[stripes1776]

All of these brief excerpts come from a book called "The Person in the Orthodox Tradition." It is just one readily accessible book that should be read by anyone who wants to understand the relationship of Hellenic thought to Orthodox Christianity.

There is a somewhat different perspective expressed on the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America website that discusses how the tension between Hellenistic thought and Christianity was resolved.

The spread of Christianity would have been impossible without the Roman Empire that turned the Mediterranean into a big Roman lake. Christianity never took deep roots in the Semitic world but Islam did. Christianity eventually flourished in that Greco-Roman culture of the Roman Empire once a systhesis had been worked out. There were many points of contact that made that possible.

[Cronos]

Christianity never took deep roots in the Semitic world but Islam did.

I would dispute that -- do remember that most of north Africa and the Middle east bar the Arabian peninsula was Christian before the Islamic invasions -- however, 1400 years of slow genocide has decimated them to now where only 2% of Egypt, 10% of Syria, 2% of the Palestinians, 5% of Iraqis and 45% of Lebanese are Christians.