ELLENISTI ('Ελληνισταί). — This name designated the Jews of the diaspora (Act. 2:11; 6:1) who lived outside Palestine and spoke Greek. We have information about some groups of these expatriates from before 586, when a group of Palestinian Jews settled on the island of Elephantine, less than 10 km north of the first cataract of the Nile. The forced deportations carried out by the Babylonians and the Assyrians respectively spread Israelite elements throughout Babylonia and among the populations of northern Assyria. In the middle of the fourth century B.C., Palestinian Jews are said to have been deported to Hyrcania by Artaxerxes III Ochus. From Palestine Judaism spread into Egypt and from Egypt elsewhere; it intensified its expansionist movement throughout the third century B.C.
Many were the places that received the expatriates: Alexandria, Antioch, Apamea, Laodicea, Pergamum, numerous Greek islands and cities of Asia Minor, and Bactriana on the borders of India. The most important center of the diaspora was Alexandria, where the Jews were attracted first by Alexander the Great and then by the Ptolemies, who granted them the same rights given to the Greeks. By the middle of the first century B.C., more than 100,000 Jews lived in Alexandria alone. Although the Jews of the diaspora favorably welcomed Hellenic culture and civilization (the Greek version of the Bible was produced at that time to meet the religious needs of the Jews of Alexandria and Egypt who did not understand Hebrew), they nevertheless always remained faithful to the Yahwistic worship. In primitive Christianity, the first deacons, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Parmenas, etc., are remembered as Hellenists (Act. 6:3); and it was the Hellenists who attempted to kill Paul after the Apostle’s flight from Damascus (Act. 9:29); some Hellenists from Cyprus and Cyrene, scattered by the storm that followed the death of Stephen, established the first Church at Antioch, which preached Christ also to the Greeks (Act. 11:20).