From the very beginning, following the Christian way commonly generated tensions within families. Insiders and outsiders alike bear witness to the threat to household and family ties posed by a transfer of the believer's primary allegiance to Jesus. This study shows that the demand to subordinate family ties in response to the call of Jesus is quite intelligible in the context of beliefs and practices both in Judaism and in Greco-Roman philosophy of the first century. Such background is related to the Gospels of Mark and Matthew.