Judaism in the Roman World: Collected Essays (Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity)

Judaism in the Roman World

Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums

Edited by

Martin Hengel (Tübingen), Pieter W. van der Horst (Utrecht), Martin Goodman (Oxford), Daniel R. Schwartz ( Jerusalem), Cilliers Breytenbach (Berlin), Friedrich Avemarie (Marburg), Seth Schwartz (New York)

VOLUME 66

Judaism in the Roman World Collected Essays

by

Martin Goodman

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Goodman, Martin, 1953Judaism in the Roman world : collected essays / by Martin Goodman. p. cm. — (Ancient Judaism and early Christianity, ISSN 1871-6636 ; v. 67) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-90-04-15309-7 ISBN-10: 90-04-15309-8 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Judaism—History—Post-exilic period, 586 B.C.-210 A.D. 2. Judaism—History—Talmudic period, 10-425. I. Title. II. Series. BM176.G63 2006 296.09'014—dc22 2006049637

ISSN 1871-6636 ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15309 7 ISBN-10: 90 04 15309 8 © Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS

Preface ........................................................................................ Acknowledgements .................................................................... Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen

Early Judaism ......................................... Identity and Authority in Ancient Judaism ................................................... Josephus and Variety in First-Century Judaism ................................................... The Temple in First-Century CE Judaism ................................................... The Pilgrimage Economy of Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period .............. Sacred Scripture and ‘Defiling the Hands’ ..................................................... Texts, Scribes and Power in Roman Judaea ..................................................... Jewish Proselytising in the First Century ................................................... A Note on Josephus, the Pharisees and Ancestral Tradition ................................ The Place of the Sadducees in First-Century Judaism ............................ A Note on the Qumran Sectarians, the Essenes and Josephus ...................... The Persecution of Paul by Diaspora Jews ......................................................... Sadducees and Essenes After 70 CE ... The Function of Minim in Early Rabbinic Judaism ................................... Modeling the “Parting of the Ways” ...................................................... Kosher Olive Oil in Antiquity .............

vii ix 1 21 33 47 59 69 79 91 117 123 137 145 153 163 175 187

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Chapter Seventeen The Jewish Image of God in Late Antiquity ................................................. Chapter Eighteen Sacred Space in Diaspora Judaism ...... Chapter Nineteen Jews and Judaism in the Mediterranean Diaspora in the Late-Roman Period: the Limitations of Evidence ................................................. Index of Names and Subjects .................................................. Index of Ancient Literature .......................................................

205 219

233 261 269

PREFACE

The studies reprinted here originally appeared in diverse publications between 1990 and 2006, and in many cases they are not easily available. They were written for a variety of purposes, but they reflect a consistent approach in the study of Judaism from the late Second Temple period to the end of antiquity and I hope that reissuing them in a single volume may prove useful. It is largely by accident that I have written on so many aspects of the religious lives of ancient Jews. I was trained as a Roman historian and came to the study of Jewish texts originally as a source for social, cultural and administrative history; for such purposes, it was necessary to analyse the religious milieu and meaning of these texts only to the extent that this clarified their value as evidence for other aspects of Jewish and Roman history. However, I discovered early in my teaching career that many colleagues simply assumed that anyone who works on Jewish texts must be interested in religious history for its own sake, and after a while I succumbed. In any case, it proved impossible to give lectures on Roman Palestine without taking a view on numerous contentious issues in the study of Judaism, and the provision of lectures for the Theology faculty in Oxford on ‘Varieties of Judaism’ encouraged a re-examination of received opinion on many aspects. The studies reprinted here reflect these origins. They are not the work of a theologian: they deal with the religious lives of ancient Jews rather than with religious ideas in the abstract. Those lives are situated, explicitly or implicitly, against the background of the wider history of the Roman world. Throughout there is a strong concern to clarify the limitations of the surviving evidence for ancient Judaism and to encourage gentle scepticism about some of the later myths about Judaism in the early centuries—myths which were created already by the end of antiquity, within the rabbinic and Christian traditions, but which have in many cases survived to the present. The texts of the essays are republished here unchanged from their original form except for the correction of a few misprints, since reference to more recent discussions of the issues they raise would not have changed the arguments and would have impaired the clarity

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of the presentation. But readers may find it helpful to know about a few of the most significant later works relevant to the articles written in the 1990s: for Chapter 2, Shaye Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: boundaries, varieties, uncertainties (University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1999); for Chapter 7, Christine Schams, Jewish Scribes in the Second-Temple Period (Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield 1998); for Chapter 8, Martin Goodman, Mission and Conversion: Proselytising in the Religious History of the Roman Empire (Oxford University, Press, Oxford, 1994); for Chapter 18, Steven Fine, This Holy Place: On the Sanctity of the Synagogue During the Greco-Roman Period (University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Ind., 1998). Martin Goodman

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Original publication details of these studies are as follows: ‘Early Judaism’, in E.W. Nicholson (ed.), A Century of Theological and Religious Studies in Britain 1902–2002 (British Academy, Oxford, 2003), 135–51. ‘Identity and authority in ancient Judaism’, Judaism 39 (1990), 192–201. ‘Josephus and Variety in First Century Judaism’, The Israel Academy of Science and Humanities. Proceedings. Vol. VII No. 6. Jerusalem, 2000, 201–13. ‘The Temple in First Century CE Judaism’, in J. Day (ed.), Temple and Worship in Biblical Israel (T. & T. Clark, London and New York, 2005), 459–68. ‘The pilgrimage economy of Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period’, in L. I. Levine, ed., Jerusalem: its sanctity and centrality to Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Continuum, New York, 1999), 69–76. ‘Sacred scripture and “defiling the hands” ’, Journal of Theological Studies 41 (1990), 99–107. ‘Texts, scribes and power in Roman Judaea,’ in A.K. Bowman and G. D. Woolf, eds., Literacy and Power in the Ancient World (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994), 99–108. ‘Jewish proselytising in the first century A.D.’, in T. Rajak, J.M. Lieu and J. North (eds.), Jews among Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire (Methuen, London, 1992), 53–78.

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‘A note on Josephus, the Pharisees and ancestral tradition’, JJS 50 (1999), 17–20. ‘The place of the Sadducees in First-Century Judaism’, in M. Gregory, S. Heschel and F. Udoh (eds.), Festschrift for E.P. Sanders (University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Ind., 2006). ‘A note on the Qumran sectarians, the Essenes and Josephus’, JJS 46 (1995), 161–6. ‘The persecution of Paul by diaspora Jews,’ in J. Pastor and M. Mor (eds.), The Beginnings of Christianity (Yad ben Zvi, Jerusalem, 2005), 379–387. ‘Sadducees and Essenes after 70 CE’, in S.E. Porter, P. Joyce and D.E. Orton (eds.), Crossing the Boundaries. Essays in Biblical Interpretation in honour of Michael D. Goulder (Brill, Leiden, 1994), 347–56. ‘The function of minim in early rabbinic Judaism’, in H. Cancik, H. Lichtenberger and P. Schäfer (eds.), Geschichte-Tradition-Reflexion. (Festschrift für Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburstag) ( J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen, 1996), vol. 1, 501–10. ‘Modeling the “Parting of the Ways”’, in A.H. Becker and A.Y. Reed, The Ways that Never Parted ( J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen, 2003), 119–29. ‘Kosher olive oil in antiquity’, in P.R. Davies and R.T. White (eds.), A Tribute to Geza Vermes (Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield, 1990), 227–45. ‘The Jewish Image of God in Late Antiquity’, in R. Kalmin and S. Schwartz (eds.), Jewish Culture and Society under the Christian Roman Empire (Peeters and JTS Press, Leuven, 2003), 133–45. ‘Sacred Space in Diaspora Judaism’, in B. Isaac and A. Oppenheimer (eds.), Studies on the Jewish Diaspora in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods (Te'uda volume 12; Tel Aviv University and Ramot Publishing, Tel Aviv, 1996), 1–16.

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‘Jews and Judaism in the Mediterranean Diaspora in the late-Roman period: the limitations of evidence’, in Carol Bakhos (ed.), Ancient Judaism in its Hellenistic Context, (Brill, Leiden, 2005), 177–203. I am grateful to the publishers of each of these articles for permission to republish them in this volume.

CHAPTER ONE

EARLY JUDAISM

In a chapter dedicated to the discussion of changing scholarly perspectives during a century of endeavour, it is appropriate to begin with the observation that any decision as to what to include under the rubric of ‘Early Judaism’ must itself be the product of a distinctive perspective. I shall discuss in this chapter the work that has been done on Judaism in the late Second Temple period and in late antiquity down to the closure of the Talmud—that is, roughly from 200 BCE to c. 500 CE. Descriptions of this Judaism as ‘early’, though common in British scholarship, is not universal. In the eyes of orthodox Jews who trace the origins of Judaism to the giving of the Torah to Moses on Mt Sinai, the late Second Temple period lies a long way down the continuous stream of halakha. In contrast, scholars who view Second Temple Judaism as a prelude to Christianity and rabbinic Judaism after 70 CE as theologically insignificant may describe the last days of the Temple as ‘Spätjudentum’. A well-meaning effort to mediate between these attitudes by describing this period as ‘Middle Judaism’ has not proven popular.1 It may justify my retention of the term ‘Early Judaism’ for this chapter to note that I am thereby reflecting the mainstream perspective of British scholars in Second Temple Judaism over the past century, since most still come from a background in biblical studies, in which a sharp break between the Israelite religion of the First Temple and Judaism of the Second Temple is taken for granted.2 That late Second Temple Judaism is seen as ‘early’ is testimony to the appreciation among such scholars that there were to be authentic later forms of Judaism from the early rabbis down to the modern day. 1 G. Boccaccini, Middle Judaism: Jewish Thought, 300 BCE–200 CE (Minneapolis, Minn., 1991). 2 Note, for instance, the implications of the decision to begin the Cambridge History of Judaism with the Persian period (vol. 1, ed. L. Finkelstein and W.D. Davies, Cambridge, 1984). Vol. 2 (1989) of the Cambridge History covers the Hellenistic period; vol. 3 (1999), jointly edited by W.D. Davies, W. Horbury and John Sturdy, covers the early Roman period.

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In contrast to Britain, in the world of scholarship outside the United Kingdom the main institutional changes influencing approaches to early Judaism have been the creation of two new academic contexts for such study, namely Jewish studies and religious studies. Neither context was known at the beginning of the twentieth century but there are now numerous departments, courses, periodicals and academic posts dedicated to Jewish studies, particularly in the great centres in the United States and Israel. Departments of religious studies have similarly been established in many universities in the United States, with Judaism of all periods studied in the context of other faiths and religion in general. Academic study of Jewish culture began in nineteenth-century Germany as a form of affirmation of the place of Jews within European culture. These pioneers of the Wissenschaft des Judentums were all themselves Jews and wrote for a Jewish readership. Almost all were either independent scholars or based in Jewish theological institutions. In the United Kingdom, University College London appointed a Jew as Goldsmid Professor of Hebrew in the mid-nineteenth century, and Cambridge had a lecturer in rabbinics soon after, but it was only in the twentieth century that Oxford established the Cowley Lecturership in Post-biblical Hebrew and then, in 1939, the Readership in Jewish Studies. In this respect British universities differed little from other Western institutions, with the notable exception of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which had been established in the 1920s as a university ‘for the Jewish people’. There was to be drastic change with the general expansion of university teaching in Western Europe and the United States in the 1960s. This general expansion coincided, especially in the United States, with a demand for greater attention to be paid to study of previously ignored social groups, in particular women and ethnic minorities. The incorporation of Jewish studies into the curricula of many American universities over the past forty years has owed much to the search by American Jews for a Jewish identity, both in the case of the students who take these courses and the donors through whose munificence academic posts have been established. Hence their academic concentration has generally been in the history of the Jews in comparatively modern times. Nonetheless, study of early Judaism, particularly the story of the last days of the Second Temple and its aftermath, has much contemporary resonance and exerts a strong hold on many students and teachers in these departments.

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The United Kingdom has not witnessed a similar explosion in Jewish studies in universities. Anglo-Jewry is among the larger populations of diaspora Jews but the size of the community is dwarfed by the number of Jews in the United States, even allowing for the considerable difficulties inherent in establishing precise figures when the definition of Jewish identity is itself disputed. English Jews have been less inclined than Jews in North America to stress their Jewishness as part of their identity, preferring instead a low profile within English society. There is only one university department in the United Kingdom devoted to Hebrew and Jewish Studies, in University College London. In recent years some universities have established centres or programmes as a way to coordinate the teaching of staff already in post with an interest in Jewish subjects but, with the exception of the privately funded Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, the initiatives have been fuelled less by the interests of donors or potential students than by the desire of university authorities to make a gesture towards incorporation of a new academic field made fashionable by its popularity in the United States. The pattern for university teaching of religious studies is also set in the United States, where to some extent it is the product of the institutionalised separation of church and state. Since state-funded universities are forbidden to teach Christian theology, study of religions has to be carried out in a more neutral fashion than is standard in the divinity schools or in European universities, and this separation has led quite naturally to study of religions other than Christianity, including Judaism. A similar pattern has begun to spread in the United Kingdom in recent years, but only slowly. For a long time the Religions Department in the University of Lancaster provided a rare British example of the teaching of religions on the model of departments in the United States. Much more common has been the accretion of religious studies to existing departments of Christian theology, with the self-evident risk that non-Christian religions, studied dispassionately from the outside, would emerge as pale and formulaic in comparison with the Christian doctrines discussed with committed passion by adherents from within the Christian tradition. These institutional changes have affected in different ways the study of Second Temple Judaism and the study of Judaism in the early rabbinic period. In 1900 most scholarship on Second Temple Jews was written by New Testament scholars whose primary interest lay in the background to Jesus. In 2000 this motivation remained strong

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among many in the field and has, if anything, been increased over the past quarter-century by awareness of the Jewishness of Jesus and many aspects of the early church (see below). But there are also more and more scholars from within Jewish studies who view this period of Judaism in the light of the history of Judaism as a whole, and some (though few in the United Kingdom) who take the quite abundant evidence for the religion of Jews in this period as a starting point for wider explanations of the nature of religion as a whole. The century has also seen incursions into this field by classicists aware that the Jewish material, apart from its intrinsic interest, provides particularly abundant insights into themes of change, acculturation and resistance which are prominent issues elsewhere in the Mediterranean world in the late Hellenistic and early Roman imperial period. The later period of ‘early Judaism’, from c. 70–500 CE, has concerned classicists less, for the simple reason that too much of the evidence is in Hebrew or Aramaic. In 1900 most New Testament scholars lost interest in the history of Judaism after the end of the first century CE: in terms of Christian theology, the history of Judaism ceased to be a concern once the history of Israel was safely in the hands of the church. The third/fourth edition of Emil Schürer’s Geschichte, published in 1901–11, took the story of Judaism to the defeat of Bar Kokhba in 135 CE, after which, he implied, nothing of any importance occurred.3 The efforts of the pioneers of the Wissenschaft des Judentums to study early rabbinic Judaism as a theological system comparable to the great monuments of systematic Christian theology of the patristic period were continued for the most part only in Jewish theological seminaries and were largely ignored in the universities. In this respect the position has much changed. First, the Jewish theological colleges of 1900 were almost entirely based in Europe and were destroyed in the Holocaust along with much of the rest of European Jewry; those that survived, including Jews’ College in London (later renamed the London School of Jewish Studies), did not exert in later years the same influence in this field that they did in the first thirty years of the twentieth century. Secondly, there has been a concerted effort, mostly (but not only) in departments

3 E. Schürer, Geschichte des Jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi, 3rd/4th edn. (Leipzig, 1901–11).

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of religious studies in the United States, to build on the pioneering efforts made by early twentieth-century scholars to subject rabbinic materials to the same sort of critical scrutiny as other religious texts, by the publication of translations of the texts into European languages and the application to the texts of techniques originally used to analyse other literatures.4 The essentially pietistic approach to these writings, which was almost universal in the Jewish seminaries in 1900, is still to be found in some current scholarship,5 but many rabbinic scholars in universities now come to the subject without the benefit (and drawbacks) of previous immersion in a traditional yeshiva training in study of the Talmud, which is almost indispensable for real familiarity with these very complex texts but brings with it a tendency to ahistorical conflation. This lack of traditional training is itself a symptom of the deepening division between religious and secular Jewish society, particularly in Israel, where those devoted to Talmud study often see no value at all in an academic approach to the texts. The upheavals of the twentieth century produced a series of great scholars who, after a traditional training, left orthodoxy behind on their entry into the university world.6 Such transitions are of course still possible, but they are increasingly rare. It is worth noting how many of the leading Jewish scholars in this field in the United Kingdom have been émigrés from elsewhere in Europe. Change over the twentieth century has largely been a product of a change of perspective: different sorts of scholars are tackling the field, for different reasons. But this change has been fuelled by a series of remarkable new finds over the course of the century, which have themselves led research in new directions. In the first half of the twentieth century, the bulk of the new documents to have had such an impact were all found in Egypt,

4 Earlier in the twentieth century, much of this work was carried out in Germany by H. Albeck and others, but note, in particular, the voluminous studies in more recent years by Jacob Neusner, in some of which, e.g. Torah from our Sages, Pirke Avot: A New American Translation and Explanation (Dallas, Tex., 1984), the location of this approach in the United States is specifically stressed. 5 For a current critique, see S. Schwartz and C. Hezser in M. Goodman (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies (Oxford, 2002) pp. 79–140. 6 For an illuminating and reflective description of this process in his own case, see the autobiography of David Halivni, The Book and the Sword: A Life of Learning in the Shadow of Destruction (Boulder, Col., 1998). Halivni, a Holocaust survivor, teaches at Columbia University in New York.

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preserved by the dry climate. Near the beginning of the twentieth century the most important finds were of material composed after antiquity, which nonetheless had an importance for study of this period also. These were the documents from the Cairo Geniza, of which the bulk were brought from Egypt to Cambridge in the 1890s. These texts had all been deposited in the Cairo synagogue between the ninth and twelfth centuries CE, and revolutionised study of the medieval Mediterranean world, but it seemed clear quite early in their study that some of the texts were based on much older materials, some of them from late antiquity. Already in 1910, Schechter published as Fragments of a Zadokite Work what turned out to be a late copy of the Damascus Rule eventually to be found in Qumran.7 The same period of discovery around 1900 unearthed a great number of papyrus documents from Egypt, which, although not religious texts themselves, shed much new light on the religious lives of Egyptian Jews. In the 1920s, Sir Arthur Cowley published the Aramaic texts from Elephantine which revealed the distinctive religious customs of a Jewish military garrison in Egypt from c. 610 to c.390 BCE, shedding much light on the varied nature of Judaism at the very end of the biblical period,8 and over the course of the century plentiful Egyptian Jewish papyri from later periods down to the upheavals in the Egyptian Jewish community in the early second century ce, most of them unearthed in the course of excavations at the beginning of the century, were published as they were deciphered, culminating in the magisterial corpus published by Tcherikover, Fuks and Stern,9 with an appendix on the Egyptian Jewish inscriptions on stone by David Lewis. Many of the Egyptian documents were concerned with the social, legal and political status of Jews rather than Judaism, but the same was not true of the great cache of religious documents found in the caves above Qumran by the Dead Sea in the late 1940s.10 Here was a mass of biblical texts, hymns, rules, prayers and psalms, hidden for safekeeping in antiquity and never recovered until accidentally

7

S. Schechter, Documents of Jewish Sectaries, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1910). A.E. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri from the Fifth Century BC (Oxford, 1923). 9 V. Tcherikover, A. Fuks and M. Stern (eds.), Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum, 3 vols. (Harvard, Mass., 1957–64). 10 See the influential translation by G. Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (London, 1997). 8

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discovered by bedouin in 1947. Initial disputes over the dates when the documents were written were resolved in the 1990s by carbon14 dating of the leather and papyrus, so that no scholar doubts any longer that they were written by Jews in the late Hellenistic or early Roman period. Publication of the scrolls languished during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, both because of the difficulty inherent in their decipherment and because of the political volatility of the region where they were found, which made it hard to put pressure on recalcitrant editors. Conspiracy theories about the reason for delay abounded in the popular press but have proven groundless now that the final fragments have been made fully available both on CD-Rom and in the official series of the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert published by Oxford University Press. The Qumran texts have generally been taken as evidence for the history of late Second Temple Judaism up to 70 CE. In contrast, the private legal documents found further south in the Judaean Desert and in Jericho have had an important role in reassessments of Judaism in the years following the destruction of the Temple. These papyri, discovered partly by accident in the 1950s and partly through controlled archaeological searches in the early 1960s (and, to a lesser extent, also since then),11 contain marriage contracts, divorce deeds, records of debt and property transfers and other documents clearly of great importance to the individuals who, apparently during the Bar Kokhba war of 132–5, secreted them away in the caves where they were found. Their significance for the history of Judaea lies in the eclectic systems of law apparently adopted by these Jews in central areas of their personal lives, and the discrepancies between the law they used and that advocated in the rabbinic corpus.12 The enterprising and energetic approach exhibited in the search for documents in the Judaean Desert caves by Yigael Yadin in the early 1960s has characterised Israeli archaeology more generally

11 Most of the documents are now available in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, vols. 2, 27 and 38; see DJD 39, published in 2002, for the definitive guide to publication details of all these texts. For an account of the archaeological explorations of the early 1960s, see Y. Yadin, The Finds from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters ( Jerusalem, 1963). 12 See H.M. Cotton, ‘The Rabbis and the Documents’, in M. Goodman (ed.), Jews in a Graeco-Roman World (Oxford, 1998), pp. 167–79.

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over the past fifty years. The main impulse to archaeological research (as in many other countries) has often been a desire to bolster nationalistic claims in the new state, and Israelis continue to have a fascination for the archaeology of the land, which outstrips their general interest in the ancient past. But, whatever the motives, the increase in knowledge brought by the explosion of excavations over half a century has been great. For the Second Temple period, most significant have been finds of, for instance, great numbers of stoneware bowls in the excavations of Jerusalem.13 For knowledge of Palestine in the late-Roman period, the first excavations of the Beth Shearim necropolis in the 1930s, and the discovery in the 1920s of a late-Roman synagogue floor at Beth Alpha depicting the signs of the zodiac, have had a huge impact (see below, pp. 11–12). Finally, the study of Judaism in the diaspora has been revolutionised by new discoveries in the twentieth century. Before 1900 diaspora Judaism was known primarily through the voluminous treaties of Philo and the ambiguous evidence from the Jewish catacombs in Rome. Excavations in the early 1930s in Dura-Europos on the Euphrates by a team from Yale University unearthed a synagogue building precisely dated to the mid-third century, when the building was covered with earth as part of the defensive measures taken by the city when it was under siege.14 The earth covering protected an extraordinary series of frescoes depicting biblical scenes, opening up the possibility that such Jewish art was long established outside this one building which happened to survive. No other diaspora finds have had quite the impact of the Dura-Europos synagogue, but identification as a synagogue of a huge late-Roman basilica in Sardis in the 1960s has encouraged much speculation about the possible relationship of Jews to the surrounding culture, particularly because the Sardis synagogue occupied so prominent a position in the fourth-century city.15 Less spectacular new evidence has accumulated gradually over the century as inscriptions on stone have been unearthed and published. First collected by J.B. Frey in the 1930s, the texts of these inscriptions

13

N. Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem (Oxford, 1984). C.H. Kraeling, Excavations of Dura-Europos, Final Report VIII.I: The Synagogue (1956, augmented 2nd edn., New York, 1979). 15 A.B. Seager and A.T. Kraabel, ‘The Synagogue and the Jewish Community’, in G.M.A. Hanfmann, Sardis from Prehistoric to Roman Times (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), ch. 9. [See Chapter 19, below.] 14

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have been re-edited and augmented in more recent editions,16 and have formed the basis of some major claims about the nature and distribution of religious authority among Jews, particularly in the context of synagogues.17 The combination of different sorts of scholars approaching the subject and the availability of this mass of new evidence has produced quite new perspectives on much of early Judaism. These new perspectives may be said to have some things in common. All of them reflect increased uncertainty about aspects of Judaism that scholars one hundred years ago thought they knew precisely. Much progress has consisted in the dismantling of such ‘knowledge’. So, for example, in 1900 much of the Jewish literature composed before 70 CE was unhesitatingly ascribed to an Essene, Pharisee or Sadducee author, on the flimsiest of grounds. It is difficult to imagine such certainty now. An interest in these non-normative early Jewish texts was signalled early in the twentieth century by R.H. Charles, through the publication of a magisterial edition of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, and the research on the Samaritans by Moses Gaster.18 Charles’s edition, which brought together the efforts of a number of scholars who had spent the previous decades unearthing and editing a series of medieval manuscripts of these early texts, itself encouraged further similar research in the same area, mostly by biblical scholars. Arguments for the significance of this material were reinforced when some of the pseudepigrapha, notably Jubilees and parts of I Enoch, were found in their original Hebrew and Aramaic forms among the Dead Sea Scrolls, thus confirming their early date and Jewish authorship and providing an invaluable insight into the

16

See especially W. Horbury and D. Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Greek and Roman Egypt (Cambridge, 1992); D. Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1993–5). 17 See, for example, B. Brooten, Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue (Atlanta, Ga., 1982). 18 R.H. Charles (ed.), Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1912–13). Compare the more cautious comments of the editors of the volume published in the 1980s, partly to replace Charles (H.F.D. Sparks (ed.), The Apocryphal Old Testament (Oxford, 1984)), and the more eclectic collection in J.H. Charlesworth (ed.), Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols. (London, 1983–5). For Gaster’s work, see M. Gaster, The Samaritans: Their History, Doctrines and Literature (Schweich, London, 1925).

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extent and nature of any changes made to such texts in the process of transmission by Christian scribes and translation into Greek (and, often, from Greek into other languages).19 The Dead Sea Scrolls themselves of course have provided an excellent insight into a particular brand of non-normative Judaism, and a huge literature has been devoted to study of the organisation, theology and history of the community responsible for the sectarian documents. British scholars were among the earliest to attempt such interpretation in the 1950s, with important work by Chaim Rabin, Cecil Roth, Sir Godfrey Driver, J.L. Teicher, John Allegro, H.H. Rowley, and (most influentially) Geza Vermes.20 Study of the Scrolls has become almost a separate sub-discipline of study on early Judaism, with two specialist journals devoted to them and widespread public interest in every revelation of their contents. Much of this interest (from scholars as much as the general public) has been in the significance of the Scrolls for the history of early Christianity, and a recent analysis of the law to be found in the sectarian writings even claimed to be ‘rescuing’ the Scrolls for the study of Judaism.21 Some of the theories promulgated about the origins of the sect have pushed to the edges of plausibility in a search to establish for them a greater significance than perhaps they have. In fact, the size and influence of the sect, and its relation to the other varieties of Judaism in the late Second Temple period, remain still disputed despite all this effort.22 It is to be hoped that in due course, as their novelty wears off, the texts will take their rightful place along with the rest of the evidence for Judaism in this era. The main impulse to much of the study of non-normative Judaism in the diaspora has also been archaeological discovery, but in fact its greatest exponent in the first half of the twentieth century, Erwin

19

Among such contributions, see M. Black, The Book of Enoch (Brill, 1985); M.A. Knibb, Translating the Bible: The Ethiopian Version of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1999). 20 The bibliography on Dead Sea Scrolls research is huge. See among recent general introductions, G. Vermes, An Introduction to the Complete Dead Sea Scrolls (London, 1999). For the site at Qumran, the best introduction is still the 1959 series of Schweich Lectures: R. de Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids, Mich., and Cambridge, 2002). 21 L.H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls (Philadelphia, Pa., 1994). 22 See, for example, N. Golb, Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? The Search for the Secret of Qumran (London, 1995); M. Goodman, ‘A Note on the Qumran Sectarians, the Essenes and Josephus’, JJS 46 (1995), 161–6 [Chapter 11, below].

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Goodenough, had already written an investigation into diaspora Judaism as expressed in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho (one of the earliest D.Phil. theses to be examined in Oxford, in 1921) when his view that Greek diaspora Judaism in late antiquity continued to be radically different from the Judaism of the rabbis was apparently dramatically confirmed by the excavation of the Dura-Europos synagogue in the early 1930s. Goodenough’s own reconstruction of a mystical Jewish theology to be ascertained by interpretation of the images used in Jewish art has not convinced many,23 but the general principle that archaeology might provide insights into types of late-Roman Judaism not known from the rabbinic texts continues to have a powerful attraction. In particular, excavation in the 1960s of a large basilica in the centre of Sardis decorated with mosaics which exhibited Jewish iconography (see above, n. 15) has encouraged speculation that in Asia Minor Jews practised a distinctive, self-confident synagogue-based Judaism quite different from that of the rabbis,24 but whether so much can really be validly deduced from mute archaeological remains is unclear. The history of synagogue excavations within the land of Israel induces salutary caution. When in the 1920s a charming, if somewhat rustic, mosaic carpet from a synagogue floor was unearthed in sixth-century Beth Alpha in the Jezreel valley, the central motif of the mosaic, a depiction of the signs of the zodiac with the sun-god at the centre of the circle, was explained as an alien intrusion into synagogue art: perhaps the Roman emperor had insisted on its incorporation.25 Finds of further zodiac mosaics in conjunction with unambiguously Jewish symbols (menorah, lulav, incense shovels, shofar) at other Galilean synagogue sites over the course of the twentieth century have made it abundantly clear that the zodiac was a distinctively Jewish symbol.26 Any argument that zodiacs provide evidence of non-rabbinic Judaism is weakened

23 E.R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Graeco-Roman Period, 13 vols. (New York and Princeton, NJ, 1953–68). 24 See among recent studies, P. Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor (Cambridge, 1991); J. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan (Edinburgh, 1996). 25 For an early discussion, see the volume published by the Academy: E.L. Sukenik, Ancient Synagogues in Palestine and Greece (London, 1934). 26 See now the comprehensive catalogue of the current state of scholarship on ancient synagogues in L.I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogues: The First Thousand Years (New Haven, Conn., and London, 2000).

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by the name of the donor of one of the finest mosaics, that in the fourth-century synagogue at Hammat Tiberias. This donor, a certain Severus, described himself in Greek as a member of the household of the illustrious patriarchs.27 There is no room for doubt that the patriarchs to whom he refers were the descendants of Rabbi Judah haNasi, the compiler of the Mishnah, the central text of rabbinic Judaism. It is just possible that by the fourth century the patriarchs had drifted away from rabbinic Judaism,28 but it is not very likely, since the Palestinian Talmud, in the form of an elucidation of, and commentary on, Judah haNasi’s Mishnah, was probably the product of Galilean rabbis in precisely this region at precisely this period. To many scholars it now seems preferable to admit to the possibility that rabbinic Jews were more tolerant of acculturation into the wider Roman world than might be apparent from the texts they produced for the consumption of insiders. The final type of non-normative Judaism to be examined here because it evoked attention for the first time in the twentieth century has been the study of mysticism. Credit for the emergence of the study of Jewish mysticism as a distinct field belongs almost entirely to the Jerusalem scholar Gershom Scholem, whose insistence on taking seriously texts which had been sidelined by the Wissenschaft des Judentums as insufficiently rational to deserve study revealed a longlasting strand of Judaism that stretched from late antiquity through the medieval kabbalah up to modern times.29 Among the aspects of Scholem’s pioneering work most questioned in more recent years has been precisely the extent of such continuity, in particular, the justification for asserting that the roots of the mystical texts preserved in medieval hekhalot manuscripts lie in late antiquity.30 A fruitful field of enquiry has been the relationship between such mystical traditions preserved by the rabbis and the accounts of heavenly visions found in the Jewish apocalyptic traditions preserved by Christians. In the study of all such texts, there is still much disagreement as to whether they reflect mystical practices or only literary genres, and

27

M. Dothan, Hammat Tiberias: The Ancient Synagogue ( Jerusalem, 1984). See most recently, S. Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 BCE to 640 CE (Princeton, NJ, 2001). 29 Most influential of Scholem’s many works in this area has been Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism ( Jerusalem, 1941). 30 See P. Schäfer, Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur (Tübingen, 1981). 28

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to what extent they represent deviant Judaism or a mystical aspect of the mainstream.31 The same logic that has prompted some to extreme scepticism about the possibility of getting back from the evidence of medieval manuscripts to learn something about late-antique mysticism has also been applied to more mainstream texts, in particular the bibles (Hebrew and Greek) used by Jews in late antiquity and the transmission of rabbinic literature. Discussions of the nature of the Hebrew biblical text in late antiquity have been transformed by the discovery of large numbers of biblical manuscripts at Qumran. In many cases these texts are close in wording to the text copied by the medieval masoretes, but some variations are considerable, sometimes demonstrating the nature of the Hebrew text underlying the LXX translation, sometimes providing readings previously wholly unknown. Arguments about the extent to which the biblical text was still fluid in the late Second Temple period are bedevilled by the difficulty of showing when a text is a biblical fragment or part of a biblical commentary or paraphrase. Many British bible scholars, such as Paul Kahle and James Barr, have been much engaged in these discussions about the biblical texts.32 Fragments of Greek biblical texts found at Qumran (in particular the Psalms Scroll) have also had an impact on Septuagint studies. The Septuagint was an area of much interest to British scholars already in 1900; the great Septuagint expert H.B. Swete was a founding fellow of the Academy, and the tradition was carried on throughout the century by others, such as Sir Frederick Kenyon. The Qumran texts provide evidence that some Jews were engaged in an exercise to bring their Greek bible closer to the Hebrew already by the first century CE and that the attitude expressed by Philo (Vita Mosis 2.44), that the LXX had itself been divinely inspired, was presumably not shared by all other Jews.33

31

See, for example, F.C. Burkitt, Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (London, 1914); C.C. Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic Judaism and Early Christianity (London, 1982). 32 For example, J. Barr, The Variable Spellings of the Hebrew Bible (Schweich Lectures, Oxford, 1989). 33 See H.B. Swete, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek (Cambridge, 1900); H. St. J. Thackeray, The Septuagint and Jewish Worship (Schweich Lectures, London,

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Both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Cairo Geniza documents stimulated in the second half of the twentieth century an upsurge in interest by textual scholars such as Paul Kahle in the targumim, the Aramaic translations of the Hebrew bible. Since the targumim often paraphrase the original text and add new material, their elucidation can illuminate post-biblical Judaism.34 The revolution in the treatment of rabbinic texts has also in part been based on the history of the manuscripts. Scholars in the nineteenth and early twentieth century succeeded in bringing to public attention a number of rabbinic texts previously unknown, but publication tended to be only of the readings of a single manuscript,35 and neither in these cases, nor in the printing of the traditional rabbinic texts, was there any attempt to produce scholarly editions such as are standard for the Greek and Latin literary texts of classical antiquity, nor have many such editions appeared over the past century. There is still no critical edition of the text of the Babylonian Talmud. Instead, scholars can now consult on CD-Rom readings from a huge number of talmud manuscripts and are left to decide on their own the significance of the many variants.36 This lack of editions is not simply a reflection of the magnitude of the task, given the size of many of the texts. Attempts in the 1980s to produce a scholarly edition of the Palestinian Talmud revealed such wide discrepancies between manuscripts that the team responsible resolved instead to publish the variant readings in synoptic form.37 The extent of variation has encouraged some scholars to doubt whether the whole notion of an original text of such documents is valid. Whole sections of texts found in the manuscripts of the Palestinian Talmud are also found in the manuscripts of Genesis Rabba, and some have suggested that rabbinic material circulated in late antiquity in units smaller than

1921; 2nd edn., London, 1923); F.G. Kenyon, Recent Developments in the Textual Criticism of the Greek Bible (Schweich Lectures, London, 1933); S.P. Brock, C.T. Frisch and S. Jellicoe, A Classified Bibliography of the Septuagint (Leiden, 1973), and N. Fernández Marcos, The Septuagint in Context: Introduction to the Greek Version of the Bible (Leiden, 2000). 34 P. Kahle, The Cairo Geniza (Schweich Lectures, London, 1947). 35 For example, W.H. Lowe (ed.), The Mishnah of the Palestinian Talmud (Cambridge, 1883). 36 Lieberman Institute: The Sol and Evelyn Henkind Talmud Text Databank with Search Capability (1998). 37 P. Schäfer et al. (eds.), Synopse zum Talmud Yerushalmi (Tübingen, 1991–).

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the composite medieval texts. Others have protested that such radical scepticism is not justified in the case of all late-antique rabbinic texts, and a few scholarly editions have begun to appear.38 In the first half of the twentieth century a number of scholars, most influentially the Harvard theologian George Foot Moore, tried to extract an overall theology from the rabbinic corpus.39 The few scholars in the United Kingdom to contribute in this area were mostly expatriate Jews based in Jews College, such as Adolf Büchler and Arthur Marmorstein.40 The middle of the twentieth century saw the publication of a monumental study of the whole of rabbinic thought based on a mass of diverse rabbinic sources,41 but this monument was not left unchallenged for long. Its publication was rapidly followed by a strong reaction against such conflation as ‘ahistorical’, and most work on rabbinic theology in the second half of the twentieth century was less ambitious.42 A few scholars have applied form criticism in an attempt to find the basic units of rabbinic reasoning43 and determine the history of development of rabbinic law.44 This latter approach has proved compatible with redaction criticism. In its extreme form, this involves the claim that it is impossible to generalise about rabbinic thought in any way beyond the Judaism of a particular text.45 This extreme approach has not been adopted by many, but interest in the final layer of each text, including its process of redaction, is increasing. Among the most acute analysts has been Louis Jacobs, the leading light in Anglo-Jewish scholarship on halakhic rabbinic texts now for

38 For the debate on the principles involved, see P. Schäfer and Ch. Milikovsky in JJS 37 (1986), 139–52; 39 (1988), 201–11; 40 (1989), 89–94. 39 G.F. Moore, Judaism in the first Centuries of the Christian era: The Age of the Tannaim (Cambridge, Mass., 1927–30). 40 A. Büchler, Studies in Sin and Atonement in the Rabbinic Literature of the First Century (London, 1928); A. Marmorstein, The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God, 2 vols. (London, 1927–37). 41 E.E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Belief ( Jerusalem, 1975). 42 See the strong criticism of Urbach in J. Neusner, The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70, 3 vols. (Leiden, 1971). 43 See recently, A. Samely, Rabbinic Interpretation of Scripture in the Mishnah (Oxford, 2002). 44 Most voluminously, J. Neusner, A History of the Mishnaic Law of Purities, 22 parts (Leiden, 1974–7), and his equally detailed studies of the other branches of Mishnaic law. 45 J. Neusner, Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah, 2nd edn. (Atlanta, Ga., 1988).

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some three decades, and a prolific author of works on contemporary as well as early Jewish thought. More general has been increasing awareness that study of rabbinic texts should allow for the possibility (indeed probability) of change between the tannaim (of the first two centuries CE) and the amoraim (of the third to fifth centuries), and of different influences on the rabbis of Palestine and those of Babylonia, not least in the development of traditions of midrashic exegesis of the biblical texts.46 The effects of the surrounding culture on early Judaism was in general a continuing scholarly preoccupation in the twentieth century. The prime issue has been the extent to which Judaism was influenced by Hellenism. In 1937 Elias Bickerman suggested in his book Der Gott der Makkabäer that some Jews welcomed and internalised a Greek interpretation of their ancestral religion, and that the revolt of the Maccabees in the 160s BCE should be seen as a reaction to such Hellenising.47 In 1974 Martin Hengel compiled evidence of many different kinds (including much archaeological and epigraphic material) to demonstrate that Judaism during the third and early second century bce was as much a part of wider Hellenistic culture as other regions which had been conquered by Alexander the Great.48 The evidence is incontrovertible and has effectively ended the distinction, common in the nineteenth century, between Hellenised diaspora Judaism and the Semitic Judaism of the homeland, but its significance, as assembled by Hengel, has been much debated, with challenges both to the notion that this spread of Greek culture provides a religious explanation of the Maccabean revolt,49 and to the general assumption that the use of Greek artefacts and language will necessarily have had an effect on the religious outlook of Palestinian Jews.50 Research into the impact of Greek culture on the rabbis has been less intensive, and most scholars have been less

46 L. Jacobs, Structure and Form in the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge, 1991); on midrash, see, for example, G. Vermes, Scripture and Tradition in Judaism: Haggadic Studies (Leiden, 1961; 2nd edn., Leiden, 1973). 47 E.J. Bickerman, Der Gott der Makkabäer (Berlin, 1937). 48 M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, Eng. trans. (London, 1974). 49 Fergus Millar, ‘The Background to the Maccabean Revolution’, JJS 29 (1978), 1–21. 50 M. Goodman, ‘Epilogue’, in J.J. Collins and G.E. Sterling (eds.), Hellenism in the Land of Israel (2001), pp. 302–5.

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inclined to suggest that the adoption of Greek terms and ideas are likely to have had any deep effect on rabbinic Judaism,51 although the synagogue art of late-Roman Palestine has itself sometimes been seen as evidence of Hellenisation.52 In other respects too, study of early Judaism has been illumined by research into the realia of Jewish life. In the last years of the nineteenth century, Sir George Adam Smith published his historical geography of the Holy Land53 and Emil Schürer in a series of editions his monumental history of the Jews in the time of Jesus Christ.54 Schürer’s study, and that of Joachim Jeremias published in 1969, were somewhat schematic, in the tradition of nineteenth-century German classical scholarship, but they laid the foundation for future research, and the revised English Schürer, published between 1973 and 1987, remains a standard resource for scholarship.55 The first really imaginative reconstruction of the nature of their religious life for late Second Temple Jews was the synthetic study by E.P. Sanders, published as Judaism: Practice and Belief.56 Here, for the first time, is an attempt to empathise with the Jews who saw the Temple in its last days as the centre of their religious lives. It is symptomatic of the accretion of detailed and often recondite scholarly disputes about some of the more important issues about the Pharisees and the nature of the purity laws that Sanders felt it necessary to hive off such issues into a whole second volume, published in fact before the synthetic account.57 For Schürer and Jeremias interest in the nature of first-century Judaism was explicitly as the background for the life of Jesus, and Hengel and Sanders also entered the field originally as New Testament scholars, and retain a strong interest in the history of early Christianity. Realisation during the second half of the twentieth century that early Christians are best understood with a full appreciation of the

51

S. Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, 2nd edn. (New York, 1962). See Sukenik, Ancient Synagogues. 53 George Adam Smith, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land (London, 1894). 54 Originally published as E. Schürer, Lehrbuch der neutestamentlichen Zeitgeschichte (Leipzig, 1874). 55 J. Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus, Eng. trans. (London, 1969); E. Schürer, rev. G. Vermes, F. Millar, M. Black and M. Goodman, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1973–87). 56 E.P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE (London, 1992). 57 E.P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah (London, 1990). 52

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Jewish background has been a catalyst for much further research, especially into the relation of specific New Testament texts to the Jewish writings of the period. Such links were already being made before the twentieth century, but new since the 1970s has been the attempt to integrate the religion of Jesus and less frequently Paul into the general picture of Judaism itself. That Jesus was a Jew to be understood fully within his Jewish environment was the claim of the highly influential study by Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew.58 Despite widespread acknowledgement of the rationale behind the approach this implies, integration has in fact been sporadic, hindered in part by the great edifice of New Testament scholarship, which discourages straightforward use of the New Testament evidence. In very recent years some scholars have suggested that integration of Jewish and Christian history should go still further, and that the ‘parting of the ways’ between Judaism and Christianity should not be seen as having occurred until the time of Constantine.59 This reassessment of the history of the two traditions is based on a radical refusal to view Jewish and Christian material primarily through the lens of later Judaism and Church history, but it flies in the face of much evidence that rabbinic Jews and mainstream Christians in fact defined themselves, at least in part, by what they were not, this being, by definition, a prime concern of patristic heresiologists and (of less obvious importance, given the rare use of the word) of the rabbis who invented the term minut to describe the wrong opinions of all those Jews whose religious ideas did not agree with theirs.60 Where does this leave current study of early Judaism? It is fair to say that more regular attention is being paid to its elucidation than in any previous period, and with more awareness of the possible extent of variety. Where British scholarship may be thought to have a special role to play may be in the continuing strength of classical studies within the United Kingdom and the increasing readiness of classicists, encouraged by the example of polymaths such as Arnaldo Momigliano, to accept Jewish studies as pertinent to the wider clas58

G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew: A Historian’s Reading of the Gospels (London, 1973). D. Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, Calif., 1999). 60 M. Goodman, ‘The Function of Minim in early Rabbinic Judaism’, in H. Cankik, H. Lichtenberger and P. Schäfer (eds.), Geschichte-Tradition-Reflexion: Festschrift für Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburtstag (Tübingen, 1996), vol. 1, pp. 501–10 [Chapter 14 below]. 59

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sical world.61 Classical scholars have played a major role in putting the Jewish evidence properly into the context of the Greek and Roman world. Too much remains disputed for syntheses of current knowledge to retain authority for long. It is not unreasonable to hope that when new syntheses are produced at the end of the twenty-first century, both British scholars and the British Academy will be seen to have played a significant part.

