Jews, Judaism and Greco-Roman world

Various Greco-Roman authors were unhappy about the great success of Jewish ingathering (conversion) activities in the Roman Empire. Here are a few examples: Decimus Lunius Luvenalis, known as Juvenal from the end of the 1st into the beginning of the 2nd century CE, was a Roman satiric poet and teacher who described life in Rome under several emperors. He wrote:

“A father sleeps more each 7th day, avoiding pork, the next thing that happens is that his sons become circumcised, keep Moses’ laws and despise the laws of Rome” (Juvenal, Satires 14.96-106).

The author of this text understood that the Shabbat, which Roman God-fearers seem to have observed, was the beginning of a slippery slope leading to full proselyte conversion, where, in the end, a law-abiding Roman citizen would adopt the rites of the Judeans and claim exemption and protection from Roman laws.

Publius Cornelius Tacitus, usually called Tacitus (56-117 CE), was a senator, historian, and orator of the Roman Empire. His famous surviving works are Annals and Histories. He wrote that people who converted to the Judean way of life:

“…abandoned the practices of their fathers. They disowned their own gods, their own country and their own family” (Tacitus, History 5:1-2).

Celsus was a 2nd-century CE Hellenistic philosopher opposed to early Christ-followers. The church father Origen preserved his words in his apologetic work against Celsus’ rhetoric. There we read:

“If the Jews maintained their own law, we should not find fault with them, but rather with those who have abandoned their own traditions and professed those of the Jews” (Origen, Contra Celsum 5.41).

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, also known as Seneca the Younger, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and humorist. Speaking of the Jews, he says:

“Meanwhile, the customs of this accursed race have gained such influence that they are now received throughout all the world. The vanquished have given laws to their victors” (Seneca quoted by Augustine, City of God, c. 5 BCE – 65 CE).

Conversion as an experience of radical abandonment of one’s religious and ethnic identity was known in antiquity. But such was definitely not Paul’s experience. Paul did not abandon Judaism but “converted” from one variety of Judaism to another—from one way within Judaism to another (Jesus-centered, apocalyptic Judaism). He was, and continues to be, a Jewish Pharisee saved by the grace of Israel’s God and called into His unique service as God’s instrument among both Israel and the Nations. Therefore, with an understanding of these basic concepts, we must retranslate and reread the Apostle Paul in our own time. I believe that the final chapter of the Christian understanding of this great Jewish man has not yet been written.