Endnote 64 – The Omnipresence of the God-Fearers

After the year 117, when the Jewish revolt against Trajan had been suppressed, Sabbath observance on the part of a non-Jew must have been fraught with danger, since the Romans had prohibited proselytizing; and this may explain why in the second century only old people and women bear the name Sambathion. (Cf. Tcherikover, Corpus Papyrorum Iudaicarum, p. 54: “If the Russian Subbotniki [non-Jews who observed the Sabbath according to the Bible, but not according to the Talmud] could profess Judaism in nineteenth-century Russia, when severe punishments were permanently threatening them, why not in Egypt in a world not yet accustomed to religious persecutions?”)