61 See A. Momigliano, Alien Wisdom: The limits of Hellenization (Cambridge, 1975); J. Reynolds and R. Tannenbaum, Jews and God-Fearers at Aphrodisias (Cambridge, 1987); F. Millar, The Roman Near East, 31 BC–AD 337 (Cambridge, Mass., 1993); T. Rajak, The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome: Studies in Cultural and Social Interaction (Leiden, 2000).

CHAPTER TWO

IDENTITY AND AUTHORITY IN ANCIENT JUDAISM

The modern debate on “Who is a Jew?” has become heated, not least because it involves a conflict of authority between different jurisdictions, each of which claim the right to define or assign Jewish identity. It is the purpose of this article to document a parallel phenomenon in the period of the Second Temple, the Mishnah and the Talmud—a phenomenon which, as far as I know, has been left unconsidered in the voluminous recent scholarship on Jewish identity in antiquity. How did anyone in the ancient world know that he or she was Jewish? Or, to put it another way, who decided who was a Jew? In what context was such a decision made? To anticipate the conclusion: if it can be shown that a variety of such decisions, and the uncertainties that they undoubtedly engendered, were common two thousand years ago, we may throw modern dilemmas into perspective. In the ensuing pages it will emerge that there were at least five main ways of establishing the Jewishness of an individual in antiquity. Sometimes, his affirmation that he was a Jew might suffice, at least to his own satisfaction. Alternatively, some central Jewish authority might take to itself the right to define status. Local Jewish communities might decree which among their number really belonged to them. Local gentiles might arrogate the task to themselves. Or the gentile state might select Jews from the general population for its own purposes. Some combination of these possibilities was also likely enough—and, in the case of most Jews, all sources of authority doubtless agreed on their Jewishness. The question of authority will have arisen mostly in discussions or assumptions about the status of those who might be seen by some as on the fringes of the community, when different definitions by the various perceived authorities may have clashed. In what follows, illustrations of each of these sources of authority for defining Jewishness will be examined in turn. Not surprisingly, the role of a strong central authority in defining Jewish status is clearly attested in this period only in the land of Israel itself. The actions of Hasmonaean High Priests in the conversion of

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Idumaeans (in the 120s BCE) and Ituraeans ( in c. 104 BCE) presupposed that such unilateral action, involving the forced circumcision of males, could turn gentiles into Jews. In other respects, too, the Temple authorities at all times had to make decisions about who was Jewish. So, for instance, some types of offerings could probably be offered up by the priests only if they had been brought by an Israelite. More drastically, gentiles were excluded from the inner courts of the Temple on pain of death, a prohibition backed up by force, as Josephus recorded, and as surviving fragments of the Temple inscription warning against infringements confirm.1 For the preservation of the purity of the Temple, mistakes could not be countenanced. However autocratic they may have been within the sanctuary, those who controlled the Temple never had the capacity, outside its confines, to impose very widely their idea of who was a Jew. Those adherents of the faith who never brought an offering to the Temple would never subject their status to scrutiny. This category will have included most such adherents who lived in the diaspora and who, despite the Biblical requirement of thrice-yearly pilgrimages, never went to Jerusalem. There is good evidence that the priests in Jerusalem could not—and probably did not usually try to—impose their will on the diaspora. So, for instance, a rival Jewish temple which offered cultic ceremonies similar to the Jerusalem shrine flourished at Leontopolis in Egypt, apparently without serious challenge, from c. 160 BCE, until it was closed down by the Romans in 73 CE as a possible centre of disaffection ( Josephus, Jewish War 7.420–36). At any rate, any role played by the Jerusalem priests in deciding on Jewish status came to an abrupt end with the destruction of the Temple sanctuary and the city in 70 CE. Late rabbinic reconstructions of Jewish history affirm an immediate, successful assumption of authority by groups of learned sages led first by Yo˙anan b. Zakkai, then by the descendants of Hillel and others. Such a reconstruction does not accord fully with the evidence of the earliest compilations of rabbinic teaching. In the Mishnah, which reached its present form (more or less) in about 200 CE, and the Tosefta, which probably dates to c. 250 CE, it is taken for granted that the rabbis operate even in the Holy Land among Jews who do not take seriously

1

J.B. Frey, ed., Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaicarum II (1952), no. 1400, pp. 328–30.

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many of the religious matters which were of great concern to the rabbis themselves. Many of such Jews, particularly those of doubtful status as Jews, among those termed ammei ha-arâz by the Sages, presumably would not have taken kindly to attempts by the rabbis to impose their criteria for Jewish status on the rest of the population. I have, indeed, suggested elsewhere that the discussions to be found in early rabbinic legal texts about social relations between Jews and gentiles may, when they are not purely theoretical, reflect the Sages’ attitudes to those who defined themselves as Jews but by criteria which the Sages did not accept. In favour of this hypothesis (which remains unprovable) is the mass of legislation about gentile-Jewish relations in rabbinic texts from Galilee. Without such an hypothesis it is difficult to explain the rabbis’ concern with the practicalities of social and commercial dealings with gentiles, for near-contemporary pagan and Christian sources describe the area of Galilee as inhabited exclusively by Jews.2 In the diaspora and in remote villages in the land of Israel it could have been more feasible to leave questions of status to the local communal authorities. Jews, in theory, needed to know quite often whether those with whom they came into social contact were Jewish or gentile. As Tacitus remarked (Histories 5.5), Jews were “separate in their meals and their beds.” The question was acute when marriage was proposed, for Jews believed that they married only other Jews—even if, in practice, there were exceptions. Similarly, if Jews believed that gentiles handling their food or wine could pollute it, it ought to have been imposible to leave the status of associates in doubt. And, yet, the impression is that, up to the end of the first century CE, it was doubt that prevailed. Josephus ( Jewish War 7.41) wrote of gentiles in Syrian Antioch whom the Jews had “in a certain way made a part of their community;” it is quite unclear whether either Josephus or the Antiochene Jews thought of these adherents as Jews or as friendly gentiles. In another passage, which is theologically incomprehensible (at least to me), Josephus affirms (Antiquities 14.403) that the Idumaeans, whose ancestors had been forcibly circumcised in the second century BCE (see above), were now “half-Jews.”

2

M. Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee, AD 132–212 (1983), pp. 41–53.

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References to friendly gentiles in texts of the first century CE or earlier are so ambiguous or untrustworthy that the very existence of a category of gentile “godfearers” has been attacked as a figment of modern scholarship.3 Where there was only one synagogue and one set of Jewish authorities in a city, ad hoc decisions on such matters might bring some clarity, but, in bigger cities such as Rome, where at least ten individual synagogues whose names are attested on inscriptions seem to have been independently organized, a conflict of jurisdiction was all too likely. In any case, for those gentiles, like the royal family of Adiabene, whose conversion to Judaism took place in a context where no Jewish community yet existed (see Josephus, Antiquities 20.17–53), some other authority for confirmation of their Jewish status must have been sought. The story of the Adiabeneans seems to imply the possibility, at least, that, in some sense, an individual could decide for himself or herself whether he or she was Jewish. Proselytes were seen as those who brought themselves to the Jewish nation or faith or God; the word “proselyte” is derived from the Greek word proserchesthai, which means “to approach” or “to come to.” Types of proselytes described as gerim gerurim, who were attacked by rabbis in texts of the third century CE and later as not genuine converts, are believed by some scholars to have been precisely such self-made proselytes, which would suggest, of course, that such people existed (but that, for those rabbis, at least, an affirmation of faith did not suffice to make one Jewish). But difficulties in interpreting this term, which can also be understood quite differently, preclude too much reliance on this argument.4 It might seem that the role of gentile authorities in the definition of Jewishness should have been negligible. So, doubtless, it was, in areas where there was a Jewish majority or state, as in Judaea before 70 CE, but there were occasions when outsiders may have had some role to play. Thus, for instance, the Greek cities of Asia Minor, largely under pressure from Julius Caesar, who wished to ensure the loyalty of 3 A.T. Kraabel, “The Disappearance of the ‘Godfearers’”, Numen 28 (1981): 113–26. 4 Against the standard understanding of gerim gerurim, see E. Bammel, Judaica: Kleine Schriften I (1986), pp. 134–39.

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the Jews to his side during the Roman civil war against Pompey, offered various privileges to the Jews in their midst in the mid-first century BCE. They must have drawn up some criteria or list to clarify which inhabitants of the city should benefit: according to the decrees preserved by Josephus in his Antiquities, Jews in these places were granted, among other benefits, a special exemption from military service and from appearing in law courts on the Sabbath. It is not clear how a law suit could be temporarily postponed by an unexpected appeal by one of the parties to his privilege of not answering charges on Saturdays. Perhaps the court simply took the appellant’s word, or had a hearing on the question. Perhaps local Jewish leaders provided the civic magistrates with the names of members of the Jewish community. Perhaps some other means was used. We do not know. There was, in theory, much greater potential for the definitions of Jewishness that were imposed by the Roman state to have an effect on Jewish self-awareness, if only because here, at least, was an authority which could impose its will on the great majority of Jews and which, at various times, needed to know precisely who was Jewish. On the one hand, after 70 CE Rome extorted a special poll tax which only Jews, and all Jews in the Roman Empire, were required to pay. The effects of this tax, known as the fiscus Judaicus (literally, the Jewish treasury), will be discussed further below. On the other hand, the sons of Jews were specifically exempted, from the mid second century CE on, from the ban on circumcision which was introduced by the emperor Hadrian. Around the time of the Bar Kochba revolt, Hadrian equated circumcision with castration, as barbarous practices unworthy of his enlightened rule, but his successor, Antoninus Pius, felt impelled to mollify Jewish feelings by permitting the continuation of this ancestral custom, while insisting that any non-Jew who indulged in the practice would incur the death penalty. There is good evidence that people other than Jews (Samaritans, and some Arabs and Egyptians, for example) had previously been in the habit of circumcising boys, and that these non-Jews were effectively prevented from doing so in the future. Before he imposed the ultimate sentence on an offending circumciser, a Roman judge must have had ways of knowing with some certainty that the culprit before him was definitely not a Jew. But a concern of this kind by the Roman state to make clear who was a Jew is not attested or, indeed, plausible, before the last

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years of the first century CE. In the rest of this discussion I shall explore the hypothesis that the ambiguities about status, which, as has been shown, were tolerated with (to us) surprising ease until then, gave way after that date to a new Jewish awareness of a need for greater clarity; and that this new awareness was precipitated, as so often in Jewish history, by the attitude of the outside world—in this case, the Roman state. The immediate factor which led to change was the reform by the emperor Nerva of the exaction of the special Jewish poll tax, the fiscus Judaicus. As was noted above, this tax was imposed on Jews after 70 CE by the emperor Vespasian, after the suppression of the great revolt and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The levy was intended both as a punishment for rebellion and as a means of raising money for rebuilding the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol in Rome. The temple had burned down in the civil war which accompanied Vespasian’s seizure of the purple, and the transfer to Jupiter of funds which had previously been paid by Jews to the Jerusalem Temple was a deliberate symbol of the Jews’ defeat. From the start, the tax was collected assiduously, and tax receipts, written on pieces of broken pottery, which have survived in the sands of Egypt, attest that both men and women were required to pay. A state official was specially appointed to supervise collection and, at the local level, designated bureaucrats drew up lists of those liable. Vespasian and his subordinates evidently assumed that the definition of a Jew was not a problem. For Romans up to and including Vespasian’s lifetime, the Jews were a people who followed peculiar religious customs: to Cicero, for instance, Jews (like Syrians) were a “nation born to be slaves” (De Prov. Cons. 5.10), while the philosopher, Seneca (On Superstition, in Augustine, City of God 6.11) described Jews as “an accursed race” with foolish customs. The same standard description of Jews was also presupposed by Josephus, when he wrote about the imposition of the same Jewish tax in his Jewish War (7.218), which was published in the late seventies or early eighties CE: “On the Jews, wherever they might be, he imposed a tax, ordering each of them to pay two drachmas every year to the Capitol.” But Josephus, as we have already seen, was at least aware of the possibility of proselytism, although he did not use the term, whereas, in gentile sources, it appears that the ethnic definition was the only concept that they had of a Jew. As far as I can tell, there is no unequivocal evidence that any gentile writer before this time

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was even aware of the notion that a non-Jew could become a Jew simply by a change of religious allegiance. Silence in this case can be seen as significant. For Greeks and Romans, who had their own distinctive ideas about the function of citizenship in their society and the ways that it could be cautiously extended by the community, Jewish acceptance of outsiders into the body politic simply on the grounds of their adoption of Jewish religious customs was very strange. Furthermore, this silence about proselytes contrasts both with a good deal of amused or angry comment in contemporary sources about the spread of Jewish practices among the pagan population—the sabbath was particularly popular—and with the vehemence and frequency of the polemic against conversion to Judaism in Latin literature of the early second century CE, after the institution of the proselyte had become widely known, for reasons to be examined below. Such gentile certainties about Jewish identity were shattered through the actions of Domitian, Vespasian’s younger son, who became emperor in 81 CE. According to his biographer, the Roman writer Suetonius, whose Lives of the Caesars was published in the first half of the second century, Domitian exacted the Jewish tax in a fashion which struck contemporaries as particularly harsh. The passage (Domitian 12.2) is worth quoting in full: Besides other taxes, that on the Jews was levied with the utmost vigour, and those were prosecuted who without publicly acknowledging that faith yet lived as Jews, as well as those who concealed their origin and did not pay the tribute levied upon their people. I recall being present in my youth when a man ninety years old was inspected before the procurator and a very crowded court to see whether he was circumcised.

People were evidently compelled to pay to the fiscus even if they lived a Jewish life only in secret—or if they simply, by whatever means, concealed the fact that they had been born Jewish. The identity of these unfortunates can be surmised with some confidence. They were not gentiles or proselytes, for we are told by the later historian, Cassius Dio (67.14.1–3), that non-Jews who “drifted into Jewish ways” were condemned by Domitian either to death or to deprivation of their property. The charge brought against such gentiles (including the consul for the year 95 CE and the consul’s wife, who was a relative of the emperor) was atheism—that is, refusal to worship pagan gods out of devotion to Judaism—which may provide further confirmation that the category of a Jewish

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proselyte was not yet known to the Roman state. It can be assumed that Domitian could not impose a tax on such gentiles for behavior which he himself categorised as illegal in Roman law. The people most at issue must, therefore, have been ethnic or born Jews who no longer followed their religion. Hence the plight of the old man whose humiliation was witnessed by the biographer Suetonius, quoted above. His circumcision was the one sign of his origin that he could not easily efface. It seems that the suffering of such apostates aroused considerable resentment at Rome and it is not hard to see why. Romans were characteristically tolerant of people from other ethnic origins so long as they assimilated into Roman culture. Many who were born as Jews did precisely that. Most such are now untraceable in the historical record, for they cannot be distinguished from other citizens of the empire, but, since numerous Jews were brought to the capital city as slaves and received Roman citizenship on acquiring freedom, it is likely that a good proportion of the city’s population was descended, directly or indirectly, from ethnic Jews. How many of these were compelled by Domitian to pay to the fiscus Judaicus is impossible to discover. It would be good to know whether Domitian required both or only one parent to be Jewish to justify ascribing to them a “Jewish origin,” but there is no evidence. However, the career of one impressive individual which is comparatively well recorded may illustrate the sort of apostate Jew who was subjected to the humiliation of the tax. Tiberius Iulius Alexander came from a leading wealthy Jewish family in Alexandria and was a nephew of the great Jewish philosopher, Philo. As Josephus noted (Antiquities 20.100), he “did not stand by the practices of his people.” Appointed governor of Judaea and, later, prefect of Egypt, he helped the Romans to capture Jerusalem in 70 CE and enjoyed high favour with the new dynasty. Men like him would not take kindly to being identified with the defeated and despised nation of the Jews. The depth of the resentment is evidenced by the actions of the new emperor, Nerva, when Domitian was murdered in 96 CE. Nerva had connived at, perhaps had a hand in organizing, the assassination. His own right to supreme power was nebulous, and he initiated a series of measures designed to win popularity in Rome. One such measure tackled the problem of the Jewish tax. Coins were issued proclaiming FISCI IUDAICI CALUMNIA SUBLATA—“the malicious accusation with regard to the Jewish tax has been removed.”

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The tax itself continued to be collected—it was still being raised in the mid-third century—but it was hoped that it would no longer cause such opposition. An important reform then—but consisting of what? The literary sources do not state, but it is a reasonable hypothesis that the main thrust was to correct the abuses which had occurred under Domitian. From then on, only those Jews who continued openly in their ancestral practices were liable to the tax: that is, the definition of a Jew was by religion, not race.5 One result of this reform—and confirmation of its nature—was that the Roman state, and Romans in general, rapidly became aware of the Jewish concept of a proselyte. For writers of the early second century CE, one of the most objectionable aspects of Jews, on a par with their social isolation, circumcision, and alleged proclivity to lust, was not that the Jews themselves should continue with their peculiar customs—these were at least partially justified in Roman eyes by their antiquity—but that pagans should forsake the old gods in order to become Jews. The Stoic philosopher, Epictetus, quoted by Arrian (Discourses 2.9.20), said in a discourse delivered in c. 108 CE that whenever we see a man halting between two faiths, we are in the habit of saying, “He is not a Jew, he is only acting the part.” But when he adopts the attitude of mind of the man who has been baptized [sic] and has made his choice, then he both is a Jew in fact and is also called one.

With greater contempt the satirist Juvenal (Satires 14.97–102) castigated proselytes who worship nothing but the clouds and the divinity of the heavens, and see no difference between eating swine’s flesh . . . and that of man, and in time they take to circumcision. Having been wont to flout the laws of Rome, they learn and practise and revere the Jewish law, and all that Moses handed down in his secret tome . . .

The historian Tacitus was most hostile of all in the description of the Jews with which he prefaced his account of the siege of Jerusalem of 70 CE He wrote of

5 I have discussed this more fully in “Nerva, the Fiscus Judaicus and Jewish Identity,” Journal of Roman Studies 79 (1989), 40–44.

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chapter two those who are converted to their [i.e. the Jews’] ways [that] the earliest lesson they receive is to despise the gods, to disown their country, and to regard their parents, children and brothers as of little account (Hist. 5.5).

How did Jews react to this new Roman definition of Jewishness as a religion to which one could convert and from which one could apostatise? The defection of those ethnic Jews who had drifted away from the community must have appeared offensively blatant when it was advertised by public refusal to pay the tax. By contrast, the loyalty of gentiles who chose willingly to define themselves as Jews despite the tax burden must have looked impressive. At any rate, Jews in the Roman empire would no longer remain in as much doubt as the Jews of Antioch in the sixties CE about which of the ethnic gentiles who frequented their community reckoned that they belonged fully within it. Those who had accreted to the synagogue could be presumed to think of themselves as proselytes if they paid the two denarii to the fiscus Judaicus and gained such subsequent advantages as official permission not to attend pagan cult worship or court cases on the Sabbath. Yet, proselytes undoubtedly existed earlier, and “Godfearers” or “half-Jews” continued even at this time, although without incurring the “Jewish tax” and the benefits that went with it. Indeed, the most striking innovation which can be dated with some confidence to this period—the second to early third century CE—was a new interest among Jews in defining the role and status (in Jewish eyes) of those gentiles who were preceived as being morally good without having chosen to become Jews. Jewish authors of earlier centuries did refer to gentiles, and it was a commonplace that, at the end of days, gentiles would come to recognize the Jewish God; but, on the position of gentiles in the meantime, little more was said than abomination of the idolatry to which it was assumed that they all subscribed. In the second century CE it seems that this lack of concern about gentiles was challenged. One strand of evidence is to be found in rabbinic texts. The Tosefta, compiled in the mid-third century CE, contains the earliest extant information of an attempt by rabbis of the preceding generations to lay down what behaviour should be demanded in theory from a gentile who wished to remain gentile but still achieve virtue (Tosefta, Avodah Zarah 8 (9):4). The Sages of the third century had already agreed that the basic commandments which had been the law

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for the “sons of Noah”—that is, the ancestors of the Jewish people before Abraham—also applied to contemporary non-Jews, since they, like Noah’s sons, were not bound by the covenant between God and Israel made at Mt. Sinai. The rabbis debated only the precise nature of those commandments, arriving (after much discussion) at the eventual, now standard, list preserved in the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 56a): prohibitions of blasphemy, idolatry, sexual immorality, murder, robbery, eating a portion of a living animal, and a requirement to set up courts of law. It has been argued by some scholars that the idea of these so-called “Noachide Laws” originated not just a generation or so before their first attestation in the third century but many centuries earlier, but this is not very plausible, for they have left no clear trace in the copious Jewish literature of the last centuries BCE and the first century CE. It seems to me at least as likely that the development of the concept reflected increased Jewish speculation about righteous gentiles as the boundaries between Jew and gentile were clarified in the second century CE.6 A second strand of evidence has a wholly different origin. The recently discovered inscription from the city of Aphrodisias in Caria (in modern Turkey) contains the names of a large number of benefactors of a Jewish institution whose precise nature remains obscure.7 The inscription, on two sides of a large stone, was probably set up in the city’s synagogue. According to the editors of the text, the most likely date for its erection was the early third century CE. It is a most curious document. On face a the names listed are those of Jews; of these, three, whose names would otherwise appear to be entirely Jewish, are described on the stone as proselytes. On face b still more Jewish names are inscribed, but those are followed by a small gap in the list, under which is found a new heading: “And these are the Godfearers.” Below this are written no fewer than fifty-two names, no one of which is Jewish in origin and some of which are positively pagan. Of these individuals, a number are described as city councillors, a rank which would entail participation in the pagan rites of the city for anyone not specifically exempted

6 See D. Novak, The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism (Toronto Studies in Theology, 14, 1983). 7 J. Reynolds and R. Tannenbaum, Jews and Godfearers at Aphrodisias (Cambridge Philological Society, Supplementary Volume XI, 1987).

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(as were Jews). It is not going too far to see here the first explicit evidence for Jews giving formal recognition in a religious context to a group of local gentiles whose close relationship with the Jewish community was acknowledged despite their clear determination not to become Jews. One can assume, perhaps, that such public Jewish acknowledgement that gentiles can achieve virtue without conversion to Judaism made all the more secure, in the eyes of other Jews, the Jewishness of those gentiles who nonetheless preferred to become proselytes. Many problems and uncertainties about Jewish identity remained after 96 CE. Presumably, a gentile who simply started voluntarily paying an annual contribution to the fiscus Judaicus but did not change his lifestyle in any other way would not thereby find immediate acceptance as a proselyte if he encountered a rabbi from Galilee. If someone born a Jew managed to escape the attentions of the tax authorities, other Jews might reckon him lucky rather than an apostate. Even if he found it necessary to attend pagan sacrifices to avert suspicion, some might think of him as a bad Jew rather than assume that he had left the faith altogether. But, even if clarity was not achieved after the tax reform by the Roman state in 96 CE, a change of some sort does seem to have occurred. Jews may still, in practice, have been uncertain in particular cases exactly who was a Jew, but they did become more aware, perhaps for the first time, that they did need to know.

CHAPTER THREE

JOSEPHUS AND VARIETY IN FIRST-CENTURY JUDAISM

It is a commonplace that Judaism before 70 CE included a number of distinct varieties. The question to be tackled in this paper is the extent of that variety. It will be my contention that a proper awareness of the necessary limitations of the surviving evidence should encourage scholars to expect greater variety than is usually acknowledged.1 Scholarship on late Second Temple Judaism is voluminous. Though the stream of studies over the past century and a half shows no sign of abating, no consensus seems to be emerging on this central issue. In essence, scholars divide into two camps. Those temperamentally inclined to harmonize the evidence take parallels between groups mentioned in the source texts to indicate probable identity. Thus, for instance, the Dead Sea sectarians are judged to have been Essenes (or Sadducees, or Jewish Christians), or the adherents of Beth Shammai are identified with the Zealots.2 On the other side, those temperamentally inclined to distinguish between groups may be accused of producing a veritable hubbub of varieties of Judaism, and some scholars have even taken to referring to ‘Judaisms’ in the plural.3 When trying to justify their approach (which they do only 1 This article is a modified version of a lecture presented to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in April 1998, in the course of a visit arranged under the Academy’s exchange scheme with the British Academy. I am grateful to the Israel Academy for its hospitality and to a number of colleagues for their helpful comments after the lecture. Since the subject of the lecture deals with general issues of historical method and does not attempt to introduce readers to previously unnoticed evidence, I have preserved the lecture format in the published text rather than presenting numerous examples or citations of modern scholarship to reinforce the points made. I hope that as a result the argument may emerge more clearly. 2 Examples are too numerous to list, but for the Dead Sea sectarians as Essenes see, e.g., G. Vermes in E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (rev. G. Vermes et al.), Edinburgh 1973–1987, II, pp. 583–585; as Sadducees, R. North, ‘The Qumran “Sadducees,”’ CBQ, 17 (1955), pp. 164–188, and much recent scholarship based on 4QMMT; and as Jewish Christians, R. Eisenman, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians, Shaftesbury, 1996. On Beth Shammai and the Zealots, see I. Ben-Shalom, The School of Shammai and the Zealots’ Struggle against Rome, Jerusalem 1993 (in Hebrew). 3 On ‘Judaisms’ in the plural see, e.g., J. Neusner, E. Frerichs and W.S. Green

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rarely), both sides in this historiographical conflict have tended to resort to appeals to instinct or taste; or, at best, to the simplicity of their explanation of the evidence, as if it can be taken for granted that the explanation should be simple. My intention in this paper is to provide a rationale for preferring one approach over the other, so that in future investigations of the evidence scholars may have a better idea of what the significance of the similarities between groups they discover is likely to be. I shall try to demonstrate that it is better to distinguish than to harmonize, and I shall do so through an investigation of the main source of evidence for Second Temple Judaism, the writings of Flavius Josephus. Of course, Josephus does not provide the only evidence for firstcentury Judaism, but his writings have a special significance, for two reasons. First, most of the other evidence was written either, like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the rabbinic texts, within a particular branch of Judaism for fellow insiders, or, like the pagan writings collected and edited by Menahem Stern, by outsiders for outsiders. The former group shows no interest in discussing other types of Judaism except when they impinge upon their own type, while the latter all too readily falls into caricature.4 Only Philo, in some of his extant writings, and Josephus, in (probably) all of his, were insiders who set out to explain Jews and Judaism to outsiders.5 Second, and more

(eds.), Judaisms and their Messiahs, Cambridge 1987. I should state clearly at the outset that the extreme form of this view, that there was no common core at all in late Second Temple Judaism, seems to me demonstrably incorrect. All pious Jews shared at least the beliefs that they worshipped the God whose Temple was in Jerusalem and that they had a common history in which a covenant between God and Israel was enshrined in the Torah, which all Jews knew they had to observe. It is important also to clarify that the varieties I am investigating constituted selfaware groups (what Josephus and others called haireseis). It is unwarranted and misleading to treat each text or author as if it or he constituted a separate Judaism. For a brief but acute analysis of the external impulses which lead scholars either to conflate or to divide see D.R. Schwartz, ‘MMT, Josephus and the Pharisees,’ in J. Kampen and M.J. Bernstein (eds.), Reading 4QMMT: New Perspectives on Qumran Law and History, Atlanta 1996, p. 72. 4 See M. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, I–III, Jerusalem 1974–1984. 5 On the readers of Philo’s works see Schürer, History (above, note 2), III, pp. 814, 817–818, 840, 853–854, 878 and 889; on the readers of Josephus’s historical writings see P. Bilde, Flavius Josephus between Jerusalem and Rome: His Life, His Works and Their Importance, Sheffield 1988, pp. 75–78, 102–103.

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crucially, only in the works of Josephus is an extensive description of the different types of first-century Judaism provided. Thus, if Josephus’s writings had not survived it would be hard to reconstruct the picture of variety that he presents in the Jewish War, the Antiquities and the Life. Philo refers to the Essenes, Therapeutae, and unnamed extreme allegorists, but not to Pharisees, Sadducees, the Fourth Philosophy, Zealots, Christians, or hakhamim. In the New Testament there is mention of Pharisees and Sadducees and of course Jewish Christians, but nothing about Essenes. Tannaitic texts are similarly silent about Essenes. By contrast, surviving pagan writings from the first two centuries CE on Jews and Judaism appear completely unaware that Judaism was in any way divided. Both Pliny and Dio Chrysostom refer to Essenes, and Tacitus mentions Christians, but, although these authors were aware that these groups originated in Judaea, they do not describe them as types of Jews.6 Thus, the only ancient source to refer even to all three of the Jewish philosophies especially singled out by Josephus on numerous occasions as characteristic of Judaism, let alone the numerous other types of Judaism to which he referred in passing, such as the Fourth Philosophy, ascetics such as Bannus and John the Baptist, and so on, was Josephus himself. The crucial question is how full a picture Josephus intended to give of first-century Judaism. The first common misapprehension to clear away is the widespread belief that Josephus’s division of Judaism into three haireseis should be taken seriously as evidence that only three types of Judaism existed in his day.7 It is true enough that Josephus made frequent mention of this division,8 often referring the reader back to his full discussion of the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes in Jewish War, 2.119–161, but his insistence on this three-fold division is bizarre when the whole point of describing the three philosophies in that context was to introduce to readers a novel Fourth Philosophy, on which he laid the blame for the outbreak of war against Rome in 6 CE. Thus, in all his later references to Judaism, such as at Vita, 10, Josephus

6 Pliny, N.H., 5.73; Dio ap. Synesius, Vita Dionis (= Stern, Greek and Latin Authors [above, note 4], I, p. 539); Tacitus, Ann., 15.44.2–8. 7 E.g., M. Broshi, ‘Ptolas and the Archelaus Massacre (4Q468g = 4Q historical text B),’ Journal of Jewish Studies, 49 (1998), pp. 341–345. 8 B.J., 2.119; A.J., 13.171–173; A.J., 18.11; Vita, 10: the haireseis are three in number ‘as I have often said.’

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ought, if he was consistent, to have referred to the four philosophies in Judaism, but he never did. It will not do to argue that he referred only to the three philosophies of which he approved and omitted the fourth philosophy for that reason, since he seems also to have disapproved of the Sadducees, who are described unfavourably in all the passages which refer to them in any detail. Nor should the appearance of a similar threefold division of Judaism in Pesher Nahum, where Israel is divided into Judah, Ephraim and Menasseh, be taken as evidence that Josephus was pedantically accurate in his assertion that there were three philosophies. Rather, it shows that Jews liked to divide up their society in this way, perhaps in imitation of a topos familiar elsewhere in the Hellenistic world.9 (Similarly, patristic writers from Justin Martyr to Epiphanius liked to list seven Jewish haireseis, although the names on their lists varied tremendously.)10 Second, it is not even the case that Josephus consistently stressed that there were different varieties of Judaism. On the contrary, the main message of Josephus’s only deliberate presentation of the theology of Judaism, in Against Apion, 2.179–210, specifically stressed the unity and uniformity of Jewish beliefs and practices. Doubtless this emphasis on uniformity was occasioned in part by apologetic concerns, since Josephus was intent in this passage on comparing the Jews to the fickle and variegated Greeks. It is also quite possible that Josephus took at least part of his description of Judaism from an Alexandrian predecessor. However, it is hard to see why he should have copied down from an earlier text a description of Judaism which he did not himself believe to be true, or how he could have hoped to convince his gentile readers about the unity of Jews if he thought his own earlier works, which he expected some of them to have read, painted a clear picture of Jewish heterogeneity.11 The probable conclusion is that Josephus did not believe that he had drawn up a proper picture of Judaism at all in his earlier works. He intended, so he said, to write a description of the nature of Jewish

9 See D. Flusser, ‘Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes in Pesher Nahum,’ in M. Dorman, S. Safrai and M. Stern (eds.), Essays in Jewish History and Philology in Memory of Gedaliahu Alon, Jerusalem, 1970, p. 159 (in Hebrew). 10 On the patristic texts see J.M. Lieu, ‘Epiphanius on the Scribes and Pharisees,’ Journal of Theological Studies, 39 (1988), pp. 509–524. 11 See my study of Contra Apionem in M. Edwards, M. Goodman and S. Price (eds.), Apologetic in the Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews, Christians, Oxford 1999, chap. 3.

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customs, but that project apparently was never completed.12 His aim in the works he did write was entirely different. The Life constituted an apologetic autobiography in which Josephus defended himself against attacks on his behaviour in the revolt against Rome; apart from his protestations about his personal piety, religion was hardly relevant.13 The Jewish War and the Antiquities concentrated on political and military history, in imitation of Thucydides and Polybius (in the case of the War) and (probably) of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (in the case of the Antiquities), so there was no need to refer to any variety of Judaism except when it had an impact on political events.14 This was indeed the explicit reason for the description of the three haireseis in War, Book 2, and A.J., Book 18, as a contrast to the Fourth Philosophy. Similarly, Philo, ‘not inexperienced in philosophy,’ was mentioned only because he was at the head of the Jewish delegation which went from Alexandria to Italy to bring a complaint before the emperor Gaius Caligula (A.J., 18.259). Hence, it is entirely probable that Josephus may have failed to mention those religious groups and tendencies which had no political impact of the type that interested him, even if such groups were influential in other ways or such varieties of Judaism were commonly espoused. Only a minuscule proportion of Josephus’s writings has anything at all to say about any variety of Judaism. It is quite wrong, for example, to view A.J., 13–18, as an apologia for the Pharisees, since they hardly feature in the narrative.15 What should follow from all this is a radical disinclination, when confronted with evidence from other sources which does not explicitly tie up with the evidence in Josephus, to use subtle arguments to make the evidence appear so to conform. Such arguments are of course perfectly possible and are often deployed. Distinctions are made between the views of a Jewish group from inside and from

12 On this uncompleted project to compose four books on Jewish theology and practice see A.J., 20.268 and elsewhere; and see the brief, not wholly convincing discussion by D. Altschuler, ‘The Treatise “On Customs and Causes” by Flavius Josephus,’ Jewish Quarterly Review, 69 (1978–1979), pp. 226–232. 13 See Bilde, Flavius Josephus (above, note 5), pp. 104–113. 14 Ibid., pp. 65–104. 15 D.S. Williams, in ‘Morton Smith on the Pharisees in Josephus’ ( Jewish Quarterly Review, 84 [1993], p. 39), notes that only 0.0109% of A.J., books 13–18, refers to Pharisees either individually or collectively.

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outside; discrepancies are explained as a result of the development of a group over time, or as evidence that different strands of a group co-existed; as a last resort, the sources of the evidence which contradicts Josephus are sometimes dismissed as ignorant. My point is simply that the deployment of such arguments itself presupposes a faith in Josephus’s thoroughness in his treatment of varieties of Judaism in his day for which there is no warrant. In the study of two groups in particular the tendency of scholars to conflate evidence seems to me to have been misleading: the Dead Sea sectarians, whose close relationship to the Essenes in Josephus is still only doubted by a minority of scholars, and the hakhamim found in tannaitic texts, whose close relationship to the Pharisees in Josephus is almost universally taken for granted. In the half century since the first scrolls were found by the Dead Sea, the group behind the sectarian documents has been identified variously with Pharisees, Sadducees, Jewish Christians, Zealots, and, most commonly, Essenes.16 In each case it is possible to point to parallels between specific aspects of sectarian behaviour or theology as revealed by the scrolls and similar traits attributed to one group or another in the Greek and Latin descriptions, but it is self-evident from the multiplicity of hypotheses that the total set of parallels is not sufficient in any one case to establish identity. Thus, the leading Essene hypothesis has to cope with serious discrepancies, such as the contradiction between the strong insistence of the classical sources on the Essenes’ devotion to the common ownership of property and the assumption in some scrolls (e.g., CD, 9.10–16) that sectarians might own their own goods. It seems to me (as to some others) better to treat the Dead Sea sect as a previously unknown Jewish group.17 The whole value of the chance find of these new documents lies not in filling in the gaps in an obscure corner of an already fairly complete picture of late Second Temple Judaism but, far more importantly, in their revelation of a type of Judaism not previously attested.

16 For the argument which follows see in greater detail my article, ‘A Note on the Qumran Sectarians, the Essenes and Josephus,’ Journal of Jewish Studies, 46 (1995), pp. 161–166 [Chapter 11, below]. 17 See S. Talmon, ‘The Community of the Renewed Covenant between Judaism and Christianity,’ in E. Ulrich and J. Vanderkam (eds.), The Community of the Renewed Covenant, Notre Dame, Ind., 1994, pp. 5–10.

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Much less has been written about the relationship between the hakhamim and the Pharisees. There is a consensus that, while it is wrong simply to equate the two groups, in some way the hakhamim ‘emerged’ from the Pharisees. Thus, for example, rabbinic stories about the Houses of Hillel and Shammai have been characterized as ‘Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70.’18 This quasiunanimity is rather curious, because there are quite powerful arguments against identification.19 Most important of these is the fact that the tannaim never referred to themselves or their predecessors before 70 as ‘Pharisees.’ There is absolutely no explicit evidence that Hillel or Shammai considered themselves to be Pharisees. It is hard to see how this can have been accidental, or simply a contrast between ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ literature. Pharisaios in Greek was a self-designation used by both Josephus and St Paul.20 Whatever its derivation, it was evidently a Semitic term in origin, translatable into Hebrew as perush,21 for the tannaim did refer occasionally to perushim as opponents of Sadducees on halakhic issues, but without identifying themselves with these perushim. Thus, the tannaim knew that there was a group of Jews called Pharisees, but they did not consider the Pharisees to be connected to their own circle.22 The distinction is clear in Mishna Yadaim 4:6: The Sadducees say, ‘We cry out against you, O Pharisees, for you say “The Holy Writings make the hands unclean, but the writings of Hamiram do not make the hands unclean!” ’ Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai said, ‘Have we nothing against the Pharisees save this!’

It is clear from this passage that Yohanan b. Zakkai, at least, did not identify himself as a Pharisee, or at least he was not so identified by the compiler of the Mishna. Ingenious arguments can of course 18

J. Neusner, Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70, I–III, Leiden 1971. See P. Schäfer, ‘Der vorrabbinische Pharisäismus,’ in Paulus und das antike Judentum, Tübingen 1991, pp. 125–175. See also, more briefly, S. Cohen, ‘The Significance of Yavneh,’ Hebrew Union College Annual, 55 (1984), pp. 36–42. 20 Jos., Vita, 12 (despite the cautionary remarks of S. Mason, Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees: A Composition-Critical Study, Leiden 1991, chaps. 14–15); Paul in Philippians 3:5. 21 Cf. A.I. Baumgarten, ‘The Name of the Pharisees,’ Journal of Biblical Literature, 102 (1983), pp. 411–428. 22 The only explicit texts are Mishna Yadaim 4:6, 7; and Tosefta Hagiga 3:35. Other relevant texts are conveniently collected in J. Bowker, Jesus and the Pharisees, Cambridge 1973, along with those passages in which the term perushim appears to have been used in a purely negative sense of ‘separatists’ (e.g., Mishna Sotah 3:4). 19

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be devised to explain these phenomena and conflate the evidence, but I would suggest that it is not justifiable to seek to do so when conflation is itself deemed implausible. I suggest, then, that the Pharisees and the hakhamim were two quite separate, self-aware groups which flourished both before and after 70 CE. I posit this hypothesis in full awareness that it raises three difficulties, which will need to be discussed separately. The first problem, and the easiest to deal with, is the fact that on all issues on which rabbinic texts state that the Pharisees took a particular stance against others, their stance was identical to that taken by the hakhamim themselves when the stance of the hakhamim happens to be recorded in later texts.23 From this it can be deduced only that Pharisees and hakhamim in some respects had similar views, not that their groups were identical. In the late Second Temple there seems to have been a series of issues on which all Jews, and each group of Jews, might be expected independently to take a stand, such as purity rules (for example, the requisite dimensions of a mikveh), controversial elements of the Temple cult (for example, the sacrifice of the red heifer, the date of the omer offering, and the calendar), life after death, eschatology, and messianism.24 It was perfectly possible for two groups to agree on one issue but disagree on another. Thus, the Dead Sea sectarians followed the same halakha as the Sadducees in some cases, but there is no reason to suppose that they did so qua Sadducees; on the contrary, the author of 4QMMT makes it clear that the ‘we’ and the ‘you’ in the text—clearly separate groups—can agree in specific instances against ‘them.’25 In the same way, different groups might adopt the same slogans and concepts but adapt them to their own use. Quite different Jews might appeal to the notion of ‘zeal’ as shown in the distant past by Pinchas, or to the name Zadok, or to separation or separateness as desirable.26 The identification of common themes and slogans is an important part of the study of Judaism in this period, but it is a quite separate exercise from the identification of distinct groups or tendencies. 23 E.g., Mishna Yadaim 4:7, on details of purity law and on the law of damages. 24 A similar point is made by A.I. Baumgarten in The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era, Leiden 1997, pp. 55–57. 25 See Y. Sussmann, ‘The History of Halacha and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Preliminary Observations on Miqsat Ma'ase ha-Torah (4QMMT),’ Tarbiz, 59 (5750), pp. 11–76 (in Hebrew). 26 Baumgarten, Flourishing (above, note 24), p. 56.

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The second problem is the later rabbinic construction of Jewish history in Second Temple times, in which actions attributed by Josephus to Pharisees are sometimes attributed in amoraic sources directly to rabbinic-type sages; an example is the hostile attitude of the Pharisees as a group toward Alexander Jannaeus and their amicable relations with his widow, Shelomzion.27 The best explanation seems to me to lie in the rabbinization of history. One of the most striking features of the earliest stratum of rabbinic literature is its apparent vagueness about the rabbinic past before the time of Hillel and Shammai; the chain of tradition in Mishna Abot, Chapter 1, is as significant for what it does not say as for what it does. By the amoraic period, the need to understand all of Jewish religious leadership since Moses as rabbinic led to the description of even such a figure as Ezra as a talmid hakham.28 It was comparatively easy to claim for the rabbinic movement a figure from the early first century BCE like Shimon b. Shetah. The third and final factor has probably been the most influential in the common tendency to treat Pharisees and hakhamim as part of a single movement, and that is the extent to which the ideologies of both Pharisees and hakhamim were closely related to the common Judaism of ordinary Jews. Here there has been much confusion, and a longer discussion is necessary. According to Josephus, the Pharisees were influential with the masses (A.J., 13.298), although they were themselves quite a small group: Josephus gives the number of Pharisees who refused to take an oath of loyalty to the emperor in the time of Herod as ‘above six thousand’ (A.J., 17.42). The explanation of their influence must therefore lie in their teachings, but, despite Josephus’s assertion in A.J., 18.15, it is hard to accept that the teachings which gave them prestige were their idiosyncratic views on fate and the afterlife.

27 Compare Jos., A.J., 13.288–298 to Babylonian Talmud Kiddushin 66a (cf. M.J. Geller, ‘Alexander Jannaeus and the Pharisees Rift,’ Journal of Jewish Studies, 30 [1979], pp. 202–211), and see the traditions about Shimon b. Shetah and Yannai in Gen. Rabba 91:3 and parallels, and about Shimon b. Shetah and Shelomzion in Babylonian Talmud Taanit 23a. See in general S.J.D. Cohen, ‘Parallel Historical Traditions in Josephus and Rabbinic Literature,’ in Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem 1986, I, pp. 7–14. 28 For the stories about Ezra see L. Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, Philadelphia 1909–1938, IV, pp. 354–359; VI, pp. 441–447.

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It is more plausible that their popularity stemmed from their attitude toward ancestral tradition.29 Josephus states in various places that the Pharisees, unlike the Sadducees, accepted the regulations handed down by ancestral tradition (A.J., 13.297, 408). This terminology does not imply that the tradition was particularly Pharisaic: Josephus uses the same terms to refer to the traditions by which Josiah had been guided long ago (A.J., 10.51), and there the ancestors in question were evidently those of all Jews. What distinguished this ancestral tradition was that it was not written down, which was why the Sadducees rejected it (A.J., 13.297), but there is no reason to suppose therefore that it was preserved orally, let alone that it should be identified with what rabbis from the amoraic period on described as the Oral Torah. It is far more likely that the paradosis accepted by Pharisees from previous generations was transmitted not by words but through behaviour, as Philo assumed in praising ancient ancestral customs in a commentary on Deut. 19:4: Another commandment of general value is ‘Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmarks which thy forerunners have set up.’ Now this law, we may consider, applies not merely to allotments and boundaries of land in order to eliminate covetousness but also to the safeguarding of ancient customs. For customs are unwritten laws, the decisions approved by men of old, not inscribed on monuments nor on leaves of paper which the moth destroys, but on the souls of those who are partners in the same citizenship. For children ought to inherit from their parents, besides their property, ancestral customs which they were reared in and have lived with even from the cradle, and not despise them because they have been handed down without written record. Praise cannot be duly given to one who obeys the written laws, since he acts under the admonition of restraint and the fear of punishment. But he who faithfully observes the unwritten deserves commendation, since the virtue which he displays is freely willed. (De Spec. Leg., 4.149–150, Loeb translation)

As Philo suggested (rightly), religion is usually caught, not taught.30

29 For a slightly more detailed version of this argument see my article, ‘Josephus, the Pharisees and Ancestral Tradition,’ Journal of Jewish Studies, 50 (1999), pp. 17–20 [Chapter 9, below]. 30 On the Pharisaic nomima see the survey of scholarship in Mason, Flavius Josephus (above, note 20), pp. 230–245. On the Philo text see N. Cohen, Philo Judaeus: His Universe of Discourse, Frankfurt 1993, pp. 258–272, but note that she, too, takes unwritten law to be oral (p. 281).

