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→The Dialogue of Judaism with Hellenism
So by the time of the AD first century, Jewish literature in Greek was hardly uncommon. That the majority of Jewish inscriptions in the Roman catacombs were Greek, that Judean synagogues had names in Greek, that Jewish persons in the later works of the Talmud had Greek names; none of this is a surprise. Aramaic was important, Hebrew was the religious language, but Greek was the ''lingua franca'' for Mediterranean urban Jews as much as it was for Gentiles.
Language, then, was not an impediment to Jewish understanding of the world through Hellenistic eyes. All the more so does one find in religious ritual a similar approach. For instance, gilding the horns of a sacrifical animal may appear to be pagan in its source to the proverbial man from Mars although it circumvented as the adornment of a commandment instead. Further, a question as to whether the ''Amidah'' was a civic prayer for Jerusalem just as the Greeks prayed for their cities is worthy of exploration. But the most fascinating example of Hellenistic custom in Jewish religious ritual is that of the Passover ''seder''.
===I. Art and Architecture===