Hellene as a means of religious differentiation. Jews, like Greeks, distinguished themselves from foreigners, but unlike Greeks, did so according to religious rather than cultural standards. Roman domination of the Greek world enhanced the prestige of the religious institutions that remained intact. Early Christians differentiated people according to religion, so the sense of the word Hellene as a cultural attribute became marginalized and then supplanted by its religious element. Eventually, Christians came to refer to all pagans as Hellenes. St. Paul in his Epistles uses Hellene almost always juxtaposed to Hebrew, and in disregard of all other ethnicities (Romans, Syrians, Egyptians, etc.) living in the area at the time. A possible exception to this being Colossians 3:11 ("Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all." King James Version). The aim was probably to represent the aggregate of the polytheistic and the monotheistic religious communities, who respectively believed in many gods or one god. Hellene is used in a religious sense for the first time in the New Testament. In the Gospel of Mark 7:26, a woman arrives before Jesus kneeling before Him: "The woman was a Hellene, a Syrophœnician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter." Since the nationality or ethnicity of the woman is stated to be Syrophœnician, "Greek" (translated as such into the English of the King James Version, but as haiþno "" in Ulfilas's Gothic; Wycliffe and Coverdale likewise have heathen) must therefore signify her polytheistic religion. Nevertheless, it is important to mention that phrases in koine Greek similar to the one in Mark 7:26 ("ἡ δὲ γυνὴ ἦν Ἑλληνίς, Συροφοινίκισσα τῷ γένει·") can be found in the new testament being applied to Jewish people (Acts 18:2 "καὶ εὑρών τινα Ἰουδαῖον ὀνόματι Ἀκύλαν, Ποντικὸν τῷ γένει,")(Acts 18:24 "Ἰουδαῖος δέ τις Ἀπολλὼς ὀνόματι, Ἀλεξανδρεὺς τῷ γένει,") and the Levite Barnabas (Acts 4:36, "Λευΐτης, Κύπριος τῷ γένει"). In all those cases the terms Hellene/Jew/Levite are mentioned, eventually followed by a comma, a designation such as Syrophoenician/Pontic/Alexandrian/Cypriot and after that the words "τῷ γένει", with the last words tending to have differing translations. A broadly similar terminology is found in John 12:20–23: "And there were certain Hellenes among them that came up to worship at the feast ... Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come,