Our God, the Jews would have said, is the One God who made the whole world. He cannot be represented by a human-made image. We will demonstrate who he is by the way we live. If we join the world around in worshipping the local divinities—let alone in worshipping the Roman emperor (as people were starting to do when Saul was growing up)—we will be making the mistake our ancestors made. (Actually, a significant minority of non-Jews admired the Jews for all this, preferring their clear, clean lines of belief and behavior to the dark muddles of paganism. Many attached themselves to the synagogue
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