Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

HELLENISM

A modern term for the dominative interaction of Greek culture with the cultures of people from other regions of the ancient world, particularly during the three centuries from Alexander the Great to the triumph of Rome over the last of the Greek kingdoms in the Battle of Actium (336-31 b.c.e.). This period was first designated “Hellenistic” by the 19th-century German historian J. G. Droysen, who thought that the entire epoch was primarily characterized by the mixture of Greek and Oriental culture which paved the way for Christianity. One of the most striking uses of Gk. hellēnismós occurs in 2 Macc. 4:13, where the terms hellēnismós and allophylismós occur in parallel. Hellēnismós, “the Greek way of life,” is a one-word summary of Greek religious and cultural identity, while allophylismós is a more general term which means “the adoption of foreign customs.” Both terms are pejorative and are antithetical to Ioudaïsmós, “the Jewish way of life,” i.e., Jewish religious and cultural identity (2 Macc. 2:21; 8:1; 14:38), which was thought threatened by hellēnismós and allophylismós. The related term Hellēnistḗs occurs in Acts 6:1 (cf. 9:29; 11:20), where “Hellenists” and “Hebrews” are used antithetically, apparently referring to Greek-speaking Jews from the Diaspora in contrast to Aramaic-speaking Palestinian Jews, without suggesting any of the overtones of cultural assimilation found in 2 Macc. 4:13.

Though Greeks had contact with other native cultures in the eastern Mediterranean region for centuries before the formation of the Greco-Macedonian kingdom in 356, these contacts were sporadic and mutually influential. However, as part of the program of conquest initiated by Philip II (382-356) and realized by his son and successor Alexander III (356-323), Hellenism became a tool for unifying a vast and disparate empire by introducing Greek language and cultural institutions through the founding of hundreds of city-states and military garrisons throughout Asia Minor, Syria-Palestine, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. These were populated with soldiers and civilians from the Greek world who became a cultural elite who regarded their language and way of life as superior to those of the “barbarians,” i.e., the indigenous population. The Greek institutions founded in each pólis included at least an acropolis, walls, a market, temples, a theater, and a gymnasium (Pausanias Descr. Gr. 10.4.1). Predictably, the natives reacted in two different ways. Those who were upwardly mobile adapted to the changed conditions by accepting the superiority of Greek language and culture and the inferiority of their own. For others Hellenism constituted a culture shock which they considered a threat to their traditional way of life and values which they resisted in a variety of ways. These antithetical reactions are dramatized in the two accounts of the conflict between Seleucid Greeks and Palestinian Jews in 2 and 4 Maccabees, which reflect a Hellenizing party in Judea alongside a group who prefer death to violating Jewish religious traditions.

Hellenism was absorbed by non-Greeks in a variety of subtle ways, including language, personal names, and architecture.

Bibliography. M. E. Boring, K. Berger, and C. Colpe, eds., Hellenistic Commentary to the New Testament (Nashville, 1995); S. K. Eddy, The King Is Dead: Studies in the Near Eastern Resistance to Hellenism, 334-31 b.c. (Lincoln, 1961); E. S. Gruen, The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome, 2 vols. (Berkeley, 1984); M. Hadas, Hellenistic Culture (1959, repr. New York, 1972); M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1974); F. Millar, The Roman Near East: 31 b.c.–a.d. 337 (Cambridge, Mass., 1993); F. W. Walbank, The Hellenistic World, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1993).

David E. Aune

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

HELLENISM

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)