Hellenistic Judaism

Hellenistic Judaism was a movement which existed in the Jewish diaspora that sought to establish a Hebraic-Jewish religious tradition within the European culture and language of Hellenism after the eastern conquests of Alexander the Great.

Until the fall of the Roman Empire and the Arab-Islamic conquest of the Eastern Mediterranean, the main centers of Hellenistic judaism were Alexandria (Egypt) and Antioch (Northern Syria- now Turkey), the two main Hellenic urban settlements of the MENA area, both founded at the end of the 4th century BCE.

The major literary product of the contact of pre-rabbinical Judaism and Hellenistic culture is the Septuagint translation from Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic to Koine Greek, which began in the 3rd century BCE in Alexandria.

The decline of Hellenistic Judaism started in the 2nd century CE, and its causes are still not fully understood. It may be that it was eventually marginalized by, partially absorbed into or became progressively the Koine Greek-speaking core of "Early Christianity" centered around Antioch and its "universalist" tradition- see most notably Paul of Tarsus and Judaism and the Abrogation of Old Covenant laws.