From The Hellenists to Marcion

The ensuing story thus begins with Judean Christ-followers in Jerusalem in the days immediately after the death of Jesus and ends with controversies sparked outside Palestine by the second-century gentile Christian theologian, Marcion of Sinope, strongly renounced as a heretic in the deviance-labelling rhetoric of his Christian critics, but nonetheless highly influential in spreading among the gentiles an anti-Judaic adaptation of the apostle Paul&s;s teachings. Paul&s;s practice and theology of mission are best understood as having been moulded in good measure by a group of Greek-speaking Jewish &s;Christ-followers&s; who were the first to include gentiles as equal members in their redemptive communities. On the basis of a story found in Acts 6:1-6, this group is referred as the &s;Hellenists&s;; and in order to understand either the development of gentile Christianity or the role of Paul in that process, attention needs to be given to these Hellenists, to some of the problems they pose for the historian.