‘Religionizing’ History, or ‘Historicizing’ Religion? Johann G. Droysen’s Hellenismus in Wilhelm Bousset’s Works on Jesus and Early Christianity

Like several older and contemporary Protestant exegetes, Bousset constructs a Hellenistic-Roman Judaism, which is in line with his own ideal Christian religion, namely, a religion liberated from the bonds of institutional (or church) ‘constraints’. The long research tradition on which Bousset founds his ideas could be easily summed up as follows: Alexandrian and/or Hellenistic Judaism has ‘enlightened’ previous and contemporary Judaism through Greek and Oriental influences, making it the seedbed of ‘universalistic’ Christianity. Only through such a seminal ‘historical’ passage, Christianity was able to reach its role as ‘the’ religion par excellence, a religion that could supersede all other religions. This is the reason why, according to Bousset, Judaism, if not influenced by the Hellenistic universalistic spirit (like Palestinian ‘Late’ Judaism), is a religion that lacks freedom and vitality. Especially in the book on ‘Second-Temple Judaism’, Bousset describes the time of Alexander and of the Diadochi as one of general Verschmelzung (fusion, amalgamation) between Greek and oriental spirits (Palestinian Judaism, the ‘durable’ Judaism in Bousset’s view, is excluded from such fusion). Cultural and ethnic borders between peoples disappear, and the Greek koiné language (i.e. the language of New Testament) emerges as the common medium of communication, both in material and spiritual sense.