Pauline churches, the majority lived in the Greco-Roman tradition. They did not then come into contact with Hellenism but rather came originally from Hellenism. The literary genres of the NT, including the letters of Paul, the Gospels, and Acts, have their closest parallels in Hellenistic literature. Early Christianity did not develop out of Judaism into Hellenism but was a part of Hellenism from the beginning. The question of the influence of Hellenism cannot be reduced to the thesis that all of