Christianity
ChristianityClassicists have traditionally found interesting both the Christian cult itself and Christian attitudes to Greek and Roman culture and the imperial state. Recent research encourages equal attention to the Jews. Christianity began as a Jewish sect and changed its relationship with the Jewish community at a time when both groups were affected by later Hellenism. Christians laid claim to an antiquity rooted in the history of ancient Israel, while at the same time they sought the tolerance, interest, and loyalty of the pagans around them.
The first followers of Jesus inhabited a political system, the Roman empire, that regarded Jews as singular. Strategic prudence had recognized in Herod the Great (confirmed as king of Judaea in 40 BC) a useful ally against opponents of Roman expansion and against rivals for power in Rome itself. The Jews, monotheists who identified closely their religion and their ethnicity, survived thus...
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