The Hellenistic World

It is astonishing that the two most influential cradles of the Western tradition - Greece and Israel - were so small even in comparison to some of their neighbours. There were two reasons for the ability of their messages – classical civilization and thought, and Christianity – to spread: The Greek and Roman Empires. Alexander the Great’s conquests built behind his advance, a lasting fortress of Hellenistic culture in the Middle East, whose marks are seen still today. At first, the Roman Empire received the baton of Hellenism, but in its later years, Christianity became the Emperor’s, and thus the Empire’s religion. It was the Jewish diaspora and much later the Empire’s Christianization that led to these remarkable processes of cultural transplantation.