The Encyclopedia Hellenistica and Christian Origins

The compilations of knowledge from a particular time and place together make up the "encyclopaedia" of their era. The "entries" which constitute an "Encyclopaedia Hellenistica" give expression to the epistemological possibilities of the Hellenistic period. A period of Hellenistic religious history has been conventionally defined with Hellenistic political history as beginning with Alexander's empire and concluding with Augustus's. Contemporary historiographical theory, however, challenges political event as an appropriate criterion for social history and, supported by new data, suggests that the events of the fourth century CE mark a more appropriate conclusion to a period of Hellenistic religious history and a beginning for the Christian era. And, rather than the redistribution of political power, it was the collective acceptance of the Ptolemaic cosmological image with its "grammar of fate" that most significantly conditioned the possibilities for Hellenistic religious discourse. Rather than cast against a Hellenistic background, the first three centuries of Christian origins must be considered, therefore, as historically constituted possibilities of the Hellenistic "circle of knowledge," and, finally, as survivals from among its shared possibilities for religious discourse.