Endnote 39 – The Omnipresence of the God-Fearers

Smallwood (E. Mary Smallwood, “The Alleged Jewish Tendencies of Poppaea Sabina,” Journal of Theological Studies 10 [1959], pp. 329–335) argues that Poppaea could hardly have been attracted to a religion which forbade murder and adultery, and she asks whether a queen could have repudiated idolatry. We may, however, reply that Poppaea may have selected whatever Jewish practices appealed to her. Again, the term theosebes is at this time hardly a technical term, since it sometimes is used of pious people generally, whether Jews or non-Jews. (Wilcox, “The ‘God-Fearers’ in Acts,” p. 121, remarks that it is strange that Josephus nowhere else uses the term theosebes in reference to “sympathizers,” and suggests that he would have done so if the term had existed and had been widely understood. The reason, we may reply, why Josephus does not use it elsewhere is that there was as yet in his time no single technical term for the “sympathizers.”)