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The Pharisees not only accepted for themselves the validity of customary interpretation of halakha; they added authority to such customs by asserting that this acceptance was not arbitrary—on the contrary, they prided themselves on the accuracy of their interpretation of the Torah (A.J., 17.41; Vita, 191, etc.).31 It is not surprising that Pharisees were popular when they supported ordinary Jews in their customary behaviour, giving them the comforting knowledge that they had the approval of pietists who were ‘unrivalled experts’ in the law (Vita, 191). In any particular case, it may have been hard to tell whether a custom was carried out just because it was customary or because it had the approval of the Pharisees, or for both reasons. To be sure, in cases like the attack by the Sadducee Jonathan on the Pharisees in the time of John Hyrcanus—which, according to A.J., 13.296, led Hyrcanus to abrogate all the nomima established by the Pharisees for the people and to punish all those who observed such regulations—the enemies of the Pharisees clearly implied that these were Pharisaic rules. However, this is the stuff of polemic. Usually, it was perhaps unnecessary to ask whether ancestral tradition or Pharisaic concurrence with such tradition mattered most. It is probable that the attitude of the rabbinic hakhamim toward ordinary customs was similar. The best evidence can be culled from the marriage contracts, divorce documents, deeds of sale, renunciations of claim and other legal documents from the Bar Kochba period which have been discovered in the Judaean Desert.32 These documents were certainly written by or for Jews and in some cases refer explicitly to ‘the law of Moses and Israel.’ However, as has long been noted, although the law in use is essentially similar to that found in tannaitic texts, there is no evidence that any rabbi was involved in either the preparation or the enforcement of the agreements, and there are also numerous variations in them from tannaitic law, some minor, others of greater import.33 One way to

31 On Pharisees’ claim to accuracy see Baumgarten, ‘Name of the Pharisees’ (above, note 21), pp. 413–417. 32 The bulk of the documents are now published in the series Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, vols. II and XXVII, and in Y. Yadin, The Documents from the Bar-Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters: Greek Papyri (ed. N. Lewis), Jerusalem 1989. 33 See the summary by H. Cotton in H.M. Cotton and A. Yardeni (eds.), Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek Documents: Texts from Nahal Hever and Other Sites (DJD, XXVII), Oxford 1997, pp. 154–157.

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explain these differences is to dismiss the Jews who produced the documents as marginal to Jewish society, and the claim that this was so is undisprovable. However, it is equally possible that the Judaean Desert documents simply reflect one strand in a general common Jewish law, and that what the tannaim did was to put into order existing legal customs by subjecting them to analysis on the basis of legal principles, logic and biblical proof texts.34 That this was indeed the case at least to some extent is clear from the internal evidence of the Mishna, according to which, for instance, quite substantial differences in marriage customs between Galilee and Judaea were acknowledged and accepted by the tannaim (cf., for example, Mishna Ketubot 4:12). That is to say, rabbinic Judaism was not a special variety of Judaism created by the decrees and decisions of innumerable hakhamim through the ages; rather, it was ordinary, customary Judaism as interpreted and approved by the hakhamim in the first two centuries CE. If this analysis is correct, it will be seen that the Judaism of the Pharisees and the Judaism of the hakhamim must in some respects have been very similar, since both accepted the validity of ancestral custom. However, this does not at all reinforce the notion that the two movements were in some way connected. It is entirely possible for two groups to co-exist in one period and place with almost identical interests but clearly separate identities. An outsider viewing varieties of orthodox Judaism in the contemporary world could not easily see the differences which divide one hasidic group from another, but it would be a big mistake to ignore the strong sense of group identity within each type of hasidism. It is often by the little differences—‘little’ as perceived by outsiders—that people and groups establish their identity over against others. Modern scholars may be unable to find a specific identifiable difference in theology or practice between the hakhamim and the Pharisees, but this may simply reflect our ignorance of, in particular, the theology and practices of the Pharisees. It is quite possibly otiose even to look for any such difference: as with contemporary hasidim, it may be mainly or only the names and the allegiances of the members of two groups that differentiate one from the other.

34 This was my argument in my book, State and Society in Roman Galilee, A.D. 132–212, Totowa, N.J., 1983, pp. 160–161.

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It is of course true that in the period while the Temple still stood two sages are specifically attested as belonging both to the Pharisees and to the hakhamim: Rabban Gamaliel and his son, Simon.35 These two are the only hakhamim described in extant Greek sources as Pharisees, although, since the family was both prominent and rich, there is no particular reason to attribute their evident influence in Judaean politics to their membership in either group.36 It is naturally possible that the ascription of these two individuals in one source to the hakhamim and in another source to the Pharisees is explained by the basic identity of these two groups, as is usually assumed, but it is no less possible that an enthusiastic Jew could, if he so wished, belong to more than one group at a time. There is indeed evidence that just as it was possible to migrate from one variety of Judaism to another—as Josephus did, according to his autobiography (Vita, 10–12)—so it was possible to hold simultaneous membership in two groups. Not all groups were tolerant of each other—thus it was presumably impossible to be both a Pharisee and a Sadducee—but other combinations, such as Pharisaism and the Fourth Philosophy, were less obviously contradictory (cf. Josephus, A.J., 18.4, 23). It may be best to envisage the varieties of Judaism as a series of overlapping circles, much as some eclectic Roman thinkers in the early empire found it possible to align themselves with a number of different philosophies at the same time. The notion of choice underlies the term hairesis, used of all these varieties of Judaism not only by Josephus but also by Philo and the author of the Acts of the Apostles.37 Thus, what made each group distinct was simply the fact that some individual Jews chose to adopt its ideas and practices. My intention has been to show how partial our knowledge of Jewish history in this period really is. If we relied, as for other religions in the Roman Empire, on the evidence of pagan authors, archaeology and inscriptions, we would be unaware of any variety within Judaism at all.38 Hence our picture of the different types of 35 On Gamaliel, see Acts 5:34–39 and 22:3; Mishna Orla 2:12, Rosh hashana 2:5, Yebamot 16:7, Sotah 9:15, Gittin 4:2–3, and Abot 1:16; on Simon b. Gamaliel see Jos., Vita, 191; and Mishna Abot 1:17 and Keritot 1:7. 36 See Schäfer, ‘Der vorrabbinische Pharisaismus’ (above, note 19), p. 172. 37 See the examples gathered by Baumgarten in The Flourishing of Jewish Sects (above, note 24), p. 3. 38 See my article, ‘Jews, Greeks and Romans,’ in M. Goodman (ed.), Jews in a Graeco-Roman World, Oxford 1998, pp. 3–14.

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Judaism relies wholly on the sources preserved, for religious purposes, by later Jewish and Christian traditions. Since much of the material found in each of these traditions is lacking in the other, it is obvious that both traditions have been highly selective, and it was always likely that there existed further material which was ignored by both. The Dead Sea scrolls provided historians with precisely such material, and their significance should not be weakened by forcing what they tell us into the straitjacket of what was already known from other sources. Hence, the number of varieties of Judaism that existed at the end of the Second Temple period must be judged even greater than what emerges from simply reading Josephus. According to the Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 29c, R. Yohanan stated that ‘Israel did not go into exile until there were twenty-four sects of minim.’ It is not clear precisely what constituted a ‘sect of minim,’ but R. Yohanan would seem to have reckoned that there were at least twenty-five types of Judaism before the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE—one acceptable variety and twenty-four others. I would not advocate reliance on R. Yohanan’s mathematics, but I would suggest that in essence he was just about right.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE TEMPLE IN FIRST-CENTURY CE JUDAISM

Among the many aspects of the Jews and Judaism that seemed odd to non-Jews in the ancient world, worship through offerings and sacrifices in the Temple in Jerusalem was not included. Greeks and Romans found Jews amusing, occasionally admirable, and (sometimes) disgusting, because of their strange customs, such as stopping work on the Sabbath, their distinctive food laws, and the circumcision of males (Stern 1974–84; Feldman 1993). But the attitudes of Greeks and Romans to the Jerusalem Temple in the final century of its existence, after it had been rebuilt magnificently in the Roman manner by Herod the Great, was primarily admiration (Tacitus, Histories 5.8.1). To worship through offering sacrificial animals, libations, and incense on special altars in areas consecrated and purified by dedicated priests was standard religious behaviour for almost everyone in the ancient world (Beard, North and Price 1998). It was also not just part but the centre of the religious life of the Jews, a fact whose importance has faded somewhat over the past two millennia as both Jews and Christians (and, later, Muslims) have learned other ways to worship, without a Temple. The Jerusalem Temple is in fact, or at least should be, much better known than any other temple system in the ancient world precisely because these later Jews and Christians preserved so much evidence about the way that the Temple operated. For no other temple does there survive a record of sacrificial ritual as detailed as the lengthy discussions in the Mishnah and the Tosefta. For no other temple do we have a long first-hand description by a priest who had known the cult from the inside, as Josephus did. The happy chance that so much literary material about the Temple was kept by these two different religious traditions—rabbinic Judaism and Christianity—provides a unique opportunity to gauge in what ways the Temple mattered to ordinary Jews in the generations immediately prior to its destruction (Sanders 1992: 47–169, 305–14; Hayward 1996). That the Temple was, in some sense at least, of supreme significance to the vast majority of Jews may be surmised from a single

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traumatic episode which occurred some thirty years before its demise. Both the contemporary philosopher Philo and the (slightly younger) historian Josephus narrate the reaction of Jews worldwide when the crazy emperor Gaius Caligula attempted to install in the Temple a statue of himself so that he might be worshipped there as divine (Schürer 1973: 388–96). Philo, who was in Rome at the time as part of a delegation which had come to the capital to seek redress for his home community in Alexandria in the diaspora after they had suffered pogroms, switched his efforts to try to counter this far more serious threat to the whole Jewish nation. Agrippa I, grandson of Herod the Great, a royal adventurer who had contrived to gain the friendship of Caligula, risked both that friendship and his life by protesting against the sacrilege. The Jews of Judaea and Galilee staged a sit-down strike to prevent a Roman army marching on Jerusalem with the statue. In the event, calamity was averted by the assassination of the tyrant emperor, but not before Jews all over the Roman world had been spurred into collective outrage in a way not recorded either in earlier crises or in the national traumas of the two later great revolts in Judaea in 66–70 and 132–135 CE or the diaspora uprising of 115–117 CE. Precise details of the appearance of the Temple just before 70 CE are much debated, not for lack of information but because the evidence of Josephus (Ant. 15.410–20; War 5.184–227; Apion 2.102–109) does not cohere in all respects with that in the Mishnah (Avigad 1984). Excavations around the Temple site have brought clarity only to a small selection of the resulting problems of interpretation. The most probable explanation of most of the discrepancies is not that either source is wholly wrong but that the lay-out of the building changed over time (Levine 1994): one extra item of knowledge which is furnished by archaeology is that Josephus’s references to structural work on the building having continued almost up to the outbreak of the Great Revolt in 66 CE seem to be correct. But if details are sometimes hazy, the general picture is not. The Temple was huge compared to other shrines in the Roman empire—rivalled by the great temples of Egypt—for the good reason that whereas devotees of other cults built local shrines, Jews, with few exceptions, directed their pious offerings to just the one place. The main impression in the main courts was space—where the enclosed perimeter of a normal pagan temple had trees, votive offerings and statues, the Jerusalem shrine had a vast piazza for worshippers to

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gather (Pseudo-Hecataeus in Josephus, Apion 1.199), the whole area preserved, according to Philo (Spec. Laws 1.74, 156), in a state of exceptional cleanliness. The walls and doors surrounding the court were brightly decorated both with objects dedicated by individuals (such as a golden chain dedicated in memory of his release from captivity by Agrippa I [ Josephus, Ant. 19.294], or the gilded gate donated by a certain Nicanor according to the Mishnah [m. Yoma 3.10]), and with outstanding works of art, such as the golden vine ( Josephus, War 5.210), which proved sufficiently famous to come to the attention of the gentile historian Tacitus (Histories 5.5.5), or the huge purple, blue and scarlet embroidered tapestries on which a panorama of the heavens (excluding the zodiac) was apparently portrayed ( Josephus, War 5.212–13). It was a sparkling stage set for the worshippers who came to throng the great open space whose size and capacity had been massively increased by Herod’s use of modern Roman techniques of vaulting to extend a platform along the side of the hill. Not that a capacity crowd was normal. On ordinary weekdays, the courts must have felt quite empty, since the daily communal ritual all took place in a restricted area around the court of the priests where the animals were sacrificed, burned and (in some cases) eaten, and the libations were poured. The actors in this solemn ritual were all priests, qualified to serve by inheritance through the male line. Physical impairment would disbar a priest from his duties, but otherwise birth—rather than skill, piety or knowledge—was the only criterion (Schürer 1979: 237–308). Doubtless the caste preserved its own traditions handed down through the generations, but for the great mass of non-priestly Jews too much was at stake in what the priests did for their conduct to be left entirely without outside scrutiny and (occasionally) interference (Goodman 2000). The rules of the sacrifices carried out by the priests on behalf of the nation were divinely ordained in the Torah. In marked contrast to pagan cults, in which worshippers themselves decided what they thought the gods wanted and judged their success by what they saw as signs of divine pleasure or displeasure, in the Jerusalem Temple the procedures were laid out by the divine recipient of the offerings, a precise menu with a precise set of times for the meals to be served. In other cults, in times of emergency regular sacrifices could be postponed, with the understanding that the gods would be willing to wait. By contrast, the divine timetable of Sabbaths, new

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moons and festivals cannot be altered by humans (Holladay and Goodman 1986). Hence widespread concern among non-priests that the offerings made by the priests should be carried out in accordance with the divine will, and the disputes among different groups, such as Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes, on the correct calendar or on matters of intricate cultic detail such as the purity of the priest who carried out the ritual of the red heifer (m. Par. 3.7). The extraordinary find at Qumran of multiple copies of Miqßat ma'a≤ê hattôrâ, a letter from the Dead Sea sectarians to the High Priest urging him to follow their rulings in such matters, provides evidence of just such attempted interference in the public procedures in the Temple even by a fringe group (Qimron and Strugnell 1994). Beyond the writing of letters and occasional mass demonstrations, the control by non-priests over the day-to-day running of the Temple was indirect at best, and it is hard to know how often ordinary Jews would go into the Temple precincts for worship. Within Jerusalem, the Temple was the main arena for public meetings of all kinds—it was here, for instance, that the first Jewish Christians preached their message (Acts 2.46–47; 5.21, 42)—but there is no evidence that individuals would go specially to the building for private prayer unless they wished to present a private sacrifice of their own. There was in theory no limit to the number of such sin, guilt and other private offerings one could bring (Sanders 1992: 89–90), buying an animal (usually a bird) from the noisy livestock compounds in the royal portico on the southern edge of the Temple platform and then handing it to a priest, who would carry out the slaughter on your behalf (Sanders 1992; Goodman 1994a). In practice, the fact that no-one, however pious, could bring an offering for every possible sin must have made such offerings essentially voluntary, a matter of individual conscience (or, for the insecure, an issue on which to seek guidance from a religious expert of one persuasion or another). It is a reasonable hypothesis that inhabitants of Jerusalem brought offerings to the Temple more often than those who lived further away, although demonstrating that physical distance created any difference in attitude to the Temple as an institution is not possible (Goodman 1999b). The experience of the individual worshipper was altogether different on the days of festivals. According to Josephus (War 6.420–27), there were 2,700,000 men in Jerusalem for the Passover of 65 CE, to which number should be added women and children. Josephus’s figure is

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not trustworthy, but the impression of a vast crowd such as can still be seen today in Mecca is confirmed by numerous stories about the political volatility of these occasions, which in the first century CE all too often provided opportunity for riots and assassinations ( Josephus, Ant. 20.186–87). The international flavour of the pilgrim crowd was much boosted in these final years not just because Herod’s rebuilding programme had made the Temple a tourist attraction even for non-Jews, but because, following the eradication of piracy by Pompey the Great and the imposition of Roman rule over the whole Mediterranean world, diaspora Jews from all over that world could, and did, travel with a fair degree of safety to Judaea to pay their respects and their dues (Goodman 1999a [Chapter 5 below]). Attendance at such festivals was evidently enjoyable, since there is good evidence that many women and children went up to Jerusalem even though they had no requirement to do so (Safrai 1985). Part of the impact on the individual will have lain in the feelings of anticipation, heightened by the purification procedures which preceded entry into the Temple precincts ( Josephus, Apion 2.104). On arrival, the worshipper was struck by the imposing architecture, the building towering high above him, the precious metals and stones glinting in the sun (cf. Pseudo-Philo, LAB 26)—giving rise in descriptions of the building to recurrent imagery of intense light (Hayward 1996: 15–16). Enmeshed within the crowd, the pilgrim who brought and took to a priest a personal offering would not see much of what happened to ‘his’ or ‘her’ animal in the court of priests when it was sacrificed. Women in particular will have had to strain to catch sight of what was going on since they were confined at a further distance, in the court of the women. But perhaps this did not matter, and distance added an element of mystery and power. Cut off from the messy business of the abattoir and butcher, the worshipper could gaze in awe at the practised precision of the priests, who operated ‘like angels’ ( Jubilees 30.14), carrying out their duties in complete silence (Pseudo-Aristeas 92–95). Not that the Temple as a whole can have been silent, or even hushed. There was the sound of Levites singing—presumably, given the acoustics of the open-air courtyard, providing background noise rather than hymns with distinguishable words. There were occasional blasts on the trumpet and the constant sound of animals on the way to slaughter. The same animals must have given a distinctive smell to the place, overlain with the scent of roast meat. Incense

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was of course offered up on the altar, but its scent will hardly have percolated to the outer courts. In the summer heat of Jerusalem all such smells will have dissipated quite rapidly in the open air, as will the tang of human perspiration, hardly avoidable in such a crowd despite the hope expressed by Ezekiel (44.18) that the priests at least should avoid wearing any clothes that cause sweat. It is easy, with empathy, to imagine the huge emotional impact of the Temple on those who visited it two thousand years ago, but the significance of the Temple went much deeper than just the emotion it elicited from the occasional visitor. The Temple was also an institution of immense importance for those many Jews who were never able to visit the Temple at all because it was too far away. The extreme case was the universal horror, discussed above, at the attempted desecration of the Temple by Gaius Caligula in 40 CE, but, on a more mundane level, ordinary diaspora Jews in Asia Minor, Rome or Babylonia demonstrated their commitment to the public sacrifices for Israel by the annual payment of a half-shekel to Temple funds by each adult male. These payments involved sufficient transfer of wealth to come to the attention of Roman governors (and encourage their rapacity) (cf. Cicero, Pro Flacco 28.66–69). Josephus described the existence in Leontopolis in Egypt of a second Jewish temple, which operated for over two hundred years until it was shut down by the Romans in c. 72 CE (War 7.420–32; Ant. 13.62–73), but it was strikingly not to that temple that the great philosopher Philo looked, despite his proximity to the site, but to Jerusalem. What mattered to Philo, who seems only once to have visited Jerusalem but who devised a complex allegorical interpretation of the details of the Temple ritual, was the idea of the Temple cult (Sandmel 1979). As a result, the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE will have been an appalling disaster for diaspora Jews just as much as for those in Judaea, even if the former had not been caught up in the fighting. They could, and did, provide explanations, both theological and secular, for what had happened (e.g. 4 Ezra; Josephus, War 6.127), but equally crucial was the question of what to do next. The older history textbooks claim that the immediate reaction was to start planning for a Judaism without a temple, a process led by Yohanan b. Zakkai at Yavneh, but such behaviour, farsighted though it turned out to be in practice, is not likely to have been standard among ordinary Jews (cf. Goodman 1994b [Chapter 13 below]). For them, the next step was entirely obvious. The Temple had been

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destroyed, so the task of Jews must be to ensure that, as rapidly as possible, it be rebuilt. In many ways, such an expectation was wholly reasonable. A rebuilt Temple would not have to be as grand as that of Herod, or even as impressive as the edifice Herod had replaced. Once the site was sufficiently cleared of rubble (a laborious task), the erection of a modest sanctuary and altar would be a simple matter. Plenty of priests survived to officiate, and presumably some still knew what to do. Josephus (War 6.268) recorded that people were all too well aware of ‘the exactness of the cycle of Destiny’ which had delayed the Temple’s fall until the precise month and day (as it was supposed) when the Babylonians had destroyed the Temple of Solomon, but in that case they will also have been aware that in due course a new Temple had been built to replace it. Nor was such rebuilding unique to the Jews. When other religious buildings burned down in the Roman world, a not infrequent accident, it was a standard act of pagan piety to permit their re-erection. Emperors before 66 CE freely recognized the worth of the Jewish cult (cf. Josephus, War 2.413). Jews might well believe that it would be only a short time before it began again. Why, then, did it not happen? The answer for at least the next one hundred and fifty years, and perhaps down to the end of late antiquity, does not seem to have been any lessening of desire on the part of the Jews, but the refusal of the Roman state to permit the Jews to behave like all other religious groups within the empire. The reasons for this unique reluctance by Rome, a reluctance which was to have enormous implications for later Judaism, in fact had, at least in origin, little to do with the Jews at all. In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE, the first priority of the Roman emperor Vespasian was not the fate of the Jews but his own position in the Roman state (Levick 1999). Appointed by Nero in 66 CE to the command in Judaea, he had been selected as general over so large a military force precisely because, although he was militarily competent, he was politically insignificant and would therefore pose no threat to the ( justifiably) paranoid emperor (Goodman 1987). Nero died in 68 CE following a coup, and was succeeded the next year by no less than four claimants, of whom Vespasian was the last. In practice, Vespasian thus came to power through victory in civil war, but glorying in such an achievement was not best calculated to endear him to his new subjects. Instead he

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chose, following the precedent of earlier usurpers (notably Augustus), to parade himself as conqueror of foreign enemies dangerous to the state. The only enemies about whom he could possibly make such a claim were the Jews, whom his son Titus subdued in August 70 at great speed, with exceptional ferocity, and with unusual disregard for the loss of Roman soldiers, precisely in order to consolidate as rapidly as possible the propaganda benefits for his imperial image (Goodman 1987: 236). According to Josephus (War 6.238–66) Titus (and presumably also Vespasian) had not intended that the Temple should be burned. Since previous emperors had valued highly the Jews’ practice of offering sacrifices in the Temple for the well-being of the emperors themselves, it is not at all unlikely that original Roman war aims involved the re-establishment of the Temple cult under the leadership of pro-Roman high priests such as had cooperated with the Roman state since direct Roman rule was first imposed in Judaea in 6 CE. But once the Temple was destroyed, neither Vespasian nor Titus could safely apologize, since, if the destruction was not portrayed as deliberate, it had to be the product of an incompetent failure of discipline by the commanders on the ground, and would constitute an act of the greatest impiety which would besmirch the record of the new regime. In any case, no apology was forthcoming. On the contrary, the utensils of the Temple were paraded in their triumph in Rome and displayed as booty in the temple of Pax near the Forum ( Josephus, War 7.158–62), and all Jews were compelled to pay a symbolic special annual Jewish tax of two denarii to Jupiter Capitolinus in place of the contribution that adult Jewish males had previously sent to Jerusalem ( Josephus, War 7.218). It must have been hard for the Jews, preoccupied with the aftermath of national defeat, to comprehend the reasons for this Roman recalcitrance, and their growing frustration, culminating in the disastrous defeat of Bar Kochba, can be traced through the next sixty-five years. In 96 CE the Flavian dynasty founded by Vespasian and Titus came to an end with the murder of Domitian, Titus’s younger brother. The new emperor, Nerva, had not been involved in the Judaean war, and the legends on some of his coins, which proclaim a major change in the collection of the Jewish tax, even perhaps its abolition, suggest that he was willing to allow the Jews to return to their earlier state as a protected minority religion within the

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variegated and multicultural empire ruled by Rome (Shotter 1983). It was almost certainly at this time that Josephus wrote in his last published work, Contra Apionem (firmly dated only to between 93 and c. 100 CE), that Jews have only the one Temple in which to worship, using the past tense when referring to the Temple building but the present tense when referring to worship within it ( Josephus, Apion 2.102–109, 193–199; cf. Bauckham 1996). The dashing of these entirely reasonable hopes seems to have come about for reasons that, once again, the Jews can hardly have anticipated, or ever fully understood. Nerva was an old man when he became emperor in mid-96 CE, and quite soon after his accession, his bodyguard, the praetorian cohorts on whom he relied for his personal security, compelled him to adopt a suitable son and heir so as to avoid the uncertainty about the succession which had proven so politically damaging in Rome over the past century (Griffin 2000). Nerva chose a young army commander named M. Ulpius Traianus, the future emperor Trajan. As luck would have it, the fortune of Trajan’s previously obscure family had been made, like that of Vespasian, some thirty years earlier in the Judaean war, when his father, also called Traianus, had commanded a legion against the Jewish rebels (Alföldy 1998 and 2000). Any hope that the Jewish Temple might be rehabilitated within Roman society was lost. The long-term consequences were immense. Towards the end of Trajan’s rule, in 115 CE, a violent Jewish insurrection erupted in Egypt, Cyrene, Cyprus and Mesopotamia. Our sources of evidence—all either Christian or pagan, since the rabbis were silent on the whole awful affair—give no reason for the uprising, but the obvious cause will have been frustration at the continuing refusal of Rome to allow the Temple to be rebuilt (Goodman 1992; contra Horbury 1996). The final suppression of the revolt in 117 CE coincided with the death of Trajan (Pucci 1981), and his successor, Hadrian, was at first too occupied in securing his own position within the Roman state to have time to deal fully with the Jews. When he did so, eventually, it was in characteristically thorough fashion (Birley 1997). In 130 CE he decided to expunge the name of Jerusalem altogether and to found upon the site of the city a miniature Rome, the Roman colony Aelia Capitolina (Cassius Dio 69.12.1–2). The Jews rebelled ‘for the freedom of Jerusalem’, as their coins proclaimed, led by Simon bar Kosiba, acclaimed Bar Kochba by his admirers (Mildenberg 1984).

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But resistance was in vain. In 135 CE the defeated province was renamed Syria Palaestina, Jews were forbidden to remain in their homeland, and the possibility of rebuilding the Temple faded into the distant future (Eck 1999). This whole sorry tale of frustrated hope attests to the continuing centrality of the Jerusalem Temple in the religious lives of the Jews both in the homeland and in the diaspora even many years after its destruction. Some have argued that the detailed descriptions of the Temple and its rituals found in the Mishnah, redacted some seventy years or so after Bar Kochba, were idealizing and never intended to reflect the real institution (Neusner 1979), but there is no evidence to support this view and it seems more reasonable to assume that the reason for their intense discussions of the way that sacrifices should be offered was that the tannaim generally hoped for a return to temple worship in their own days. It is difficult to judge precisely when this hope faded and was projected instead on to the future state of Israel in the days of the Messiah, but a point by which at least some Jews appear to have reconciled themselves to life without the Temple may be discerned in the mid-fourth century CE, when, in 362 CE, the emperor Julian, who had once been a Christian but had apostatized to paganism, decided that a good way to infuriate his former co-religionists was to rebuild the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem (Avi-Yonah 1976: 185–207). Rebuilding started, but the attempt eventually came to nothing because Julian died soon after, in 363 CE, while on campaign. The Christian sources narrate in horrified tones the start of rebuilding and the enthusiasm of the Jews, but, so far as is known from surviving manuscripts of rabbinic texts composed in Palestine in the fourth century and later, this was not an enthusiasm shared by the rabbis, who (if the surviving manuscripts give an accurate picture) seem almost totally to have ignored what had happened. It is possible, then, that at least among the rabbis, by the mid-fourth century hopes for the rebuilding no longer looked to the immediate future. On the other hand, it is certain that the significance of the Temple priests remained powerful for some Jews at least for the rest of late antiquity, as can be seen from the frequent references to the priestly courses in fifth–sixth century Palestinian synagogue mosaics and the prominence of priests in Palestinian poetry ( piyyû†) of this period (Irshai 2003). Such attitudes may largely have been the product of eschatological expectation, but it is not impossible

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that they were also practical and mundane. By the twelfth century CE it was possible for Maimonides (Guide of the Perplexed 3.32, 46) to refer to the whole system of sacrificial worship as a regrettable stage through which Jews had to go in order to wean them from worse practices (though even then such an attitude was by no means standard; cf. the view of Nahmanides, Commentary on Lev. 1.9), but by then Jews lived in a wholly different world in which neither Christians nor Muslims saw a role for sacrifices. It would be unsurprising if the eventual fading of Jewish hopes for the Temple service to be restored in the immediate non-eschatological future were linked, like so much in Jewish history, to developments in the culture of the surrounding world. Bibliography Alföldy, G. (1998) ‘Traianus Pater und die Bauinschrift des Nymphäums von Milet’, Revue des Etudes Anciennes 100: 367–99. Avigad, N. (1984) Discovering Jerusalem (Oxford: Basil Blackwell). Avi-Yonah, M. (1976) The Jews of Palestine (Oxford: Basil Blackwell). Bauckham, R. (1996) ‘Josephus’ Account of the Temple in Contra Apionem 2. 102– 109’, in L.H. Feldman and J.R. Levison (eds.), Studies in Josephus’ Contra Apionem (Leiden: E.J. Brill): 327–47. Beard, M., J.A. North and S.R.F. Price (1998) Religions of Rome (2 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Birley, A.R. (1997) Hadrian: The Restless Emperor (London: Routledge). Busink, Th.A. (1978, 1980) Der Tempel von Jerusalem (2 vols.; Leiden: E.J. Brill). Eck, W. (1999) ‘The Bar Kochba Revolt: The Roman Point of View’, JRS 89: 76–89. Feldman, L.H. (1993) Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Goodman, M. (1987) The Ruling Class of Judaea: The Origins of the Jewish Revolt Against Rome, AD 66–70 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). —— (1992) ‘Diaspora Reactions to the Destruction of the Temple’, in J.D.G. Dunn (ed.), Jews and Christians: The Parting of the Ways, AD 70 to 135 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck]): 27–38. —— (1994a) ‘E.P. Sanders’ Judaism: Practice and Belief; SJT 47.1: 89–95. —— (1994b) ‘Sadducees and Essenes after 70 CE’, in S.E. Porter, P. Joyce and D.E. Orton (eds.), Crossing the Boundaries: Essays in Biblical Interpretation in Honour of Michael Goulder (Leiden: E.J. Brill): 347–56. —— (1999a) ‘The Pilgrimage Economy of Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period’, in L.I. Levine (ed.), Jerusalem: Its Sanctity and Centrality to Judaism, Christianity and Islam (New York: Continuum): 69–76. —— (1999b) ‘Galilean Judaism and Judaean Judaism’, in W.D. Davies and W. Horbury (eds.), The Cambridge History of Judaism (3 vols. so far; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), III: 596–617. —— (2000) ‘Josephus and Variety in First-Century Judaism’, Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 7.6: 201–13. Griffin, M. (2000) ‘Nerva’, in A.K. Bowman, P. Garnsey and D. Rathbone (eds.),

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The Cambridge Ancient History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edn): XI, 84–96. Hayward, C.T.R. (1996) The Jewish Temple: A Non-Biblical Source Book (London: Routledge). Holladay, A.J., and M. Goodman (1986) ‘Religious Scruples in Ancient Warfare’, Classical Quarterly 36: 151–71. Horbury, W. (1996) ‘The Beginnings of the Jewish Revolt under Trajan’, in H. Cancik, H. Lichtenberger and P. Schäfer (eds.), Geschichte —Tradition—Reflexion. Festschrift für Martin Hengel zum 70 Geburtstag (3 vols.; Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck]): I, 283–304. Irshai, O. (2003) ‘The Role of the Priesthood in the Jewish Community in Late Antiquity: A Christian Model?’, in C. Cluse, A. Haverkamp and I.J. Yuval (eds.), Jüdische Gemeinden und ihr christlicher Kontext in kulturräumlich vergleichender Betrachtung (5.–18. Jahrhundert) (Forschungen zur Geschichte der Juden, 13; Hanover: Verlag Hahnsche Buchhandlung): 75–85. Jacobson, D.M. (1990–91) ‘The Plan of Herod’s Temple’, Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society 10: 36–66. Levick, B. (1999) The Emperor Vespasian (London: Routledge). Levine, L.I. (1994) ‘Josephus’ Description of the Jerusalem Temple’, in F. Parente and J. Sievers (eds.), Josephus and the History of the Greco-Roman Period: Essays in Memory of Morton Smith (Studia Post-Biblica, 41; Leiden: E.J. Brill): 233–46. Mildenberg, L. (1984) The Coinage of the Bar Kokhba War (Aarau: Sauerländer). Neusner, J. (1979) ‘Map without Territory: Mishnah’s System of Sacrifice and Sanctuary’, History of Religions 19: 103–27. Pucci, M. (1981) La Rivolta Ebraica al tempo di Traiano (Pisa: Giardini). Qimron, E., and J. Strugnell (eds.) (1994) Qumran Cave 4, V: Miqßat Ma'a≤e Ha-Torah (DJD, 10. Oxford: Clarendon Press). Safrai, S. (1985) Pilgrimage at the Time of the Second Temple ( Jerusalem: Akademon, 2nd edn [Hebrew]). Sanders, E.P. (1992) Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE (London: SCM Press). Sandmel, S. (1979) Philo of Alexandria: An Introduction (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press). Schürer, E. (1973–87) The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (3 vols. in 4; revised G. Vermes et al.; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark). Shotter, D.C.A. (1983) ‘The Principate of Nerva, Some Observations on the Coin Evidence’, Historia 32: 218–23. Stern, M. (ed.) (1974–84) Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (3 vols.; Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities).

CHAPTER FIVE

THE PILGRIMAGE ECONOMY OF JERUSALEM IN THE SECOND TEMPLE PERIOD

There have been many general studies of the economy of Jerusalem in the late Second Temple period.1 It is clear that, despite social tensions engendered by the inequitable distribution of wealth, this was an exceptionally prosperous society.2 The basis of such prosperity can hardly have been the exploitation of the agrarian hinterland in the Judaean hills which, despite the panegyrical remarks of Josephus (War 3, 49–50), was too poor and too far from the coast for the encouragement of cash crops for interregional trade. Jerusalem did not lie on any important trade route. Nor was prosperity a product of the political role of the city in the Herodian period and under Roman procuratorial rule, for the government of Judaea was often based elsewhere than Jerusalem and, in marked context to Ptolemaic Alexandria, Jerusalem never developed a society and economy based around a royal court. The wealth of Jerusalem derived in one form or another from its sanctity. It is a truism that without its religious role Jerusalem would never have become a major city; specifically, although by the end of the Second Temple period the city may have attracted wealthy visitors to study or to settle in an exciting international atmosphere, the main cause of prosperity was the presence of the Temple. The aim of this paper will be to explore the role in the economy of mass pilgrimage and, in particular, the significance of pilgrimage from abroad. In theory, the economic impact of pilgrimage should have been immense. According to the Torah (Ex. 23:17; Deut. 16:16), every adult Jewish male was required to visit the Temple three times each year, and although the total size the Jewish population in this period is unknown, it was undoubtedly very large indeed.3 Comparison with 1

For example, J. Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (London, 1969). M. Goodman, The Ruling Class of Judaea: the Origins of the Jewish Revolt against Rome AD 66–70 (Cambridge, 1987), 51–75. 3 For estimates of the size of the Jewish population, see L.H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World (Princeton, 1993), 293, 555–56. 2

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the history of Mecca in more recent times encourages speculation that much of Jerusalem’s society might have been bound up in the service industries required by pilgrims, so that the periodic pilgrim festivals might have become the “harvest” of the city,4 although since Jerusalem did at least have some indigenous economic base, the city would not have been as totally dependent on visitors as Mecca became.5 Some aspects of the pilgrimage process and its importance in later Second Temple Judaism can be derived from explicit evidence in the ancient sources, particularly the writings of Josephus and early rabbinic texts.6 Visitors might use tents (Ant. 17, 213–17) but often they needed to be given accommodation by institutions7 or individuals (Mark 11:11), for which they might pay in cash or in kind (as envisaged in T Ma'aser Sheni 1:12). They needed food, drink, luxuries, and souvenirs, and it is reasonable to assume that the craftsmen of the city, who greeted the pilgrims on arrival according to M Bikkurim 3:3, took advantage of the market for their goods. Pilgrims tended to stay not just for the minimum period required, but for the whole festival period, often bringing with them their wives and children, even though the latter were under no obligation to visit the Temple at all.8 Proper performance of pilgrimage without considerable expenditure was more or less impossible, however cheaply the pilgrim tried to live, since, according to early rabbinic texts, there was a requirement for the money earned in exchange for the second tithe (Deut. 14:26) to be spent by the pilgrim while within the boundaries of the city.9 It is unlikely that every adult male Jew visited Jerusalem at the same time, but ancient comments on the impact of pilgrimage in the first century CE make it clear that the festivals were very crowded. The interest of the sources lies naturally not in economics but in the 4

M.N. Pearson, Pious Passengers: the Hajj in Earlier Times (London, 1994), 172–

87. 5 F.E. Peters, Jerusalem and Mecca: the Typology of the Holy City in the Near East (New York and London, 1986). 6 See especially S. Safrai, Pilgrimage in the Time of the Second Temple2 ( Jerusalem, 1985) (Hebrew). See also J. Feldman, “La circulation de la Tora: les pèlerinages au second Temple,” La Société juive à travers l’histoire, IV, ed. S. Trigano (Paris, 1992–93), 161–78. 7 J.-B. Frey, Corpus Inscriptionum Judaicarum, II (Rome, 1952), no. 1404. 8 Safrai (above, note 6), chapter 6. 9 E.P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief (London, 1992), 128–29.

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political volatility which resulted from the presence of huge numbers of people (War 2, 224 and elsewhere). Passover was apparently a particularly popular pilgrimage time (Ant. 17, 214), but the Pentecost and Tabernacles festivals were also well attended. Numbers in ancient texts are always hard to evaluate, but Josephus clearly intended to impress his readers when he gave the figure of 2,700,000 male pilgrims who came to Jerusalem for the Passover in 66 CE (War 6, 425); the size of the city’s normal population is unknown, but even the highest estimate is under a quarter of a million.10 As Philo remarked with pride, these pilgrims came from all over the Jewish world: they were “thousands of men from thousands of cities” (Special Laws 1, 69). Such mass international pilgrimage is not attested for any other cult in the Roman empire, for the simple reason that only Jews insisted (at least in theory) both that only one Temple was a valid place for sacrifices and that all adult male devotees of the cult were duty bound to make regular obeisance there. Other shrines, like the sanctuary of Asclepius at Pergamum or Artemis at Perge, also hosted regular large gatherings,11 but these festivals were essentially local affairs for the surrounding region. A devotee of Asclepius in Italy would usually visit a shrine to the god closer to home than Pergamum, and would see no value in the long trek to Asia Minor; pagan pilgrims who embarked on long journeys were the exception, not the rule.12 It seems clear that mass international pilgrimage was a feature of Judaism which distinguished it from other religions, thus explaining the nervousness of the Roman authorities at the potentiality for political unrest among such huge crowds. It is worth comparing the caution of Trajan when asked by Pliny the Younger about setting up a fire brigade in Nicomedia in Bithynia (Letters 10, 33–34). It is also likely (if unprovable) that such pilgrimage was to prove an important element in the prosperity of the city in the last century of its existence. Below I shall investigate a question which, I think, has not been previously asked by scholars: when did such mass international pilgrimage start?

10 11 12

See the figures quoted by Feldman (above, note 3). R. MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven, 1981), 25–26. Ibid., 29.

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It has been noted before that no reference to international pilgrimage can be found in any source referring to the period before Herod.13 I would like to suggest that this silence may not be accidental. It seems to me significant that nothing about such pilgrimage can be found in the glowing description of Jerusalem found in Ps. Aristeas to Philocrates 83–120, a text composed probably in the mid-second century BCE, or in the writings of any of the Greek and Latin gentile authors who wrote about Jews before the mid-first century BCE14—despite the fact that mass movements across international borders would have been very noticeable in the late Hellenistic period, with Jews coming from Alexandria (in Ptolemaic territory until 31 BCE) or Babylonia (in Parthian territory). Both Jewish and non-Jewish writers referred quite frequently to the transfer of money from the Diaspora to the Temple. This was the theme of Cicero (On Behalf of Flaccus 28), Josephus described it as an ancient custom (Ant. 14, 185–267; 16, 160–78), and according to Bar. 1:10–14 Babylonian Jews sent money (rather than themselves) to Jerusalem for offerings and prayers to be made on their behalf in the holy city on the feast days. None of these sources, however, refers to Diaspora pilgrimage. It seems likely that the pilgrimage feasts before Herod’s time involved essentially only local Jews from the land of Israel; the vastly expanded Temple court which Herod was to build would eventually be filled to overflowing, but no source suggests a problem with lack of space in the Temple before then. If mass pilgrimage began in Herod’s reign, how did it come about? By chance, perhaps. It is notoriously hard to gauge the intentions of individuals from their actions. But it seems to me more likely that the prime motivator was Herod himself. Herod was a remarkable businessman, speculator, and entrepreneur,15 and had initiated numerous complex financial schemes.16 It is hard to believe that he was unaware of the economic consequences of the upsurge in the number of visitors to Jerusalem during his rule, especially when his own expenditure did so much to support it (see below). It was

13

Safrai (above, note 6), 55. See the authors cited in volume I of M. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism ( Jerusalem, 1974). 15 M. Grant, Herod the Great (London, 1971), 173. 16 See especially E. Gabba, “The Finances of King Herod,” Greece and Rome in Eretz Israel: Collected Essays, eds. A. Kasher et al. ( Jerusalem, 1990), 160–68. 14

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unlikely that Diaspora pilgrimage would have become popular unless it was encouraged. Diaspora Jews were not tied into the Temple service by the close links of the ma'amad system, which apparently applied only to inhabitants of the land of Israel.17 It is possible that the loyalty to Jerusalem of the huge Jewish population of Egypt (and especially Alexandria) was threatened by the competing attractions of the shrine at Leontopolis, although concern about such competition cannot be proved. Josephus even hints that pilgrims were only expected to go up to Jerusalem “from the ends of the land which the Hebrews shall conquer” (Ant. 4, 203). It was a product not of a change of halakha from the biblical requirement, but of custom, that Diaspora Jews had come to assume that they were not required to visit the Temple three times a year. If their custom was to alter, they would have to wish to go. Herod had good economic reasons to encourage pilgrimage from the Diaspora. The kingdom of Judaea, granted to him and captured for him by the Roman state,18 lacked more than a few capital assets. There was a limit to the wealth to be derived from natural resources such as the balsam groves of 'En Gedi, and Judaea was not well suited to bring in a large income from agricultural exports. The only real asset of the kingdom to be exploited was the status of Jerusalem as a religious center, and that is what Herod set out to do. The time was propitious for the venture. The pax Romana permitted freedom of movement throughout much of the world inhabited by Jews, particularly after the suppression of Mediterranean piracy by Pompey in 67 BCE.19 After 31 BCE, the huge Alexandrian Jewish community was, like Judaea, integrated into the Roman empire; the Jews of Syria and Asia Minor had been incorporated within the empire earlier. The Babylonian community remained under Parthian rule at this time, but trading contacts between the empires multiplied, as is evident from the sudden prosperity of the caravan city of Palmyra,20 which facilitated communications of other kinds. In any event, the brief episode of Parthian control over Judaea in

17

On the ma'amad, see M Ta'anit 4:2–3. On Herod’s accession to power, see Josephus, Ant. 14, 381–93. 19 See P. Greenhalgh, Pompey: the Roman Alexander (London, 1980), 91–100. 20 On Palmyra, see J. Starcky and M. Gawlikowski, Palmyra2 (Paris, 1985), 36–42; E. Will, Les Palmyréniens: la venise des sables (Paris, 1992), 33–46. 18

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40–37 BCE21 initiated far closer relations between Palestinian and Babylonian Jews than had been known for many centuries.22 Even if Herod’s Hasmonaean predecessors thought of encouraging mass pilgrimage (which is unknown, although many of them invested in the repair of the Temple itself), political instability would have made it difficult.23 By contrast, Herod chose the right time. The economic advantages brought by such pilgrims were multifarious. Pilgrims helped to protect delivery of the offerings sent to the Temple, even by those who did not themselves go up to worship (cf. Ant. 17, 312–13, on the caravans which came from Babylon); according to T Sheqalim 2:3, which may or may not be based on anything more than speculation, the offerings from remote lands were a rich source of Temple income. Jews from the Mediterranean Diaspora seem to have picked up from their gentile compatriots the practice of euergetism, apparently uncommon among Judaean Jews outside the Herodian family. Thus, the gates of the Temple were plated with gold by Alexander the Alabarch, who came from Alexandria (War 5, 201–206), and there are other examples of such conspicuous expenditure by individuals in search of prestige.24 Visitors were bound to spend money on the purchase of souvenirs,25 and although it is impossible to tell precisely when the non-biblical requirement to spend all second tithe money in Jerusalem became current,26 it is probable that it was in operation in Herod’s time. How could Herod set about attracting Diaspora pilgrims to the holy city? The dictatorial methods he used in the administration of Judaea27 would hardly work in this case, since he lacked any formal powers outside his kingdom, but he was an expert at diplomacy, as shown by his ability to prosper through the Roman civil wars. The examples of the capitalist schemes of the Ptolemies in Egypt and the

21 E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, eds. G. Vermes et al., 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1973–87), I, 278–83. 22 On Herod and the Jews of Babylonia, see J. Neusner, A History of the Jews of Babylonia, I: The Parthian Period, rev. ed. (Leiden, 1969), 34–39. 23 I owe this observation to Ed Sanders. 24 On the inscription near the Temple by a Jew from Rhodes, see B. Isaac, “A Donation for Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem,” IEJ 33 (1983), 86–92. 25 See M. Del Verme, Giudaismo e Nuovo Testamento: il caso delle Decime (Naples, 1989), 194–97. 26 J. Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (London, 1969), 9. 27 A. Schalit, König Herodes: der Mann und sein Werk (Berlin, 1969).

