Recent decades have witnessed a growing trend towards viewing early Christianity more as a Jewish sect than as a religion in its own right, as it later became. Extensive study has shown that ancient Judaism was relatively pluralistic and included several different groups, Christians among them. In his new book Runar M. Thorsteinsson of the University of Copenhagen goes a step further and places these Christ-believing Jews in their wider Graeco-Roman context. He joins the recent attempt on the part of scholars to bridge the Judaism/Hellenism divide, in particular by seeing Stoicism as an important intellectual factor underlying early Christian thinking. Thorsteinsson introduces to the reader three important figures of first-century Stoicism. Seneca, Musonius Rufus and Epictetus were all active in the city of Rome (though the last later moved to Nicopolis, today in modern Greece) when Paul wrote his Epistle to the Roman Christians. As well as Paul's Epistle, Thorsteinsson defines Roman Christianity with the help of Peter's first Epistle and that of Clement. He also exploits recent studies on the beginnings of Christianity in the city of Rome. Thorsteinsson shows how the Stoics have been inadequately understood in early Christian studies, and that the divide between Stoic and Christian morality is narrower than many scholars have maintained. He convincingly argues that love was not a uniquely Christian virtue. Citing numerous Stoic texts he asserts that love of humankind was central to Stoic ethics. As with the Christians, the Stoics also provided an ethics of non-retaliation and presented moral life as the proper worship of God instead of a cult. Thorsteinsson concludes that ‘Roman Christianity and Roman Stoicism are fundamentally similar in terms of morality and ethics’, but with one exception. He rightly notes that Christian love is brotherly love between Christ-believers. In other words, it was an intramural phenomenon, while the Stoics required love of the whole of humankind without qualifications. Yet, if Roman Christians were as strongly under Stoic influence as Thorsteinsson convincingly argues, why did they differ from the Stoics in this respect? Is it because Christians strongly associated love with faith in Christ which they saw as the only basis of genuine love? This would explain why they found love only among believers. Thorsteinsson's book is indispensable for all with an interest in the origins of Christian morality. Its understanding of Stoic ethics is excellent and there are rich references to Stoic and Christian sources. The scope of the volume encompasses the city of Rome, but also opens much wider perspectives onto early Christian morality.