Agree whole hearted with your reply/sDCHindley wrote: ↑Sun Sep 30, 2018 7:21 am
I do not think that Judeans resident in the Diaspora were disposed to be too strict, as inscriptions record many many cases where synagogues and Judeans of the Diaspora got along very cozily with pagan patrons, even letting them equate the Judean god with some local god. Of course the local Judeans did not really think that, but they were willing to let the local pagans think so for the sake of getting along.
DCH
I don't even apply such to Judean residents. Herods temple IMHO opened up Monotheism to the Roman Empire and its residents. It created and is responsible for generating more Proselytes then anyone had ever seen before in such a short period. This temple brought in gentiles by the hundreds of thousands to the point, in Hellenistic circles they were considering each other Jews simply for swearing off pagan deities [jewish encyclopedia]
Hellenistic Judaism rose, More then the previous oppressors adherence to monotheism, but because of the temple, and with Christianity, this movement was short lived and within a few hundred years, Christianity absorbed it all in whole, gone. Im sure fall of the temple played a large role, but either way, Hellenist often preferred Proselyte status over full on cultural adherence to laws and customs.
I do not see a progression of Christianity from Hellenistic Judeans of the Diaspora, I feel the gentiles and proselytes are "more" responsible. Real Jews or Judeans would not be as easily swayed to blasphemous claims of a messiah or parallels to Emperors divinity as "son of god" as to where the Hellenistic Proselytes had no problem "carving up" traditions they were already refusing in full.