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radical reorganization of Rome by Augustus after Actium undoubtedly influenced his general policies, but in this case only indirectly. Some methods of encouragement were simply practical. Herod protected the pilgrimage route from Babylonia by installing a military colony in Batanaea (Ant. 17, 29–31), although there is no evidence that he encouraged a network of protected pilgrimage routes for the Mediterranean Jews; on the contrary, arrival at his new port city of Caesarea would have presented a disconcerting first view of the holy land for pious Jews, since the temple of Rome and Augustus dominated the harbor.28 The Temple provided, either through its own staff or by leasing space to entrepreneurs, good facilities for the exchange of foreign currencies (M Sheqalim 2:1, 4), but Herod’s only obvious contribution to this service was the building of the great basilica in which it was probably housed. More significant, perhaps, were Herod’s efforts to alter Diaspora attitudes to the Temple to make Diaspora Jews feel that pilgrimage would be worthwhile. Among more blatant moves was the appointment of high priests from the principal Diaspora communities, such as the Babylonian Hananel, and Jesus b. Phiabi and Boethus, both from Egypt. This preference for non-Judaean priests as incumbents of the highest office has often been discussed as part of the suppression of the local Jewish elite,29 but it is reasonable also to emphasize its effect in raising the profile of Diaspora Jews in Jerusalem. Herod in any case maintained contact with many Diaspora communities, portraying himself as their protector throughout the Roman empire, much as Hyrcanus had done before him; in this case, his patronage may have bought the king prestige in the eyes of his Roman masters by showing him to be a ruler with a constituency wider than just Judaea, and the promotion of pilgrimage may only have been a secondary motive.30 It is plausible to postulate a similar dual motive for the single action by Herod most likely to have stimulated pilgrimage—the rebuilding of the Temple. Rebuilding began in 20/19 BCE and was basically

28 On the buildings of Caesarea, see K.G. Holum and R.L. Hohlfelder (eds.), King Herod’s Dream: Caesarea on the Sea (London and New York, 1988), 72–105. 29 See especially M. Stern, “Social and Political Realignments in Herodian Judaea,” The Jerusalem Cathedra, III, ed. L.I. Levine ( Jerusalem, 1982), 40–62. 30 Josephus, Ant. 16, 27–65; cf. Schürer (above, note 21), I, 319.

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completed by ca. 12 BCE, although work on the building continued fairly constantly until 64 CE, since the edifice needed frequent repair.31 Herod himself explained his massive expenditure as a product of his piety and wealth, according to Josephus, whose report probably derived from Nicolaus of Damascus (Ant. 15, 380–90), and the new edifice was doubtless intended to reflect the glory of his rule, much as Augustus tried to enhance his own image by the rebuilding of the city of Rome. The initial completion of the Temple project was celebrated on the anniversary of Herod’s accession to power (ibid., 15, 421–31). Like Augustus in contemporary Rome, Herod enhanced public space by enlarging the hillside through the use of an artificial platform built on arches. It is less likely that Herod’s main hope was to win popularity with his Jewish subjects, who were apparently nervous about the whole project and the possibility that it might prove sacrilegious (ibid., 15, 385); like Augustus, Herod’s main hope may have been to ensure his reputation for posterity. At the same time, it is a reasonable assumption that Herod believed that his rebuilding made economic sense and that it was more than simply a heavy financial drain. It is hard to doubt Josephus’ insistence (ibid., 15, 380; 17, 162) that Herod paid for the initial construction out of his own pocket, but the continuing work on the site, not completed until more than three-quarters of a century later, was financed from Temple money and the grandiose project may have served a useful purpose in releasing into the economy sacred funds otherwise kept idle in the Temple treasury.32 In practice, the building project stimulated the entire economic life of the kingdom.33 Despite the behavior of Agrippa II in seeking alternative jobs for the workmen after the Temple was finally completed in 64 CE (ibid., 20, 219–22), it is implausible to see the provision of employment as a prime aim of Herod. Equally implausible is the picture of Herod’s finances given by Josephus (Ant. 16, 150–55), where he described Herod’s munificence as the product of a passion for honor which blinded him to the economic consequences of his generosity. According to Josephus, it was only after prolonged famine that Herod’s expenditure on urban reconstruction led him

31 32 33

Ibid., I, 292, note 12, on the chronology. Gabba (above, note 16), 166–68. Ibid., 166.

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into difficulties in feeding his subjects from his own resources (ibid., 15, 302–16). The whole thrust of this paper is to encourage the view that Herod’s expenditure was really a capital investment expected to pay off in time in the promotion of tourism. Pilgrimage to the great new sanctuary, one of the wonders of the Roman world, built on a massive scale with meticulous care, became an enjoyable and awe-inspiring experience, such that Diaspora Jews would be willing to undergo the inevitable discomforts of the journey and, on arrival, would spend their money in the holy city. It takes time for investment in infrastructure to pay off, and it is unlikely that Herod’s own finances benefited greatly from the influx of tourists he encouraged. His own income derived from direct and indirect taxation in Judaea (benefiting in the latter case from the increase in interregional trade) and by the profit from tax concessions in various parts of the empire leased to him by the Roman state. It also remained true, even in the very last days of the Temple, that the great majority of pilgrims still seems to have come from the land of Israel. There is no evidence that a Diaspora Jew like Philo went up more than once to Jerusalem (On Provid. 2, 64), and it is a surprising fact that non-local coin issues have rarely turned up in the archaeology of the city.34 Nonetheless, by the mid-first century CE, many Jews from many different places could be found in the vicinity of the Temple (Acts 2:9–11; 6:9), and Jerusalem was, in the eyes of Pliny the Elder, one of the great cities of his time (Nat. Hist. 5, 14).

34 Z. Safrai, “Jerusalem as an Economic Center during the Roman-Byzantine Period,” Recent Innovations in the Study of Jerusalem, eds. Z. Safrai and A. Faust (Ramat Gan, 1996), 29 (Hebrew).

CHAPTER SIX

SACRED SCRIPTURE AND ‘DEFILING THE HANDS’

I. The Canon of Scripture Much has been written about the creation of the canon of the Jewish bible.1 Most discussion has revolved around the authority and divine inspiration of particular disputed texts which belong to what was later termed the writings: Daniel, Song of Songs, Esther, Ecclesiastes. Perhaps, it has been suggested, the attitude of Jews two thousand years ago was rather more liberal than that of later rabbinic Judaism or developed Christianity, and they did not yet have any xed list of texts which they considered divinely inspired. Perhaps, on the contrary, new writings which purported to come from the acknowledged prophets of old could be passed off as no less sacred than longer accepted books—it is, after all, not unreasonable to attribute a hope for such acceptance to the authors of the pseudepigrapha which survive.2 I do not intend here to contribute further to this discussion of the limits of the canon, but rather to draw attention to a problem logically prior to it. Whatever texts they included in the category of sacred scripture, Jews of the rst century seem to have taken for granted the category itself. But what exactly did they mean by ascribing sanctity to a book? Did they refer to the ideas contained within the book, or to the words of the book when spoken, or to the book itself as a physical object, or to all of these? I hope that an investigation of the rabbinic texts which discuss the delement of the hands may provide some clues.

1 See most recently the contrasting views of R. Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church and its Background in Early Judaism (1985) (with thorough bibliography) and J. Barton, Oracles of God: Perceptions of Ancient Prophecy in Israel After the Exile (1986). The rabbinic evidence is laid out very usefully in S.Z. Leiman, The Canonization of Hebrew Scripture: the Talmudic and Midrashic Evidence (1976). I am very grateful to John Barton and Wilfred Lambert for their comments on the rst draft of this article; the mistakes that remain are not their responsibility. 2 For this argument see J. Barr, Holy Scripture: canon, authority, criticism (1983) and, more fully, Barton, op. cit.

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There has been much interest in these passages, under the heading of the ‘Council of Jamnia’, for over a century. After Graetz in 1871 it was long assumed that the disputes of the rabbis about whether the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes dele the hands (e.g. mYad. 3:5) constituted the nal discussion among the Jewish authorities which led to the closure of the canon. This general consensus has been challenged in recent years, primarily on the grounds that later rabbis were portrayed as quoting particular texts as authoritative or divinely inspired despite their insistence that those texts do not dele the hands. Some modern scholars have rightly stressed that the issue for the rabbis of the rst and second centuries AD may well have been nothing more than the practical problem of knowing how to avoid pollution. If rabbis genuinely cared which of the books they used might dele their hands, it may be a mistake to misconstrue their disputes to t in too neatly with later Christian notions of a canon of authoritative inspired texts.3 But this negative conclusion can hardly be the end of the matter. If the authority of their contents did not distinguish texts which dele the hands from other texts, on what other grounds did the rabbis make the distinction? The suggestions made by modern scholars seem rather lame. Leiman and Barton, nding in the rabbinic texts themselves conicting explanations of the phenomenon, simply choose those rabbinic ideas which seem to them most plausible. Thus, for Leiman, the straightforward answer given by R. Mesharshiya ( . AD 350–375) in bShab. 14a should be accepted:       ?         .                 .          And why did they impose uncleanness upon a book? R. Mesharshiya said: Because originally they stored food of terumah with the scroll of the Torah and said ‘This is holy and that is holy.’ But when they saw that it came to harm, the rabbis decreed uncleanness on it.

To prevent holy books from suffering in this way from what he describes as ‘the mouse problem’, Leiman suggests that it was necessary to prevent them from being stored next to food set aside for sacred purposes lest

3

Barr, op. cit., pp. 50–1; Barton, op. cit., p. 69.

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they be eaten by rodents.4 It seems a complicated way to achieve a simple end. Barton, by contrast, relies on bMeg. 7a, where the compiler puts forward a different explanation to reconcile two apparently discrepant opinions both recorded in the name of R. Samuel ( . 220–50).     .          

       ?         .       .  Rab Judah said that Samuel said: Esther does not dele the hands. Are we to say that Samuel believed that Esther was not produced [‘said’] under [the inspiration of ] the holy spirit? Yet Samuel said that Esther was produced under [the inspiration of ] the holy spirit. It was produced to be recited and it was not produced to be written.

Barton suggests that the explanation given here about the book of Esther might also account for earlier disputes as to whether Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes dele the hands. If all these books were intended to be recited rather than to be read by each individual from a scroll, it might be argued that written versions of such texts were only aides-mémoire for the ofciant in public recitations and therefore were not sacred in themselves.5 The main problem with this theory is that the liturgical use of megillot besides that of Esther is not attested until medieval times, and references already in the Mishnah to the Esther scroll as the megillah render any suggestion that it was only one of a number rather implausible. I suggest a rather different approach to the conicting statements of the rabbis. The only fact beyond dispute is that such texts do indeed conict, which suggests that at least by amoraic times it was unclear what was the reason for the belief that texts dele hands: thus, according to R. Simon b. Menasia ( . AD 170–200), cited in tYad. 2:14, the scriptures dele because they are inspired not by men but by God (    ), a notion implicitly denied by R. Samuel ( . AD 220–50) according to the text in bMeg. 7a cited above. The Mishnah itself (mYad. 4:6) portrays Sadducees as nding the whole notion that holy books above all could dele quite bafing:

4 5

Leiman, op. cit., p. 116. Barton, op. cit., pp. 68–72.

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.    [?]   ,   The Sadducees say, ‘We protest against you, O Pharisees, for you say that sacred scriptures dele the hands but the books of Hamiram [Homer? apostates?] do not dele the hands.’

The whole notion of ‘deling the hands’, whatever its cause, is itself rather strange, as a number of scholars have observed.6 According to the bible, delement, when it occurs, is assumed to affect the whole body, not just the hands. It is obscure why and in what context deled hands could pose a problem, although it may reasonably be speculated that priests in the Temple would be more likely to show concern at such a condition than would lay Jews in secular surroundings. At any rate it was evidently considered desirable to avoid delement where possible, since in mEduy. 5:3 the ruling of the followers of Shammai, that Ecclesiastes does not dele the hands, was interpreted as evidence of leniency:  .                 .     

R. Ishmael [variant: R. Shimon] says: Three things in which the House of Shammai are lenient and the House of Hillel are strict. Ecclesiastes does not dele the hands according to the House of Shammai.

Behind all this seems to lie rabbinic embarrassment about a system which they endorse but do not understand. For example, the status of the special scrolls of the biblical books found in the Temple was rendered somewhat anomalous if all sacred writings were reckoned to dele. These were particularly important documents since they acted as archetypes to which the scribes making copies could at least in theory refer, but any notion that they could impart impurity within the precincts of the Temple would presumably make them very difcult to use, since priests who kept themselves scrupulously undeled would be unwilling to touch them. At mKel. 15:6 the rabbis solve the problem with the simple assertion that the book of the Temple court was exceptional in that it alone did not dele (.       ). Why not? The rabbis do not even try to give a reason. It was evidently not reckoned to be something inherently different about those particular

6

E.P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (1985), pp. 185–6.

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scrolls themselves, since, according to tKel.B.M. 5:8, books of the Temple taken outside the precincts do dele:       .      .    The book [deposited by] Ezra which went outside [the Temple Court] deles the hands. And not only the book of Ezra but even the prophets and the Homashim [?].

On the other hand, according to the same passage entry into the Temple did not prevent other sacred scrolls from deling the hands just as they did in secular surroundings .       And another book which entered there deles the hands.

The rabbis of the second and third centuries seem to have found themselves confronted by a general religious attitude, that holy texts dele the hands, whose rationale was obscure to them. A reconstruction of the origins of such an attitude is not therefore likely to be found by choosing between the various hypotheses put forward in ignorance by later rabbis. More fruitful may be an examination of the possible reasons for such an attitude in the context of other developments within Judaism in the period of the Second Temple. II. The Pentateuch The details of synagogue services of the rst century CE cannot be precisely known, but the essential features seem clear enough. A crowd of worshippers, perhaps after special ablutions, gathered at a special place or building. Psalms were probably chanted in praise of the deity. From an adjoining room or other hidden place was brought a chest. An object was reverently extracted from the chest and from its special wrappers, all present trying to avoid touching it directly. At the end of the ceremony the object was carried back to its hidden place. To an ill-informed outsider the Jewish rite may have appeared to differ from forms of worship in contemporary pagan cults in Syria only in the simple fact that the object of reverence was neither the god nor a

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representation of the god, to which sacrices and libations were to be offered, but a scroll, whose sole function was to be read.7 To what extent did the parallel indeed strike outsiders? It is hard to tell, for Greek and Latin writers followed Jews before AD 70 in assuming that the centre of Jewish worship was the Temple in Jerusalem, and they have almost nothing to say about the functioning of synagogues. But some diaspora synagogues may have looked like temples, for Josephus at BJ 7.44–5 appears to refer to that in Antioch in the rst century as a ×GTÀP, and in the later Roman period the architecture of synagogues in Palestine shows marked resemblances to the village temples found in neighbouring pagan areas. It may be signicant that at Dura-Europus and in later synagogues the niche in which the scrolls were kept was in the centre of the wall towards which prayer was directed.8 The unique attitude of the Jews was, then, their belief that the physical scrolls which contained their sacred texts were themselves sacred objects. No parallel notion can found in Greek or Roman paganism. Nor was this attitude conned to a few. When a soldier in a village of Judaea in the early 50s AD deliberately destroyed a copy of the Torah there was a mass protest against his action, and the procurator Cumanus was sufciently impressed by the accusations of sacrilege to order the public execution of the culprit to assuage the outrage of the Jews ( Jos. BJ 2.229–31; AJ 20:115). It might seem to outsiders that in practice the difference between Jews’ reverence for the Torah scroll and that of pagans for their idols was negligible. Nothing in the biblical references to the written Torah had suggested the desirability of such an attitude to the scrolls of scripture. The process had evidently occurred naturally without, so far as is known, the intention or deliberate collusion of any authority. As pagans might carry their idols with them for comfort, so might Jews keep copies of scripture for consultation in times of stress.9 If Jews became aware of such parallels, one imagines that they would be at the least rather embarrassed and more probably horried. After all,

7

Precise descriptions of temple cult practices in Syria in this period are lacking, but see Herodian 5.3.3–6 (on Emesa) and Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess (on cults in Hierapolis and elsewhere). 8 See the survey of current views of such matters in L.I. Levine (ed.), The Synagogue in Late Antiquity (1987). 9 For a pagan carrying his personal idol, see Apuleius, Apologia sive pro se de magia 63.4. For Jews having available a copy of the Torah for looking at before battle, see 2 Macc. 8:23.

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the bible itself is clear enough in its prohibition on the worship of objects made by men. It may be signicant that rabbinic texts consistently avoid describing the scrolls as themselves sacred—they are termed   (‘writings of the holy’) rather than    (e.g. mYad. 4:6)—but perhaps this is simply a semitism. I suggest, very tentatively, that the origins of the notion that sacred books dele the hands may lie in this embarrassment. According to mYad. 4:6 (see above), the notion originated with, or at least was particularly espoused by, the Pharisees (. . . .         ). If this is correct, it may be speculated that, in a fashion which may be characteristic of the general functioning of their application of the Oral Torah, the Pharisees made sense of and provided religious justication for what was already well established custom. Faced by the fact that ordinary Jews treated scrolls of scripture as too special to be used as ordinary objects, and unwilling to accept that such behaviour could be put down to the semi-idolatrous notion that pieces of parchment could be sacred, the Pharisees may have explained customary behaviour by asserting that the scrolls of the Torah must be handled with care because when touched they would dele the hands. III. Sacred Scripture There is much evidence that the Pentateuch had a special position in Jewish life in the Second Temple period as at other times. So, for instance, the annual festival on Pharos described by Philo celebrated the translation into Greek of the Pentateuch alone (Philo, Vita Mosis 2.41–2). But, if the hypothesis outlined above about the origins of the idea that scrolls of the Torah dele the hands is at all close to the truth, the way lies open to understanding the implications of the assertion that copies of other biblical books could have the same effect. Precisely because delement by copies of the Torah was such an illdened concept, it was reasonable to suppose that anything connected with or similar to a scroll of the Pentateuch might share in the aura. The thongs, straps, wrappings, and so on attached to scrolls dele the hands in the same way as the scrolls themselves, at least according to tYad. 2:12, written in the third century AD:                             . .  

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chapter six The thongs and straps which one sewed onto a book, even though it is not permitted to keep them, impart delement to hands. A container of books, and a box of books, and the wrappings of a book, so long as they are clean, impart delement to hands.

Similarly, it may be that any religious book which was accepted as authoritative might dele the hands so long as it looked like a Torah scroll. At any rate, the converse is explicitly attested: according to mYad. 4:5 no writing, however divinely inspired its contents, could dele the hands if it was not written, like a scroll of the Pentateuch, in formal ‘Assyrian’ characters, on parchment and in ink (   .   ,  ). It seems likely that the vagueness and power of this feeling that a special aura emanated from such perfectly produced scrolls was a strong incentive to the production of pseudepigraphic additions to the corpus of authoritative Jewish religious texts. Of the many and varied documents which have been found by the Dead Sea, almost all the religious texts were written not just with extra care but, more signicantly, on parchment; in contrast, the cheaper medium of papyrus was generally used for secular documents, including legal contracts whose physical preservation might seem to be at least as important to the owner as that of particular copies of religious works. The use of parchment goes far beyond what later ages were to dene as canonical books, to include much of the pseudepigrapha and sectarian works. It is likely that this tendency was not conned to Dead Sea sectarians. The rabbis would not have needed to assert, as they do at tYad. 2:13, that the books of the minim do not dele the hands, unless a real possibility that they might do so was recognized by at least some Jews of the time; it seems probable that such books will have looked similar to the books reckoned sacred by the rabbis, since otherwise exclusion on the grounds of physical appearance alone would have sufced. IV. Approaches to the Biblical Text How would the general attitude described above affect the way Jews before AD 70 approached the preservation of the text of the Bible? It is tempting, particularly perhaps for biblical scholars, to assume that people who believe that a text is sacred will go to great trouble to ensure its precise transmission. The variety of textual traditions found alongside each other at Qumran suggests that this temptation should be

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resisted. Just as Josephus could vary the biblical text considerably while claiming, however speciously, to reproduce it with complete accuracy (AJ 1.17), so a common assumption that scrolls which looked right were special might do away with the need to worry over the precise words which they contained. Nor is it justied to assume that the increasing emphasis of rabbis of the second century ad on greater precision in the copying of biblical texts was primarily concerned with the meaning of those texts. What may still have mattered most was the perfect reproduction of the appearance of the text, as emphasized by R. Akiba’s renowned interest in every aspect of that appearance, even to the decorative crowns of the letters. A similar preoccupation with appearance rather than meaning may perhaps be found in the production of the new translation of the Hebrew bible into Greek by Aquila in the second century AD: this curiously overliteral version attempted to reproduce the syntactical peculiarities of biblical Hebrew in an entirely articial Greek despite the obfuscation of the Septuagint text which resulted, a process most clearly illustrated by the notorious translation of the Hebrew particle  by the Greek word UµP. If what concerned Jews most of all was the external appearance of the text, the preference of early Christians for a strikingly different form of book production may be more easily explained. It has long been noted that the use of the papyrus codex for sacred writings was universal among Christians from the beginning and that this practice is very strange since conservatism in such matters is to be expected. Roberts and Skeat have argued forcefully that neither economy, nor compactness, nor comprehensiveness, nor convenience of use or ease of reference can well explain Christian preferences in this regard, and they have suggested that the birth of the codex among Christians came about through a concerted effort to differentiate their communities from those of the Jews.10 Why, then, did tannaitic and amoraic rabbis eventually feel the need gradually—perhaps over centuries—to dene which texts did dele the hands when copied in a certain way and which, however beautifully produced, did not? No evidence permits a straightforward answer, and it may be fruitless to speculate. But it is ironic that the same rabbis who were exercised to create greater clarity in the denition of a canon of

10

C.H. Roberts and T.C. Skeat, The Birth of the Codex (1983), pp. 45–57.

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authoritative texts added to the confusion by their own sayings. It was axiomatic for the rabbis that their own teachings bore the authority of divine inspiration since they had been passed on by word of mouth from one generation to the next, but no compilation of rabbinic dicta was ever said to ‘dele the hands’.

CHAPTER SEVEN

TEXTS, SCRIBES AND POWER IN ROMAN JUDAEA

No ancient society was more blatantly dominated by a written text than that of Jews in the Roman period. The most influential text was of course the Hebrew bible, of which many thousands of copies must have existed by the first century AD, scattered throughout the Jewish world. Since such great authority was attributed by Jews to the bible, it is a reasonable hypothesis that the ability to read, write and interpret biblical texts will have brought prestige to those who possessed it within Jewish society. The survival from antiquity of much evidence about Jews in this period through the continuous Jewish and Christian religious traditions down to modern times, and the discovery of archaeological finds in the Judaean Desert over the last half century, make it possible to test this hypothesis. My suggestion at the end of this essay will be that among Jews reading did not in itself bring power, but that writing—or at least writing of a particular kind—probably did. The date of the canonisation of the Hebrew bible and its Greek translation, the Septuagint, is much debated, but disagreement revolves primarily around the questions of what books were contained within the canon at which period and what precisely a canon of the bible should be understood to be.1 No one doubts that, by late Hellenistic times in Judaea, a select core of texts, more or less corresponding to those eventually enshrined within the bible, was recognised by all Jews as the main foundation of their theology and the source of authority for almost all their civil, criminal and religious laws and customs. These texts were taken so seriously by Jews that everything written in them was assumed to be valid and important in contemporary life. Apparent discrepancies within the texts were regularly explained away by ingenious interpretation. New laws and customs were either

1

Contrast Beckwith (1985) to Barr (1983) and Barton (1986).

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generated or justified by subtle exegesis of biblical passages.2 According to the rabbis, an ability to read scripture was thus a prime aim of education (cf. Mishnah Abot 5.21). But writing was less common,3 not because it was thought unimportant but, on the contrary, because the production of religious texts was a specialised task. When Josephus claimed in the first century AD (C. Ap. 1.37–41) that Jews venerated their religious texts with a zeal which far surpassed the nonchalant attitude to their own traditions of other peoples in the ancient world, he may have had partly in mind the serious attention paid by Jews to the contents of these texts: regular reading by Jews of the laws ensured, so he claimed, both accuracy and unanimity in their interpretation (C. Ap. 2.175–81). But Josephus’ boast at C. Ap. 1.37–41 may also have reflected a different and even more striking peculiarity of Jewish culture, a peculiarity about which he wrote in the immediately following passage in Contra Apionem. This was the belief that religious power was enshrined within the physical object on which the divine teachings were inscribed. Josephus wrote that Jews were prepared to risk their lives to preserve the scrolls of the Law (C. Ap. 1.42–4). When a Roman soldier destroyed a text, the result was a riot (B.J. 2.229–31; A.J. 20.115). Josephus claimed with pride that he had used his privileged position to rescue books from destruction in Jerusalem in AD 70 (Vita 418). A scroll of the Law could be a rallying sign for the seditious (Vita 134) or, in the eyes of the victorious Romans, a symbol of the defeated nation, paraded at the culmination of the triumphal procession of Titus and Vespasian in Rome (B.J. 7.150). The sacred text par excellence was the Pentateuch, properly inscribed in the stipulated Hebrew lettering in ink on parchment, but other books from what was later described as the canon of scripture could, if correctly written, also share in the numinous quality obscurely defined by the rabbis as the ability to ‘defile the hands’.4 The religious power of such written objects may have been only loosely connected to the meaning of the words they contained, since few of the works now included within the corpus of the prophets and (in particular) the writings were ever subjected in antiquity to the intense

2 3 4

Vermes (1970, 1973). Schürer (1973–87: II 420). Goodman (1990) [Chapter 6 below].

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study and interpretation accorded to the Pentateuch. The symbolic significance of the texts used as tefillin (phylacteries) was particularly blatant, since they were encased in leather in such a way that they usually could not be read at all.5 The origins of this reverence for physical texts can perhaps be traced back to biblical times. The two tablets of stone brought down from Mt Sinai by Moses had enshrined a powerful religious charge; carried in the specially devised ark (Exodus 25.10–22), they had formed the focus of Jewish veneration, and those who lacked sufficient respect for them were liable to divine punishment, like Uzzah who unwisely touched the ark in its journey from Gibeah to Jerusalem (II Samuel 6.7). In one symbolic passage in the book of Ezekiel (3.1–3), prophetic utterance was said to have been achieved by swallowing a written text on parchment (cf. also Jeremiah 15.16).6 According to the later rabbinic view of such attitudes, one of the reasons was simple. At least by the fifth century AD, if not earlier, the Hebrew alphabet was reckoned by Jews to be sacred in itself: the tabernacle had been created out of the letters (Babylonian Talmud Berachot 55a), each letter had a symbolic meaning (Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 104a), every stroke made by a scribe in the creation of a text had its significance (Pirkei de R. Eliezer 21). Such numinous qualities seem to have adhered only to sacred texts in Hebrew. Despite the widely attested belief that the Septuagint translation of the bible into Greek had been divinely inspired (cf. Philo, Vit. Mos. 2.41–2), there is no evidence that Greek biblical scrolls were ever afforded the same reverence. However, in the early Roman period it is wrong to suppose that Hebrew functioned only as a sacred language. On the contrary, texts found in the Judaean Desert reveal Hebrew in secular use, at least among some Jews, well into the second century AD.7 The sound of spoken Hebrew became in itself sacred, and therefore worrying (and indeed dangerous), only when the Divine Name was pronounced. The author of Targum Jonathan to Deuteronomy 32.3 neatly linked the taboo against uttering the Name to that encapsulated in the notion of sacred texts, by asserting that Moses, who did utter the

5 6 7

See Benoit, Milik and De Vaux (1960–1: 80–5). Davis (1989). On languages used in Roman Palestine, see, e.g., Schürer (1973–87: II 20–8).

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Holy Name, only dared to do so after he had dedicated his mouth with eighty-five letters (which was the minimum quota of letters from a sacred text which had to be inscribed for the parchment on which it was written to defile the hands, cf. Mishnah Yadaim 3.5). It is possible that this reverence for the Name was also sometimes one of the causes of Jews’ respect for their written texts, since, as the documents preserved in the Cairo Genizah in the early Middle Ages amply illustrate, any writing which contained the name of God was treated as too precious for deliberate destruction when no longer needed.8 But the inclusion of the Divine Name cannot have been the only reason for treating some texts as holy, for the texts which defiled the hands could acquire this power by containing any eightysix consecutive letters from the appropriate book. In the case of the book of Esther, notoriously, the Divine Name did not occur at all. It is worth asking whether this high valuation ascribed to religious texts as objects had any effect on Jews’ use of secular written documents, but the answer is mostly negative.9 The private documents, recording loans, marriage contracts and so on, which have been found in the Judaean Desert, seem to have served the same function as documents in contemporary Greek and Roman society—essentially, to act as a record of agreements between individuals.10 This was, for instance, the purpose of the ketubah (meaning, literally, ‘written object’), which recorded the stipulation made by a husband to his wife as to the recompense she could expect upon divorce or widowhood; the use of writing to confirm that stipulation seems to have been a practice borrowed by the Jews from Greek customs.11 The archive of the unfortunate and litigious woman Babatha, who left her private documents wrapped up in a sack in a Judaean Desert cave in the last days of the Bar Kokhba war,12 reveals even a remarkable lack of concern about the language to be used in such documents. She preserved legal agreements in Greek and Aramaic as well as in

8 On the Cairo Genizah in general, see Reif (1988). On the writing of the Divine Name in Hebrew manuscripts, see Sanders (1965: 7); on the Name in Greek manuscripts, see P. Oxy. 3522; Tov (1990: 12). 9 Schams (1992). 10 Documents in Benoit, Milik and De Vaux (1960–1); Yadin (1989). 11 Archer (1990) 171–3. 12 Yadin (1971). For the Greek documents, see Yadin (1989). The semitic documents are so far unpublished.

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Nabataean. The language used may have depended sometimes on the preferences of the parties involved, but it may also simply have reflected the expertise of the scribe. The exceptions which prove the rule are the secular documents to which power was accorded when this notion was inherited from biblical law, as in the use of a get (divorce document) to effect a valid break between a married couple (cf. Deuteronomy 24.1–4), or the document dissolved in water and given to a sotah (suspected adulteress) to drink (cf. Numbers 5.11–31). In both these latter cases, precise formulation and production of the documents was reckoned crucial to their validity.13 The need for precision would seem necessarily to give a role to experts, as in any legal system, but in the second half of this paper, I shall argue specifically that the special Jewish attitude towards religious texts may have given peculiar prominence and power to the scribes who produced them. Even the secondary role of scribes in recording oral transactions could of course be highly important in societies which attributed strong evidential value to written documents, as was evidently the case among Jews in the Roman period. Babatha presumably believed that her scrolls of papyrus and skin could ensure her status and her property rights. It was assumed in rabbinic texts that scribes (soferim) could be found in village markets with blank forms to record loans and sales.14 Such services could be essential for normal life: a vow taken not to benefit in any way by a named individual could, according to one rabbinic opinion, be cancelled if he turned out to be a scribe (Mishnah Nedarim 9.2). But, important though this function was, there is no evidence that it was more vital in Jewish society than in other contemporary societies. It is thus plausible to seek a religious explanation of some kind for the common modern assumption that scribes had a central role in Jewish life in first-century Judaea. This view that the authority of scribes was paramount in almost all areas of Jewish behaviour15 derives primarily from the New Testament. In the gospels, the term grammateis (‘scribes’) was used frequently in references to the opponents of Jesus. In twenty-two

13 14 15

See discussions in the Mishnah, tractates Gittin and Sotah. Cf. Goodman (1983: 57–9). See, for example, Saldarini (1989: 241–76).

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places, Jews depicted as acting as the authorities were described as ‘high priests and scribes’. Eighteen times they were named as ‘scribes and Pharisees’. The authors of the synoptic gospels seem clearly to have thought of scribes as a separate class within the Judaean religious establishment. But when attention is turned to the precise religious role of Jewish scribes as pictured in the New Testament, oddities emerge. Most strikingly, scribes are never depicted as writing anything. In so far as they are said to undertake any specific religious activity, it is teaching (Mark 1.22; Matthew 7.29, 17.10). Thus the standard histories of Judaean society before the destruction of the Temple in AD 70 explain the prominence of scribes by equating them with Pharisees.16 As the argument was formulated by Jeremias, scribes won influence as expert interpreters of the Mosaic Law, which they exegeted in the light of Pharisaic traditions which were specifically preserved in oral form.17 This standard view is odd in a number of different ways. First, the correct Greek for an interpreter of texts, rather than a writer of them, should have been grammatikos, not grammateus. Secondly, the notion that scribes had authority specifically because of what neither they nor anyone else wrote down seems rather bizarre.18 It is true that some later rabbinic texts (e.g. Babylonian Talmud Temurah 14b) emphasised the importance of preserving traditions by word of mouth, master to pupil, rather than in written form.19 But in practice, and regardless of later rabbinic beliefs about the oral publication and transmission of their most influential document, the Mishnah,20 at least some of the smaller, less popular rabbinic compositions must have been written down, as were those writings of the sectarians at Qumran which have been discovered in the Dead Sea caves. Thirdly, it is by no means clear that scribes should be equated with Pharisees, not least because that would render otiose the collocation ‘scribes and Pharisees’ found in the gospels.21 Fourthly, it is 16

See, for example, Jeremias (1969: 243–5, 379–80). Jeremias (1964). 18 See Bickerman (1988: 161–76, esp. 163). 19 Strack and Stemberger (1991: 35–49). 20 For arguments in favour of accepting such beliefs, see Lieberman (1962: 83–99), but the issue is still debated. 21 This is not to say that scribes could not be confused with Pharisees in different versions of the same story in different gospels. Cf. Cook (1978: 88–95). 17

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uncertain that Pharisees in the first century subscribed to a concept of an oral Torah alongside the written Torah. Explicit formulation of this notion is found only in rabbinic texts of the third century AD.22 Fifthly, neither Josephus nor Philo suggests that a class of scribes had religious authority in Judaean society. According to Josephus, there was no need for lay scribes as legal experts because the main teachers and interpreters of scripture were priests (cf. C. Ap. 2.165, 184–7; Vita 196–8; B.J. 3.252). As E.P. Sanders has trenchantly remarked, most of the persons described as ‘scribes’ in modern scholarly works were not so designated in any ancient text.23 The standard view of the role of scribes in first-century Judaea is thus rather dubious. But the prominence of scribes can hardly be dismissed altogether. The New Testament picture of Jewish scribes must have come from observation of some facet of Jewish life. It can hardly have been an anachronism under the influence of the organisation of Christian communities, for within those communities scribes are not attested as a defined group. Nor can it have derived from the pagan Greek environment within which much of the New Testament was composed: in civic Greek society, a grammateus could be an important administrator, like the town clerk in Ephesus described in Acts of the Apostles 19.35, but no class of scribes (in the plural) existed. What in the Jewish background could have come through to the early Church to encourage them to depict Jewish scribes as they did? References to scribes in surviving Jewish texts from antiquity are rather sparse, in marked contrast to their ubiquity in the synoptic gospels. In few cases is an interpretation of their role as that of a legal expert totally precluded, but in most cases it is by no means obvious. Thus some scribes (soferim) in the Hebrew bible could be government officials rather than legal experts (e.g. II Kings 22.3–13). Ezra may have won his reputation for deep understanding of the law not by virtue of his role as scribe but because he was a priest (Nehemiah 12.12–13); in any case his designation as scribe may have been an official Persian title as well as a description of his role within Jewish society.24 In the royal charter for Jerusalem issued by 22 23 24

Sanders (1990: 97–130). Sanders (1992: 174–81). Cf. Schraeder (1930).

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the Seleucids at the beginning of the second century BC, the ‘scribes of the sanctuary’ were, according to Josephus (A.J. 12.142), granted privileges as officials of the Temple, but, like the scribes described in II Chronicles 34.13 as a class of Levite, these individuals seem to have been on a fairly low social level and in my view are more likely to have been bureaucrats than religious leaders or iuris periti.25 It seems hard to imagine that the polemic in the New Testament can have been aimed simply at such people. Thus nothing much is gained by asserting that the scribes of the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles should be identified as Levites.26 Even if the suggestion is correct, it leaves open the question why the particular functions of these Levites laid them open to such antagonism. Only occasionally does the role of scribes as interpreters rather than simply writers of religious texts emerge as clearly from Jewish texts as from the Christian gospels. The rabbis, in texts compiled in the late second century AD and later, ascribed some specific religious teachings to the soferim of a distant, but evidently post-biblical, past (e.g. Mishnah Tohorot 4.7; Abot 6.9), even though in the same texts the term sofer, when it was applied to their own day, was reserved for descriptions of technicians or schoolteachers. But the best example of a scribe’s profession being described as that of a religious teacher may be found in the extended praise of the scribe’s life to be found in the treatise of Ben Sira (38.24–39.11), composed in the early second century BC. The passage is worth quoting at length (Anchor Bible translation): The scribe’s profession increases wisdom; whoever is free from toil can become wise. How can one become wise who guides the plough, who thrills in wielding the goad like a lance . . .? So with every engraver and designer who, labouring night and day, Fashions carved seals . . . So with the smith sitting by the anvil, intent on the iron he forges . . . So with the potter sitting at his work . . . All these are skilled with their hands, each one an expert in his own work;

25 26

Contra Bickerman (1988: 162–3). Schwartz (1985).

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Without them no city could be lived in, and wherever they stay, they do not hunger. But they are not sought out for the council of the people, nor are they prominent in the assembly. They do not sit on the judge’s bench, nor can they understand law and justice. They cannot expound the instruction of wisdom, nor are they found among the rulers. Yet they are expert in the works of this world, and their concern is for the exercise of their skill. How different the person who devotes himself to the fear of God and to the study of the Law of the Most High! He studies the wisdom of all the ancients and occupies himself with the prophecies; He treasures the discourses of the famous, and goes to the heart of involved sayings; He studies the hidden meaning of proverbs, and is busied with the enigmas found in parables. He is in attendance on the great, and has entrance to the ruler. He travels among the peoples of foreign lands to test what is good and evil among people. His care is to rise early to seek the Lord, his Maker, to petition the Most High, To open his lips in prayer, to ask pardon for his sins. Then, if it pleases the Lord Almighty, he will be filled with the spirit of understanding; He will pour forth his words of wisdom and in prayer give praise to the Lord. He will direct his counsel and knowledge aright, as he meditates upon God’s mysteries. He will show the wisdom of what he has learned and glory in the Law of the Lord’s covenant. Many will praise his understanding; his fame can never be effaced; Unfading will be his memory, through all generations his name will live. The congregation will speak of his wisdom, and the assembly will declare his praises. While he lives he is one out of a thousand, and when he dies he leaves a good name.

The term used for ‘scribe’ at the beginning of this panegyric (38.24) is, in the Greek, grammateus. Such a man, according to Ben Sira, is devoted to study and wisdom (38.34–39.3).

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It is true that much of Ben Sira’s treatise was compiled from highly traditional clichés culled from the wisdom literature of the Near East, and it is quite possible, as E.P. Sanders has recently stressed,27 that Ben Sira’s own authority derived in part from the fact (if it was a fact) that he was a priest. It is worth noting that the praises accorded by Ben Sira to the life of the scribe are closely paralleled in other wisdom texts, most strikingly in an Egyptian text, The Instruction of Khety, Son of Duauf.28 But it seems inescapable that Ben Sira meant his praises to apply at least in part to his own society. If so he must have thought that the role of scribes was (or should be?) to dispense wisdom at leisure, not just to be engaged in the copying of sacred texts. It is likely enough, then, that some individuals in Jewish society called scribes had prestige in that society because of their legal expertise. But in the rest of this paper I shall explore the possibility that they may also have gained prestige by virtue of the main function suggested by their name, that is, writing. I discussed in the first part of this paper the numinous qualities attributed by all Jews to the parchments on which biblical and some other texts were inscribed. Large numbers of such texts must have been produced, since all sources agree that all, or at any rate all adult male, Jews had regular access to at least a Pentateuch scroll, since they could expect to hear it read aloud in synagogues at least once a week, on the Sabbath.29 The onus of producing a valid text, and therefore a sacred object, presumably lay entirely with the scribes. There is no evidence that any system existed for checking texts once complete. In any case this would be an exceptionally laborious task for texts as long as the Pentateuch. It is quite possible that archetypes of some (all?) biblical books were kept in the Temple (cf. Mishnah Kelim 15.6).30 But there is no reason to suppose that all copies in use were made by consultation with these archetypes: the gospel references to scribes presuppose their wide dispersion around the country. In practice, numerous variants in biblical texts were preserved at Qumran, probably by a single group of Jews, if the

27 28 29 30

Sanders (1992: 181). Skehan and Di Lella (1987: 449–50). Schürer (1973: II 447–54). See Leiman (1976).

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Dead Sea sectarians were responsible at least for the preservation, if not necessarily the production, of all the scrolls found in the nearby caves.31 So far as is known, no-one fixed any seal on finished texts to certify their accuracy. This is not because all copies were assumed accurate, for the rabbis had traditions about the activity of soferim (scribes) in correcting texts into which errors had crept, in a fashion similar to Hellenistic scholarship on the text of Homer.32 It is worth remarking that such scribal activity seems to have been accepted by the rabbis without complaint. What made a parchment scroll holy was therefore presumably the authority of the scribe who said that he had copied a sacred text correctly onto it. It requires little imagination to suggest the prestige which might accrue to a scribe who can produce a holy object, for which Jews might be prepared to die, simply on his own authority by the marks made on parchment. For ‘people of a book’, the writer’s function was bound to seem admirable. On over twenty of the inscriptions set up by Jews in the city of Rome, the title (or description?) grammateus was displayed.33 When the targumim referred to Moses as the scribe (safra) par excellence,34 they thought of him perhaps not only as interpreter of the Divine Law but, more prosaically, as the man who wrote down the words of God (Exodus 34.27). Perhaps the two roles of scribes, as writers and interpreters, were mutually reinforcing. An expert sofer who was trusted to produce valid manuscripts for worship might well also be a learned exegete of the biblical texts he assiduously copied. Such learning must have been presupposed by the author of the post-talmudic tractate Soferim, whose detailed regulations for the production of texts belong in their present form to the early mediaeval period, if he really expected the rules which he laid down to be scrupulously followed.35 It might be precisely for such learning that a scribe was trusted as a scribe. In that case, perhaps there never existed a class of scribes whose main function was to teach the Law, as the scholarly consensus has it. Hence the silence of Philo and Josephus about such a class.

31 On biblical texts from Qumran, see Vermes (1977: 198–225); for current uncertainty about the origins of the scrolls, see (most radically) Golb (1989). 32 Lieberman (1962: 20–37). 33 Leon (1960: 183–6, 265–331). 34 Vermes (1973: 52). 35 Higger (1937).

