$1.95 The conflict the church and the synagogue

THE JEWS IN THE ROMAN WORLD 25Church were laid almost exclusively among proselytes orpeople already interested in Judaism. The transition bywhich these groups passed from partial membership of Judaismto full membership of the Christian Church was an easyone. Had the synagogues of the diaspora insisted primarilyon the ritual and not the moral and ethical implications ofJudaism, on observance of the letter rather than the spiritof the Law, it is doubtful if this transition would everhave taken place except in a few individual cases. WhatChristianity offered them was not something completelydifferent, but the same thing with, in addition, the power ofJesus Christ in place of the disadvantages of circumcisionand other ritual prescriptions.The Romans were always suspicious of the activities ofeastern missionaries in Rome, and the Jews were not the onlypeople concerned. But the Jewish proselyte seemed particularlydangerous to the security of the empire because hewas an * atheist '. This did not so much mean a believer inno God, as a disbeliever in the Gods of the state. It hadnothing to do with the absence of images in Jewish worship.It was not an irreligious attitude, but one which escapedbeing seditious only by the granting of special privileges. Allthat was required for conformity to the state religion was toscatter a few grains of incense upon an altar, and to obtaina certificate, easily granted, that this had been done. Torefuse so simple an act of fellowship with society, one mightalmost say of common courtesy to one's neighbours, seemedto show a strangely malignant character. One was not askedto believe anything. One was only asked to conform to apolitical convention. And the Jews, and later the Christians,were the only people who refused. Whatever Seneca orTacitus might think of this courage from the standpoint oftheir philosophies, they could only condemn it as men ofaction and Roman officials, and consider that to allow sucha religion to spread was an act of supreme folly.To chastiseit with the scorpions of ridicule, to repeat the accusations ofa Manetho or an Apion was an act of political wisdom,whether the accusations were well founded or not.It was therefore not the actual principles of the Jewishreligion, but the effervescence of Messianism and themissionary proclivities of the Jews in the diaspora which