Materialist: Men make their [world], but they do not make it as they please.

I'm interested in understanding the interplay between theological problems (Which canonical revealed texts? Which doctrines?) in Early Christianity and Talmudic Judiasm on the one hand, and the rise in power and prestige of monotheisms against state paganism in the Roman Empire up to Constantine on the other.

I don't think that materialism has contributed much to Biblical Hermeneutics, although there are such things as Marxist and Nietzschean approaches to theology. I'm here to learn, not as an expert.