Botanically, the wild branches have “overrun” the roots. Allegorically, some aspect of the Gentile grafting has altered or diluted the power of the root.
Since the root is the covenant, this overrunning of the root means that some force has reduced the covenant’s effect, even though the initial grafting showed great promise. Historically, this passage describes the apostasy. The image of overrunning the root may be an apt description of how the apostasy occurred.
When any of us attempt to resolve a question, we do so with the best information and training available to us. In an intellectually Hellenized world, it was inevitable that Hellenic ideas and modes of discourse infused the decision-making process of the early Christians as they attempted to answer new questions never touched upon by Jesus. In the Old World this process had already begun as part of the Jewish Diaspora prior to the time of Christ. As Lawrence Schiffman, professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University describes that period:
Only a few Jews in the Hellenistic Diaspora went so far as to apostasize from Judaism. A somewhat larger group seems to have become involved in syncretism, identifying the God of Israel with the chief pagan deity, a phenomenon which had grievous consequences in Judea. Some scholars have mistakenly considered the religion of the syncretists to have been the dominant Judaism of the Diaspora, but in fact this approach had few adherents, and for the most part, the Diaspora Jews were loyal to their ancestral ways and faith. At the same time, however, they eagerly sought to adapt and accommodate to the surroundings in which they lived, especially when they came to have the same educational background and occupations as their neighbors, a process that was abetted by the many shared ethical concepts of Judaism and the Greek philosophical tradition.
One of the most important examples of the use of Greek forms to explain Jewish scriptures is seen in the writings of Philo (20 B.C.–A.D. 40). Charles Duke Yonge notes that his “works are highly interesting as showing us the manner in which the Sophists of his age and national [sic] sought to appropriate the Greek philosophy by an allegorical interpretation of the works of Moses, which they thus represented as containing all the principles which the Greeks subsequently expanded into the precise doctrines of their several sects.”
There is no single point at which one may draw a line with apostasy on one side and doctrinal purity on the other. Even in the very earliest days, the myriad of questions surrounding how one might embrace the gospel reveals that there was no single orthodoxy. The differences of opinion between Paul and the Jerusalem church establish that fact.
As the young church struggled to understand how to handle new possibilities, not the least of which was the opening of the gospel to the Gentiles, possible answers came from multiple sources. Hellenic appeals to reason and logic, as well as information from other sources, became the dominant mode of resolving issues, rather than the appeal to revelation that Peter used when confronted with Cornelius. Worldly logic subtly infiltrated the realm of gospel teaching, and the weight of the intellectual world overran the purity of the roots. Even the Apostle Paul uses Greek rhetorical techniques to make his point as he teaches the Gentiles.