"... In Romans 12:4-13, the kind of piety stressed in previous lines as due to the Jewish god (defined in special insider terms as the father of Jesus, and at times conveniently indistinguishable as here in Romans 12:12 from Jesus as “Lord”) is further described in terms of qualified positive engagement with common first-century Greco-Roman Jewish ideals. The stress on proper holy “zeal” expressed in prayerful obedience recalls the Jewish insider ideals and identities promoted in the Maccabean letters, and as some commentators have noticed, the reference to meeting “the needs of the saints” strongly connotes community support for relatively underprivileged Jewish insiders, potentially in terms of future offerings for “the saints” in Jerusalem (like the one promoted later as important in Romans 15:25-31), help for local Roman Jewish insiders targeted by the emperor Claudius, etc. As noted by Jewett and others, the kind of ideal insider excellence of character and behavior expressed in Romans 12:14-18 in terms of humility, rejoicing with those who rejoice, and weeping with those who weep (seen above to be in line with Greco-Roman ideals) also has suggestive traditional Jewish parallels (Jewett cites here Sirach 7:34: “Do not withdraw yourself from weepers, and mourn with mourners”). The fact that such traditional Jewish values and exhortation are specifically directed here at promoting practical community mutuality and solidarity of a kind seen to be appropriate to the service of association networks ... underlines yet again the community-defining focus and function of the passage and the letter ..."