One branch of the Tsabians were King Herod's Hodites evicted from Jerusalem by the Romans. According to the Hodites of Mecca their scriptures stated that a Prophet would arise there who would bring about the dawn of a new aga and take them back to Jerusalem. "Synagogues" incorporating pagan motifs found all over the Holy Land are the last remnants of Herod's "Hodite" Tsabian community.
The most common form of σεβεια was a kind of syncretism. While the church draws a sharp distinction between Emperor Constantine and Julian the Apostate, there is no evidence that the religious beliefs of both men were not exactly the same. It is clear only that that their views on who exactly Jesus was differed, Constantine seeing him as an incarnation of Mithras, Julian seeing him as nothing but a 1st century Jewish teacher. Constantine was interested in bringing out Mithraic symbolism in rituals of Jewish origin, while Julian clearly respecting Jewish ritual saw no reason for syncretism and preferred not to blur the line between his own ethnic pagan rituals and rituals of Jewish origin. This distinction makes Constantine the heretic from a Jewish perspective while Julian was firmly within Theosebeia even though his ritual observances were further away from Judaismpaganism.
