GYMNASIUM (γυμνάσιον, a place for exercise; γυμνός, G1218, naked). In Greece the gymnasium was originally a place of training for the Olympic games and other athletic contests. By the 4th cent. b.c. it had become as well an educational and cultural center for Gr. youths, and was regarded as an essential feature of a city. It derived its name from the fact that the competitors exercised naked. The gymnasium consisted of a number of large buildings, which contained not merely places for each kind of exercise—running, boxing, wrestling, discus throwing, etc.—but also baths, a covered portico for practice in bad weather and in wintertime, and outside porticos where philosophers and writers gave public lectures and held disputations. Most of the education of boys and young men was obtained in gymnasiums. In Athens there were three great gymnasiums, each consecrated to a particular deity, and each made famous by association with a celebrated philosopher: the Academy, where Plato taught; the Lyceum where Aristotle held forth; and the Cynosarges, which was the resort of Antisthenes and his followers, the cynics.

The Gr. institution of the gymnasium never became popular with the Romans, and was held in horror by orthodox Jews. Nevertheless, a gymnasium was erected in Jerusalem by Hellenizing Jews, under the leadership of the high priest Jason, in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, who tried to compel the Jews to give up Judaism (1 Macc 1:10, 14; 2 Macc 4:7-9). Strict Jews opposed it because it introduced heathen customs and led Jewish youths to exercise naked in public and to be ashamed of the mark of their religion, circumcision. It existed until the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. Paul alluded to the exercises of the gymnasium several times: boxing (1 Cor 9:26), wrestling (Eph 6:12), and racing (1 Cor 9:24; Gal 5:7; Phil 3:12-14). See Athlete, Athletics.