How were Hellenistic Jewish communities structured?
What s important to note about these communities is that they were open to Gentiles, but did not apparently erase all differences. That is, in addition to the Hellenistic Jews there were the Proselytes, Gentiles that now followed all the rules of Torah. In addition, there were Gentiles who followed the meaning but not all of the Laws; these were called God-Fearers. While this structure may seem discriminatory to us, and may in fact have been discriminatory, to understand its import we need to examine Philo s notion about Torah. The Greeks and then the Hellenists considered citizenship to be conferred by education paideia. While there was a notion of a Greek paideia, they recognized that other peoples had their own paideia. Torah was accepted as the Jewish paideia. Philo takes this acceptance two steps forward. First, in good Platonic style, he sees the laws of Torah as allegorical. For the Jew they had a meaning rooted in Jewish history; Passover was the reminder and thank offering of
