If, according to Paul, this new world of forgiveness had opened up to embrace all alike, non-Jew as well as Jew, what would become of the settled but still fragile place of the Jewish communities in the Roman world? Everything was going to change.
This was in fact the main challenge for Paul’s hearers, the possibility that the carefully nuanced relationship between Jewish communities and the emerging Roman Empire would be upset. That was already the problem for Jesus in Jerusalem and caused his death.
