Christians - A Third Race

My cousin has been writing a series of lessons for Bible class, and one of them deals with "The Development of the Christian Assembly".

In the historical background he provides, an interesting nugget made itself apparent.

After the Romans conquered the Jewish nation, they soon learned that the Jews were stubborn in several ways, such as by keeping themselves separate from non-Jewish culture, and refusing to worship any god but Yhwh, and not eating and partying with non-Jews, etc. The Romans learned that the Jews had a long history to which they were loyal (at least in principle), and the Romans found that unless there was a reason to do otherwise, it was generally just easier to leave the Jews alone as much as possible.

In the early years of Christianity, the Romans did not make any distinction between Christian Jews and non-Christian Jews; as far as the Romans were concerned, they were all just Jews. Accordingly, the Romans tended to treat the early Christians like they'd treat Jews, leaving them pretty much to themselves (as in Gallio refusing to bother with trying Paul over "Jewish issues" in Acts 18:12-17).

However, after Gentiles started becoming Christians, it became apparent to the Romans that these converts did not have the long history of being a Jew to account for their refusal to participate in Roman society (worship of the Roman gods, wild parties, etc). The Romans began to see these Gentile Christians as a developing "third race"; not Gentile like themselves, nor Jewish like the Jews.

It just struck my fancy (as it did those Christians, apparently, as per my cousin's writings), that we are a "Third Race", a "new People".

Fascinating.