HELLENISTS (Hellenista), a term occurring in the Greek text of the New Testament, and which in the English version is translated Grecians. The authors of the Vulgate, indeed, render it Græci; but the Port-Royalists, more accurately, Juifs-Grecs, Grecian Jews—that is, Jews who spoke Greek, and who are thus distinguished from the Jews called Hebreus, who spoke the Hebrew tongue of that time. The Hellenists, or Grecian Jews, were those who lived in Egypt and other parts where the Greek tongue prevailed. It is to the Hellenists that we owe the Greek version of the Old Testament, commonly called the Septuagint. The Hellenists are properly distinguished from the Hellenes or Greeks, mentioned in John xii. 20, who were Greeks by birth and nation, and yet proselytes to the Jewish religion.