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But those pious scholars whose expertise in producing holy copies of the sacred texts was renowned may also by definition have been treated as authorities in other aspects of religious life. Hence, when scribes laid down their teachings, their words had power. Bibliography Archer, L.J. (1990) Her Price is above Rubies: The Jewish Woman in Graeco-Roman Palestine. Sheffield. Barr, J. (1983) Holy Scripture: Canon, Authority, Criticism. Oxford. Barton, J. (1986) Oracles of God: Perceptions of Ancient Prophecy in Israel after the Exile. London. Beckwith, R. (1985) The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church and its Background in Early Judaism. London. Bickermann, E.J. (1988) The Jews in the Greek Age. New York. Cook, M.J. (1978) Mark’s Treatment of the Jewish Leaders (Novum Testamentum Supplementary Volume 51). Leiden. Davis, E.F. (1989) Swallowing the Scroll: Textuality and the Dynamics of Discourse in Ezekiel’s Prophecy. Sheffield. Higger, M. (1937) Masseket Soferim. New York. Jeremias, J. (1964) ‘Grammateus’, in Kittel (1964). —— (1969) Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus. London. Kittel, G. (1964–74) Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 9 vols. Grand Rapids, MI. Leiman, S.Z. (1976) The Canonization of Hebrew Scripture: The Talmudic and Midrashic Evidence. Hamden, CT. Lieberman, S. (1962) Hellenism in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Literary Transmission, Beliefs and Manners of Palestine in the I century B.C.E.–IV Century C.E., 2nd edn. New York. Reif, S.C. (1988) Published Material from the Cambridge Genizah Collection: A Bibliography. Cambridge. Saldarini, A.J. (1989) Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees in Palestinian Society. Edinburgh. Sanders, J.A. (1965) The Psalms Scroll of Qumran Cave II (11QPsa) (Discoveries in the Judaean Desert 4). Oxford. Schams, C. (1992) ‘The attitude towards sacred and secular written documents in first-century Judaism’, M. Phil. thesis, Univ. of Oxford. Schraeder, H.H. (1930) Esra der Schreiber. Tübingen. Schwartz, D.R. (1985) ‘ “Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites”. Who were the Scribes?’, Zion 50: 121–32 [in Hebrew]. Skehan, P.W. and Di Lella, A.A. (1987) The Wisdom of Ben Sira, Anchor Bible vol. XXXIX. New York. Tov, E. (1990) The Seiyal Collection I: The Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Nahal Hever (8 Hev XII gr) (Discoveries in the Judaean Desert 8). Oxford. Vermes, G. (1970) ‘Bible and midrash’, in The Cambridge History of the Bible I 199–231. Cambridge. —— (1973) Scripture and Tradition in Judaism: Haggadic Studies, 2nd edn. Leiden. —— (1977) The Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective. London. Yadin, Y. (1971) Bar-Kokhba: The Rediscovery of the Legendary Hero of the Last Jewish Revolt against Imperial Rome. London. —— (1989) The Documents from the Bar-Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters: Greek Papyri, ed. N. Lewis. Jerusalem.

CHAPTER EIGHT

JEWISH PROSELYTIZING IN THE FIRST CENTURY

For all students of the religious history of the Roman Empire the emergence and spread of Christianity must be a great challenge to explanation and understanding. Among a welter of significant factors which contributed to this phenomenon, one, it seems to me, stands pre-eminent. Other religions spread either because worshippers moved or because non-adherents happened to find them attractive. Christianity spread primarily because many Christians believed that it was positively desirable for non-Christians to join their faith and accrete to their congregations. It is my belief that no parallel to the early Christian mission was to be found in the ancient world in the first century. There is no space here to describe the differences, which seem to me to be crucial, in the activities of contemporary pagan priests or philosophers. Nor is there room to elucidate the possible internal motivation for mission within the early Church. The aim of this chapter will be purely negative. Many scholars have claimed that the idea of a mission to convert was inherited by the early Jesus movement from contemporary Judaism.1 I feel that the evidence for such a claim is flimsy and may fruitfully be re-examined. I should make it clear that I do not doubt either that Jews firmly believed in their role as religious mentors of the Gentile world or that Jews expected that in the last days the Gentiles would in fact come to recognize the glory of God and divine rule on earth. But the desire to encourage admiration of the Jewish way of life or respect for the Jewish God, or to inculcate general ethical behaviour in other peoples, or such pious hope for the future, should be clearly distinguished from an impulse to draw non-Jews into Judaism. In the following pages I shall look in some detail at the evidence which

1 For an extreme example of the argument that the first Christians imitated Jewish missionaries see Georgi 1987: 83–228. This study was completed in 1989. I have benefited from much secondary literature that I have not had space to cite here. I am grateful to Paula Fredriksen and Ed Sanders for help and advice.

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has previously been put forward to commend the view that Jews in the first century actively sought proselytes. Proselytes within Judaism The argument tends to begin from the simple fact of the existence of proselytes (e.g. Feldman 1986). It is indeed worth noting that familiarity with the concept of conversion has bred disregard among modern historians of the peculiarity of such an institution. Jews constituted a nation which at some time before the Hellenistic period accepted the principle that it was open to anyone to integrate himself or herself into its political and social community simply by acceptance of Jewish religious customs. The potential flexing of communal boundaries entailed by such a notion is quite astounding. It is in marked contrast to the jealous preservation of the rights of individual citizens by Greek city-states and the exclusion of outsiders from such rights. The difference was particularly marked because, like Romans but unlike Greeks, Jews accepted the notion that their politeia was not fixed to any particular locality. We have evidence of at least some such converts during the Hellenistic period and early Roman Empire. Josephus described the women of Damascus as converts in AD 66 ( Jewish War II 20, 2 (559–61)) and provided a detailed description of the conversion of famous royal proselytes from Adiabene (Antiquities XX 2, 3–4 (34–48)). Acts 6:5 refers to a proselyte of Antioch. The semi-technical use of the term ‘prosèlytos’ in the Septuagint suggests that the right of such converts to be considered as part of the house of Israel was widely recognized by Jews. And while there is no evidence that converts made up any great proportion of the Jewish population, the lack of such evidence cannot be decisive in assessing how many proselytes there were. Furthermore, both Josephus and Philo seem in general to have assumed that proselytes are to be welcomed. Philo’s ethical maxim that proper nobility is not an accident of good birth (On the Virtues 35 (187)) may have implied that anyone could acquire the virtues enshrined in the Jewish Law. The author of 2 Maccabees 9:17 rejoiced that the wicked king Antiochus Epiphanes on his death-bed promised to become a Jew. Similarly Josephus was clearly proud of the converts in Adiabene. Jews were happy to accept committed

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converts, as Josephus stated explicitly (Against Apion II 28 (210)) (cf. Cohen 1987). Jewish Missionary Activity: The Evidence It is likely enough, then, that Jews welcomed sincere proselytes in the first century. But passive acceptance is quite different from active mission. The evidence alleged to show that Jews took positive steps to win proselytes is commonly culled from a variety of sources which I shall outline here in brief. I begin with the least convincing arguments. The activities of the earliest Jewish believers in Jesus have been adduced as indirect evidence that some Jews who did not believe in Jesus were doing the same thing (Georgi 1987: 101). But this prejudges the possibility of unique circumstances in the early Church which might have led to such missionary behaviour. It is likely that texts of the early Church which appear to attack Jews as competitors for the souls of converts refer in fact to followers of Jesus who, in the eyes of their opponents, clung too hard to Jewish customs. The missionary zeal of these Jewish Christians may have come not from their Judaism but from their belief in Christ. Second, it has been argued that the probable growth of the Jewish population in this period, as evidenced by the remarkable spread of Jewish settlement in the Diaspora, the size of some of the communities there, and the increase in the population of Palestine apparent from archaeological survey of settlements, is in itself evidence of Jewish proselytizing (cf. Feldman 1986: 59). This seems dubious on two counts. On the one hand ancient writers explained the Jewish Diaspora by the overpopulation of the home country (Philo, Moses II 42 (232)) and Jewish fertility by the Jews’ strange ideological opposition to abortion, infanticide and contraception (cf. Tacitus, Histories V 5); to this one could add the Jewish concept of charity, unique in the ancient world, which made it a religious duty to prevent the children of the poor from dying in infancy, so that the main natural inhibition on population growth was at least partially stifled.2 The 2 See my arguments in Goodman 1987: 61. Note, however, that rabbinic references to Jewish foundlings (e.g. mKiddushin 4:22) suggest that some Jews may have adopted the standard Gentile custom of exposing unwanted children.

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theory that a massive surge of proselytes to Judaism accounted for this population growth is not impossible, but it runs up against the curious fact that no ancient Jewish writer claimed that such widespread conversion had taken place, although it would have been an obvious source of pride. On the other hand, even if proselytes did comprise a high proportion of first-century Jews, this does not imply that such converts were actively sought. But the case for a Jewish mission to win proselytes is based on better arguments than these, and in the next few pages I shall attempt to present as strongly as possible the best reasons often proposed, before offering counter-arguments in the second section of the chapter. In certain circumstances some Jews may have insisted on Gentiles’ conversion. In the most dramatic instances, whole populations of Gentiles are said to have been incorporated within the Jewish nation by the militant Hasmonaean dynasty. Thus the Idumaeans of southern Palestine were encouraged and perhaps forced by the Hasmonaeans to convert en masse in the 120s BC, and some of the Ituraeans of the northern part of the country were compelled to submit to circumcision in 104–103 BC according to Josephus (Antiquities XIII 9, 1 (257–8); 11,3 (319)).3 Both the Bible and the Apocrypha record with some glee how Gentiles at moments of Jewish glory converted to Judaism out of fear of the Jews (cf. Esther 8:17). Like Achior the Ammonite, such Gentiles saw the power of the Lord, believed and were converted ( Judith 14:10). More generally, even Jews as lax in their religious observance as members of the Herodian dynasty insisted that their Gentile marriage partners should be initiated into Judaism before marriage. All Jews accepted the metaphor of the nation as a family into which outsiders had to be adopted to be accepted, and when a fiancé refused to take up Jewish customs, the wedding was liable to be cancelled (cf. Josephus, Antiquities XX 7, 1 (139)). It is also possible, although not certain, that at this period, as later, some

3 Kasher 1988: 46–77, 79–83, argues vehemently and ingeniously that the allegation that the Hasmonaeans used force was fabricated by Gentiles as anti-Hasmonaean propaganda. But I am unconvinced by his assertion, which is necessary for his argument, that Josephus included such propaganda in his history out of lip-service to his Roman masters. Josephus was proud of his own Hasmonaean lineage ( Josephus, Life 1 (2–4)).

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Jews still expected that their slaves would submit to circumcision as stipulated in Genesis 17:12–13: this would at any rate be desirable if the slave was to be used for domestic purposes, since only if the slave was considered in some sense Jewish (or at least not an idolater) could the danger of pollution to food be avoided. Since it is possible that Jews thus sometimes insisted on conversion when they had the power to enforce their will, it has been suggested that they used persuasion when that was the only weapon available to them. Undoubtedly proselytes were often instructed in Judaism by some Jew before conversion; the name of the teacher of the royal family of Charax Spasinou, Ananias, was preserved by Josephus (Antiquities XX 2, 3–4 (34–42)). There is no evidence that any such teachers travelled abroad specifically in order to deliver such teaching. The traveller Eleazar who insisted that the king of Adiabene, Izates, should be circumcised if he wanted to follow Jewish law is often portrayed as a missionary, but Josephus (Antiquities XX 2, 4 (44)) made it clear that his intention in coming to Adiabene was not to convert anyone but simply to pay his respects to the royal family. But a considerable literature has survived which, it has been claimed, may reflect the arguments and methods used by such missionaries to win converts, if such missionaries did in fact exist. A partial list of such literature can conveniently be found in Dalbert (1954); to the texts there discussed could be added, among others, the romantic story Joseph and Asenath. This literature is somewhat heterogeneous. The writings of Demetrius the Chronographer comprise a rather dry analysis of the time-periods given in the biblical narrative. Philo the Elder, Eupolemus and Artapanus rewrote the biblical stories in prose with considerable embellishments. Ezekiel the Tragedian did much the same with the narrative of the Exodus but in his case produced his reinterpretation in dramatic form. Ps.Hecataeus and Ps.-Aristeas wrote glowing accounts of Judaism as a way of life and of Jews as a people, presenting themselves in the guise of non-Jewish writers. The Jewish authors of parts of the corpus of Sibylline Oracles similarly slipped comments about Judaism into the oracles they forged. Finally, at least three authors attempted to produce a version of Judaism that would fit more or less comfortably with contemporary Greek philosophy. Of these, the author of the Wisdom of Solomon made the fewest concessions to the rigours

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of philosophical analysis, Philo made the most. Aristobulus, who wrote in the second century BC, lay somewhere between the two (see Schürer 1986: 470–704). All these writings have in common that they were composed in Greek by Jews. They survive, often only in very fragmentary form, only through the interests of the Christian Church; they were almost entirely ignored by the Jewish tradition until the Renaissance. Why should anyone believe that they were originally composed with a Gentile audience in mind? After all, it seems fairly likely that the greatest literary production of Greek-speaking Jews, the translation of the Bible into Greek as the Septuagint, was intended for use by Jews in their own liturgy, and this is also probable for the revisions of the Septuagint by Aquila and others. None the less the Septuagint may point to at least a secondary intention by the authors to bring Judaism to the attention of a Gentile audience, for there is evidence that at least one Gentile writer, the anonymous author of a rhetorical treatise On the Sublime, may have come across at least the opening of the text of Genesis (see commentary in Stern 1974: 361–5). It has even been argued that the survival of writings like those of Philo through a non-Jewish tradition may imply that they were originally intended for non-Jews (Georgi 1987: 368). At the least it can be asserted that there is no proof that such literature was not meant for outsiders alone. If Gentiles read such literature, were they expected to react by considering conversion to Judaism? Perhaps. At any rate, that they would be expected to develop a friendly attitude towards Jews and Judaism seems clear: a work like the third Sibylline book unabashedly praises the Jews and their mode of worship. But if Jews did write such propaganda literature in order to win proselytes, how did they expect to make sure that their propaganda was read or heard? In a time before mass printing, books would spread only in single, rare copies. Enthusiasts would have to employ slaves to produce their own copies. Perhaps, then, it has been suggested, the literature enshrines material that was disseminated more widely by oral means. It has been alleged that Jews invited pagans into their synagogues to hear displays of preaching along the same lines as the extant writings. Georgi has drawn attention to Philo’s statement that ‘each seventh day the synagogues stand wide open in every city’ as ‘schools of good sense’ and other virtues, while Philo’s denial that Jews on the sabbath attended performances in the theatre

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has been taken to suggest that a comparison between synagogues and theatres was possible.4 Josephus wrote of the Jews of Antioch that they had brought into their rites (thrèskeiai ) in the first century AD many Greeks and (presumably by this means) made them ‘in some sense part of themselves’ ( Jewish War VII 3, 3 (45)). Not enough survives of first-century synagogues to tell whether they allowed easy access to casual outsiders to listen from the street, but it is possible: in Caesarea in AD 66 one synagogue was down an alleyway next to pagan houses, though in this case not conversion but antagonism resulted ( Josephus, Jewish War II 14, 4 (285–6)). If Jews were really eager to win converts, the easiest way to increase their number might be to remove some of the more onerous requirements laid upon proselytes. It has been vehemently argued by, among others, McEleney (1974) that some Jews in the Diaspora were prepared to allow some male Gentiles to be treated as Jews even without undergoing circumcision. It is certain that an uncircumcised Jew was not a logical impossibility. Later rabbis discussed haemophiliacs for whom the operation would endanger life and could therefore be forgone (bPesa˙im 96a). When other rituals, including the bringing of an offering to the Temple, were also required of converts, the question also arose of the religious status of a proselyte who had fulfilled some of the initiation procedures but not (yet?) all of them (Nolland 1981: 173–94). Philo in one passage referred to a small group of Jews—‘extreme allegorists’—who believed that only the inner meaning of the Torah matters and that its actual observance was therefore irrelevant (On the Migration of Abraham 16 (89)). Such Jews might perhaps forgo circumcision for their sons and stress instead a moral allegory such as that propounded for the operation by Philo himself (Questions and Answers on Exodus II 2). Finally, Epictetus wrote in the early second century as if the ultimate sign of dedication to Judaism by a convert was baptism, and the same seems also to have been implied by the (probably Jewish) author of Sibylline Oracles IV 164, who wrote in c. AD 80, although this latter passage may refer not to a baptism for converts but just to a bath for purification. If Jews were so keen to win converts, they will have been eager also to lure pagans away from their customary worship. A pragmatic

4 Philo, On the Special Laws II 15 (62); Moses II 39 (211); cf. Georgi 1987: 85, 113–14.

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willingness to partake in other cults was not standard for Jews, although it was not entirely unknown in this period as in others.5 As such, any Jewish mission for converts was likely to provoke opposition from the Gentile society in which it operated. Evidence for resentment against Jews on these grounds is not to be found in pagan writings composed before AD 96, and I have argued elsewhere (Goodman 1989b) that before that date Romans at least were actually ignorant of the Jewish notion that a Gentile could become Jewish. But modern authors have pointed out that Jews were expelled from the city of Rome in 139 BC and AD 19 and have asserted that this was as a punishment for seeking proselytes (e.g. Stern 1974: 357–60; 1980: 70). In the former case one of the Byzantine epitomators of the first-century writer Valerius Maximus implied that the Jews’ crime was that they ‘tried to transmit their sacred rites to the Romans’. In the latter case Cassius Dio (LVII 18, 5a) is said by John of Antioch to have written (in the early third century AD) that the Jews were ‘converting many of the natives to their ways’, an explanation which is missing in the earlier historians Josephus and Tacitus, who related instead a curious story of the duping of an aristocratic Roman lady proselyte by unscrupulous Jews intent on her money. It is not impossible that Tacitus was ignorant and that Josephus (Antiquities XVIII 3, 5 (81–4)) hid the truth because it embarrassed him in his apologetic aim of reconciling the Romans to the Jews.6 The case for believing in a mission to win proselytes may reasonably be ended with two of the most striking categories of literary evidence. First, Horace, Satires I 4, 142–3, veluti te / Iudaei cogemus in hanc concedere turbam, has been interpreted to mean that ‘like the Jews, we will compel you to join our throng’ (see Stern 1974: 323). Second, and most strikingly, Matthew 23:15, which reads ‘Woe to thee, scribes and Pharisees, that you cross land and sea to make one proselyte’, seems to imply that scribes and Pharisees did indeed travel in such a way to win converts to Judaism.

5 Note, for example, Herod’s attendance at a Roman state sacrifice on the Capitol in Rome at the start of his reign ( Josephus Jewish War I 14, 4 (285)), despite his portrayal of himself as a Jew. 6 Thus Georgi 1987: 92–3. For the texts, see Stern 1974, Stern 1980.

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The Absence of a Jewish Mission: A Reinterpretation This last text, from the gospel of Matthew, has often been taken as the starting-point for discussions of the Jewish attitude to mission in the first century AD, and it seems fitting to begin with this passage my scrutiny of all the arguments and evidence for such a mission which have been laid out above. What reason, then, not to believe the plain meaning of Matthew 23:15? Few scholars would wish to construct too elaborate an argument on one of Matthew’s statements about Pharisees, since his discussion of them is notoriously tendentious and polemical and the undiscriminating collocation ‘scribes and Pharisees’ in the woes in this gospel may be attributed to his muddled views as a redactor.7 The saying here ascribed to Jesus may belong to the earliest (i.e. Palestinian) stratum of the tradition about him, since it uses various Semitisms including the Aramaic term ‘Gehinnom’ ( Jeremias 1958: 17–18, n. 4), but the fact that it is omitted by Luke suggests that it reflects the special interests of Matthew, whose own preconceptions about the desirability of winning converts for Christ may therefore be reflected in the ascription of parallel aims to the despised Pharisees. However this may be, it is overwhelmingly likely that the phrase made sense to Matthew’s audience at the end of the first century and that they accepted that Pharisees could be particularly eager to gain one proselyte. But what does this phrase mean? The expression is decidedly odd. Why ‘land and sea’? And why ‘one proselyte’? Is the reader expected to supply the term to make it ‘even one proselyte’? It has been suggested that Matthew had in mind a particular instance of a Gentile converted by a Pharisee, which is possible (so Munck 1959: 266). Even an isolated case, however, would be sufficient to show that some Jews were interested in seeking converts in the first century. And that is what Matthew 23:15 clearly must mean if the term prosèlytos is understood in its customary sense. But this, as I shall show below, cannot be taken for granted. I shall suggest instead that

7 Precisely what group was designated by the word grammateis in the gospel of Matthew is not clear. See Garland 1979: 41–6.

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Matthew is here attacking Pharisees for their eagerness in trying to persuade other Jews to follow Pharisaic halakhah.8 It seems clear that the prosèlytos to whom Matthew referred became a Pharisee or a follower of Pharisaic teaching as a result of the Pharisees’ efforts. He becomes ‘twice the son of Gehinnom’ that the Pharisee is, which is not an expression which Matthew was likely to use about Jews qua Jews. Is the conversion of Jews to Pharisaism something that Pharisees would have found desirable in the first century? There is little explicit evidence, but it seems at least possible. Pharisees believed that they alone could interpret the Torah correctly and it would seem obvious that, like the prophets of old calling the people to repent, they should feel a duty to teach the rest of the Jews how to live righteously and bring divine blessings on to the community. Similarly the members of the Qumran sect, if they were celibate, as is probable, may have adopted a missionary stance in order to survive for their divinely ordained mission, since no children could be born within the group. The only figure given in any ancient text for the size of the Pharisees’ sect is Josephus’ reference to the ‘more than six thousand’ individuals who identified themselves as Pharisees at the end of the first century BC when they refused to take an oath to Herod (Antiquities XVII 2, 4 (41–5)). There is no evidence that there were any more followers of the sect than that number, even though they were widely influential, persuading the people about prayers and sacrifices ( Josephus, Antiquities XVIII 1, 3 (15)). It is reasonable to suppose that they might wish as many Jews as possible to ‘become Pharisees’, although precisely how such a conversion would be marked (other than by the self-description of the convert) is unclear. That Matthew should find such missionary behaviour by Pharisees objectionable is also unsurprising. For much of the first century the followers of Jesus may have been competing against Pharisees and other interpreters of Judaism to win Jews as converts to Christianity. More of a problem is the implication that Pharisees sought followers outside Palestine, for which there is no other firm evidence: the Diaspora Jew St Paul claimed to be a Pharisee, but he may have been trained in Jerusalem rather than Tarsus, and Josephus, who said

8 This interpretation was floated by Munck 1959: 267 in one paragraph, but (so far as I know) it has never been fully argued.

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that he was a Pharisee when in Rome, made no explicit mention of Pharisaic teachers outside the land of Israel. But the teachings of the rabbis, who were in some ways the successors of the Pharisees after AD 70, did in time spread to Babylonia and elsewhere and eventually were to become normative among Jews of the western Diaspora as well. In any case, the same objection applies whatever interpretation of the term prosèlytos is preferred, since there is also no other evidence for Pharisees seeking to convert Gentiles to Judaism outside Palestine.9 In sum, the passage makes good sense—even better sense—if prosèlytos has the meaning I have suggested rather than that traditionally attributed to it. Is such a meaning possible? There are a number of factors in its favour. First, it should be noted that the term is very rare in the first century except in quotations from the Septuagint. It was hardly used by Philo and never used by Josephus. Apart from the passage in Matthew, the only book of the whole new Testament where it is found is Acts, where it occurs three times (Acts 2:11; 6:5; 13:43). It was clearly becoming a technical term among Jews for a converted Gentile, and had been doing so since the time of the Septuagint translation of the third and second centuries BC (see Allen 1894), but its meaning was not yet confined to this sense alone. An examination of Philo’s use of the term may illustrate this continuing flexibility. In referring to Gentile converts to Judaism Philo preferred to use the word epèlus. Prosèlytos appears only when it is already found in the passage of the Septuagint which Philo was quoting (Daniel 1975: 221–12). In the Septuagint itself prosèlytos undoubtedly usually means a Gentile convert: the Hebrew word gèr which means ‘immigrant’ or ‘resident alien’ in the earlier layers of the Pentateuch and ‘Gentile who has become Jewish’ only in the latest layer, was always translated by prosèlytos in the Septuagint when it has the latter meaning (except once, when it was transliterated as geiòras), whereas other terms, such as paroikos, were usually used for those places where gèr appears in the Hebrew with one of its earlier

9 Baumgarten 1983: 414, n. 10, argues that Eleazar, who converted the king of Adiabene, Izates, may have been a Pharisee because he was described by Josephus (Antiquities XX 2, 4 (43)) as akribes (‘accurate’) in the Law. But akribeia in Josephus’ writings cannot always be equated with Pharisaism: in Josephus, Against Apion II 31 (227) the Spartans are said to have observed their laws akribòs (as noted by Baumgarten himself, 1983: 413, n. 6).

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meanings (Meek 1930). But ‘Gentile convert’ cannot have been the only acceptable meaning of prosèlytos for the Septuagint translators for, just occasionally, this term also was used to mean a resident alien (e.g. Leviticus 19:10; 24:16). This latter use is striking in the Greek of Exodus 22:20, where prosèlytoi is found, as a translation of gèrim, to refer not to Gentiles but to the Israelites in Egypt. Philo evidently found such a usage strange but not impossible, since he did not choose to substitute one of the other Septuagintal translations of gèr at this point, as he could have done. In Questions and Answers on Exodus II 2 he commented that what makes a prosèlytos is not circumcision (which, he therefore implied, is what one might have expected), since the Israelites were not circumcised until they began their wanderings in the desert; what matters is turning to God for salvation. He made the same observation at On the Special Laws I 9 (51), pointing there to the etymology of the word, which suggests that the prosèlytos ‘comes to’ a holy life from a different one. This sense of proserchesthai as the approach to something sacred can also be found in the general use of the verb in the gospel of Matthew (Edwards 1987), and in Josephus, Jewish War II 8, 7 (142), where those who join the sect of the Essenes are described as tous prosiontas, a participial form of the same verb. What I suggest, therefore, is that prosèlytos in the first century had both a technical and a non-technical sense, and that in that latter sense it could quite easily be applied to Jews. This usage is precisely parallel to that long ago noted for the term ‘God-fearer’ in this period, which often, sometimes apparently as a semi-technical term, referred to Gentiles but which was also, perhaps metaphorically, used to describe Jews (Feldman 1950). If this argument is accepted, then it will no longer be possible to use Matthew 23:15 as a prooftext—often the proof-text—for a mission by Pharisees and other Jews to win converts to Judaism from the Gentile world. So too with the other literary ‘evidence’. The text in Horace, Satires I 4, 142–3, veluti te / Iudaei cogemus in hanc concedere turbam, need not refer to Jewish eagerness to proselytize at all: Horace certainly portrayed the Jews as prone to use pressure to achieve their ends but he implied nothing about Gentiles being compelled to become Jewish or about the corollary of such conversion, that such converts learn to despise their own gods. The Jewish crowd was notorious in Roman politics, at least in the previous generation when Cicero referred to them (In Defence of Flaccus 28, 66) as prone to use mass

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intimidation to get their way when lawsuits were in progress, and that may be all that is at issue here (Nolland 1979). It is unlikely that any of the residual arguments for a Jewish mission in the first century would ever have been proposed if such a mission had not already been presupposed. The mass conversions to Judaism said by Josephus to have been forced by the Hasmonaeans were obvious political gambits which may have owed something to the example set by the Roman republic in the spread of Roman citizenship over Italy: the notion of an indefinite expansion of citizenship in this way is found in the ancient world only among Jews and Romans and, since the latter had found it strikingly advantageous in the centuries immediately preceding the Hasmonaean dynasty, it would not be all that surprising if the Jewish monarchs, who were eager to maintain contact with the Romans, followed suit.10 Certainly a Gentile observer such as Timagenes (cited by Strabo) accepted such conversions as standard political incorporation of a neighbouring people ( Josephus, Antiquities XIII 11, 3 (319)). If the Hasmonaeans wanted a theological justification—and it is quite possible that by the 120s BC they had so far assumed the characteristics of a normal Hellenistic state that they saw no need for one—they could find it in the notion that the land of Israel must be purified by the exclusion of idolatry (cf. Deuteronomy 12:1–3). Despite the location of Pella just east of the Jordan, such an attitude would best explain the treatment of the inhabitants of that place: because they did not promise to go over to the national customs of the Jews, their city was destroyed ( Josephus, Antiquities XIII 15, 4 (397)). It was the same notion as lay behind the enthusiastic exclusion of Roman military standards from polluting the land when the Syrian legate Vitellius wished to march through with his legions against the Nabataeans in AD 37 ( Josephus, Antiquities XVIII 5, 3 (121)). So too the Galileans who were intent on the enforced circumcision of two of Agrippa II’s Gentile courtiers whom they caught in their territory in AD 67 argued that ‘those who wished to live among the Jews’ must needs

10 See M. Smith 1978. If Kasher 1988: 46–8 is correct to emphasize against Josephus’ account the remark of Strabo, Geography XV 2, 34, that ‘the Idumaeans are Nabataeans [sic], but owing to a sedition they were banished from there, joined the Judaeans and shared in the same customs with them’, there would be no need to explain Hasmonaean motives in forcing conversions since the whole story of such conversions was fabricated. But see my reservations, above, note 3.

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be circumcised ( Josephus, Life 23 (113)). If this distinction was generally made by Jews, it provides of course an argument against any universal mission, since it suggests that Gentiles are welcome to remain uncircumcised provided that they live outside the Holy Land. As for the conversion of the Idumaeans, it is true that biblical Edom was not part of the biblical land of Israel, but in Maccabaean times the story of the relationship between Jacob and Esau (ancestor of Edom) was rewritten in the book of Jubilees to emphasize both their fraternal origins and the justified domination of the latter by the former. In any case the area inhabited by Idumaeans by the 120s BC was north of biblical Edom and in fact lay within the southern part of the old kingdom of Judah.11 The assumption by Jews that marriage partners should convert before union seems to have been general by the first century. As evidence can be cited the very public insistence to this effect by the women of the Herodian family. Against such a view, it has been argued that the term memigmenon at Josephus, Jewish War II 18, 1 (463) must refer to Jews who have intermarried with the Gentile population. That many intermarriages without conversion took place is highly probable—the papyri from rural Egypt may provide examples.12 But it must be assumed that many Jews viewed such liaisons with distaste, for the actions of the Herodians would otherwise be inexplicable. It is, however, hard to see how such insistence on conversion for marriage can be seen as missionary. It might even be suggested that opportunities for mission were lessened by such a custom since a Jew could not seek to convert his or her partner after marriage, as was permitted among Christians (II Corinthians 7: 12–14). That Jews in general preferred to portray themselves as marrying only within the fold was common knowledge (cf. Tacitus, Histories V 5: discreti cubilibus). When an outsider was allowed in, he or she would have to be initiated into the community; such behaviour reinforces the group’s boundary and solidarity, it does not open it up to the outside (cf. B. Wilson cited in Towler 1974: 125). In other words, it is striking that the conversion of the Gentile partner was

11

On the attitude of the book of Jubilees, see Mendels 1987: 75–81. See Tcherikover and Fuks 1960: 2–3, on CPJ II, no. 144. On the Josephus passage, see M. Smith 1987: 182, n. 33. On intermarriage, see in general ibid., 65–6. 12

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apparently devised at some time between the period of Ezra, who does not seem to have conceived of such a solution to the problem of foreign wives, and the first century AD, but, though of immense practical importance, the innovation in no way attacked the basis of Ezra’s ideal Israel as a pure nation separated from the pollution which enveloped it. All this needs emphasis because it is a priori probable that in antiquity, as now, the majority of conversions to Judaism took place to facilitate a marriage. It is noteworthy that the story of Asenath in Joseph and Asenath seems to portray her as the paradigm of the proselyte, but that the main theme of the story is that she cannot marry Joseph while she is heathen whereas she can and does so as soon as she has been initiated into Judaism. Little need be said about the other group on whose circumcision Jews may have insisted, namely their male slaves. It has been suggested above (see p. 95) that this may have been partly for domestic convenience, and it is likely that almost all slaves owned by Jews, at least in Palestine, will have served primarily as domestic servants since that was their normal function in the Near East. Such insistence—if indeed it was already standard at this period, which is debatable (see p. 94)—must be understood in a similar way to conversion for marriage. The slave became by force a member of the family group and circumcision established him as part of that group. Such an attitude reveals nothing at all about Jews’ expectations and hopes for those whose economic circumstances did not bring them into this sort of close social relationship with a Jewish family. What explanation should be offered for the fragments of the large literature which, it is claimed, was produced to win converts to Judaism? The argument, it will be recalled, was roughly as follows (see p. 96). Some Jews wrote a number of religious tracts in Greek during the first century AD and the two centuries before. Such works would have been more or less readily comprehensible to non-Jews. Since the main burden of such writings was praise of Judaism and the Jewish God, it is assumed that those Gentiles who read such material were expected or hoped to become proselytes. The fallacies in this assumption are evident and have been demonstrated by others since the pioneering work of Tcherikover (1956). It is more than likely that most if not all the Jewish literature in Greek was composed primarily for Greek-speaking Jews. This has already been pointed out for the Septuagint translation of the Bible (see pp. 96–7), but the same assertion applies also to all the Jewish

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texts which both proclaim their Jewishness and stress the need to keep the Law. There is no evidence at all of any Gentile interest in, for example, the Wisdom of Solomon or the fourth book of Maccabees. It is highly unlikely that any non-Jew would be interested in the dry chronological calculations of Demetrius. Even those writings masquerading under Gentile authorship, such as the work of Ps.-Hecataeus and Ps.-Aristeas, may have been intended primarily for Jews: Jews steeped in the surrounding Greek culture as well as their own religious traditions will have taken comfort from such testimony by respected Gentiles to the truth of their faith, much as more recent rabbis appeal on occasion to modern science as support for the wisdom of traditional Jewish customs. It is of course possible that some of these works were read by Gentiles as well as by Jews, and that this was intended by their authors, even though the only Gentile known to have taken any interest in any of these writings before Christians adopted them was the polymath Alexander Polyhistor, who collected such material in the first century BC for his own work On the Jews. But, if so, it is hard to see what Gentiles were to make of such literature. The status of Gentiles in the cosmic order was referred to on occasion, particularly in the Sibylline Oracles, but this question was decidedly not the main focus of the bulk of these works. On the contrary, their main theme was the excellence of Judaism. When the writings urged specifically Jewish customs, such as the observance of the sabbath, they tended to be pseudonymous: thus, the fact that Orpheus was portrayed by a Jewish forger as approving of rest on every seventh day, or that Phocylides was shown approving of Jewish morality, was likely to be comforting for a Jew who was impressed by Orpheus and Phocylides but was not likely to persuade a Gentile to become Jewish. By contrast, those writings which were openly Jewish often urged not conversion to Judaism but a more general ethic. The themes which crop up in, for instance, the Testament of Abraham are moral ones: charity, hospitality, the avoidance of adultery and homosexuality, the shunning of infanticide and so on (cf. Collins 1983: 137–74 on ‘the common ethic’). Even in a work like the third book of the Sibylline Oracles, where the fact that it was the Jewish cult that was being praised was only thinly disguised and one could argue that such a disguise was a necessary part of the oracular form, there was no suggestion that Gentiles should immediately rush to convert, or, indeed, that the covenant of Judaism (including circumcision) had

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anything to do with them—at least, until the final reckoning at the end of days (Collins 1985: 165–6). Literature intended to persuade Gentiles to abandon their social customs and enter a new society in Judaism would need to be far more direct than this. It is only because some modern scholars assume (wrongly) that Jews sought proselytes of some sort that they have sometimes attributed to such writings an intention to attract proselytes who would observe only a select few of the commandments (McEleney 1974: 323–4). For Josephus, the matter was simple: those proselytes who found it beyond their endurance to keep the laws properly were considered to be apostates (Against Apion II 10 (123)). And yet, as has been seen (see p. 97), many have argued that one religious duty in particular was often waived by Jewish missionaries in their eagerness to win proselytes. It was possible, so it is claimed, for Gentile males to become Jewish without undergoing circumcision. Why this particular duty rather than any other? To be sure, circumcision is a painful business and cases are recorded from the ancient world of this being the sticking-point for would-be converts: Izates of Adiabene hesitated to undertake an act which might prove disastrously unpopular with his subjects (Josephus, Antiquities XX 2, 4 (38–9)). But the main reason for modern scholarly interest in this particular religious duty is the emphasis laid upon it by St Paul in his attacks on ‘those of the circumcision’ and his insistence that it was not required for entrance into the Church (McEleney 1974: 328–41). The operation is no more painful or dangerous than that in other initiation rites; indeed, it could be argued that the discomfort caused constitutes part of its efficacy for initiation. Many peoples other than Jews practised (and practise) the same custom. It seems naive to suggest that dropping this one requirement could bring a flood of proselytes to join the Jewish fold. The physical discomfort would be negligible compared to the social problems faced by the new convert. But in fact the evidence for uncircumcised proselytes is anyway minimal and should be discounted.13 Epictetus, assuming baptism as the main sign of initiation (ap. Arrian, Dissertations II 9, 20), may simply have been confused or taking a part of the initiation ceremony to stand for all. The rabbinic texts said to consider the possibility of

13

See Nolland 1979 for the following arguments.

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a proselyte who has not (yet?) been circumcised discussed the case only as part of a gradual unveiling of a complex theoretical argument. An examination of Philo’s allegorical method and its application to the significance of circumcision makes it highly implausible that he suggested the abolition of this law any more than any other. It needs to be recognized how far-reaching such an abolition would be. Circumcision was the symbol of the Jew (for outsiders as well as for Jews themselves), however many other peoples did it and regardless of the occasional Jew who, for whatever reason, did not carry out the Law. The attitude of Metilius, the Roman garrison commander in Jerusalem in AD 66, can be taken as indication of the importance of the rite. He was prepared, he said, to become Jewish (ioudaizein) ‘even as far as undergoing circumcision’ ( Josephus, Jewish War II 17, 10 (454)). One final claim needs to be countered, namely that the expulsion of the Jews from the city of Rome in 139 BC and AD 19 was in retaliation for the vehemence of their proselytizing (see p. 98). Neither case is as well documented as is often assumed. The affair in 139 BC was referred to only by Valerius Maximus, an author of the late first century BC whose remarks survive only in two Byzantine epitomators, Julius Paris (c. AD 400) and Nepotianus (c. AD 500). Since the two accounts differ, they are clearly not preserved verbatim, and the confused nature of the reference to Jupiter Sabazius in Julius Paris has been well clarified by Lane (1979; see Stern 1974: 357–60 for the passage). According to Nepotianus, the Jews were banished, along with astrologers, for ‘trying to transmit their sacred rites [sacra] to the Romans’; private altars were therefore removed by the Roman authorities from public places, and they were expelled from the city. Various peculiarities about this story have been noted. One is that it is not clear who these Jews could be. There is no other evidence for a Jewish community in Rome in the second century BC. The suggestion has been made that these Jews were the deputation from Simon the Maccabee mentioned in the first book of Maccabees, but this does not fit in with the required date. More significant, however, is the odd description of the Jews’ alleged crime. It seems difficult to imagine a new convert being recommended to set up altars of any kind. Jews did countenance the setting up of a temple at Leontopolis in this period by priests who had come from Jerusalem, but no Jews are recorded as having approved of the use of private altars in this way. What was at issue here, then, if the

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account is not totally confused, was something rather less than the conversion of proselytes. I suggest that the Jews were accused not of teaching Romans to despise their native cults, which would be the most obvious and objectionable effect of conversion, but simply of bringing in a new cult into public places without authority, a practice which the Romans traditionally deprecated, as they had shown recently in their opposition to the spread of the cult of Bacchus. What may have happened is that some Romans, impressed by Jews, chose to express their admiration in conventional Roman fashion by the setting up of altars within the city. How pleased Jews might be about this it is impossible to say, but they would certainly distinguish it quite clearly from the conversion of Romans to Judaism. As for the expulsion of AD 19, it has already been noted that neither Tacitus not Josephus gave missionary activity as an explanation (see p. 98). The suggestion that Josephus might be prepared to hide the truth is somewhat implausible: if the Jews’ missionary activity was well known, Josephus would have been better advised to try to justify such behaviour than to try to pretend it did not happen. It seems to me better to explain the motive for the expulsion, which is first found in a fragment of Cassius Dio’s history preserved not in the manuscript traditions but in a solitary quotation (not necessarily verbatim?) by the seventh-century Christian writer John of Antioch, in terms of a new Roman awareness of the possibility of proselytism since the end of the first century, and perhaps as evidence for a real proselytizing mission in his day, the third century AD (see p. 114). On examination, then, the evidence for an active mission by first-century Jews to win proselytes is very weak. I think that it is possible to go further and to suggest that there are positive reasons to deny the existence of such a mission. Unlike all other contemporary religions before Christianity, Judaism was a way of life, which could even be cited in contrast to living like a Greek (W.C. Smith 1978: 72). Conversion to such a new life and to the new social group which went with it was a major undertaking. One would expect much negative comment about such proselytizing in the anti-Semitic literature which survives, but it is not to be found before the end of the first century AD (cf. Goodman 1989b). One would also expect riots and expulsions from the other great centres of Jewish life, giving proselytizing as justification, but, again, only in the city of Rome is this said to have happened, and even there the evidence seems doubtful. One would expect a great deal to be said about

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such a mission in the works of Philo and Josephus if Jews wished all Gentiles to take so momentous a step. But in fact these authors have little about proselytes and nothing about a mission to win them. Indeed, Josephus is explicit that those outsiders who only flirt with Judaism will not be accepted as proselytes (Against Apion II 28 (210)). A full commitment was needed, and if this diminished the number of conversions no contemporary Jewish author expressed any regret. It should be recognized that the suggestion that Josephus deliberately hid the fact that Jews believed that they had a mission to convert the world (e.g. Delling 1970: 51) is a major, and most implausible claim. How could he hope to escape undetected with such a lie? Furthermore, the ambiguous status of proselytes in the eyes of Jews is itself evidence that the winning of more was not seen as a religious duty. That the Jews were remarkable in espousing the whole notion of permitting converts to enter the body politic has been noted above (see p. 92), but this should not prevent awareness of the limitations in the openness to outsiders thus expressed. If Jewish attitudes to proselytes are compared not to those of contemporary pagans but to those of the early Church, those limitations will rapidly become clear. In the early Church, a convert to Christ was in essence equal to his or her fellows. There is no evidence of prejudice against those who had formerly been in darkness, except in so far as they needed to heed the teachings of the more enlightened. In the early years, of course, all Christians had been converts. By contrast, a proselyte to Judaism became in religious terms a member of a clearly defined, separate and, in a few cases mostly concerned with marriage, less privileged group within the Jewish commonwealth. That this was so was doubtless due to the dual function of conversion as entry into a political and social as well as into a religious entity, but it is significant that the distinct definition of proselytes as a particular sort of Jew was retained throughout antiquity. It was even possible to describe the descendants of the Idumaeans who had converted to Judaism as ‘half-Jews’ ( Josephus, Antiquities XIV 15, 2 (403)). It would be wrong to suggest that a negative attitude towards proselytes predominated in the Jewish texts of the first century—in so far as converts were discussed at all, it was usually with sympathy and sometimes with admiration. But even the possibility of such ambivalent attitudes is enough to show how unlikely the picture is of a Jewish mission to win converts. If Gentiles wished to come to

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( proserchesthai ) Israel, the commandments and God, they were welcome, but the etymology of the word ‘proselyte’ implies movement by the Gentile concerned, from darkness into light, not the changing of the Gentile’s nature as simple repentance might be termed, and not a bringing in by the body of the Jews as the model of mission would require. The role of the Jews was simply passively to bear witness through their existence and piety; how the Gentiles reacted to such witness was up to them. Jewish Attitudes to Gentiles This laissez-faire attitude was much facilitated by the general variety and frequent tolerance of Jewish attitudes in this period towards those Gentiles who had not converted. For a truly missionary philosophy it is necessary to believe that the unenlightened are in some way damned. It is not easy to find clear evidence of first-century Jews asserting that those who do not become proselytes will suffer such a fate.14 Speculation by Jews about the fate of Gentiles either immediately after death or at the expected end of the world was very varied. Some texts implied apocalyptic destruction (2 Baruch 82:3)—perhaps only for unrighteous Gentiles (2 Baruch 72:4); others implied eventual subjugation to a redeemed Israel; yet others expected Gentiles to participate in the kingdom. Most Jewish texts had nothing to say on the matter: in a period of great trauma for Israel the status of non-Jews was hardly a pressing matter. But enough can be culled from the evidence to show that the notion that only by conversion could Gentiles be removed from the multitude of the damned would not often have received the assent of first-century Jews. It is true enough that Philo wrote that the proselyte who had left the country of idolatry had come to his true homeland in Judaism (On the Special Laws IV 34 (178)), implying perhaps that all other pagans are in exile (or perhaps, more sophisticatedly, that proselytes must in some sense have been born as potential Jews (cf. bShabbath 146a)). It is also true that the tendency of many Jews in this period

14 See discussion by Sanders 1976: 11–44. On Jewish expectations of the fate of Gentiles in the messianic period, contrast Sanders 1985: 18–20 to Fredriksen 1988: 149ff., 166ff.

