Why does Peter use Greek Mythology

[yeshuasavedme]

Josephus was not a hellinized Jew.
Josephus was a circumcised Jew descended from the priest tribe of Levi, who once lived with the sons of Zadok (Essenes), in the wilderness, but he did not take the vows to join the Essenes.
From his writings I pasted from, he knew who God the Word was.
You are in extreme prejudiced error about the Book of Enoch's author and original date of first manuscript .

 

[nonaeroterraqueous]

2 Peter/Jude influenced by Enoch which in turn is influenced by Greek Mythology. Did they know they were referencing a mythical influenced hellenstic text or did they do it in ignorance with the best intentions in mind? how do we understand these references?

Correlation must not be confused with causation. The influence could have gone the other way, but I prefer to think that both had a common origin. It's quite possible that both stem from a real truth from long ago. Which one is closer is a matter of opinion. In other words, they were referencing their own text, which related to the same event that gave rise to these Hellenistic narratives.

 

[RDKirk]

...because those are the closest words in Greek which represent the biblical afterlife?

Or the closest that represented his intention--that spirit beings could be confined, and differently from the confinement of human spirits.

The same could be true of the consistent use of the Greek Hades in scripture as a different concept from the use of the Aramaic Gehenna. Unfortunately, most English bibles translate both words to "hell," but when you look at them in their contexts, Hades is used as a "holding place--the grave" while Gehenna is used to represent utter destruction...two different concepts for which the scripture writers did indeed use two different terms. (Some English translations do use "hell fire" where the text uses Gehenna.)

But the point is that the scripture writers reached to a Greek mythological term that their audiences understood--Hades--to illustrate the particular concept of the grave as a holding place rather than destruction.

 

[DamianWarS]

Correlation must not be confused with causation. The influence could have gone the other way, but I prefer to think that both had a common origin. It's quite possible that both stem from a real truth from long ago. Which one is closer is a matter of opinion. In other words, they were referencing their own text, which related to the same event that gave rise to these Hellenistic narratives.

the Phoenicians would be the closest thing to a missing link if you're looking for one. "phoenician" is a greek word itself but essentially they are canaanites, Israel's enemies and the greek alphabet is based on Phoenician.

However to me the closeness of Enoch and Greek mythology suggest a far more direct influence then thousands of years or organic morphing. Enoch feels like a classic pseudepigrapha hellenized Jewish text which would be a reason why there is no hebrew text available. The OT philosophy of the afterlife is simply too underdeveloped to support Enoch as it's base understanding. In absence of orthodox teaching of these things people are going to want to fill in the blanks and those blanks are going to be borrowed with a more articulate position but still somewhat analogous. Translating the OT to Greek creates this analogous link (as Sheol is hellenized to Hades) and this can confuse or mix mythologies; this is the foundation that the book of Enoch sits on.