If Torah was a vital symbol within first-century Judaism, it was a severely practical one. At a time when Judaism’s distinctive identity was under constant threat, Torah provided three badges in particular which marked the Jew out from the pagan: circumcision, sabbath, and the kosher laws, which regulated what food could be eaten, how it was to be killed and cooked, and with whom one might share it. In and through all this ran the theme of Jewish ‘separateness’.