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was to shy away from social contact with the Gentile world; it is a tendency that seems to me to have been based more on instinct than on theology or religious law, as can be seen from the symbolic extension of food taboos to exclude more and more non-Jewish food from the kosher diet, but it was justified in religious terms by the (correct) feeling that Gentiles were always prone to idolatry, from which Jews were so strongly excluded by their law. But Jews in the first century did not even agree among themselves whether life after death was possible for Jews, so the idea that they should have had any clear notion on the availability of such post-mortem existence for Gentiles seems implausible. From those Jews who did refer to the expected fate of Gentiles there is plenty to suggest that the future of at least some unconverted Gentiles was deemed to be safe enough. At places Philo described the achievement of wise and virtuous Gentiles with approval (On the Special Laws II 12–13 (44–8)). Quite what a Gentile was reckoned to have to do in order to be deemed wise and virtuous was perhaps debated. The Jewish texts in Greek discussed above (see p. 95) urged a general morality: sexual continence (especially avoidance of homosexuality), charity, hospitality and so on. The most common theological demand was a recognition by Gentiles that there is only one God, but this could usually be achieved with singularly little action by the Gentile concerned simply by the avowal that the divinities he worshipped were all aspects of the single divine nature (cf. Ps.-Aristeas 16, 189). Some Jewish texts encouraged further worship specifically at the Jewish shrine (e.g. Sibylline Oracles III 565) but this was rarely felt to be incompatible for Gentiles with continued pagan practices: thus the Septuagint version of Exodus 22:27 urged Jews not to revile the gods of others, an attitude echoed both by Josephus (Antiquities IV 8, 10 (207); Against Apion II 33 (237)) and by Philo (Moses II 38 (205); On the Special Laws I 9 (53); Questions and Answers on Exodus II (5)). Josephus urged that everyone should be allowed ‘to reverence the god according to his own inclination’ (Life 23 (113)). Artapanus, an Egyptian Jewish author of the mid-second century BC, could even commend the utility of pagan cults (Eusebius, Preparation of the Gospel IX 27, 4). This Jewish attitude was not just a question of theory. The Jewish merchant Ananias who taught the royal family in Charax Spasinou and Adiabene to revere the god (without converting to Judaism)

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presumably thought this would be pleasing to God and of advantage to them ( Josephus, Antiquities XX 2, 3 (34–5), 4 (41)). The same must surely be true of the Jewish treatment of the pagan priestess in Phrygia, a certain Julia Severa, who, also in the first century, was granted an honoured position in a synagogue without becoming Jewish. The evidence for a formally recognized group of Gentiles designated as ‘God-fearers’ does not predate the third century AD, but the theological preconceptions which were then to encourage the emergence of such a defined status for honoured non-Jews were already established in the first century. That theology was of great simplicity. Gentiles stood outside the special covenant made between God and Israel. They had none of the burdens of the covenant. They might win divine favour by freely offering worship, but such worship was not required of them. Their only duty, in the eyes of Jews, was a general morality. Christianity and Jewish Attitudes to Mission Jews thus lacked an incentive for proselytizing, and it could be argued that in theological logic arguments against winning converts could even have been brought forward. If many Jews believed at this time that the imminent arrival of the last days could best be facilitated by the righteous behaviour of Jews (cf. bSanhedrin 97a), it might seems a retrograde step to produce more Jews who, through human nature and the difficulties inherent in full observance of the Jewish way of life, were liable to add to the number of Jewish sinners. But such arguments are found only in later periods and even then have an air of justification after the event—no one seems to have urged the corollary, that producing children should also be avoided. The lack of a proselytizing movement in first-century Judaism seems to me all the more striking when it is contrasted not just with the early Church but with developments within Judaism later in antiquity. At some time in the second or third century some Jews seem to have begun looking for converts in just the way they were apparently not doing in the first century. The evidence, which is extensive but oblique, has been discussed by me in detail elsewhere (Goodman 1989a), but presentation of one strand here may usefully bring out the new mood among some rabbis. In Sifre to Deuteronomy

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313 (on Deuteronomy 32:10), a rabbinic text probably compiled in the late second or early third century AD, the patriarch Abraham was described as being so good a missionary that he caused God to be known as king of earth as well as heaven, and this prowess in winning proselytes was one of the main features of the career of Abraham singled out for praise in later rabbinic writings. By contrast, it was Abraham’s piety as a convert, not a converter, that was stressed by Philo, Josephus and other writers of earlier periods.15 What might appear to be an exception on closer inspection proves the rule. Josephus wrote that Abraham went to Egypt ‘intending, if he found their doctrine more excellent than his own, to conform to it, or else to rearrange them to a better mind should his own beliefs prove superior’ (Antiquities I 8, 1 (161)). But what he taught was not, it seems, Judaism, or anything like it. The burden of his teaching emerges unexpectedly as arithmetic and astronomy (Antiquities I 8, 2 (167)), while the Jew Artapanus in the second century BC envisaged Abraham, as the bearer of culture, teaching the Egyptian Pharaoh astrology (Eusebius, Preparation of the Gospel IX 18, 1). The missionary hero in search of converts for Judaism is a phenomenon first attested well after the start of the Christian mission, not before it. There is no good reason to suppose that any Jew would have seen value in seeking proselytes in the first century with an enthusiasm like that of the Christian apostles. The origins of the missionary impulse within the Church should be sought elsewhere. Bibliography Allen, W.C. (1894) ‘On the meaning of prosÆlutow in the Septuagint’, Expositor (series 4) 10: 264–75. —— (2nd edn, 1907) A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel of S. Matthew (International Critical Commentary), Edinburgh. Baumgarten, A. (1983) ‘The Name of the Pharisees’, Journal of Biblical Literature 102/3: 411–28. Cohen, S.J.D. (1987) ‘Respect for Judaism by Gentiles According to Josephus’, Harvard Theological Review 80: 409–30. Collins, J.J. (1983) Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora, New York.

15 Philo, On Abraham 13–14 (60–7); Philo, On the Virtues 39 (212–19); Josephus, Antiquities I 7, 1 (154–7).

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—— (1985) ‘A Symbol of Otherness: Circumcision and Salvation in the First Century’, in J. Neusner and E.S. Frerichs (eds.) ‘To See Ourselves as Others See Us’: Christians. Jews, ‘Others’ in Late Antiquity, Chico, Calif. Dalbert, P. (1954) Die Theologie der Hellenistich-Jüdischen Missionsliteratur unter Ausschluss von Philo und Josephus, Hamburg. Daniel, S. (ed.) (1975) Philo, De Specialibus Legibus, Paris. Delling, G. (1970) Studien zum Neuen Testament und zum hellenistischen Judentum, Göttingen. Edwards, J.R. (1987) ‘The use of pros°rxesyai in the Gospel of Matthew’, Journal of Biblical Literature, 106: 65–74. Feldman, L.H. (1950) ‘ “Jewish Sympathisers” in Classical Literature and Inscriptions’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 81: 200–8. —— (1986) ‘The Omnipresence of the God-fearers’, Biblical Archaeology Review 12, 5: 58–63. Fredriksen, P. (1988) From Jesus to Christ: the Origins of the New Testament Images of Jesus, New Haven, Conn. Garland, D.E. (1979) The Intention of Matthew 23 (Supplement to Novum Testamentum 52), Leiden. Georgi, D. (1987) The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians, Edinburgh. Goodman, M.D. (1987) The Ruling Class of Judaea: the Origins of the Jewish Revolt against Rome, AD 66–70, Cambridge. —— (1989a) ‘Proselytising in Rabbinic Judaism’, Journal of Jewish Studies 38: 175–85. —— (1989b) ‘Nerva, the fiscus Judaicus and Jewish Identity’, Journal of Roman Studies 79: 40–4. Jeremias, J. (1958) Jesus’ Promise to the Nations, trans. S.H. Hooke, London. Kasher, A. (1988) Jews, Idumaeans and Ancient Arabs: Relations of the Jews in Eretz-Israel with the Nations of the Frontier and the Desert, Tübingen. Lane, E.N. (1979) ‘Sabazius and the Jews in Valerius Maximus: a Re-examination’, Journal of Roman Studies 69: 35–8. McEleney, N.J. (1974) ‘Conversion, Circumcision and the Law’, New Testament Studies 20: 319–41. Meek, Th. J. (1930) ‘The Translation of Gêr in the Hexateuch and its Bearing on the Documentary Hypothesis’, Journal of Biblical Literature 49: 172–80. Mendels, D. (1987) The Land of Israel as a Political Concept in Hasmonean Literature: Resource to History in Second Century BC Claims to the Holy Land, Tübingen. Munck, J. (1959) Paul and the Salvation of Mankind, trans. F. Clarke, London. Nolland, J. (1979) ‘Proselytism or Politics in Horace, Satires I, 4, 138–143?’, Vigiliae Christianae 33: 347–55. —— (1981) ‘Uncircumcised Proselytes?’, Journal for the Study of Judaism 12, 2: 173–94. Sanders, E.P. (1976) ‘The Covenant as a Soteriological Category and the Nature of Salvation in Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism’, in R. Hamerton-Kelly and R. Scroggs (eds) Jews, Greeks and Christians: Religious Cultures in Late Antiquity, Leiden. —— (1986) Paul, the Law and the Jewish People, London. Schürer, E. (1986) The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, Vol. III. 1, ed. G. Vermes, F. Millar and M. Goodman, Edinburgh. Smith, M. (1978) ‘Rome and the Maccabean Conversions—notes on I Macc. 8’, in E. Bammel, C.K. Barrett and W.D. Davies (eds.) Donum Gentilicium: New Testament studies in honour of David Daube, Oxford. —— (1987) Palestinian Parties that Shaped the Old Testament, London. Smith, W.C. (1978) The Meaning and End of Religion, London. Stern, M. (1974) Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, Vol. I, Jerusalem. —— (1980) Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, Vol. 2, Jerusalem.

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Tcherikover, V.A. (1956) ‘Jewish Apologetic Literature Reconsidered’, Eos 48: 169–93. Tcherikover, V.A. and Fuks, A. (1960) Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum, Vol. II, Cambridge, Mass. Towler, R. (1974) Homo Religiosus: Sociological Problems in the Study of Religion, London.

CHAPTER NINE

A NOTE ON JOSEPHUS, THE PHARISEES AND ANCESTRAL TRADITION*

There has been for many years an intense debate over the influence of the Pharisees in late Second Temple Judaism. Scholars are divided into those who view them as a small pious group uninvolved in wider Judaean affairs—thus dismissing the statement of Josephus at A.J. 13.298 that the Pharisees ‘have the masses as their ally’ and his assertion that all prayers and sacred rites were performed according to their exegesis (A.J. 18.15)—and those who view them as the main leaders of the Jews—thus ignoring the singular absence of Pharisees qua Pharisees from the narrative of the political history of Judaea in the first century CE provided by Josephus both in B.J. and in A.J. and the absence of Pharisees from the description of Jewish religion provided by Josephus in C. Apionem.1 It is the purpose of this note to suggest that both extremes are wrong and that a better understanding of the role of the Pharisees can be gained by further study of Josephus’ statements about the attitude of the Pharisees to ancestral custom. Much has been written about ‘the Pharisaic paradosis’,2 but this phrase is not found in any ancient text. Instead, what Josephus described was the pride of the Pharisees in keeping accurately ‘the ancestral [customs?] and laws in which the Deity rejoices’ (A.J. 17.41),

* A version of this note was presented at the Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies held in Toledo in July 1998. I am grateful to the participants for their comments. 1 See the useful summaries by D. Goodblatt, ‘The Place of Pharisees in FirstCentury Judaism: The State of the Debate’, JSJ 20 (1989), pp. 12–30; S. Mason, Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees (1991); D.S. Williams, ‘Morton Smith on the Pharisees in Josephus’, JQR 84.1 (1993), pp. 29–42. Most contributions over the past ten years have dealt with the relationship of Josephus’ account to his source material in the writings of Nicolaus of Damascus. I here accept the arguments based on stylometry of D.S. Williams, ‘Josephus or Nicolaus on the Pharisees?’, REJ 156 (1997), pp. 43–58, that Josephus did not copy his source blindly and that his words should therefore be taken seriously. 2 A.I. Baumgarten, ‘The Pharisaic Paradosis’, HTR 80 (1987), pp. 63–77.

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their introduction of regulations ‘according to ancestral tradition’ (A.J. 13.408) and their transmission of certain rules ‘received from the ancestors’ (A.J. 13.297). The main characteristic specified about these traditions is that they were not written down in the laws of Moses and that for this reason ‘the Sadducean group reject them, saying that one should consider as rules [only] those which have been written down, and that it is not necessary to keep the regulations handed down from the ancestors’ (A.J. 13.297). There has been, so far as I can tell, a quasi-unanimous assumption among scholars that such unwritten ancestral traditions must have been transmitted orally, and most discussion has focused on whether, and how, such traditions should be identified with the Oral Torah to which reference is made in later rabbinic texts.3 Josephus, however, does not mention oral transmission at all, and it seems to me more likely that he had in mind traditional behaviour rather than traditional teachings. For most individuals in most societies religion is caught, through imitation of parental customs, rather than taught, whether through writings or verbal instruction. This was precisely the distinction Philo had in mind in his contrast between written words and ancient customs as unwritten laws in his commentary on Deut. 19:4: Another commandment of general value is ‘Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmarks which thy forerunners have set up’. Now this law, we may consider, applies not merely to allotments and boundaries of land in order to eliminate covetousness but also to the safeguarding of ancient customs. For customs are unwritten laws, the decisions approved by men of old, not inscribed on monuments nor on leaves of paper which the moth destroys, but on the souls of those who are partners in the same citizenship. For children ought to inherit from

3 See E.P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies (1990), chapter 2; Mason, Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees, pp. 230–45. J.M. Baumgarten, ‘The Unwritten Law in the Pre-Rabbinic Period’, JSJ 3 (1972), pp. 7–29, simply takes for granted that oral transmission was standard for Pharisees. Cf. the comment by L.H. Feldman, Josephus and Modern Scholarship (1984), p. 567: ‘If not written, they must be oral’. A.I. Baumgarten, ‘Pharisaic Paradosis’, pp. 66–67, is unusual in his reference to the importance of behaviour. The discussion of ‘ancestral laws’, in B. Schröder, Die ‘Väterlichen Gesetze’: Flavius Josephus aus Vermittler von Halachah an Griechen und Römer (1996), shows that Josephus did not have any technical meaning for the term. The interesting suggestion by Daniel Schwartz (SCI 17 (1998), pp. 251–52) that patrios may mean ‘of the fatherland’ rather than ‘of the fathers’ does not affect the present argument.

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their parents, besides their property, ancestral customs which they were reared in and have lived with even from the cradle, and not despise them because they have been handed down without written record. Praise cannot be duly given to one who obeys the written laws, since he acts under the admonition of restraint and the fear of punishment. But he who faithfully observes the unwritten deserves commendation, since the virtue which he displays is freely willed. (De Spec. Leg. 4.149–50, Loeb translation)4

Pharisees encouraged ordinary Jews to keep ancestral customs common to all Jews (except for those like Sadducees, who opted out, or those like Essenes, who followed their own quasi-sectarian practices). Hippolytus, in his excursus on the nature of the Pharisees, characterised them simply as followers of ancient tradition (Hippolytus, Ref. 9.28.3). It may thus seem that Pharisees were essentially conservative in behaviour (and, incidentally, the Sadducean rejection of normal custom far more radical than it is usually portrayed).5 Nonetheless it is clear that Pharisees did more than simply accept the status quo. At the least there must be some reason why they were a distinctive group within Judaean Judaism: since both Josephus and St Paul used the term pharisaios about themselves, the name seems to have been a self-description adopted with pride by those who belonged to the hairesis.6 If Josephus is to be believed, they had distinctive theological ideas, not least about life after death (B.J. 2.162–3; A.J. 18.12–14). They supported each other as part of their group; as Josephus put it, they were philallèloi (B.J. 2.166). They also espoused a special lifestyle: they avoided luxury (A.J. 18.12) and, according to the Gospel of Matthew, wore recognisably distinct clothing with ostentatiously broad tefillin and long fringes on the corners of their garments (Matt. 23:5). But when Pharisees gave instruction to the general population, it seems that what they taught was not their distinctive doctrine

4 See the discussion by Naomi G. Cohen, Philo Judaeus: His Universe of Discourse (1993), pp. 242–47, 277 (but ibid., p. 281, she still assumes that Philo refers to the oral law). 5 On Sadducees as conservative, see e.g. E. Schürer, rev. and ed. G. Vermes et al., The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, vol. 2 (1979), p. 411. 6 On ‘Pharisee’ as a self-designation, see Jos. Vita 12; Philippians 3:5. Cf. A.I. Baumgarten, ‘The Name of the Pharisees’, JBL 102 (1983), pp. 411–28. On the meaning of hairesis, see A.I. Baumgarten, The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation (1997), p. 3.

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but ancestral custom. Josephus wrote in the context of the struggle between the Pharisees and Sadducees in the Hasmonean period as if the Pharisees were responsible for establishing and introducing as well as transmitting such customs (A.J. 13.296, 297, 408), but the customs themselves cannot have been specifically Pharisaic if they could be characterised in these same passages as ancestral. Similarly, although in Matt. 23:4 Jesus was portrayed as attacking the Pharisees because they ‘bind heavy burdens . . . and lay them on men’s shoulders’, the burdens in question cannot comprise specifically Pharisaic doctrine since in the preceding verse (23:3) Jesus is quoted as instructing the multitude and his disciples to observe whatever the scribes and Pharisees say; Jesus’ objection here is quite explicitly not to the teachings of the Pharisees but to their alleged hypocritical failure to conform to their own advice (cf. also 23:28). The accusation against Jesus’ disciples recorded in Mark 7:1–5 and Matthew 15:1–3 was not their failure to follow Pharisaic tradition in washing hands before meals—since they were not Pharisees, they had no reason to behave in Pharisaic fashion—but their failure to live ‘according to the tradition of the elders’ (Mark 7:5; Matt. 15:2). Thus Pharisees did have their own distinctive doctrines but what they taught the people more generally was correct behaviour in accordance with ancestral customs. Since they had a reputation for extraordinary accuracy in interpretation of the Torah (A.J. 17.41; B.J. 1.110; 2.162; Vita 191), and since ‘accuracy’ was a slogan much in vogue among Jews in this period,7 and since above all the behaviour thus validated by the Pharisees was in any case what people did because their ancestors had always done it, it is unsurprising that the Pharisees had the support of the masses, although in any particular case it might be hard to know whether a custom was carried out by ordinary Jews because it was customary, or because it had the approval of the Pharisees, or for both reasons. It is true that Josephus stated explicitly (A.J. 18.15), that the Pharisees’ influence was caused by the admiration shown by the Jews towards their theological notions, such as life after death, but I suggest that the role of the Pharisees as teachers of conservative behaviour explains more fully their ambiguous position. This was

7

133.

On ‘accuracy’ as a slogan, see Baumgarten, Flourishing of Jewish Sects, pp. 56,

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a distinctive group of ostentatious religious pietists (cf. B.J. 1.110), devoted to particular doctrines of their own (A.J. 18.12) but sufficiently integrated into the wider Jewish community to permit individuals such as Gamaliel and his son Simon to participate in political life (although not necessarily by virtue of their status as Pharisees).8 Their endorsement of ancestral tradition gave them great popularity among members of the wider population who valued the approval of such conspicuously pious and accurate interpreters of the Torah.

8 On their public careers, see Acts 5:34–40 (Gamaliel); Jos. Vita 190–91 (Simon b. Gamaliel).

CHAPTER TEN

THE PLACE OF THE SADDUCEES IN FIRST-CENTURY JUDAISM Traditional scholarship has long portrayed the Sadducees in firstcentury Judaea as wealthy aristocrats, primarily of priestly origins, whose lifestyle was more secular and hellenized than that of other Jews.1 We are told that their political stance was more in sympathy with the Romans than that of other Jews,2 but that their theology was more conservative.3 Their strong links to the priesthood, and especially the high priests,4 is said to have given them authority in first-century Jerusalem,5 and is said to explain their disappearance from the historical record after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE.6 Such is the standard picture. In the course of his classic studies of late Second Temple Judaism, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah and Judaism: practice and belief, Ed Sanders queried in a number of different places aspects of this picture.7 But, despite his skepticism, the picture has remained up to now more or less intact, with only occasional hints of dissent to be found in the secondary literature.8 It is the purpose of the present study to take further the

1

For one among many basic discussions, see Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (3 vols. in 4 parts; rev. and ed. Geza Vermes,; Edinburgh et al.: T & T Clark, 1973–87), 2:404–14. 2 See the views summarized by A.C. Sundberg, “Sadduccees,” in IDB, vol. 4 (ed. George A. Buttrick et al.; New York/Nashville: Abingdon, 1962), 4:162. 3 Gerhard Kittel, TDNT (10 vols; trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–76), 7:49. 4 Schürer, History of the Jewish People, 2: 413–4. 5 F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone, eds., ODCC (3rd ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 1439. 6 L.H. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 1991), 119. 7 E.P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies (London: SCM Press, 1990), 100–2, 107–8; E.P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE (London: SCM Press, 1992), 317–40. 8 It would be inappropriate to provide a full bibliography here, but it is worth pointing out two studies of particular importance: J. Le Moyne, Les Sadducéens (Paris: Études Bibliques, 1972) and G.G. Porton, “Sadducees,” in ABD, vol. 5 (ed. D.N. Freedman; New York: Doubleday, 1992), 892–5.

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task of demolition and to suggest that every aspect of the traditional view requires re-evaluation and, in many cases, rejection. The evidence about the Sadducees is not particularly extensive if, as I suggest one should, one takes a minimalist approach and uses only the evidence which is certainly applicable to them.9 Beyond the references in the Gospels and Acts, the only Greek references of any value are those in the writings of Josephus, since all later Christian commentators seem to have derived their material either from him or from the New Testament.10 Apart from these Greek texts, references in early (i.e. Tannaitic) rabbinic texts to tsadukim can be used with some confidence in those passages where tsadukim and perushim are found in dispute with each other.11 It is possible in theory that stories about arguments between tsadukim and perushim in the Hebrew texts might not be related to stories in the Greek texts which refer to arguments between pharisaioi and saddoukaioi, but such a coincidence of names seems exceptionally unlikely: Josephus specifically described the nature of Sadducee doctrine as ‘in opposition to the Pharisees’ (A.J. 13.293). Beyond such texts it is unsafe to go (although scholars often do).12 References in rabbinic texts to individual Sadducees may be misleading: since later rabbis used the term tsaduki as a generic term for

9 For a justification of this minimalist approach, see M. Goodman, “Josephus and Variety in First-Century Judaism,” in Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, vol. 7.6 (2000), 201–13 [Chapter 3 above]. 10 The main passages by Josephus are B.J. 2 164–6; A.J. 13.173, 297–8; 18.16–17; 20.199; Vita 10–11. See E. Main, “Les Sadducéens vus par Flavius Josèphe,” RB 97, no. 2 (1990): 161–206, who notes that Josephus’ depiction of the Sadducees should be treated with some caution because he generally discussed them in relation to the Pharisees with whom he aligned himself. The extended discussion of haireseis by Josephus in B.J. 2.119–66 constitutes a peculiar excursus in the context of Josephus’ history of the Jewish war, and it is not unlikely that Josephus originally composed the passage for a different purpose, but I find it hard to imagine that so learned a Jew could have taken over from a non-Jewish author a description of contemporary Judaism which he himself knew to be false, particularly since in three places in the Antiquities (A.J. 13.173, 298, 18.11) Josephus referred his readers back to the specific passage in B.J. where the haireseis were described. 11 E.g. m. Yad. 4.6–7. See J. Lightstone, “Sadducees Versus Pharisees: The Tannaitic Sources,” Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults: Studies for Morton Smith at Sixty, vol. 3 (ed. J. Neusner; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 206–17. 12 The most common extrapolation is from the word “Manasseh” in Pesher Nahum from Qumran; see especially D. David Flusser, “Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes in Pesher Nahum,” in Essays in Jewish History and Philology in Memory of Gedalyahu Alon (eds. M. Dorman, et al.; Tel Aviv, 1970), 159.

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heretics, including Karaites, it is all too probable that the manuscripts of Tannaitic texts, copied by later scribes, may have been corrupted by this later usage. References to other groups which had something in common with some Sadducees, such as the Baetusin (“Boethusians”) referred to in some early rabbinic writings, cannot responsibly be used as evidence for the Sadducees themselves.13 The most valid conclusion to be drawn from the remarkable discovery that the sectarian author of the Qumran text 4QMMT agreed in some aspects of halakha with the tsadukim as portrayed in the Tannaitic texts is not, as some have suggested, that the Qumran sectarians were a type of Sadducee but that Jews with greatly different religious orientations could nonetheless agree on specific aspects of halakah.14 In any case, as I have argued elsewhere,15 in the study of Jewish groups from the late Second Temple period it seems to me good practice, and intellectually justifiable, to follow the general principle that it is wrong to conflate evidence about groups which are prima facie distinct, except in those cases where the reasons to conflate are overwhelming. The Name of the Sadducees It is almost certain that the name “saddoukaios” in Greek was a selfdesignation of which an individual could be proud, since Josephus portrayed himself as having thoroughly investigated at the age of sixteen the hairesis of Sadducees (Vita 10–11).16 The meaning of the name has been much debated, with opinion divided between those, including some early Christian writers, who view it as derived from tzaddik (“righteous”) and those who connect it to Zadok, the high priest at the time of David and Solomon.17 Neither derivation is without philological problems, and both would fit into the rhetoric 13 See L. Grabbe, Judaic Religion in the Second Temple Period (London: Routledge, 2000), 199. 14 See especially Y. Sussmann, “The History of Halacha and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Preliminary Observations on Miqsat Ma"ase Ha-Torah (4QMMT),” Tarbiz 59 (1989): 11–76. 15 See Goodman, “Josephus and Variety”. 16 How trustworthy this claim is cannot be precisely ascertained; see Tessa Rajak, Josephus: The Historian and His Society (2nd ed.; London: Duckworth, 2002), 34–9. 17 For discussion of the etymology of the name, see Le Moyne, Les Sadducéens, 157–63.

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of Second Temple Jews; the attractions of describing yourself as “righteous” are obvious and the “sons of Zadok” were ascribed a special role by the Dead Sea sectarians, so “Zadok” was evidently a name to conjure with.18 But in fact the name “Sadducee” may well have been ambiguous and allusive already in its original use. Both the Dead Sea sect and the rabbis were accustomed to refer to important individuals and groups by allusive description rather than by name: for instance, the “Wicked Priest” and the “Seekers of Smooth Things” in the Dead Sea scrolls, and the rabbinic references to Simon bar Kosiba, leader of the revolt of 132–135 CE, as either Bar Kochba or Bar Koziba.19 But in any case, the original derivation of their name may say little about the nature of the Sadducees by the first century CE. Early History The same argument applies to the early history of the Sadducees: whatever they were like in the second and first centuries BCE, it is entirely possible that they may have changed entirely by the first century CE. A comparison with the changing membership, ideology, and structure of political parties which retain the same name over centuries should make the point.20 Reference to Sadducees is in fact first made in the early Hasmonaean period, and many have therefore surmised that this is where they originated.21 This is of course possible, but by no means necessary, since our ignorance of the third century BCE is profound for the good reason that the ignorance of our prime source for the period, Josephus, seems also to have been profound.22 One can of course imagine good reasons why Sadducees might have emerged in

18 On “sons of Zadok” at Qumran, see, e.g., Geza Vermès, “The Leadership of the Qumran Community: Sons of Zadok-Priests-Congregation,” in Geschichte-TraditionReflexion: Festschrift für Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburtstag, vol. 1 (eds. H. Cancik, et al.; Tubingen; Mohr Siebeck, 1996), 1:375–84. 19 On the real name of Bar Kochba, see Schürer, History of the Jewish People, 1:543. 20 This point was made by Arnaldo Momigliano in his Grinfield Lectures in Oxford on the Septuagint in the late 1970s. 21 Al Baumgarten, Flourishing of Jewish Sects. 22 See in general Fergus Millar, “The Background to the Maccabean Revolution,” JJS 29 (1978): 1–21.

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the traumatic events of the Maccabean crisis in the second century BCE, but any hypothesis should allow for the possibility that they had in fact existed as a group for much longer. Certainly there is no firm warrant to try to understand the Sadducees of the first century CE in the light of the Maccabean crisis;23 this is not a link made by any ancient source. Social Status More of a problem is why Sadducees are so often characterised as wealthy aristocrats.24 Two texts are responsible. First, Josephus stated in A.J. 18.17 that the Sadducees’ doctrine came to only few men, but that these are protoi tois axiomasi. The standard translation of this phrase is “first in rank,” and there are indeed many examples of axiomata with the meaning “rank” in Josephus’ writings,25 but elsewhere in Josephus’ corpus axioma can also mean “prestige” or “reputation,”26 and in the context of A.J. 18.17 the axiomata (reputation) of the Sadducees could be for their doctrines, or even their practice of arguing with their teachers, which has just been described by Josephus, rather than their social standing. Secondly, in A.J. 13.298 Josephus stated that, in the political struggles of the Hasmonean period, the Sadducees persuaded the euporoi, who are here contrasted to the demotikon and plêthos, or populace. The term “euporoi” must here mean “wealthy,” or at least “well off,” but the fact that Sadducees “persuaded” the wealthy does not amount to stating that the Sadducees in the first century CE were themselves rich, just that their philosophy was more likely to prove acceptable to the wealthy than the masses. In his descriptions of the Jewish philosophies in B.J., A.J. and Vita,27 Josephus makes no suggestion that any of the philosophies was restricted to any particular social group. He describes the doctrine of the Sadducees as available for any Jew, of any class, to adopt (as, according to Vita 10, he himself had briefly done). It is quite true that we never read of

23 24 25 26 27

So Grabbe, Judaic Religion, 82. Schürer, History of the Jewish People, 2:404. E.g., B.J. 7.416, 439. E.g., A.J. 1.221 (about Abraam); A.J. 2.193 (about Joseph). See the passages listed in n. 10 above.

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a Sadducee who is poor, but an argument from silence should not be attempted in this case: hardly any individual Sadducees of any kind are identified in the surviving evidence, and in those rare cases when ancient authors identified specific individuals in their writings for any reason, they tended to be rich. Priestly Origins More of a puzzle is why Sadducees should be thought to have priestly origins.28 Even if the name of the group was derived from the name of the High Priest Zadok, the adoption of a priestly name need not imply descent within the priestly caste. As it happens, neither Josephus nor the rabbinic sources suggest any link at all between Sadducees and the priesthood. This silence is very unlikely to be without significance, since Josephus was himself a priest29 (and insisted in Contra Apionem that priests are the expert teachers of the law)30 and the early rabbis had a great deal to say about the importance of priests, not just as officiants in the temple but also as recipients of tithes. As for the further assumption that most high priests were Sadducees, the evidence could in fact suggest the contrary. Josephus specifically stated, when narrating the trial of James the brother of Jesus, that Ananus b. Ananus, the high priest responsible for the trial and execution, was a Sadducee and, hence “more savage than all the Jews in matters concerning trials” (A.J. 20.199). One interpretation of this statement might be that the condemnation of James, the brother of Jesus, and some others was so odd that it needed explaining to gentile readers by pointing out that Ananus’ behavior came about only because high priests, being Sadducees, followed a particularly harsh interpretation of the law,31 but it is hard to see why this particular type of apologetic was needed here if it was normal for high priests to be Sadducees, nor why the particular case of James was illuminated for gentile, non-Christian readers by the addition of this

28

See the careful discussion in Le Moyne, Les Sadducéens. Vita 1–2. 30 C. Ap. 2.193–194. 31 On the trial of James, see R.J. Bauckham, “For What Offence Was James Put to Death?” in James the Just and Christian Origins (eds. B. Chilton and C.A. Evans; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 199–232. 29

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detailed information. It seems to me, rather, that such a statement presupposes that the Sadducaean affiliations of a high priest could not be taken for granted. Since Josephus also stated that prayers and sacrifices were carried out in accordance with the teachings of the Pharisees (A.J. 18.15), life must have been uncomfortable for those high priests who were Sadducees, since they were required to carry out their duties in a way that they themselves believed invalid. Indeed, Josephus implies precisely that: “whenever they come to office, they agree, albeit unwillingly and under compulsion, with what the Pharisees say, because otherwise they would become intolerable to the masses” (A.J. 18.17). The origins of the widespread belief that high priests and their entourages were generally Sadducees lies in unwarranted generalisation from two texts in the New Testament, both to be found in Acts and, according to the commentary of Boismard and Lamouille, ad loc., probably a doublet. The Synoptic Gospels make reference to Sadducees in various contexts, but never suggest that they were priests or that the high priest was a Sadducee, while the Gospel of John remarkably includes no mention of Sadducees at all, so the alleged high-priestly origins of the Sadducees thus rest entirely on two passages in Acts (Acts 4:1–7 and 5:17). Leaving on one side questions about the reliability of Acts as a historical source, closer examination of these passages suggests that they cannot take such a weight. The first passage, Acts 4:1–7, reads as follows: 1. And as they spoke to the people, the priests and the captain of the Temple, and the Sadducees, came upon them [Peter and John], 2. being grieved that they taught the people, and preached in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. 3. And they laid hands on them, and put them in guard to the next day, for it was already evening. 4. But many of those who heard the word believed, and the number of men was about five thousand. 5. It happened next day that their rulers and elders and scribes 6. and Annas the High Priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and as many as were from the high-priestly family, were gathered together to Jerusalem. 7. And when they had set them in the middle, they asked, “By what power, or by what name, have you done this?”

The passage differentiates in verse 1 between the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees: on the face of it, the Sadducees are portrayed therefore as separate from “the priests.” Nothing suggests that the priests, or the captain of the temple, or the rulers,

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elders and scribes (verse 5), or Annas, Caiaphas and their relations (verse 6) were Sadducees. The objections to Peter and John voiced by all these participants was not to the notion of resurrection from the dead (preaching resurrection hardly deserved arrest—Pharisees preached resurrection, after all), but to preaching that resurrection came through Jesus (verses 2 and 7). It appears that in this drama Sadducees were just one group alongside the priests. The second passage, Acts 5:17–18, dealing with a later arrest of Peter and John, reads as follows: 17. Then the High Priest rose up, and all who were with him—which is the hairesis of the Sadducees (or [Lake and Cadbury] “the local school of the Sadducees”)—were filled with indignation, 18. and laid their hands on the apostles, and put them into the common prison.

This passage much more directly identifies those with the high priest as Sadducees and is undoubtedly the key text from which the standard view of the Sadducees as related to the high priest derives, but what it says does not in fact imply anything so general. All it suggests is that those who accompanied the high priest on this occasion were Sadducees. It neither states that the high priest himself was a Sadducee, nor that his entourage was made up of Sadducees on other occasions. Cultural and Political Stance It is hard to see why anyone should ever have suggested that Sadducees were particularly imbued with Greek culture,32 except as a by-product of their alleged social origins—the notion that richer Jews were more likely to adopt elements of fashionable Greek culture is plausible enough, but it has been seen that you did not have to be rich to be a Sadducee. A similar reason lies behind the common assumption that Sadducees would be naturally inclined to support Roman rule and to be supported by Romans,33 since the Romans preferred to control

32 See, e.g., M. Mansoor, “Sadducees,” in EncJud, vol. 14 (ed. C. Roth; Jerusalem: Keter, 1971), 622. 33 On Sadducees as the ruling class, see Schürer, History of the Jewish People, 2:404.

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provincial societies through wealthy local elites.34 It is however certain that being a Sadducee was not reckoned to rule out opposition to Rome, since the commander-in-chief of the Judaean rebels from October 66 CE, the former High Priest Ananus b. Ananus (B.J. 4.319–21), was known to be a Sadducee (A.J. 20.199), a fact which evidently did not undermine his authority. There is slightly more justification in the portrayal of Sadducees as more secular than other Jews, since Josephus asserted repeatedly that one of their distinctive characteristics was the belief that humans have control over their own destinies (B.J. 2.164–6; A.J. 13.173). In one passage (B.J. 2.164) he attributes to the Sadducees the almost Epicurean notion that “they place God outside doing or seeing anything bad,” with the implication that God does not intervene in human affairs. Josephus seems to have had the same thing in mind when he states that the Sadducees “totally do away with fate,” saying that men have complete free will, since elsewhere in his writings he described in very similar terms (but in this case, with explicit disapproval) the doctrines of the Epicureans, “who exclude pronoia from life and do not believe that God governs affairs” (A.J. 10.278). It is easy to see how such a philosophy could lead to behavior which might to the outsider look like atheism (as happened to Epicureans)—if the gods do not intervene in human life, for practical purposes their existence is irrelevant. However, the case of the Sadducees is different, since according to Josephus’ own testimony (as well as that of others), they had strong views on how God should be worshipped and on all aspects of the keeping of the Torah (see below). It is evident that their theology was in some respects inconsistent, but this should not altogether surprise: the claim of the Pharisees as described by Josephus in A.J. 18.13, that everything is brought about by fate but nonetheless humans have free will, is also inconsistent, although in his version of Pharisaic philosophy in A.J. 13.172, Josephus attributes to the Pharisees the more tenable doctrine that “Some things, but not all, are the work of fate.”35

34 35

Goodman, Ruling Class of Judaea. Emphasis added.

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Josephus described Sadducaism as one of the philosophies any religious Jew might espouse. Modern scholars routinely describe that philosophy as “conservative,”36 even though the strong views of the Sadducees just described on the unimportance of fate might already seem to throw such a characterisation into doubt. In fact, it is wholly inappropriate, since the Sadducees took particular care to deny the validity of ancestral traditions. According to Josephus (A.J. 13.297), the Sadducees differed from the Pharisees in their insistence on relying on the written laws alone and their refusal to follow traditions handed down through the generations. The issue which divided the parties was not that Sadducees did not accept Pharisaic tradition, which would be obvious, but that they said that there was no need to keep “those laws from the transmission of the fathers,” that is, any ancestral customs.37 As Ed Sanders has argued, despite their claim to rely only on the written laws, Sadducees must in practice have developed traditions about how to interpret them, since all written legal texts need interpretations if they are to be useful.38 Records of some of their interpretative traditions were indeed preserved in the early rabbinic writings for polemical purposes, such as the Sadducee method for counting the omer (m. Menah. 10:3) or for carrying out the red heifer ritual (m. Parah 3:7). The difference between Pharisees and Sadducees thus lay less in what the groups actually did than in what they said they were doing. Sadducees had strong views on purity and Sabbath laws just as Pharisees did (m. Yad. 4:6; m. 'Erub. 6:1). To the author of the Gospel of Matthew, Sadducees were essentially just another group of Jewish leaders alongside Pharisees (Matt 3:7), distinguished only by their rejection of the notion of resurrection (Matt 22:23–33). The notion of resurrection seems to have been the crucial issue also for the author of Acts 23: 7–8, which states that “the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit”: disbelief in angels is not ascribed to the Sadducees by any other source, and

36 Schürer, History of the Jewish People, 2:411; Kittel, TNDT 7:49; Mansoor, “Sadducees,” 621. 37 M. Goodman, “A Note on Josephus, the Pharisees and Ancestral Tradition,” JJS 50 (1999): 17–20 [Chapter 9 above]. 38 E.P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 333–6.

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the wording of Acts (“the Pharisees confess both,” not “all three”) suggests that “neither angel nor spirit” refers to types of resurrection, not separate doctrines to be added to resurrection.39 The Pharisees were willing to justify their interpretations of biblical laws by pointing to what Jews in practice did (and, it was assumed, always had done).40 By contrast, the Sadducees refused to accept the validity of any ancestral custom that could not be explicitly justified from a biblical text. In so doing, they rejected customs which may have been universally accepted over centuries. Far from being conservatives (as the Pharisees were), Sadducees were radical biblical fundamentalists. It is difficult to be a pure fundamentalist. When Sadducees refused to express belief in resurrection (Acts 23:7–8) and rejected the nonbiblical custom of the 'erub (m. 'Erub. 6:2), they could point to the fact that these concepts do not appear in Scripture, but when it came to knotty issues of purity law, the claim to be biblically based may often have been little more than an assertion. It is easy to see why a philosophy which claimed authority from the text alone encouraged disputes between its practitioners (B.J. 2.166; A.J. 18.16), and why there were so few Jews prepared to devote themselves to the constant questioning of the text required by their austere approach (A.J. 18.17). To be a Sadducee, you would have to be an intellectual: perhaps this explains why they were “first in honors” (A.J. 18.17). Influence It is not hard to imagine the probable attitude of ordinary Jews to radical biblical fundamentalists who rejected wholesale much in Judaism to which they held dear. Josephus is explicit: the Sadducees achieved nothing when in office, because otherwise the masses would not tolerate them (A.J. 18.17). This must, of course, be an exaggeration—the one Sadducee explicitly attested by Josephus as a holder of political authority was the High Priest Ananus b. Ananus (A.J. 39

On the Gospel depictions, see (e.g.) A. J. Saldarini, Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees in Palestinian Society (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1989), 144–73. On Acts, see David Daube, “On Acts 23: Sadducees and Angels,” JBL 109 (1990): 493–7; E. Main, “Les Sadducéens et la resurrection des morts: comparison entre Mc 12, 18–27 et Lc 20, 27–38,” RB 103 (1996): 411–32. 40 See Goodman, “A Note on Josephus”.

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20.199), who became commander-in-chief of the rebels in October 66 CE (B.J. 2.563) and certainly achieved a great deal politically (B.J. 4.319–21), but not (so far as can be seen from Josephus’ narrative) in the imposition of Sadducaic law and ritual. Certainly, the notion that Sadducees ran the temple41 is explicitly contradicted by Josephus’ statement that “with regard to prayer and sacrifices” the ordinary Jews followed the teachings not of the Sadducees but of the Pharisees (A.J. 18.15). The evidence may perhaps be best explained by suggesting that Sadducees might be admired as intellectuals but that their advice would not therefore necessarily be taken seriously in practice any more than is that of university professors in contemporary society. Sadducees After 70 CE The textbooks assert that the Sadducees disappeared after 70 CE,42 basing their assertion on the belief that the Sadducees were high priests (and hence had no role once the temple was destroyed) or, more simply, on an alleged lack of evidence for Sadducees after that date, but this argument is not strong, as I have discussed in more detail elsewhere.43 It is not in fact the case that references to Sadducaism as a living philosophy ended after 70 CE. Most notably, Josephus himself wrote about Sadducaism as a type of contemporary Judaism—he wrote in the present tense—as late as the Vita, published in or after 93 CE. Later sources are indeed more or less silent, but no deduction about the state of Sadducees can be safely based on their silence. If rabbinic literature has little to say about Sadducees, this need not imply their non-existence, just the solipsistic interest of the rabbinic texts in what is required for one to be a pious adult male rabbinic Jew:44 instead of differentiating other types of Judaism, the rabbis lumped together all those they considered deviant, labelling them

41

See, e.g., Mansoor, “Sadducees,” 620. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition, 119. 43 M. Goodman, “Sadducees and Essenes After 70 CE,” in Crossing the Boundaries: Festschrift for Michael Goulder (eds. S.E. Porter, et al.; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 347–56 [Chapter 13 below]. 44 See S. Stern, Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings (Leiden: Brill, 1994). 42

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as minim, “heretics.”45 It is not at all unlikely that on occasion the minut attacked was that of Sadducees (particularly when minim are said to deny resurrection).46 The apparent silence about Sadducees in Greek Jewish literature after Josephus is equally easy to explain, since no such literature was preserved—not because it was not written, but because the Christians who preserved earlier Greek Jewish writings lost interest in Jewish literature once they were creating their own.47 If, as I have argued above, it was not necessary to be a priest to be a Sadducee, Sadducees had no need of the temple to continue to hold their philosophy. They did not even need each other: theirs was an individualist creed, and they did not need to create a group around them as the Essenes did—indeed, they were positively unpleasant to each other (B.J. 2.166), so creating a group must have been quite difficult at any time. When at the end of the first millennium CE, the rabbis were confronted by Karaites who claimed to go back to biblical fundamentals, rejecting rabbinic Judaism, the rabbis characterised them sometimes as Sadducees, a label some of the Karaites seem to have in part willingly accepted.48 In terms of genealogical connection, the medieval rabbis were wrong, but in terms of ideology, they were right. The lack of a temple is no hindrance to adoption of Sadducaism. It would still be quite possible for a pious Jew to become a Sadducee now.

