Arial,
The Jewish narrative is that Greece was quite perverted in its sexual passions...
This is from Aish.com
http://www.aish.com/jl/h/48939587.html
HELLENISMThe Greeks were not only military imperialist but also cultural imperialist. Greek soldiers and settlers brought their way of life: their language, art, architecture, literature, and philosophy, to Middle East. When Greek culture merged with the culture of the Middle East it created a new cultural hybrid-Hellenism (Hellas is the Greek word for Greece) whose impact would be far greater and last for far longer than the brief period of Alexander's empire. Whether through the idea of the pitched battle, art, architecture or philosophy, Hellenism's influence on the Roman Empire, Christianity, and the West was monumental.
The Greeks showcased all human talents - literature, drama, poetry, music architecture, sculpture, etc. They glorified the beauty of the human body, displaying athletic prowess in the Olympics. Nothing regarding the human body was considered embarrassing, in need of hiding, or private for that matter.
(Athletic competitions performed in the nude were the norm in Greece. Our modern word "gymnasium" is derived from the Greek word "gumnos" which means naked. Public toilets often consisted of a bench on main street with holes in it; people sat there and did their business as others walked by.)
Naturally, human passions were venerated and this meant there were few sexual taboos -- even pedophilia and pederasty. Indeed, the sexual initiation of a young boy by an older man was considered the highest form of love and vital part of a boys education. Plato wrote of this in his Symposium (178C):
"I, for my part, am at a loss to say what greater blessing a man can have in earliest youth than an honorable [older] lover ..."Even Greek gods were described in human terms and were often bested by human beings in Greek mythology; with time, it became the style of intellectual Greeks to denigrate their gods and speak of them with biting cynicism and disrespect.
In short, the Greeks introduced into human consciousness an idea which is going to come into play as one of the most powerful intellectual forces in modern history - humanism. The human being is the center of all things. The human mind and its ability to understand and observe and comprehend things rationally is the be-all-and-end-all. That's an idea which comes from the Greeks.
Above all, the Greeks thought that this was enlightenment, the highest level of civilization. They had a strong sense of destiny and believed that their culture was ordained to become the universal culture of humanity.
The Jews had a different vision. The Jews believed that a world united in the belief in one God and ascribing to one absolute standard of moral values -- including respect for life, peace, justice, and social responsibility for the weak and poor -- was the ultimate future of the human race.
This Jewish ideology was wedded to an extreme, uncompromising exclusivity of worship (as demanded by the belief in one God) and a complete intolerance of polytheistic religious beliefs or practices. There was only one God and so only one God could be worshipped, end of story.
To the Jews, human beings were created in the image of God. To the Greeks, gods were made in the image of human beings. To the Jews, the physical world was something to be perfected and elevated spiritually. To the Greeks the physical world was perfect. In short, to Greeks, what was beautiful was holy; to the Jews what was holy was beautiful.
Such disparate views were bound to clash, sooner or later.
[/quote]