should properly be attributed only to a later period.
5
Among the major supports for such a construction are the similarities between Paul and Philosimilarities that cannot easily be accounted for by assuming influence, since both were active at the same time in quite widely separated places (Chadwick 1966 and Borgen 1980). The affinities between Philo and such texts as the fourth gospel and the Letter to the Hebrews are only slightly less compelling evidence, because of the possibility that the authors of these texts already know Philo (Borgen 1965; Williamson 1970). I take these affinities as prima facie evidence for a Hellenistic Jewish cultural
koine
throughout the eastern Mediterranean, undoubtedly varying from place to place in many respects but sharing some common elements throughout the region.
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Moreover, as Wayne Meeks (1983, 33) and others have pointed out, it is impossible to draw hard and fast lines between Hellenistic and rabbinic Jews in the first century.
6
On the one hand, the rabbinic movement per se does not yet exist, and on the other hand, Greek-speaking Jews like Paul and Josephus refer to themselves as Pharisees, and Paul is allegedly a disciple of Rabban Gamaliel, the very leader of the putative proto-rabbinite party. Nonetheless, I am going to suggest that there were tendencies, which, while not sharply defined, already separated first-century Greek speakers, who were relatively acculturated to Hellenism, from Semitic speakers, who were less acculturated. These tendencies were, on my hypothesis, to become polarized as time went on, leading
in the end
to a sharp division between Hellenizers, who became absorbed into Christian groups, and anti-Hellenizers, who formed the nascent rabbinic movement.
7
The adoption of Philo exclusively in the Church and the fact that he was ignored by the Rabbis are symptomatic of this relationship,
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 | | 5. I am aware that I am placing myself in the middle here of a great contest in the interpretation of Paul. Suffice it to say here that I am cognizant of the different ways to read the Pauline corpus, including in particular the stimulating (but ultimately unconvincing) revisionist reading of Gaston (1987). In my work in progress,
A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity,
I will, Deo volente, detail my reasons for making these judgments.
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| | 6. Several of the essays edited by Neusner, Frerichs, and McCracken-Flesher (see Collins 1985) also deal with these issues, particularly those in the section entitled "Defining Difference: The First Century" (73282).
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| | 7. We must not forget that there were anti-Hellenists in later Christianity as well. Tertullian is the most obvious example, and in some respects, his sensibility about the materiality or corporeity of human essence is similar to that of the Rabbis, although his ideology of sexuality is in total opposition to theirs.
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