This second lecture establishes the social, thus religious context for the development of early Christianity, namely, Graeco-Roman Judaism. How did Jews fit themselves into the world after Alexander? This lecture will examine Jewish heterogeneity, the vigorously various expressions of ancient Jewishness that prevailed both in the homeland and in the Greek-speaking Diaspora. We will see how pagan culture accommodated Jewish difference, and how different Jews accommodated themselves to pagan culture. We will consider the many gods of ancient Jewish “monotheism.” We will see how pagans and Jews shared common ideas about ethnicity and what it meant to be a people. We will find Jews in pagan places, especially in that great pagan religious institution, the ancient city; and we will find pagans in Jewish places – in the temple in Jerusalem, and especially in synagogue assemblies throughout the empire. And, finally, we will see how Jewish traditions expressed in Greek enabled the dissemination of religious ideas not only to widely dispersed Jewish populations, but also to interested pagans. Graeco-Roman Judaism laid the groundwork for the spread of Christianity. A recording of Lecture Two - Israel Abroad: Jews among the Gods This article was published on Thursday 13 August 2026