45 M. Goodman, “The Function of Minim in Early Rabbinic Judaism,” in Geschichte-Tradition-Reflexion: Festschrift Für Martin Hengel Zum 70. Geburtstag, vol. 1 (eds. H. Cancik, et al.; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), 1:501–10 [Chapter 14 below]. 46 Goodman, “Function of Minim,” 504–5. 47 Goodman, “Sadducees and Essenes,” 355. 48 L. Nemoy, “Karaites,” in EncJud, vol. 10 (ed. C. Roth; Jerusalem: Keter, 1971), 10:765.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A NOTE ON THE QUMRAN SECTARIANS, THE ESSENES AND JOSEPHUS

It is undoubtedly rash for one of Geza Vermes’s pupils who has not specialized in the interpretation of the Dead Sea scrolls to offer in his honour a suggestion about the origins of the Qumran community directly opposed to the view that Geza himself has championed for most of his scholarly career.1 I do so primarily because I believe that the question should be resolved not by considering afresh the scrolls themselves but by a different appreciation of the writings of Josephus.2 As a result of this reconsideration, I shall suggest that the Essene hypothesis of Qumran origins is much less probable than is usually proposed. The basis of the Essenes hypothesis lies in the similarities between the communal life laid down in the sectarian rules and the communal life ascribed to the Essenes by some of the Greek and Latin authors who referred to them.3 The site of Qumran can also be made, more or less, to correspond to the location of the Essenes

1 I am grateful to Emanuel Tov and especially to Geza Vermes for their helpful, if skeptical, comments on this short paper. I have kept references to modern discussions to a minimum, in the belief that extensive bibliographical information will not be needed for readers of this Journal, since the wise editorial policy of Geza Vermes over many years has ensured that new scholarship on the Dead Sea scrolls has frequently featured on its pages. 2 Most discussions of the relationship of Josephus’ writings to the Qumran scrolls take for granted that the sectarians were Essenes. Cf., for example, T.S. Beall, Josephus’ Description of the Essenes illustrated by the Dead Sea Scrolls (1988). Many of the points that I am making in this brief study have been raised before as a possibility by scholars ever since Louis Ginzberg, An Unknown Jewish Sect (original German edn. 1922; rev. English edn. 1976). The case seems to me to be worth restating because even those scholars most acutely aware of the dangers of parallelomania in other fields, such as the comparison of the New Testament to rabbinic literature, seem to drop their guard when they come to consider the identity of the Dead Sea sect. 3 The comparison is laid out most clearly in E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, ed. G. Vermes et al., vol. II (1979), pp. 583–5.

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asserted by Pliny,4 and one period of occupation of the site coincides with the efflorescence of Essenes in the late Second Temple period.5 Acknowledged discrepancies, such as the emphasis on common ownership of property and on celibacy, which rank high in some of the classical descriptions of the Essenes but are not found in every group depicted in the scrolls, can be explained away by a number of plausible strategies: the differences may reflect different groups of Essenes, or different stages of the development of the sect, or the differing viewpoints of ‘insider’ compared to ‘outsider’ accounts.6 Above all, it is averred, the Essene theory ‘is to be preferred to theories linking Qumran with the Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Judaeo-Christians, not to mention the medieval Karaites’.7 It is not my intention to dispute the plausibility of any of this hypothesis as it stands, but simply to draw attention to one crucial pre-supposition which underlies it. Arguments about which of the Jewish groups known from the extant literary sources to have existed in late Second Temple Judaea should be identified with the Qumran sectarians take for granted that the extant sources provide, between them, a full list of such groups. If that were so, it would indeed be the task of scholarship to adjudicate between the claims of different groups to be identified with the Qumran sectarians. But it seems to me demonstrably unlikely that such a full list survives. It is easy to show that all the extant literary sources apart from Josephus provide only a partial picture of first-century Judaism. If only the New Testament and the rabbinic tradition survived, modern scholars would know about Pharisees and Sadducees but not Essenes; since at least one amoraic rabbi asserted that there were no fewer than twenty-four groups of heretics within Judaism before 70 CE, that rabbi, if he thought at all about the implications of his assertion, must have assumed that most such groups had names which later Jews no longer recalled.8 If only the voluminous writ4 Pliny, Natural History 5.17, 4 (73). On the possible meanings of infra hos Engada, there is a large literature. Cf. R. De Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1973), pp. 133–8. 5 Cf. G. Vermes and M. Goodman, The Essenes According to the Classical Sources (1989), p. 14. 6 G. Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective (1977), pp. 127–30. 7 Schürer, History, vol. II, p. 585. 8 Cf. ySanh. 29c: ‘R. Yohanan said, “Israel did not go into exile until there had been made twenty-four sects of minim”.’ I do not suggest that this tradition should be taken as a serious reflection of Second-Temple times, since the number 24 is

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ings of Philo survived, modern scholars would know about Essenes but not Pharisees or Sadducees. If scholars had to rely on the testimony of the non-Jewish pagan authors who referred to the Jews, they would learn many bizarre myths about Judaism, but nothing at all about the existence of various groups within Judaism: in none of the writings of these authors does any reference to Pharisees or Sadducees survive, and Pliny and Dio Chrysostom, who did refer to Essenes, did not describe them as a type of Jew.9 The reason for the inadequacy of all these sources lies not in censorship, nor even necessarily in ignorance (although that best explains the vagaries of some of the non-Jewish accounts), but in the interests of the authors and of the Christian and rabbinic traditions which preserved their texts. Rabbis were not interested in non-rabbinic Jews except in so far as disputes with them generated new halakha;10 early Christians were primarily interested either in ancient Israel or in those types of Jews with whom Jesus and his earliest followers came into contact and sometimes conflict, not in Judaism for its own sake.11 The only ancient author to mention Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots and Judaeo-Christians as well as Essenes, was Josephus. The question to be addressed is therefore whether Josephus, who came from first-century Judaea, and had a deep interest in religious questions, attempted in his writings to produce a full picture of the different religious groups within his society. Curiously, in the one work where Josephus explicitly claimed to be describing Judaism as it was, the Contra Apionem, he denied the existence of variety within Judaism altogether. According to C.Ap. 2.179–8, all Jews agree on everything about the nature of the divine and about the correct way to worship and obey the commandments; this ‘admirable harmony’ (C.Ap. 2.179) under the tutelage of the priests (C.Ap. 2.185–7) marks them off from other peoples, and

probably symbolic and the correlation between division within Israel and Israel’s exile was a standard rabbinic motif. 9 See the sources collected in M. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, 3 vols. (1974–86). 10 See my arguments in ‘Sadducees and Essenes after 70 CE’, in S.E. Porter, P. Joyce and D.E. Orton (eds.), Crossing the Boundaries (Festshrift for Michael Goulder) (1994), pp. 347–56 [Chapter 13 below]. See also S. Stern, Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings (1994). 11 See now M. Taylor, Anti-Judaism and Early Christian Identity: A Critique of the Scholarly Consensus (1995).

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especially from Greeks. Doubtless Josephus’ picture was idealized, but the innocent reader of Contra Apionem, assumed by Josephus to be a gentile in need of instruction about the nature of Judaism, would be quite unaware of religious divisions within Jewish society.12 If he or she was sufficiently curious to follow up Josephus’ references in Contra Apionem to his earlier works (C.Ap. 1.47–56), the discrepancies might have seemed rather startling. In all three of those earlier works Josephus wrote, as is notorious, about the three haireseis (‘schools of thought’) within Judaism (B.J. 2.119; A.J. 13.171; 18.11; Vita 10); in B.J. 2.119, the three groups are described as types of philosophy. The description of these philosophies was evidently a set-piece, originally composed either by Josephus or by someone else. At A.J. 18.11 Josephus referred the reader to his account in B.J. 2.119–66, and a similar account, perhaps derived indirectly from Josephus, survives in the writings of Hippolytus of Rome (Refutation of all Heresies 9.18–28).13 This is the closest that Josephus came to claiming to produce a list of the different groups or tendencies within Judaism. Was it intended to be complete? The question, once asked, is instantly answered. Josephus’ entire reason for inserting a description of the three philosophies into the narrative at B.J. 2.119–66 and A.J. 18.11–22 was to introduce a fourth philosophy, entirely novel in 6 CE and dedicated to the anarchist doctrine that Jews should call no-one their leader and master apart from God (B.J. 2.108; A.J. 18.23). It is not my purpose here to rehearse the problems of the inconsistencies in Josephus’ accounts of this philosophy, nor the much-debated question of its influence on either sicarii or zealots.14 My intention is only to discuss Josephus’ literary purpose. Josephus described the three old philosophies in order to claim that a fourth group had made a major historical impact on first-century Judaea. The whole point of the passages in B.J. 2.119–66 and

12

Cf. Jos., C.Ap. 2.193–6 (Jews have one Temple and one God). See M. Black, ‘The account of the Essenes in Hippolytus and Josephus’, in C.H. Dodd Festschrift (1956), pp. 172–5; M. Smith, ‘The description of the Essenes in Josephus and the Philosophoumena’, HUCA 29 (1958), pp. 273–313. 14 See esp. M. Hengel, The Zealots: Investigations into the Jewish Freedom Movement in the Period from Herod I until 70 AD (1989). The incomplete nature of Josephus’ account of Jewish groups has often been noted (e.g. P.S. Alexander, ‘Rabbinic Judaism and the New Testament’, ZNW 74 (1983), p. 425, n. 11), but scholars seem oddly unwilling to face the implications of this fact. 13

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A.J. 18.11–22 was to assert that there were four types of Judaism. Yet when Josephus described his own upbringing at Vita 10–11, he reverted to the enumeration of the Jewish philosophies as three: ‘at about the age of sixteen I wished to get experience of the schools of thought to be found among us. There are three of these—Pharisees the first, Sadducees the second, Essenes the third—as we have often remarked.’ Thus he managed to combine his own assertion that there were four Jewish haireseis with the continuing assumption that there were really only three. Quite apart from the Fourth Philosophy, Josephus was of course aware of numerous other types of Judaism. In Vita 12, immediately after his reference to ‘the’ three, he described the ascetic Judaism of Bannus. In A.J. 18.259 he described Philo as ‘not inexpert in philosophy’. He referred elsewhere to the religious teachings of John the Baptist, Jesus and numerous mavericks: not all won his approval, but all were assumed by him to be teaching some distinctive kind of Judaism. It seems certain that Josephus did not intend to encompass all varieties of contemporary Judaism in his set-piece description of the three haireseis. If this appraisal of Josephus’ intentions is correct, the Essene hypothesis of Qumran origins will come to seem rather less compelling. It is undoubtedly true that the information about the lives of the sectarians in IQS is closer to the description of the Essenes in the classical sources than to that of any other group described by those writers, but when new evidence turned up by chance in the Judaean Desert, scholars should not have been looking for a direct correlation between the new material and what was already known. It was always more plausible that the new evidence would tell them about a type or types of Judaism previously undiscovered. It is a truism that most information about late Second Temple Judaism is now irretrievably lost, since the same is true about every aspect of the ancient world. It would be remarkable if the new evidence happened to fit precisely with the partial literary record. Thus, it is up to proponents of the Essene hypothesis to make their case. None of the published documents from Qumran refers to the sectarians as Essenes or by any Semitic word of similar derivation or meaning. This fact can of course be explained away by adherents of the Essene hypothesis—members of a group may never use in ‘insider’ literature the collective name for themselves which they use when presenting themselves to the rest of the world—but it does put

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the onus of persuasion on those who advocate the Essene identity of the Qumran sect.15 I have left to the end the arguments from archaeology. Here I must begin by stating that, in the light of the archaeological evidence alone, it seems overwhelmingly likely that the site at Qumran was used by ascetic Jews. Apart from the curious choice of location for a settlement, the strongest argument lies in the insistence of the inhabitants on producing their own pottery in an area where fuel supplies for the kiln were very hard to obtain: such expenditure of effort to ensure control over the production, and hence the purity, of vessels for food makes most sense in the light of notions about kashrut derived from Leviticus.16 Pliny and Dio Chrysostom both located a settlement of Essenes somewhere in the region of Qumran.17 That in itself makes identification possible, but no more. Arguments from silence about archaeological data are perhaps the most dubious of all. More investigation may always turn up something new. It is not even true that Qumran was the only settlement of its type near the Dead Sea: the site of En el-Ghuweir, discovered in the 1970s, is similar.18 Numerous other sites could emerge at any time in areas still insufficiently explored. Archaeologists do not even know exactly what they are looking for. Pliny unhelpfully described the Essenes as at a distance (unspecified) from the shore of the Dead Sea, but with the company of palm trees; Dio Chrysostom described them as an ‘entire and prosperous city’ which, if true, would suggest somewhere rather more substantial than the Qumran remains reveal.19 It is salutary to recognise that the interpretation of a site through the perspective of literary texts belongs to a tradition of biblical archaeology that archaeologists in other areas of both Jewish and Roman history have been at pains to avoid over the past decades. 15 A similar point is made on the simple grounds of general scholarly skepticism by S. Talmon, ‘The community of the Renewed Covenant: Between Judaism and Christianity’, in E. Ulrich and J. Vanderkam (eds.), The Community of the Renewed Covenant (1994), pp. 5–10. 16 See, most conveniently, R. De Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1973). 17 On the text in Pliny, see above, n. 4. Dio Chrysostom, in Synesius of Cyrene, Dio 3, 2, locates the Essenes ‘near the Dead Sea, in the centre of Palestine, not far from Sodom’. 18 See P. Bar-Adon, ‘Another Settlement of the Judaean Desert Sect at ‘En elGhuweir on the Shores of the Dead Sea’, BASOR 277 (1977), pp. 1–25. 19 There is no extant parallel to the reference in Dio to a city of Essenes.

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The implications of my essentially negative remarks are in fact quite positive. I suggest that the logical response of scholars to the chance discovery of texts in the Judaean Desert should not have been to try to fit the information from them into what was already known through the texts preserved by Jews and Christians by regular copying since antiquity. Rather, the new evidence has revealed aspects of Judaism previously unknown. The Dead Sea sectarians had many important preoccupations in common with other contemporary Jews such as biblical interpretation, eschatology, halakha and purity; the similarities should not surprise, since all forms of first-century Judaism derived ultimately from the Torah and were subjected to similar cultural and social influences. The details which have most impressed adherents of the Essene hypothesis—common ownership and the celibacy of some members of the sect—are in fact found only in one of the Qumran documents, the Community Rule.20 It is notorious in studies of other societies that to sectarians themselves the differences which seem to the outsider least significant may often appear the most important factor in their self-definition.21 In sum, the details which have led scholars to identify the Qumran sectarians with other Jewish groups can be most plausibly explained by the common origin of all such groups in first-century Judaism. The message of the scrolls, if they were not composed by Essenes, is thus evident. It is that the extent of variety within first-century Judaism was even greater than anyone could have known before the scrolls were found. The importance of this insight for the history of Judaism and the origins of Christianity should not require elaboration. The scrolls have provided a unique opportunity to counteract the weight of later traditions, to discover just some elements of the Judaism of the first century which both rabbis and Christians were to forget.22

20

Cf. Vermes and Goodman, Essenes According to Classical Sources, pp. 7–8. I owe this observation, which is backed by many studies of modern sects, to Al Baumgarten, from whom I have learned much about the nature of sectarianism. 22 This is also the main contention of Talmon, ‘Community of the Renewed Covenant’, pp. 3–23. 21

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE PERSECUTION OF PAUL BY DIASPORA JEWS

The question addressed in this paper is limited in scope but has, I believe, quite wide ramifications. It is simply this: Why was Paul subjected by some of the Jews he met to judicial punishments? The problem is an issue above all for Jewish rather than Christian history, since the aim is to discover the motivation of the persecutors, not the explanations given for their suffering by the persecuted. Some distinctions will be useful at the outset. From the point of view of the persecutors, judicial punishments require quite a different attitude than less formal types of persecution. Thus judicial punishments should be distinguished from passive approval of punishments carried out by others, as in the support apparently expressed by the Jews for the execution of James, the brother of John, and the arrest of Peter, by Agrippa (Acts 12:1–19). They are also to be distinguished from mob action engendered by zealous enthusiasm, such as (probably) the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7:51–60),1 or the expulsion of Christians from synagogues (e.g. John 9:22),2 or verbal attacks, from sophisticated religious polemics to formal cursing.3 All such informal violence may have been just as terrible to undergo as judicial punishment, but those responsible will not have needed to think so much about their hostile actions. By contrast, judicial punishments are by definition deliberate.4 A second distinction must be between, first, the explanation of persecution given by the victims, who will naturally have wanted to

1 Cf. J. Munck, The Acts of the Apostles, Garden City 1967, p. 68; E. Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles, Philadelphia 1971, p. 296. 2 Cf. R. Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to St. John, London 1971, p. 250. 3 On polemics and the birkat haminim, see most conveniently J.T. Sanders. Schismatics, Sectarians, Dissidents, Deviants: The First One Hundred Years of Jewish-Christian Relations, London 1993, pp. 58–61. 4 For a survey of the varied measures taken against Christians by Jews, see E. Bammel, “Jewish Activity against Christians in Palestine According to Acts,” R. Bauckham (ed.), The Book of Acts in its Palestinian Setting, Grand Rapids, MI 1995, pp. 357–364.

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make sense of, and ascribe some meaning to, their suffering; second, the judicial charges brought, which may have been trumped up in particular cases, but whose existence as potential charges was nonetheless clearly essential if a case was to stick; and third—my topic here—the reasons for electing to bring such charges, since the existence on the statute book of laws against particular behavior does not in itself necessitate in any legal system action to enforce those laws, and this will have been all the more true in ancient societies, which lacked any state prosecution service and therefore relied on private initiative for accusations to be brought. My theme will therefore be the incentives which impelled some Jews to bring charges against some early Christians, in the full expectation that such reasons may have differed in every case. The investigation is not without problems. Most obvious is one of method: almost all the accounts of persecution come from the Christians who were persecuted, and since martyrdom early became a potent theme in Christian literature, as in Acts 5:40, which refers to “suffering for Jesus’ name,”5 it will be hard to find reliable evidence of the views of the Jewish persecutors concerned: the issue raises in a particularly acute form the problem that references to Jews in Christian texts relate only obliquely to references to Christians in Jewish texts, a disjunction which should not really surprise. The problem for the historian of Judaism grappling with the persecution of early Christians is the abundant evidence of the pluralism tolerated within Jewish society in this period. The variety of coexisting Judaisms has been, if anything, confirmed by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, especially if the evidence of the scrolls is not robbed of its value by unnecessary identification of the sectarians who produced them with one of the numerous groups already known from literary sources.6 Disputes between such groups are of course well attested in late Second Temple times, but although Pharisees and Sadducees indulged in political struggle under the Hasmoneans7 and

5 See W.H.C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church: A Study of Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus, Grand Rapids 1965. 6 See M. Goodman, “A Note on the Qumran Sectarians, the Essenes and Josephus,” JJS, 46 (1995), pp. 161–166 [Chapter 11 above]. 7 E.g. Ant. 13.296–298; cf. E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, rev. G. Vermes et al., II, Edinburgh 1979, pp. 381–414.

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sometimes unruly demonstrative actions to support their views about the correct conduct of such Temple rituals as the sacrifice of the red heifer,8 none of this involved any judicial charge, despite theological differences which could be quite acute. In the same way—to anticipate some of the conclusions of this paper—it must be significant that for many years after its foundation the Jerusalem Church is said to have prospered in peace (Acts 2:46–47); in other words, the theological views adopted by Jewish Christians did not always automatically lead to violent opposition by their fellow Jews. The reasons for the judicial actions taken by the authorities in Judea against Jesus and some of his followers have long been argued to be essentially political, and I shall not rehearse the arguments again here. It will suffice to note that, whatever the charges brought against Jesus before the High Priest and his supporters,9 the reason for their concern to deal with him is likely to have lain in the volatile politics of the Judean elite as it strove to maintain its position with the Roman governor;10 the closest parallel, notoriously, was the beating incurred by the strange prophet named Jesus son of Ananias, whose (correct) prediction of the destruction of the city of Jerusalem was offered so continuously that the authorities deemed it a threat to good order and tried, not surprisingly, to silence him by beatings (B.J. 6.300–309).11 It is just as plausible that a need to keep order lay behind the arrest of Stephen on a charge, brought to the Jerusalem council by diaspora Jews, of speaking blasphemous words against the Temple and the Torah (Acts 6:9–14); if the charge is correctly reported by the author of Acts, it is worth noting that it seems to have borne little relation to the reasons for the eventual stoning to which Stephen was subjected. Political explanations are also as good as any for the persecution of the Church by Saul before his conversion (Acts 26:10–11) and the execution of James, the brother of Jesus, by the Sadducaean High Priest, Ananus, son of Ananus (Ant. 20.200a); it is worthwhile noting that Josephus’ description of the latter episode falls squarely in the middle of his narrative of the

8

Cf. M. Parah 3:7; cf. M. Goodman, Mission and Conversion, Oxford 1994, pp. 171–172. 9 See, e.g., P. Winter, On the Trial of Jesus, Berlin 19742. 10 Cf. M. Goodman, The Ruling Class of Judaea, Cambridge 1987, pp. 27–133. 11 See the discussion in E.P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, Philadelphia 1985, pp. 302–303.

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faction struggles within the Judean ruling class which ravaged the city in the sixties CE.12 More difficult to explain, and my main concern here, is the willingness of the Jewish authorities in the diaspora to take judicial action against Christians. The earlier cases, such as the self-imposed mission of Saul to bring any Jewish Christians he might find in Damascus to Jerusalem for punishment (Acts 9:1–2), are less problematic, since the need for the Judean ruling elite to prevent trouble in areas surrounding Judea itself can be understood purely in terms of Judean politics: just as the outbreak of revolt in Jerusalem in 66 CE affected the Jewish communities in the cities of the Decapolis as far north as Damascus (B.J. 2.457–498, 559–561), so too the Jerusalem uprising itself was sparked off by events which began in tensions between Jews and gentiles in the mixed city of Caesarea (B.J. 2.284–296), and it would make sense for the High Priest to stamp out talk by Jews in Damascus of the imminent arrival of the End of Days in the volatile atmosphere in Jerusalem during the last years of the governorship of Pontius Pilate.13 But such a “Judean” explanation is much less plausible for the actions taken against Paul later in his career, and it is to this topic that the rest of this paper is devoted. At 2 Corinthians 11:24, Paul boasted that his devotion to the propagation of the Christian message was proved by his sufferings at the hands of the Jews: “By the Jews five times I received forty [stripes] save one.” The emphasis on the precise number suggests that the punishment to which Paul alluded must have been formal lashing at the hands of an official of a Jewish court rather than an informal lynching, and it is a reasonable hypothesis that the beatings took place in the diaspora, where Paul undertook most of his mission, rather than Judea, not least because a fivefold repetition of so serious a punishment is hard to envisage within the comparatively short period of Paul’s known residence in Jerusalem after his conversion.14 At any rate the punishment must have been voluntarily accepted by Paul, since at any time he could

12

See Goodman, Ruling Class, pp. 138–151. Ant. 18.55–62, 85–89; cf. Schürer, History (n. 7 above), I, pp. 383–387. See P. Fredriksen, “Judaism, the Circumcision of Gentiles, and Apocalyptic Hope: Another look at Galatians 1 and 2,” JTS, 42 (1991), pp. 532–564. 14 For the suggestion that the beatings might have taken place in Judea, see Sanders, Schismatics (n. 3 above), pp. 5–6, 9, 203–204. 13

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have removed himself from the jurisdiction of the Jewish court by denying his continued adherence to the Jewish community: that some Jews could simply divorce themselves from their Jewish origins in this way is clear from the career of Tiberius Julius Alexander, the nephew of Philo and eventual Prefect of Egypt,15 and it seems wrong to assert that the coherence of Jewish communal life made it difficult for those who wished to opt out to do so.16 Punishment implies inclusion17 and its recognition both by Paul and by the Jews who punished him, especially if the statement in Acts is accepted that Paul was a Roman citizen who could thus at any time have stopped the beatings by stating the fact (cf. Acts 22:25–26). Paul’s motive in insisting on his Jewishness is not hard to discern, since his claim to be a Hebrew and an Israelite (2 Cor. 11:22), “circumcised on the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin” (Phil. 3:5), and so on was evidently intended to impress his fellow Jewish Christians with his credentials. But why should the synagogue leaders have accepted Paul’s self-evaluation? It might have seemed easier simply to expel him from the community. Some empathy with their predicament is necessary. If Paul could have accused them of abusing a Roman citizen they ran great risks both to their own persons and for their communities. Thirty nine stripes was a flogging heavy enough for a man to die. Their reasons for invoking Jewish law—which law, and on what charge, is not really important—must have been very potent. So, what was Paul doing to provoke some of his fellow Jews into so rash a reaction? The suggestions made in commentaries and in earlier studies of the question seem to be pure guesses.18 It needs to be kept in mind that the issue is not the charge or charges brought by his accusers, but the reason why someone dared to bring a charge of any kind. My suggestion is that the behavior which so offended the Diaspora Jewish authorities was precisely the behavior to which

15

V.A. Burr, Tiberius Julius Alexander, Bonn 1955. But note A.E. Harvey, “Forty Strokes Save One: Social Aspects of Judaizing and Apostasy,” idem (ed.), Alternative Approaches to New Testament Study, London 1985, pp. 79–82, who emphasizes the difficulties involved in changing allegiances. 17 The phrase is from E.P. Sanders, Paul, the Law and the Jewish People, Philadelphia 1983, p. 192. 18 See, for example, Harvey, “Forty Strokes,” p. 84, with the suggestion that Paul’s crime was his lax practice of the law caused by consorting with gentile Christians. 16

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he devoted himself according to his own extant letters, his mission to the gentiles. Paul devoted himself to persuading gentiles to join not the existing Jewish synagogues but his new Christian communities.19 Such behavior should not in itself have caused any upset to Jews, who were quite accustomed both to gentiles as God-fearers on the fringes of their communities (cf. B.J. 7.45 about such hangers-on in Antioch) and to gentiles as full converts to Judaism (cf. the narrative of the conversion of the royal family of Adiabene as described in Ant. 20.17–96). In any case, if Paul’s converts joined separate communities the Jewish authorities need not ever have come across them. The problem for Paul’s fellow Jews lay in the hostile reaction to the conversion of gentiles to Christianity to be expected from unconverted gentiles, in particular the civic and Roman authorities, and the possibility that, because Paul portrayed himself as a Jew, they as Jews might be blamed for his behavior. I have argued elsewhere that Paul was the first Jew known not just to have accepted but actively to have sought the conversion of gentiles.20 Such behavior was offensive to gentiles not because of the positive practices which Paul enjoined on his new flock—pagans were generally quite tolerant in this period of the spread of new religious rites—but because of his insistence that they should give up their pagan cults. This insistence is found consistently both in Paul’s epistles and in Acts: hence the complaint of the silversmiths in Ephesus that Paul’s mission would ruin their trade and the worship of Diana (Acts 19:24–27). Christianity, like Judaism, was from the start a religion which, at least in theory, excluded other forms of worship, an attitude which distinguished them completely from all other cults in the ancient world.21 From the point of view of pagan polytheists this attitude was incomprehensible, offensive, dangerous in so far as it might alienate the traditional deities, and disloyal in so far as Christians failed to petition those deities for aid to their society. Atheism was one of the regular charges brought against Christians, to the extent that Christians arrested by the state could be forgiven their earlier alle-

19 20 21

So, e.g., Sanders, Paul, p. 176. Goodman, Mission and Conversion (n. 8 above), pp. 105–106. Cf. Ibid., pp. 97–98.

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giance if they showed themselves willing to worship the gods in the future.22 The concern of the pagan authorities was simply that the altars should continue to smoke and the benevolence of the gods be ensured (cf. Pliny the Younger 10.96). The security of Jewish communities in diaspora cities depended above all on Jews not interfering in the civic life, not least the religious civic life, of the gentile majority. It would be wrong to see Jewish-gentile relations in such cities as constantly fraught. On the contrary, Jews will only have been permitted to settle in such cities if the indigenous inhabitants were at worst neutral, and if some members of the Jewish communities were proselytes they will have had relatives within the majority community. Josephus wrote that in 66 CE the inhabitants of Damascus were unwilling to take action against the local Jews because their wives had become attracted to Judaism (B.J. 2.559–561) and that the people of Gerasa protected their Jews even at a time when massacres were occurring in neighboring cities (B.J. 2.480), but it was all too easy for such amicable relations to break down into pogroms, as in Alexandria in the thirties CE23 and in many places close to Judea in 66 CE.24 The determination of diaspora Jews to preserve the privileges which protected them in dossiers like those cited by Josephus in books 14 and 16 of his Antiquities25 is testimony to their concern that their delicate position might be undermined. The actions of Paul threatened precisely such undermining. The gentile Christian mission was not in itself any concern to Jews, and indeed in later years Jews were rarely involved in the martyrdoms to which Christians were sometimes put; the only two exceptions to the rule after New Testament times, the martyrdoms of Polycarp and Pionios, both in Smyrna, may doubtless be explained in terms of local community relations in each case, but the precise circumstances are impossible to discover from the highly colored Christian narratives which survive.26 It will not do simply to assert with Harnack

22 See G.E.M. de St. Croix, “Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?” M.I. Finley (ed.), Studies in Ancient Society, London and Boston 1974, pp. 210–249. 23 See E.M. Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule, Leiden 1976, pp. 224–255. 24 B.J. 2.457–480. 25 Cf. T. Rajak, “Was There a Roman Charter for the Jews?” JRS, 74 (1984), pp. 107–123. 26 For the narratives, see H.A. Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, Oxford 1972, pp. 2–21, 136–167. Discussion in, e.g., R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians,

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that “though apparently it was no concern of theirs” Jews elected to oppose gentile Christianity when they did “by a sort of instinct”;27 this is to substitute abuse for argument. The punishments meted out to Paul had a precise purpose. As Paul wrote, ‘the Jews persecute us . . . forbidding us to speak to the gentiles that they might be saved’ (1 Thess. 2:15–16). Punishment was intended to prevent Paul from going round Diaspora cities incurring odium for local Jews from gentiles by urging those gentiles to cease their ancestral worship. He was to be prevented either by persuading him to stop his behavior or by forcing him to stop presenting himself as a Jew. It was a dangerous ploy: when the Jews accused Paul before the Roman governor Gallio, saying that he “persuades men (surely gentiles at least in part, cf. Acts 18:6) to worship God contrary to the law” (Acts 18:12–13), Gallio dismissed the charge, choosing arbitrarily to interpret the word “law” (nomos) as Jewish law rather than Roman law, which was presumably what the Jews had in mind (cf. Acts 16:21, where Roman law must be at stake), and Sosthenes, the leader of the synagogue, was beaten up by “all” in front of the governor’s tribunal without Gallio bothering to intervene (Acts 18:17). Nonetheless, the tactic may be seen in some ways eventually to have worked, for not even those pagan authors such as Tacitus most hostile to Jews and Christians ever described Christianity as a type of Judaism, even though the foundation of the new religion in Judea was well known.28 To sum up, I have suggested that although there may well have been all sorts of theological reasons for Jewish hostility to early Christians, theology alone can never explain the risks taken by synagogue authorities in imposing violent discipline on the Christian Jews such as Paul in their midst. In the case of Paul I have suggested that the political factor which impelled diaspora Jewish leaders to persecute him was the need to live a quiet life untroubled by the hostility of pagan neighbors resentful that a Jew should try to lure them away from the ancestral worship on which, in their eyes, their security depended. New York 1987, pp. 460–492; L. Robert, rev. and ed. by G.W. Bowersock and C.P. Jones, Le Martyre de Pionios, prêtre de Smyrne, Washington, D.C. 1994. 27 A. von Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity, New York 1908, I, p. 58. 28 See most conveniently M. Whittaker, Jews and Christians: Graeco-Roman Views, Cambridge 1984; R.L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, New Haven 1984.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

SADDUCEES AND ESSENES AFTER 70 CE

Among students of Jewish history it is a commonplace that Judaism in the land of Israel after 70 CE was radically transformed by the traumatic experience of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Although estimates of the pace and nature of that transformation vary,1 almost all scholars seem to agree that the great variety known to have existed in Judaean Judaism before 70 came to an end in the next few generations, and, specifically, that self-aware religious groups like the Sadducees and Essenes were within a few years no longer to be found.2 It is this latter view that I shall question in this paper, not by presenting new evidence but by challenging the way that the evidence is usually interpreted. I start with two basic facts. First, the emergence of distinctive religious parties was one of the most striking developments of postbiblical Judaism.3 Second, no ancient source refers to their disappearance after 70 despite their prominence in pre-70 Judaea. The first explicit statement in the extant evidence that groups such as the Sadducees and Essenes are no longer to be found is in the fourthcentury heresiologist Epiphanius, but even he did not state when he believed this new situation to have begun: he stated explicitly only that the seven (sic) Jewish haireseis to be found in Jerusalem continued after 70 until “in time” (kata kairon kai kata chronon) they were scattered abroad and destroyed (Pan. 19:5:6–7). All references before Epiphanius to the Jewish parties, whether found in patristic or

1 See e.g. G. Alon, The Jews in their land in the Talmudic Age, 70–640 CE (vol. I; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1980), pp. 107–14; B.M. Bokser, “The Wall Separating God and Israel,” JQR 73 (1983), p. 371. 2 See the explicit assertion by S.J.D. Cohen, “The Significance of Yavneh,” HUCA 55 (1984), pp. 28–36, a study to which I am much indebted, as will become clear. See also E. Main, “Les Sadducéens vus par Flavius Josèphe,” RB 97 (1990), p. 204. I have omitted all discussion of the continuation of Pharisaism in order to avoid the complex problem of the relation between Pharisaic and rabbinic Judaism. 3 See e.g. L.H. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1991).

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rabbinic texts, are couched—when they do not refer quite clearly to the period before 70—in a present tense which could quite well be intended to describe contemporary life (though, of course, it could also be timeless).4 The standard assumption that these Jewish groups disappeared soon after 70 is therefore no more than an assumption. Furthermore, the presuppositions which have encouraged the assumption are so theologically loaded that historians’ suspicions should be instinctive. Both Jews and Christians are inclined to accept that these Jewish groups just rolled over and died: Jews, because later rabbinic tradition claimed that Yohanan ben Zakkai and his colleagues saved and reconstructed Judaism at Yavneh;5 Christians, because the Church asserted that all forms of Judaism were irrelevant once the (now destroyed) Temple cult had been replaced as an instrument for atonement by faith in Christ, so that positive evidence for all continuing forms of Judaism after 70 was played down, and lack of evidence gratefully interpreted as evidence of non-existence.6 In the light of the standard assumption, it is worth noting that some of the extant literature in fact appears to assume the continued existence of self-aware Jewish religious groups like the Sadducees and Essenes after 70. Pliny the Elder in his Natural History (5:17:4(73)) described the Essenes as an eternal race, precisely emphasizing their continued existence (which he considered remarkable because they did not procreate), and dating his observations to after 70 by his note that Jerusalem and En Gedi had recently been destroyed. Pliny may have been credulous and ignorant—although he was not usually notable for credulity7—but neither charge can plausibly be laid against Josephus, who self-consciously described the three (or sometimes four)

4 Discussion of the rabbinic texts in J. Lightstone, “Sadducees v. Pharisees in Tannaitic Sources,” in J. Neusner (ed.), Christianity, Judaism and other Greco-Roman Cults (Smith Festschrift) (Leiden: Brill, 1975), vol. III, pp. 206–17; patristic texts in M. Simon, “Les sects juives d’après les témoignages patristiques,” Studia Patristica 1 (1957), pp. 526–39; M. Black, “The Patristic Accounts of Jewish Sectarianism,” BJRL 41 (1958–59), pp. 285–303. 5 See, for example, E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, vol. 1, rev. G. Vermes and F. Millar (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1973), p. 524. 6 Cf. M. Simon, Verus Israel (ET; Oxford: Littman Library, 1986). 7 See now M. Beagon, Roman Nature: The Thought of Pliny the Elder (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992).

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philosophies of the Jews in three publications, completed between the late seventies and the mid-nineties CE.8 Josephus did not hint for a moment in any of his writings that two of the main haireseis of the Jews, through which he himself claimed to have passed, had ceased or were ceasing to exist. In the mid-second century Justin Martyr similarly assumed that various different groups existed within Judaism in his own day, although he did not name Sadducees or Essenes. Most of the names he gave them in his Dialogue with Trypho (80:4–5) mean little to us now, and, if correctly transmitted, may be his designation rather than the names they gave themselves: “Genistai, Meristai, Galilaioi, Hellenianoi, Pharisaioi, Baptistai.” Justin’s characterization of these groups as heresies which Trypho, as an “orthodox” Jew, might be expected to exclude from true Judaism may owe more to his Christian perspective in an era of explicit self-definition within the Church than to any shift in that direction within Judaism,9 but his argument would be peculiar if no non-standard varieties of Judaism of any kind were believed to exist at least somewhere in the Jewish world. In the mid-fourth century Epiphanius wrote that the Jewish sects of the Nasaraeans and Ossaeans were still to be found, albeit not in great numbers (Pan. 20:3:1–2); in this matter he is likely to be trustworthy, since he explicitly contrasted the surviving groups to those, including the Sadducees, who he stated had disappeared by his time, although whether by “Ossaeans” he meant “Essenes,” as some have argued,10 is more dubious. Similar scraps of evidence which might suggest the survival of sects like Essenes and Sadducees after 70 can be found in some rabbinic texts. According to m. Nidd. 4:2, R. Yose in the mid-second century dealt leniently with a problem concerning the purity of “the daughters of the Sadducees” by asserting that they may be trusted “unless they separate themselves and follow after the ways of their fathers”; according to t. Nidd. 5:3 and b. Nidd. 33b, R. Yose felt able to make this lenient ruling because he knew Sadducean women better than anyone else, and hence he knew that they all followed the advice of the sages in respect to niddah—except for one Sadducee

8

Jos. Bell. 2:119–166; Ant. 18:11–22; Vita 10–12. So Simon, “Les secte juives,” p. 538. 10 Cf. J.M. Lieu, “Epiphanius on the Scribes and Pharisees (Pan. 15.1–16.4),” JTS 39 (1988), p. 511. 9

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woman (according to the text in the Babylonian Talmud, a woman who lived in R. Yose’s neighbourhood), who did not follow the sages’ rulings, and who died. A story in b. Shabb. 108a concerning a different rabbi, R. Joshua haGarsi, of the same generation as R. Yose, narrates conversation between R. Joshua and a Boethusian as to whether tefillin can be written upon the skin of an unclean animal. From the end of the third century comes a story preserved in b. Sanh. 91a, that a heretic (mina) asked R. Ammi how he could believe that physical resurrection is possible (“Can dust come to life?”); the only Jews in antiquity known specifically to have denied life after death were the Sadducees. This is hardly a huge amount of evidence (although other hints could be added),11 but it is not nothing. If such stories and descriptions were confronted by a clear statement in any source that the pre-70 religious groups in the land of Israel had disappeared soon after 70, it would be reasonable to try explaining such references away (as, with a little ingenuity, can certainly be done): to quote Shaye Cohen’s influential study which attempts precisely that, the standard picture “cannot be upset by a lone baraita and by an elusive passage of Justin,”12 and it is quite possible to imagine that Justin was confused and R. Yose was discussing the historic past. But since in fact no clear statement positively asserting the standard picture of the disappearance of pre-70 groups exists, it must be recognized that the standard argument rests entirely on the claim that the sources are consistently silent about Jewish groups continuing to exist after 70, and that the standard argument is therefore unsafe on two grounds. First, consistency alone is no evidence of truth, if the information derives only from a limited number of sources. Second, the argument from consistency fails as soon as there is an exception (and in this case a number of possible exceptions have been noted). Arguments from silence are particularly valueless once the silence has been broken, however faint the sound. Once the standard view has been questioned, many factors come to mind that might be thought to have made likely the continuation of separate religious groups like the Sadducees and Essenes after 70.

11 E.g. Justinian, Novella 146, with reference to Jewish heretics who deny resurrection. 12 Cohen, “Significance of Yavneh,” p. 36.

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First, the Sadducees at least seem to have relied for their party label on particular ideas—whether theological or halakhic—rather than organizational structures or buildings—Josephus specifically stressed that Sadducees did not have good relations with each other—and ideas are hard to wipe out by military action.13 If Josephus’ picture is correct, the lives of Essenes relied more heavily on the existence of Essene communities,14 but you would not need more than a minyan for an Essenic common meal. Even if the Dead Sea scrolls be identified as Essenic and ascribed to a group of Essenes from Qumran, the undoubted fact that those responsible for the deposit of the scrolls in the caves were unable to remove them for continued use by no means shows that all Essene communities everywhere were wiped out.15 Secondly, none of the characteristics of any of the different types of Judaism was dependent on the existence of the Jerusalem Temple. It is plausible enough to argue that many sectarian differences originally arose from disputes about the cult, but the cessation of sacrifices would hardly heal the splits. The Qumran sectarians could claim that the Temple’s destruction vindicated their view that the priests had been wicked, since it proved divine displeasure. The rabbinic sages could indulge, as we know they did, in theoretical discussions about how the Temple should have been run. Nor were the Sadducees bereft of a raison d’être. Like the rabbinic sages they had every reason to preserve and develop their own ideas about the conduct of sacrifices, cherishing their views about the cult through the second and third centuries. Neither they nor anyone else could possibly know that the Temple was not to be rebuilt, for such rebuilding of destroyed sanctuaries was standard in the Roman world, and their desire to control the cult will not have disappeared during what they believed to be its temporary cessation. Disputes between groups about the cult will have been altered by the destruction of the Temple only to the extent that such disagreement could be much less public.

13

Cf. Jos. Bell. 2:166; J. Le Moyne, Les Sadducéens (Paris: Lecoffre, 1972). Jos. Bell. 2:119–161; Ant. 18:18–22. 15 Cf. H. Stegemann, “The Qumran Essenes—Local Members of the Main Jewish Union in Late Second Temple Times,” in J. Barrera and L. Montaner (eds.), The Madrid Qumran Congress Volume (Leiden: Brill, 1992), vol. I, pp. 83–166. On the continuing debate over the Essene origins of the Scrolls, see N. Golb, “The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Perspective,” American Scholar 58.2 (1989), pp. 177–207. 14

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Third may be added a general argument about the way individuals can be expected to react to disaster. If you believe that you have discovered and are following the divine will, it is easy within Judaism to explain mishaps as the result of the sins of Israel, whether they be yours or those of other Jews. The destruction of the Temple could be attributed, as it was by Josephus, not to God’s impotence but to his desire to punish Israel and help Rome.16 Neither in 2 Baruch nor in 4 Ezra is there any evidence that the despondent stance of the authors was particularly motivated by concern at their inability now to worship through the sacrificial cult.17 The halakhic rulings of, for example, Eliezer ben Hyrcanus suggest that he presupposed that life could go on pretty much as it had in the past.18 For most Jews, Judaism did not need to be reconstructed, because it was not shattered. Hence the striking lack of references in Josephus’ writings, including the theological summary in Contra Apionem, to a need for a new Judaism. There is a similar silence in Mishnah and Tosefta, despite their long discussions of how the Temple should have been. Fourthly, any change that might have come about as a result of disappointment in 70 CE might be expected to be in the direction of greater variety, as Jews hunted for different explanations of disaster. Fifthly, and finally, it is hard to see how rabbis in Yavneh or after 135 in Galilee could impose on other Jews their own views of how Judaism should cope with change without the benefit either of mass communications or of state authority, for neither of which, in my view, is there any good evidence before the nasi received the backing of the Roman state in the late fourth century. Most Jews, in the land of Israel as elsewhere, must have been left to come to terms with the world without the benefit of rabbinic guidance.19 I am going to suggest a different approach to the whole subject, but first I should make clear with which elements of the traditional 16 Jos. Bell. 6:99–110; on the rationalization of religious disappointment in general, see M. Hazani, “When Prophecy Fails: Leaders Die, Followers Persevere,” Genetic, Social and General Psychology Monographs 112 (1986), pp. 247–71. 17 Cf. M.E. Stone, “Reactions to Destructions of the Second Temple,” JSJ 12.2 (1981), pp. 195–204; Cohen, “Significance of Yavneh,” p. 28. 18 Cf. J. Neusner, Eliezer ben Hycarnus: The Tradition and the Man (Leiden: Brill, 1973), vol. II, p. 300. 19 M. Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee, AD 132–212 (Totowa: Rowman & Allanheld, 1983), ch. 7; idem, “The Roman State and the Jewish Patriarch in the Third Century,” in L.I. Levine (ed.), The Galilee in Late Antiquity (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992), pp. 127–39.

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picture I have no quarrel. I do not doubt that most Jews grieved for the loss of the Temple, nor that some marked their sorrow by ascetic practices or found solace in apocalyptic visions of a better future, although I see no reason to think that such practices supplanted older theologies rather than supplementing them. Nor do I doubt that rabbinic teachings which helped Jews to compensate for their inability to worship through sacrifices were an important element in the eventual ability of the rabbis to establish their type of Judaism as normative, although the date to be assigned to that event is much more difficult to ascertain. Nor do I doubt that after 70 many Jews in the Roman empire were forced to reevaluate their commitment to Judaism, although I would see as the main agent of this change not theological reflection but the impact of the fiscus judaicus, which, at least after 96 in my view, fell on ethnic Jews only if they continued to practise Judaism.20 Finally, I am happy to accept Shaye Cohen’s observation that the sages at Yavneh and down to the end of the tannaitic period showed little interest in excluding or attacking other types of Judaism,21 although I am not persuaded by him that the motive for this eirenic stance was a catholic desire to include all groups in a common stream rather than, more introspectively and passively, a lack of interest in other groups which did not share their concerns. It is from this last point that I should like to suggest a different approach. It is along lines which, so far as I know, have only been raised in print by Shaye Cohen himself,22 only to be dismissed by him, in my view over-hastily. The issue in essence is whether the sages’ views about what they would like to be the case in fact corresponded to reality, in this instance as in others. If the rabbis did not talk about, or to, Sadducees in their own times, that may indicate not that the Sadducees had disappeared or were unimportant in Jewish society, but that the rabbis were not interested in them. The structure of the Mishnah as a long series of unresolved disputes shows that the tannaitic rabbis were willing to tolerate considerable variety within one system, but not that they were prepared to

20 M. Goodman, “Nerva, the Fiscus Judaicus and Jewish Identity,” JRS 79 (1989), pp. 40–44. 21 Cohen, “The Significance of Yavneh.” 22 S.J.D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987), pp. 224–26.

