Greece

Greece (Hebrew Yavan, "Javan") in its classical sense comprised Macedonia and Epirus to the north and Achaia and the Peloponnese to the south, together with the Aegean islands and the Greek cities of Asia Minor. In the Table of Nations the Greeks descend from Javan, a son of Japheth (Genesis 10:2), whose own sons — Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim — gave their names to the seafaring peoples of the Mediterranean (Genesis 10:4). For most of the Old Testament Greece lies on the far horizon, a distant maritime trading partner (Ezekiel 27:13); only with the rise of Macedon does it stride to the center of the biblical stage as the third of the great world-empires.

Daniel foresaw it. The bronze belly of the great image is a third kingdom that would rule the earth (Daniel 2:39); the shaggy male goat charging from the west with a single conspicuous horn is named outright — "the king of Greece" — as it shatters the ram of Media and Persia (Daniel 8:5; Daniel 8:21). A mighty king would arise and rule with great dominion, and at the height of his power his kingdom would be broken and divided toward the four winds of heaven (Daniel 11:3; Daniel 11:4) — fulfilled to the letter in Alexander the Great (334–323 BC) and the division of his empire among his generals. The Hellenistic world Alexander left behind shaped the very soil in which the gospel would be sown: koine Greek became the common tongue of the eastern Mediterranean, the Hebrew Scriptures were rendered into Greek in the Septuagint, and a single cultured language stood ready to carry the apostles' message to the nations.

So in the New Testament Greece becomes a chief field of the gospel's advance into Europe. Summoned by a vision of a man pleading, "Come over to Macedonia and help us" (Acts 16:9), Paul crossed from Asia and planted the first European church at Philippi, where Lydia believed and a jailer was saved (Acts 16:14). He preached in Thessalonica and among the noble Bereans, who searched the Scriptures daily (Acts 17:11); at Athens he disputed with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers (Acts 17:18) and proclaimed the unknown God from the Areopagus, so that Dionysius and Damaris believed (Acts 17:34); and at Corinth he stayed eighteen months under the indifferent magistracy of the proconsul Gallio (Acts 18:11; Acts 18:12).

Greece thus stands in Scripture for the wisdom of the world brought face to face with the wisdom of God. "Greeks seek wisdom," Paul wrote, "but we preach Christ crucified" — to such minds folly, yet in truth the power and wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:22; 1 Corinthians 1:23). When certain Greeks came up at the feast saying, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus" (John 12:21), it signalled the hour when the gospel would pass beyond Israel to all peoples. For in Christ the ancient division is healed: the gospel is the power of God for everyone who believes, "to the Jew first and also to the Greek" (Romans 1:16), and in him "there is neither Greek nor Jew" but Christ is all and in all (Colossians 3:11; Galatians 3:28).