According to A.H.M. Jones, the extensive immigration of Greek mercenaries into Syria-Palestine instigated by the Ptolemaic and Seleucid rulers who followed upon Alexander the Great’s early death in 323 BCE explains the rapid Hellenization of the area.
The upper classes rapidly appropriated the culture of the dominant Greeks and became Greek speaking and adopted Greek names. A frequently referenced example is the Jewish recourse to painful reversal of circumcision in order to participate in the naked athletics of Gymnasium. The pervasive Greek culture, with its posture of military and cultural superiority, soon spread throughout the society to embrace and influence all classes excepting pockets of Judaic resistance like the Pharisaic separatist movement of religious purity.
It is provocative to speculate on the extent to which Jesus was a Hellenized Jew. The prevailing answer seems to be that a Hellenizing process begins later, that is, after the death of Jesus. Paul, whose letters date around 50 CE, is customarily presented as the primary agent – even villain – in this drama of Hellenization. Marcello Craveri, in The Life of Jesus, claims, “Paul not only often changed the master’s message but also dramatically altered his very character” (p. 156). Further, “Paul’s thinking…was clearly no longer the religion preached by Jesus but the cult of Christ as a God” (p. 157).
This question, as we see, does not have a self-evident answer. John Barton, in A History of the Bible, provides a clear if unexpected answer. He says, “the thought world of the New Testament is thoroughly Hellenistic and trying to construct an early form of the Christian message as yet untainted by Hellenism is likely to be fruitless” (p. 150). Further, “Jesus was…aware of currents in the Judaism of his day that were indebted to Hellenism, whether he detected this influence or not” (p. 151).
Granted that Christianity is a syncretistic amalgam of Jew and Greek (Hellenism), the question still emerges. Was the syncretism already an accomplished fact when the Jesus movement became visible in the missionary enterprise of Paul? In other words, was the Jesus movement itself a pre-existing fusion of Greek and Jew arising out of a Hellenized Judaism? Most starkly put: Was Jesus a Hellenistic Jew? Or, did Paul invent a Hellenistic Christianity which found easy access in the Greek cities of his mission? This question requires exploration.