happens. The Jews of Jesus’ day, as is well-known, were living under foreign rule and had been for several centuries. The worst thing about that was not the high taxation, the alien laws, the brutality of oppression and so on, awful though that often was. The worst thing was that the foreigners were pagans. If Israel was truly God’s people, why were the pagans ruling over her? If Israel was called to be God’s true humanity, surely these foreign nations were like the animals over which Adam and Eve