Quote:
Originally Posted by awareness
That Christianity was Hellenized is obvious by the fact that all the NT books, even Paul's, was written in Greek, and not Hebrew.
I once brought up that they used the Greek Septuagint in Sunday School class, and the preacher that was leading the class said, "If it was good enough for Jesus, and the apostles, it's good enough for us."
But we don't use the Septuagint today. In fact, we completely reject that Christianity was Hellenized. While reading books that were Hellenized ... like the gospel of John, that was clearly Hellenized.
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The Greeks introduced Hellenism in the 4th Century BCE. Some Jews were captivated by the Greek ideal. But it became a source of conflict in 167 BCE when Antiochus epiphanes ruler of the seleucid empire violated the temple and introduced a Hellenistic cult there. The dynasty founded by The Maccabees was cruel and corrupt. So there was a lot of conflict on both sides of the issue.
The early Jesus movement in Palestine where many of the sects were hostile to Gentiles was unusual in that it attracted Greek-speaking Jews from the diaspora and "God fearers" the non-jews who were honorary members of the synagogues. Diaspora Jews tended to be less exclusive and more open to Hellenistic ideas.
Alexandrian Jews spoke Greek and achieved an interesting fusion of Greek and Jewish culture. But few of them could read classical Hebrew so they couldn't understand the Torah thus the need for the Septuagint translation.
Philo of Alexandria seems to have influenced both Paul and the Gospel of John. He produced a large number of commentaries on the pentateuch that you can read today. He allegorized the Bible using numerological and etymological methods and the Logos.
The apocalypticists stressed the coming of the Kingdom to this world. The Alexandrians or hellenists saw this world as a shadow of the timeless dimension of reality that is more real than its physical or historical dimension. When Jesus failed to return to set up his kingdom on Earth as expected the church moved in the direction of otherworldly salvation that had been laid out by the hellenists. If we want to call that trend "Christianity" then it could be said that Christianity saved the Jesus movement rather than that it polluted it.