The origin of a rational and inner-worldly ethic is associated in the Occident with the appearance of thinkers and prophets ... whodeveloped in a social context that was alien to the Asiatic cultures. This context consisted of the political problems engendered by the bourgeois status-group of the city, without which neither Judaism, nor Christianity, nor the development of Hellenistic thinking are conceivable.|author=|title=|source=