The Romans take for granted that their culture is the best. They have a very strict morality, and people who fall foul of it are produced. The Judeans do not castrate themselves or dress up as women. And they don't worship gods with animal heads like the Egyptians did. But all the people of the Roman Empire are a bit mad. It's when they start to become what we would perhaps now call Jews,. People with rabbis whose focus is the synagogue rather than the temple.