Christian message. In their juncture with the monotheism of Israel, Christianity, an amalgam of Jewish faith and pagan culture, was born.1 Justified as it is, however, the effort of Christian scholarship to expose the pagan roots of Christianity has gone too far. Christianity is sometimes viewed as basically paganism with a “monotheistic” facade, the pagan component as primary and the Jewish as secondary and extrinsic. Christianity’s “warfare” with idolatry was, accordingly, only on the surface;