My inquiries are directed almost entirely at the Greeks and Romans, with very limited treatment of the Jewish tradition in itself. But I did not look at the Greeks and Romans as entirely separate from the Jews and risk being lured into the tired and rather unfruitful debate over who had the greater influence on Paul. I didn’t want or need to go there. Greco-Roman culture tended to assimilate conquered peoples with the force of a John Deere harvester, and at this period many Jews of the Diaspora lived and thought like Greeks and Romans most of the time (though Palestinian Jews offered the most
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