Ancient Judaism and Christianity were far more diverse and interconnected than traditional scholarship assumed, as demonstrated by several groundbreaking methodological advances in studying the Greco-Roman period. Jacob Neusner's four-volume festschrift for Morton Smith, alongside monographs by Lee Levine, David Goodblatt, and Menahem Stern, challenge longstanding assumptions through critical historical analysis freed from theological presuppositions. Goodblatt's lexicographical analysis reveals that conventional views of Babylonian rabbinic academies are anachronistic, with Geonic sources incorrectly projecting later institutional structures onto earlier periods. Levine's social history of Caesarea illuminates the cosmopolitan nature of Jewish communities and extensive Jewish-Christian interactions, while Stern's compilation of Greek and Latin sources provides crucial external perspectives often obscured in rabbinic literature. Through form-critical approaches to rabbinic texts and comparative methodology across religious boundaries, these works demonstrate that pre-70 CE traditions underwent significant revision and that rigid categorical distinctions between Jewish and Christian communities, as well as between Palestinian and Diaspora Judaism, fail to capture the complex realities of ancient religious life. This scholarship necessitates more nuanced historical reconstructions that acknowledge the fluid boundaries and diverse expressions of ancient religious practice.