Status Updates From Paul: The Pagan's Apostle

"Belief, as moderns view it--the sincerity or the authenticity or intensity of some inner disposition or psychological state of an individual believer--is not native to this [Greco-Roman] worldview. Ancients focused instead on acts of deference, on offerings, or on what we might designate 'cult,' which enacted affection and esteem." (70)

"It was impossible to live in a Greco-Roman city without living with its gods." (63)

"Ethnicity was an expression of cult." (64)

"Heaven and earth ran along ethnic lines." (64)