Greeks

'Greek' as Shorthand for the Gentile World

By the New Testament era, three centuries after Alexander the Great's conquests spread Greek language and culture across the eastern Mediterranean, 'Greek' had become less a strict ethnicity and more the New Testament's standard shorthand for the whole non-Jewish world that shared this common Hellenistic culture and language. Paul's repeated formula 'to the Jew first, and also to the Greek' (Romans 1:16; 10:12) uses the pairing to mean, in effect, 'to everyone, Jew and Gentile alike' — the entire human race the gospel addresses, not literally only ethnic Greeks.

Hellenists in Acts

Acts distinguishes 'Hellenists' — Greek-speaking Jews, often from the wider Mediterranean Dispersion — from Aramaic-speaking, more traditionally Judean 'Hebrews' within the earliest Jerusalem church, a distinction that surfaces in a dispute over the fair distribution of food to widows, resolved by appointing seven men (including Stephen and Philip) specifically to oversee it (Acts 6:1-6). Paul's own missionary strategy repeatedly engages the Greek intellectual world directly, most memorably reasoning with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers at Athens's Areopagus, quoting Greek poets to make his case for the God 'in whom we live, and move, and have our being' (Acts 17:16-34).

Scripture references

• Romans 1:16 — 'To the Jew first, and also to the Greek'
• Acts 6:1-6 — Hellenists (Greek-speaking Jews) distinguished from Hebrews in Jerusalem
• Acts 17:16-34 — Paul reasons with Greek philosophers at the Areopagus

Further reading

• Encyclopaedia Britannica: Hellenistic Age