Now that we have the answer (or answers) to the question ‘Why Greece?’, the next question to ask is what it was that made ‘Hellenism’ and ‘Hebraism’— in contraposition to one another—'terms of common literary and cultural usage', or conceptual twins. Why did not the various uses made of the Greek historical-cultural model or the conflict between it and Christianity suffice? Why was it also necessary to place the Greek ideal in opposition to Hebraism (Judaism)? To answer this question, we ought first briefly to describe the appearance of the pattern of antinomy, its repertoire, and their reception.

‘All men are either Jews or Hellenes’ (‘alle Menschen sind entweder Juden oder Hellenen’), Heinrich Heine (1800-56) stated in his commemorative essay Ludwig Borne: Eine Denkschrift (1840), and went on to contrast the two: men who are ascetics, despisers of the flesh, yearning for spiritual enlightenment, or men content with their earthly existence, building their lives in the practical, realistic world. There were Hellenes (in spirit) in the families of German pastors, and Jews (also in spirit) who were born in Athens and perhaps were descendants of Theseus. Jewish and Christian Nazarenes are ‘men of ascetic instincts, enemies of artistic representations and bent on the life of the mind and spirit’ (‘mit asketischen, bildfeindlichen, vergeistigungssiichtigen Trieben’); Jewish and Christian Hellenes are full of life, realistic, and proud of their capacity for exposition (‘Menschen von lebensheiterem, entfaltungsstolzem und realistischem Wesen’). Expressions like ‘Nazarene’ or ‘Jews', Heine hastened to explain, designate not a particular people but a cast of mind and a way of looking at things: ‘I say “Nazarene” to use neither the expression ‘'Jewish'' or “Christian”, although those expressions are synonymous for me.’ In other words, this is a new division of the human race (that is, Western civilization) which supplants the split into ‘Jews’ versus ‘Christians’. The aim of these expressions, he assured his readers, was not to suggest a racial division instead of the religious one but a metaphorical one: of two types (Typen) of human nature.