Serapis and the adjacent great library of Alexandria were destroyed by a Christian mob; twenty-five years later, the brilliant and beautiful philosopher and mathematician Hypatia was gruesomely murdered in the same city by a gang of monks instigated by St Cyril. These two acts of violence mark the end of Egypto-Paganism and the beginning of the Christian Dark Ages."
"The ‘Ancient Model’ was the conventional view among Greeks in the Classical and Hellenistic ages. According to it, Greek culture had arisen as the result of colonization, around 1500 BC, by Egyptians and Phoenicians who had civilized the native inhabitants. Furthermore, Greeks had continued to borrow heavily from Near Eastern cultures."