Abstract

J. C. Droysen was the first to use the term "Hellenism" to designate the civilization of the Greek-speaking world after Alexander, and much of the confusion over what the term is intended to signify derives from Droysen's own difficulty in relating the political to. the cultural aspects of that period. Droysen defined Hellenism as that stage in the evolution of paganism which led from classical Greece to Christianity. The most convincing explanation for Droysen's abandonment of cultural history is that his close personal ties with Jewish converts to, Christianity made the problem of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity taboo. When Droysen started his History of Hellenism, the emphasis was on the encounter of Greek and non-Jewish Orientals; but after the work of the TUbingen school, it was impossible to talk seriously about the origins of Christianity without a prolonged study of the' Jewish background