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tolerate indefinite variety. On the contrary, non-rabbinic Jews were dismissively ignored and rejected as minim, a largely undifferentiated category for heretics about whose precise beliefs it seems that the rabbis usually lacked interest to inquire. In many rabbinic texts the tradition so radically lacks interest in the real beliefs and customs of other Jewish groups that minim, like Roman emperors, are made to talk like deviant rabbis, arguing with the sages from within the sages’ own world of discourse.23 It takes two to pick a fight. There is much evidence in the New Testament and patristic sources that many Christians in the first two centuries attacked Judaism as part of the process of the self-definition of the Church, but tannaitic sources for the most part ignore Christianity.24 Clearly, the argument that silence proves non-existence will not do. It would be unsurprising if the sages after 70 decided that there were more important things to do than to attack other Jews for faulty halakha on matters of Temple ritual or mistaken theology about resurrection. If the hypothesis is correct that the sages after 70 just chose to ignore other Jewish groups, Sadducees and Essenes after 70 may have flourished just as much as the sages did, each group turning in on itself, unconcerned about the others. I do not see that anything prevented such groups continuing to exist in the land of Israel or elsewhere until the end of the second century, or even the third, until the time when Epiphanius in the fourth century explicitly declared them a phenomenon of the past. In the intervening centuries, Sadducees and Essenes will have cropped up in the world of the rabbis only intermittently, to be classified under the general heading of minim (as I suggested above may have been the case in b. Sanh. 91a). Christian writers will have ignored them because outsiders to any institution generally tend to miss divisions which may be obvious to insiders, and because they were interested in Jews only in the context of biblical Israel, or the life of Jesus, or

23 For texts on minim, see R.T. Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash (London: 1903; repr. New York: Ktav, 1975). 24 Such evidence as there is collected by L.H. Schiffman, Who Was a Jew? (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1985). It amounts to very little. On patristic attitudes to Jews as part of Christian self-definition, see M. Taylor, “The Jews in the Writings of the Early Church Fathers (150–312): Men of Straw or Formidable Rivals?”, D.Phil. thesis (Oxford, 1992).

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the continual problem of the role of Jewish practices in the Church; in any case, it is worth recalling that most early Christian literature came from outside the land of Israel, and that since even a Jewish writer from the pre-70 diaspora like Philo showed no knowledge of either Sadducees or Pharisees despite the volume of his outpourings on Judaism, patristic ignorance should not surprise. Let me put my suggestion clearly but crudely. My hypothesis is that groups and philosophies known from pre-70 Judaism continued for years, perhaps centuries, after the destruction of the Temple. This is a stronger suggestion than the continuity of isolated legal traditions posited by those who note similarities between the halakha and theology ascribed by rabbis to Sadducees and those found in some Qumran texts and in Karaism.25 But unlike their arguments, my hypothesis is essentially negative. I do not believe that the scraps of evidence I have presented, that some writers in the second and third centuries may have talked about Sadducees in the present tense, add up to proof of the continued existence of Sadducees in their time. I am indeed highly suspicious of scholarly constructs of religious groups based on only fragmentary references in polemical texts. But Sadducees and Essenes are well attested up to 70, so the existence of such groups at some time is undisputed, and the onus is on those who claim that they disappeared to justify their claim. It is obvious that the existence of Essenes and Sadducees in lateRoman Judaea must remain an unproven hypothesis unless and until more evidence is unearthed. For the present, I simply want to stress—not for the first time—the extraordinary selectivity of the survival of evidence about Judaism in the land of Israel after 70. Only texts approved by the rabbinic tradition survived, because after about 100 CE Christians lost interest in the preservation of Jewish writings which they saw as alien. Since most of what Jews did and thought after 70 is thus irretrievably lost to us, I suggest that a plausible explanation of the scarcity of references in rabbinic texts to Jewish groups like the Sadducees and the Essenes after 70 is not

25 N. Wieder, The Judaean Scrolls and Karaism (London: East and West Library, 1962); Y. Sussmann, “The History of halakha and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Tarbiz 59 (1989–90), pp. 11–76 (Heb.); M. Broshi, “Anti-Qumran Polemics in the Talmud,” in J. Barrera and L. Montaner (eds.), Madrid Qumran Congress Volume (Leiden: Brill, 1992), vol. II, pp. 589–600.

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that the rabbis repressed such groups, nor that they included them in a wider coalition, but that they simply ignored their continued existence. If the view I have presented is accepted, or at least the standard view is seen to be as shakily based as I have suggested, it will have implications for those New Testament scholars who routinely date and explain New Testament texts on the assumption that after 70 only Pharisees survived to represent Palestinian Judaism. When I first considered presenting a paper on this topic in a volume in honour of Michael Goulder, I thought that I might try exploring such implications. But on reflection I realize that it would be wiser and much more interesting to leave such an attempt to him. It is with warm affection that I offer this study to Michael Goulder. The informal, friendly and immensely learned biblical seminar which he organized on many evenings in the 1970s and 1980s gave me my first glimpse of the complexity of New Testament studies, an opportunity for which I am very grateful. This essay was written while I was a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the spring and summer of 1993, and it was presented to the World Congress of Jewish Studies in June of that year. I am grateful to all those who offered comments at or after the Congress, especially Al Baumgarten, Shaye Cohen, Moshe David Herr and Danny Schwartz.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE FUNCTION OF MINIM IN EARLY RABBINIC JUDAISM

In the fateful years after 70 CE when Yohanan ben Zakkai and a small group of rabbinic sages in Yavneh began to formulate a new theology in reaction to the destruction of the Temple, another pious Jew of similar background, Flavius Josephus, composed a passionate tract in which he tried to define the essential character of Judaism.1 Among the prime characteristics singled out by Josephus for praise in the Contra Apionem was the remarkable unanimity of Jews in their ideas about the nature of God and the correct way to worship him (C.Ap. 2.179–81): To this cause above all we owe our admirable harmony. Unity and identity of religious belief, perfect uniformity in habits and customs, produce a very beautiful concord in human character. Among us alone will be heard no contradictory statements about God, such as are common among other nations, not only on the lips of ordinary individuals under the impulse of some passing mood, but even boldly propounded by philosophers; some putting forward crushing arguments against the very existence of God, others depriving Him of His providential care for mankind. Among us alone will be seen no difference in the conduct of our lives. With us all act alike, all profess the same doctrine about God, one which is in harmony with our Law and affirms that all things are under His eye. Even our womenfolk and dependants would tell you that piety must be the motive of all our occupations in life. (Loeb translation).

Doubtless Josephus exaggerated for the sake of his argument, for he asserted in C.Ap. that one of the signs that Jewish religious traditions were superior to Greek was the confusing variety of the latter,2 and he could afford to idealise Judaism because he does not seem

1 For studies on Josephus, Contra Apionem, see J.G. Mueller, Des Flavius Josephus Schrift gegen des Apion (1877); L. Troiani, Commento Storico al “Contra Apione” di Giuseppe (1977); K. Keeble, A Critical Study of Flavius Josephus’ Contra Apionem (1991). 2 C.Ap. 2. 164, 172, 250–4.

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to have envisaged any Jewish readers of this work who might have contradicted him.3 But precisely the importance of this claim in Josephus’ apologetic makes implausible any suggestion that it lacked foundation altogether. Josephus’ assertion of the theological unanimity of the Jews is all the more striking because of his willing confession in each of his three other published works (the War, the Antiquities and the Life) that Judaism embraced at least three distinctive philosophies or tendencies (Pharisaism, Sadduceeism and Essenism), which differed both with regard to practice (i.e. halakha) and belief (e.g. about divine intervention in human affairs and life after death).4 Josephus referred to two of these earlier writings in a number of places in Contra Apionem, so he was presumably prepared for his readers to compare his apparently contradictory evaluations of variety within Judaism.5 It is thus reasonable to assume that he did not himself see his different accounts as contradictory: in some sense, the Jews of these different haireseis all agreed on the theological principles fundamental to Judaism. Thus Josephus himself, despite his profession of adherence to the views of the Pharisees in his public life, could write with admiration about other types of Judaism, most notably the Essenes.6 Josephus’ tolerance of variety within Judaism left only a little space for the concept of heresy. In his eyes there might be bad Jews, like Tiberius Julius Alexander, who lacked piety towards God in so far as he did not stand by ancestral customs,7 and there might be odd Jews, like Bannus, who espoused distinctive views,8 but although he wrote critically about the harshness of the Sadducees in their interpretation of the law,9 he did not condemn them altogether, and although he criticised false prophets for their misleading messages, he did not suggest that their theology of prophecy was itself at fault.10 The closest he came to condemning one type of Judaism as heresy

3 On the readers at whom C. Apionem was aimed, see P. Bilde, Flavius Josephus (1988), pp. 120–1. 4 B.J. 2.119–66; A.J. 18.11–22; Vita 10–12. 5 Cf. C.Ap. 1.1, 47–56. 6 See G. Vermes and M. Goodman, The Essenes according to the Classical Sources (1989), pp. 34–59. 7 A.J. 20.100. 8 Vita 11. 9 A.J. 20.199. 10 See, e.g., R. Gray, Prophetic Figures (1993).

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was in his description of the so-called ‘Fourth Philosophy’, known only from Josephus’ writings and condemned by him as responsible for the outbreak of the disastrous revolt of 66–70.11 The question I want to tackle in this paper is why some of Josephus’ contemporaries in the nascent rabbinic schools of the land of Israel failed to take the same liberal stance as, in general, he did. I shall try to show that the concept of heresy was assumed by tannaitic rabbis. I shall then discuss the function of this concept in the construction of rabbinic self-identity in this crucial period. Finally I shall suggest possible explanations of the rabbis’ attitudes. It will be best to start by saying what I mean by a concept of heresy. The paradigm is the use of the term by Christians from early patristic times to refer to a theological opinion held in opposition to what those Christians considered to be the mainstream Church. Adoption of the concept presupposes both that a mainstream exists and that separation from the mainstream in certain ways is inherently wicked. A heretic is differentiated from an apostate by his claim to present another, better version of a theological system than that found in the mainstream. By contrast, an apostate may simply reject the system, offering nothing else in its place. If Judaism is categorised as a system of covenantal nomism, the distinction between types of sinner should be clear.12 All Jews are bound by the covenant between God and Israel. Ordinary sinners are those who try to observe the covenant but do so badly; apostates are those who deny the covenant explicitly; heretics are those who (in the eyes of others) break the covenant by wilful misinterpretation of its meaning. The need to establish that the tannaim had a notion of heresy arises particularly in the light of an influential and important article published by Shaye Cohen rather more than ten years ago.13 Cohen argued there that the tolerance of variety which I have ascribed to Josephus was in fact found first among rabbis in Yavneh. The “significance of Yavneh”, according to this eirenic view, lay in the non-partisan stance of the tannaim, who did not portray themselves as

11

B.J. 2.118; A.J. 18.4–10. Cf. M. Hengel, Die Zeloten, 2nd ed., 1976, still the most influential study of this subject since its first publication in 1961. 12 On Judaism as a system of convenantal nomism, see E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977). 13 S.J.D. Cohen, ‘The significance of Yavneh’, Hebrew Union College Annual 55 (1984), pp. 28–36.

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one party (the Pharisees) triumphant over others but rather subsumed variety within one united movement, tolerantly permitting differences on matters of halakha to remain unresolved in the open-ended discussions characteristic of the Mishnah. It will become apparent in the rest of this article that it seems to me that Cohen was right to assert the significance of the non-polemical style of early rabbinic literature, but wrong to suggest that it precluded a rabbinic notion of heresy which must be excluded from their generally welcoming embrace. The evidence for a rabbinic notion of heresy lies primarily in references to minim and minuth in tannaitic texts.14 The term min in reference to a deviant Jew is not found often in tannaitic writings, but the contexts in which it is found are sufficiently dissimilar and integral to the argument in each place to make it very unlikely that all such uses are later interpolations.15 That the terms were significant to the tannaim seems fairly certain. Thus, the fact that the tannaim chose to use a new word of any kind to describe deviants, since the Bible has plenty of Hebrew words for wicked Jews, as did the sectarians at Qumran, demands explanation. Even more striking is the coinage of the term minuth, “heresy”,16 since the creation of an abstract noun to denote a religious tendency was not otherwise common in tannaitic texts (for example, there was no abstract noun in Hebrew for Pharisaism or Sadducaism). That these minim were reckoned by the tannaim to be wicked is clear enough from every reference to them, like the chilling remark of R. Shimon b. Eliezer that “one must not repent of a curse, since it was from the repentance of Aaron and Moses that the minim separated” (t. Meg. 3 (4):37 (Lieb.)). However, it must be admitted that the precise meaning of the word min is far from sure. The derivation of

14 Scholarly discussion of these terms has mostly concerned the birkat haminim. On the terms themselves surprisingly little has been written. Cf. D. Sperber, in Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 12, pp. 1–3; F. Dexinger, ‘Die Sektenproblematik in Judentum’, Kairos 21 (1979), pp. 273–87. 15 The term min with this meaning is found in the following tannaitic texts: m. Ber. 9:5; m. R. Sh. 2:1; m. Sanh. 4:5; m. Hull. 2:9; t. Ber. 3:25; 6(7):21 (Lieb.); t. Shab. 13(14):5 (Lieb.); t. Meg. 3(4):37 (Lieb.); t. B. M. 2:33 (Zuck.); t. Sanh. 8:7; 13:5 (Zuck.); t. Hull. 1:1; 2:20, 24 (in one ms.) (Zuck.); t. Parah 3:3 (Zuck.). 16 The term minuth is used in m. Meg. 4:8–9; m. Sot. 9:15 (a post-tannaitic interpolation (see below)); t. Hull. 2:24.

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the term is uncertain,17 and the most plausible derivation (from the identical word meaning “kind” or “species”) is unhelpful. As with all words, meaning must be deduced from context. In this case the examples to be considered will show that more than one variety of wicked Jew can come within the category of min. The contexts in which references to minim are found in tannaitic compilations are rather limited. This is so even when the net is widened from examination solely of minim to include those passages in which the manuscripts now have terms other than min to denote a religious deviant. It is desirable to allow for terminological variety mainly because many variant readings can be found both in the manuscripts and in printed editions, often because of self-censorship by the editors, with the term cuthi (Samaritan) or saddouki (Sadducee) or apikoros (Epicurean) sometimes substituted for min.18 What, then, were minim said by the tannaim to do and say? They were portrayed as healers and miracle workers, as in the story in t. Hullin 2:22–3 of the attempt by Jacob of Cfar Sima to cure R. Eleazar b. Dima of snake bite in the name of Yeshua ben Pantera.19 They were said to follow a liturgy close to that of the rabbis but different from it in crucial respects, wearing tefillin and blessing the Jewish God, but doing both in the wrong way, for example, with the tefillin on the palm of the hand, not the forearm (m. Meg. 4:8–9). They have books which look like kosher books and include the divine name (t. Shabb. 13 (14):5 (Lieb.)), and they produce meat by a process similar enough to rabbinic shechita to risk confusion (t. Hull. 1:1; one of their more suspect habits was the collection of the blood of a slaughtered animal in a hole in the ground (m. Hull 2:9)). Finally, they might espouse deviant theological views in various unconnected areas: they might imply that there are two powers in heaven (m. Meg. 4:9), by saying “we give thanks” twice in prayer, or that there is no world to come (m. Ber. 9: 5; t. Ber. 6 (7):21 (Lieb.)), or that man had some part in the creation of the world alongside God (t. Sanh. 8:7).

17 On possible derivations of the word min, see R.T. Herford, Christianity in the Talmud and Midrash (1903), pp. 362–5; G.F. Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries, Vol. 3 (1930), pp. 68–9. 18 Cf. Sperber, in Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 12, p. 1. 19 For the reference here to minuth, see t. Hull. 2:24.

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The method proposed by tannaitic rabbis to deal with minuth was essentially avoidance of contact.20 Stories about contacts between tannaim and heretics presuppose that heresy might be attractive to rabbis, as in the story about R. Eliezer, who was arrested by a Roman governor on a charge of minuth and concluded after heartsearching that he must have suffered because “in Sepphoris I once found Jacob, a man of Cfar Sakhnin, and he said a word of minuth in the name of Yeshua ben Pantiri and it pleased me” (t. Hullin 2:24). Hence rabbis urged Jews to avoid the books, food and houses of the minim (t. Hullin 2:20). Now, if such avoidance was wholly successful, one would expect heresies to have had no effect on the tannaim at all. But injunctions to avoid contact are only needed when contact would otherwise be probable, and we have no evidence that rabbis in the Yavnean period had the power to prevent such contacts, or, indeed, to impose any of their views outside their immediate circle.21 Thus the tannaitic texts do record a few changes to rabbinic behaviour in reaction to heresy. According to m. Megillah 4:8 there were a few areas of liturgy in which rabbinic Jews were urged to change, or at least control, the precise words used in prayer to avoid the danger of heresy: “If one say (presumably, from the context, in prayer), “The good (pl.) will bless you”, behold, this is the way of minuth . . . ( if he said) “Thy mercies reach to the nest of a bird” or “May your name be remembered for the good” or “We thank, we thank”, they put him to silence” (m. Megillah 4:9).

The last of these prohibitions is probably related to the heretical belief found elsewhere in the presence of more than one divine power in heaven,22 but the reason for the other prohibitions is unclear. According to m. R.Sh. 2:1, the rules about taking evidence from witnesses of the appearance of the new moon, an essential element in the fixing of the calendar, were changed “since the minim acted perversely”, so that “they should not receive evidence except from such as are known”. This last reaction to the fear of heresy makes explicit what elsewhere is left implicit. The assumption which lies 20 I owe this point to Richard Kalmin, to whom I am grateful for sending me a copy of his study before publication. 21 For my view on these matters, see M.D. Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee, AD 132–212 (1983), pp. 93–118. 22 See especially A.F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven (1977).

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behind the prohibition in t. Hullin 2:20 of the meat, wine and sacred books of the minim is that conscientious rabbinic Jews would check not just the actions but also the theological views of the butcher and grocer from whom they purchased foodstuffs and the scribe from whom they purchased scrolls of the Torah: in other words, no such purchases should be made except from “such as are known”. It may be worth wondering what attitude tannaitic rabbis would have taken to the biblical scrolls in Qumran. I can see no evidence that in the tannaitic period (i.e. before c. 200 CE) the rabbinic reaction to heresy went beyond such attempts by rabbis to protect themselves from quasi-infection. If this is so, and the effect on rabbis of their belief that they were confronted by heretics in the tannaitic period was therefore limited, it is worth asking why this was so. In the history of early Christianity, theology and practice both developed to a large extent through polemic against deviants.23 St. Paul and heresiologists like Irenaeus advised their flocks on correct action and belief through highly effective rhetoric against specific heresies. Similarly specific polemic can be found among some Jewish sectarians in the Second Temple period, most obviously in the recently published Miqsat Maasei haTorah from Qumran, in which is recorded the views of one side in a dispute of two unnamed groups over the correct procedures to be followed by the priests in the Jerusalem temple.24 In the accounts in tannaitic texts of the clashes between Pharisees and Sadducees before 70, the motivation for action by the Pharisees is specifically stated on occasion to have been the desire to confound the other side: for instance, during the red heifer ceremony, the priest was rendered unclean so that the Sadducees should not be able to claim that the ceremony must be carried out only by “those on whom the sun has set”, i.e. the ritually pure (m. Parah 3:7).25 By contrast, tannaitic rabbis do not seem to have been concerned much of the time either to analyse the precise constituents of minuth

23 See, for example, E.P. Sanders et al., Jewish and Christian Self-Definition (1980–82). One of the corollaries of the present study is that transfer of the same assumptions to self-definition by rabbinic Jews may be mistaken. 24 E. Qimron and J. Strugnell, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, vol. 10 (1994). 25 For a discussion of the possible motivation behind these actions by the Pharisees, see M.D. Goodman, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the religious history of the Roman Empire (1994), pp. 171–2.

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or to define their own views in contrast to heresies. It is notorious that in the Babylonian Talmud the minim disparaged by rabbis seem sometimes to have been gentiles, and specifically gentile Christians, rather than deviant Jews.26 The same is also true of the assertion in m. Sotah 9:15 that “when the Messiah comes . . . the empire will fall into minuth”, which seems so transparent a reference to the Roman empire after Constantine that it must surely be a post-tannaitic interpolation. It is probably a mistake to indulge with the many ingenious scholars who have hunted for a precise referent for each rabbinic text in which heretics were attacked: the very fact that minim have been identified, in different passages, with Jewish Christians, Gnostics, Hellenistic Jews, Sadducees and others constitutes evidence that the rabbis who compiled these rabbinic documents used the term in a vague way.27 The contrast to the prurient details in the writings of Christian heresiologists is striking. Despite their general interest in the classification of phenomena in the world about them the rabbis do not seem from the extant evidence to have been concerned to define minim or minuth; it was enough that the general category existed. It should be clear that I do not believe that the attitudes of the rabbis can be explained, as it was by Shaye Cohen, in terms of the liberal outlook of the tannaim, because the rabbis were not liberal (unlike Josephus), just vague about the content of the heresies they condemned. Rabbis could be horrible to each other (as in disputes over the calendar, in which opposition might be publicly crushed by, for instance, R. Joshua ben Hananiah being made to appear before Rabban Gamaliel carrying his staff and purse on what he ( Joshua) believed to be the Day of Atonement).28 What looks like a liberal attitude by the rabbis of the Mishnah in apparently leaving halakhic disputes open may simply reflect the genesis of the Mishnah as a compilation of the views of jurists rather than a law code.29

26 Cf. b. Pesahim 87b. See J. Neusner, Judaism and Christianity in the Age of Constantine (1987). 27 See, for example, R.T. Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, pp. 365–8; W. Horbury, ‘The Benediction of the Minim’, Journal of Theological Studies (1982), pp. 19–61. 28 M. R.Sh. 2:8–9. Cf. also the excommunication of R. Eliezer b. Hycarnus. 29 On different theories about the purpose of the Mishnah, see now G. Stemberger, Einleitung in Talmud und Midrasch, 8th ed. (1992), pp. 113–52.

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It may be that a better explanation for the tannaitic attitude to minim lies in what Sacha Stern has described, perhaps unfairly, as the solipsism of the rabbis, the tendency to think about their Jewishness almost entirely in terms of the life of an adult male rabbinic Jew.30 Rather than attack heretical Jews, the tannaim preached that heretics should be ignored. It may simply be that to a considerable extent they practised what they preached. Thus I have argued elsewhere that, for all we know, Sadducees and Essenes may have flourished long into the amoraic period; the fact that rabbis hardly talked about them does not imply their non-existence.31 An examination of the nonsense enshrined in the comments of early rabbis about contemporary pagan cultic practices will show how little attention they paid to the world around them: the flourishing paganism revealed by inscriptions and archaeological excavation in the Decapolis and coastal cities apparently hardly impinged on the rabbis who produced the Mishnah and Tosefta in neighbouring Galilee in the second and third centuries.32 What, then, was the function of the concept of minuth in early rabbinic Judaism? There is no evidence that it served to hound out of the fold particular deviants whose continued presence was believed to threaten the health of the body politic of Judaism. Nor is there evidence that it served to define correct behaviour for rabbinic Jews by clarifying what was forbidden in thought or deed. The categories of Israel excluded from a share in the life to come according to m. Sanhedrin 10:1–3 (where minim are not mentioned) were impracticably vague: one category, for instance, was of those who read the “outside books”, but the Mishnah neither defines such books nor states how much they must be perused for an otherwise good Jew to forfeit the world to come. It is hardly likely that a solution to the problem will easily emerge; it may be enough simply to have shown that the problem exists. It may be that the vagueness of rabbinic references to minim results

30

S. Stern, Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings (1994), pp. 215–23. M.D. Goodman, ‘Sadducees and Essenes after 70 CE’, in S.E. Porter, P. Joyce and D.E. Orton, eds., Crossing the Boundaries. Festschrift Goulder (1994), pp. 347–56 [Chapter 13 above]. 32 For a compilation of their statements, see M. Hadas-Lebel, ‘Le paganisme à travers les sources rabbiniques des IIe et IIIe siècles: contribution à l’étude de syncrétisme dans l’empire romain’, ANRW II. 19.2 (1979), pp. 397–485. 31

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simply from the loss of much of the tannaitic tradition. It is entirely possible, for example, but unprovable, that a tannaitic tractate entitled Minim once existed within a much wider literature but failed to be preserved. In that case, vague allusions elsewhere in tannaitic texts will once have been clarified in the tractate dedicated to the subject. Alternatively, the vagueness of terminology may show not a lack of rabbinic interest in minim but simply the scarcity of rabbinic comment: the rabbis may have known exactly what they meant but just happened not to tell us. Hence my own preferred explanation of the vagueness of the rabbinic conception of heresy is only a possibility: I do not know that it can be shown to be more plausible than other explanations, but it is, I think, no less possible, and it has the advantage that it coincides with the standard concerns of rabbinic discourse. I suggest that the concept of minuth may have stemmed originally not from the practical need to deal with heretics but from a theoretical consideration of the impact on rabbinic thought of a category of Jews whose theology or behaviour placed them outside the covenant between God and Israel. For the rabbis, the minim will therefore have been an intellectual counterpart to the tumtum or androgynos.33 What interested the rabbis was the way that contact between such minim and rabbinic Jews might affect the lives of rabbinic Jews. In this respect, rabbinic concerns about the minim ran parallel to their exploration of the impact of women of different statuses on the adult male rabbinic Jew.34 The main difference was that the rabbis could not avoid contact with women, and the result was the whole order Nashim of the Mishnah, Tosefta and Talmuds. It was much easier in practice to avoid heretics, and that is precisely what the tannaim tried to do. That, I suggest, may be sufficient to explain the minimal halacha about minim in the rabbinic texts which survive. The best way to deal with a potential problem is often simply to ignore it.

33 On the tumtum, see Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 2, p. 949 (s.v. ‘androgynos’). It is characteristic of rabbinic discourse that all minim were treated by the tannaim as male. 34 See J.R. Wegner, Chattel or Person? The status of women in the Mishnah (1988).

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Bibliography Bilde, P., Flavius Josephus between Jerusalem and Rome: his life, his works, and their importance. ( Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Supp. Ser. 2). Sheffield, 1988. Cohen S.J.D., ‘The significance of Yavneh’, HUCA 55 (1984), pp. 28–36. Dexinger, F., ‘Die Sektenproblematik im Judentum’, Kairos 21 (1979), pp. 273– 87. Goodman, M.D., State and Society in Roman Galilee, AD 132–212. (Totowa, N.J. 1983). ——, ‘Sadducees and Essenes after 70 CE’, in S.E. Porter, P. Joyce and D.E. Orton, eds., Crossing the Boundaries: Essays in Biblical Interpretation in Honour of Michael D. Goulder (Leiden, 1994), pp. 347–56. ——, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the religious history of the Roman Empire. Oxford, 1994. Gray, R. Prophetic Figures in Late Second Temple Jewish Palestine: the evidence from Josephus. New York and Oxford, 1993. Hadas-Lebel, M., ‘Le paganisme à travers les sources rabbiniques des IIe et IIIe siècles: contribution à l’étude de syncrétisme dans l’empire romain’, ANRW II.19.2 (1979), pp. 397–485. Hengel, M., Die Zeloten. Untersuchungen zur jüdischen Freiheitsbewegung in der Zeit von Herodes I. bis 70 n. Chr. 2nd ed., Leiden, 1976. Herford, R.T., Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, London, 1903. Horbury, W., ‘The Benediction of the Minim’, Journal of Theological Studies, 33 (1982), pp. 19–61. Keeble, K., A Critical Study of Flavius Josephus’ Contra Apionem. Oxford, M. Phil. thesis, 1991. Moore, G.F., Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: the age of the Tannaim. 3 vols. Cambridge, Mass., 1927–30. Mueller, J.G., Des Flavius Josephus Schrift gegen des Apion. Text und Erklärung. Ed. C.J. Riggenbach and C. von Orelli. Basel, 1877. Neusner, J., Judaism and Christianity in the Age of Constantine: History, Messiah, Israel, and the initial confrontation. Chicago, 1987. Qimron, E. and Strugnell, J., Discoveries in the Judaean Desert. Vol. 10: Qumran Cave 4: V Miqsat Ma"ase ha-Torah. Oxford, 1994. Sanders, E.P., Paul and Palestinian Judaism: a comparison of patterns of religion. Philadelphia, 1977. Sanders, E.P. et al., Jewish and Christian Self-Definition. 3 vols. London, 1980– 82. Segal, A.F., Two Powers in Heaven: Early rabbinic reports about Christianity and Gnosticism. Leiden, 1977. Sperber, D., ‘Min’ in Encylopaedia Judaica, vol. 12 ( Jerusalem, 1971), pp. 1–3. Stemberger, G., Einleitung in Talmud und Midrasch. 8th ed., Tübingen, 1992. Stern, S., Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings. Leiden, 1994. Troiani, L., Commento Storico al “Contra Apione” di Giuseppe. Pisa, 1977. Vermes, G. and Goodman, M., The Essenes according to the Classical Sources. Sheffield, 1989. Wegner, J.R., Chattel or Person? The Status of Women in the Mishnah. New York and Oxford, 1988.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

MODELING THE “PARTING OF THE WAYS”

Much of the disagreement in modern scholarship about when, how, why, and indeed whether, the ways of Judaism and Christianity parted in antiquity derives from confusion about differences of perspective. The relationship of one group to another may be seen quite differently by members of the two groups, and differently again by the modern observer. Thus, for instance, someone considered Jewish by a Christian might not consider himself or herself Jewish, and might or might not be considered as a Jew by non-Christian Jews. It is unreasonable to expect ancient authors always to have made the clear distinctions which historians now seek to discover: the relationship between Jews and Christians may generally have been important for Christians as part of their self-definition, but it was much less crucial for Jews, who could ignore for much of Late Antiquity what Christians thought and did.1 At the same time, occasional contact and conflict between members of distinct groups, and their sharing of theological notions or liturgical practices, need not imply any lack of clarity for the ancient participants of each group about the differences between them: if modern scholars find it hard to decide whether the author or intended readers of a particular text were Jews or Christians, it does not follow that those who produced and used the text in antiquity were similarly in doubt. In illustrations of these varieties of perspective I drew up, for the last of the seminars held in Oxford before the Princeton colloquium, a series of schematic diagrams for the seminar participants to refine. Crude copies of the revised diagrams were distributed at the start of the Princeton meeting, where they were subjected to further alteration. They were amended yet again in the light of comments

1 See further M. Goodman, “The Function of Minim in Early Rabbinic Judaism,” in Geschichte —Tradition—Reflexion, Festschrift für Martin Hengel zum 70, vol. 1, Judentum, ed. P. Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), 501–10 [Chapter 14 above]; S. Stern, Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings (Leiden: Brill, 1994).

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by a group in Cambridge and in reaction to the alternative models proposed by the student leaders of the seminar held in Oxford after our return from Princeton. The final versions presented here are thus very much the product of joint endeavor. All models are inexact representations of an elusive reality. In the course of discussing these diagrams many useful suggestions were made of what might better represent the complex relationships between Judaism and Christianity on which all are agreed. There was much enthusiasm, for instance, for a three-dimensional model, which might give greater prominence to synchronic variation in religious practice and belief in different places and to the varying significance of the different streams—the idea is attractive, but hard to represent on the page. A water-filled construction to represent the wave model, based on language formation, as proposed by Daniel Boyarin in this volume, is similarly impractical for mass distribution. If no image is perfect, some images are more useful than others. In any case, models should only be used as heuristic devices for finding out more about the import of the ancient evidence. It is in that minimal spirit that the diagrams are reproduced here, expertly transformed from my incompetent artistic efforts through Jeremy Boccabello’s expertise in computer design.

70 CE

is

s

Cultural Assumptions of the Graeco-Roman World

stian

Rabb

Chri

Varieties of Paganism

Jewish Christians

Pharisees

Cultural Assumptions of the Graeco-Roman World Varieties of Paganism

Competition

Conflict

Contact

400 CE

Fig. 1 The “Parting of the Ways” is usually seen as the emergence of two distinct religions out of a common source in pre-70 Judaism.

Varieties of Judaism

Standard view of the “Parting of the Ways”

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70 CE 135 CE

JEWS

CHRISTIANS

312 CE

Fig. 2 There has been much dispute about the precise date when Judaism and Christianity became separate religions. The decisive moment is sometimes presumed to be an event within Christian circles, sometimes a political event that affected Jews more widely.

Jesus

30 CE Destruction of Second Temple

1 CE

Paul

Different datings of the “Parting of the Ways”

Bar Kochba

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Christians

Fig. 3 Most of what is reported about pagan views on Judaism and Christianity has been unreliably mediated through Jewish and Christian sources. Pagans appear to have been unaware that within Judaism there were many varieties. The New Testament suggests that pagans could get Jews and Christians confused, but if only the surviving pagan texts are taken into account, it would appear that, at least from the early second century, pagans viewed Christianity as a wholly separate religion, which happened to have started in Judaea. Celsus saw the separation of Christians from Judaism as the product of violent revolt.

Jews

Christ

30 CE

Jews and Christians as seen by pagans in antiquity

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Avoda Zara

Avoda Zara

minim (unspecified)

Jewish Christians

Mishnah

minim (unspecified)

Gentile Christianity

Talmud

Fig. 4 This reconstruction of rabbinic views is derived from a small number of scattered sources. Rabbis showed little interest in minim (“heretics”) of any kind. Some scholars assert that rabbinic silence about Christianity was polemical, but this is impossible to demonstrate. Rabbis refer only rarely to any link between Jewish and Gentile Christianity.

Gentile World

Moses

24

in of m s d kin

im

70 CE

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Israel

aism Jud

Other heresies

Judaizing heresies

st) hri C ed ect (rej

Christianity/the ‘True Israel’

Conflict/ Dialogue

Fig. 5 The images of the Jewish past to be found in Eusebius’ voluminous writings are not wholly consistent. This picture reflects most closely what is found in the Ecclesiastical History. Other fourth-century Christians, such as Epiphanius, had a quite different picture.

Moses

Christ

Eusebius’ view of the “Parting of the Ways”

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30 CE 70 CE

other Jews

ews inic J

Rabb

Social relationships: Jews and Christians 400 CE

Fig. 6 The pattern of social relationships depicted in this diagram is largely based on guesswork. It illustrates the difficulties faced by modern exegetes in establishing social realities from literary texts. For example, references in gentile Christian texts to contemporary Jews may have in mind Jewish Christians, rabbinic Jews, non-rabbinic (but non-Christian) Jews, or “Judaizing” Christians who might not have thought of themselves as Jews at all.

s

le Ch ristia n

genti

h Ch ristia ns

Jewis

............................................................................................................................

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varieties of gentile

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CHRIST and some Christian text

Fig. 7 It is likely that varieties of Judaism continued to exist for many years after 70 CE, and it is certain that many different groups described themselves as Christian. All types of Judaism shared some common characteristics, as did all types of Christianity. It was possible to be both Jewish and Christian, but some forms of Judaism had nothing in common with some forms of Christianity. It was not necessarily the case that the “common core” of either religion was what mattered most to the adherents of that religion.

TORAH and belief that Jewish history is one’s own history

Self-perceptions

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Rabbis

minim

minim

gnostic groups

Marcion

“Proto Orthodox” Christians

Fig. 8 “Proto-orthodox” Christians went to great lengths to define the boundaries of acceptability by describing different heresies. By contrast, rabbinic self-definition was inward looking and rabbis allowed the definition of minim to remain vague.

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Attitudes to boundaries

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IC

o f

C “Proto-O rthodox” Christian ity “Heresies” + + Gnostics etc. Marcionites

tics g Gnos Judaizin PLATONISM Jewish Christians

im Talmidei Hakham

W

400 CE

Fig. 9 The relationships between Judaism, Christianity, and the surrounding culture was complex. The designation of each group in this diagram is that used by modern scholars rather than that used by insiders: no Christian group ever described itself as a “heresy.” The significance of convergence between groups is that particular groups had ideas or practices close to those of other groups: it should not be concluded that closeness of ideas promoted cooperation or even social contact. Groups may reserve their greatest hostility for similar enthusiasts who happen to diverge from them in some small but (in their eyes) immensely significant detail.

T PLA

ON

ISM

CH RIS TIA NIT IES

A N

D R L Essenes? s? a S dducee

O

P a g a n i s m

S AISM O M POST-70 JUD R C O E SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISMS R A G s Ebionite F O CHRISTIANITIES R E U T L tians g Chris C U Judaizin

100 CE V a r i e t i e s

Viewed from outside (first to fourth century)

GI MA

MAG

M C

ONIS GI

PLAT MA

0

modeling the “parting of the ways” 185

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

KOSHER OLIVE OIL IN ANTIQUITY

I hope that it may be thought appropriate to offer to Geza Vermes, who has dedicated much of his scholarly life to the elucidation of the varied nature of Judaism and the attitudes of Jews towards their tradition in late antiquity, a study of a religious development which both originated and came to an end in this period. The problem to be tackled may be stated quite succinctly. In the hellenistic period some Jews objected to using oil produced by non-Jews. Some time in the third century CE the rabbinic patriarch and his court decreed that the ban on gentile oil was no longer to be enforced, and their decision seems to have been generally followed, if not immediately then at least within a few generations. No ancient text gives an adequate explanation either of the original prohibition or of the later relaxation. My purpose is to investigate the underlying religious attitudes which might account for both developments.1 Olive oil was an item of considerable importance in the economy of the land of Israel. Oil was one of the three staple products of the land (Deut. 11.14; 2 Kings 18.32). Of the many varieties of oil, olive oil was among the most expensive, but it was widely used for cosmetics (Eccl. 9.7–8), for medicine (Isa. 1.6), and as a fuel for lamps (cf. R. Tarfon in m. Shabb. 2.2, on the Sabbath lights). It was of course a ubiquitous ingredient in food. Josephus made special mention of the productivity of olive trees in the hills of Galilee (B.J. 2.592). The concern of the inhabitants to ensure their supply of olive oil is illustrated by nds of oil presses on Mount Hermon some way above the height at which olive trees ourish.2 Whether olives actually grew at such a height in antiquity or were transported raw to the upland settlements for processing is unclear. In either case the importance attributed to the product is striking.3 1

The only work specically devoted to this topic is S.B. Hoenig, ‘Oil and Pagan Delement’, JQR 61 (1970/71), pp. 63–75. 2 Cf. S. Dar, ‘The History of the Hermon Settlements’, PEQ 120 (1988), p. 37. 3 Apart from the greater ease in the transport of olives rather than oil, it may be that people preferred to process their own oil to prevent adulteration by inferior olives or other substances.

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In this reliance on olive oil the Jews of Palestine shared in the general culture of the Mediterranean region. By the time of the early Roman empire olive cultivation was almost universally found in lowland coastal regions, and the long-distance trade in high quality luxury oil was equalled in bulk and distribution only by the trade in wine.4 When Jews decided in the Hellenistic and early Roman imperial period not to use gentile olive oil, they were, then, deliberately turning their backs on some of the more widely traded goods in their society. But it may be that by the time such trade had fully evolved in the last centuries BCE, Jews could already justify the taboo to themselves by claiming reliance on ancient tradition, for the rst evidence for a prohibition on the use of gentile oil may date back to before 281 BCE. According to Josephus (Ant. 12.119–120), Seleucus Nicator, who ruled from 312 to 281 BCE, gave special privileges to the Jews as follows. MC­ ImT 5‚NGWMQY Ù 0KMlVXT …P C´Y ‡MVKUG R¿NGUKP …P V’ #U¬ MC­ V’ MlVX 5WT¬ MC­ …P C¸V’ V’ OJVTQR¿NGK #PVKQZG¬ RQNKVG¬CY C¸VQ¶Y L¬XUG MC­ VQ®Y …PQKMKU[G®UKP ÖUQV¬OQWY oR‚HJPG /CMGF¿UKP MC­ g'NNJUKP, œY VŽP RQNKVG¬CP VCµVJP ‡VK MC­ P·P FKCO‚PGKP VGMOTKQP Fƒ VQ·VQ VQ¶Y +QWFC¬QWY OŽ DQWNQO‚PQWY oNNQHµN™ …NC¬™ ZTÈU[CK NCODlPGKP œTKUO‚PQP VK RCTm VšP IWOPCUKlTZXP GÖY …NC¬QW VKOŽP oTIµTKQP …M‚NGWUGP Ú VQ· FOQW VšP

#PVKQZ‚XP …P V¥ P·P RQN‚O™ N·UCK RTQCKTQWO‚PQW, /QWMKCPÀY ÉIGOÓP ŸP V¿VG VÈY 5WT¬CY …VTJUGP.

Seleucus Nicator granted them citizenship in the cities which he founded in Asia and Lower Syria and in his capital, Antioch, itself, and declared them to have equal privileges with the Macedonians and Greeks who were settled in these cities, so that this citizenship of theirs remains to this day; and the proof of this is the fact that he gave orders that those Jews who were unwilling to use foreign oil should receive a xed sum of money from the gymnasiarchs to pay for their own kind of oil; and, when in the present war the people of Antioch proposed to revoke this privilege, Mucianus, who was then governor of Syria, maintained it.

If Josephus is to be trusted, at least some Jews in Asia Minor and/or Syria were unwilling to use foreign oil before 281 BCE. How many 4 On the olive trade of the early Roman empire, see in general D.P.S. Peacock and D.F. Williams, Amphorae and the Roman Economy: an Introductory Guide, London and New York, 1986. For the economic importance of this trade, see D.J. Mattingly, ‘Oil for Export? A Comparison of Libyan, Spanish and Tunisian Olive Oil Production in the Roman Empire’, JRA 1 (1988), 33–56, but note that there has been more study of the trade in this period in the Western Mediterranean than in the Levant. For olive oil production in Roman Palestine, see the articles and bibliographies in M. Heltzer and D. Eitam, eds., Olive Oil in Antiquity: Israel and Neighbouring Countries from the Neolithic to the Early Arab Period, Haifa, 1987.

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Jews followed this line is not clear: VQ¶Y +QWFC¬QWY OŽ DQWNQO‚PQWY may mean ‘the Jews who did not want’ or, more probably, ‘those Jews—i.e. only some—who did not want’. It is quite likely on general grounds that Josephus ascribed the grant of this privilege to an earlier period than was the case, and that in fact a later Seleucid monarch, such as Antiochus III, who ruled from 223 to 187 BCE, was responsible,5 but in any case it seems certain that the custom was well established in the Hellenistic period. Whenever the taboo started, two things about it are established from this passage. First, Jews kept up the habit in the late sixties CE during the First Revolt, when Mucianus as governor of Syria permitted them to maintain their privilege. Second, the complaint expressed about unkosher oil was that it was foreign, allophulon, and Josephus could take it for granted that the reasonableness of this objection was sufciently self-evident not to need spelling out to his readers, most of whom would be gentile. Josephus’ reason for taking the taboo so much for granted was probably simply that it was part of his own lifestyle, for the only other context in which the ban on gentile oil is mentioned in his writings involved an incident in his own career. The incident was described by Josephus twice, with interesting divergences between the two accounts. First, at BJ 2.591–592, Josephus included the following passage in his attack on his long-standing rival, John of Gischala. ‡RGKVC UWP[G­Y UMJPŽP RCPQWTIQVlVJP, œY qTC HWNlVVQKPVQ RlPVGY Q× MCVm VŽP 5WT¬CP +QWFC®QK …NC¬™ ZTÈU[CK OŽ FK ÙOQHµNXP …IMGZGKTKUO‚P™, R‚ORGKP C¸VQ®Y …R­ OG[QT¬CP …LÛVUCVQ. UWPXPQµOGPQY Fƒ VQ· 6WT¬QW PQO¬UOCVQY, Ú V‚UUCTCY #VVKMmY FµPCVCK, V‚UUCTCY oOHQTG®Y, VÈY C¸VÈY …R¬RTCUMGP VKOÈY ÉOKCOH¿TKQP. QºUJY Fƒ VÈY )CNKNC¬CY …NCKQH¿TQW OlNKUVC MC­ V¿VG G¸HQTJMW¬CY, GÖY URCP¬\QPVCY GÖUR‚ORXP RQN¶ MC­ O¿PQY qRGKT¿P VK RNÈ[QY UWPÈIGP ZTJOlVXP, Q´Y G¸[‚XY …ZTÈVQ MCVm VQ· VŽP …TICU¬CP RCTCUZ¿PVQY.

He next contrived to play a very crafty trick: with the avowed object of protecting all the Jews of Syria from the use of oil not supplied by their own countrymen, he sought and obtained permission to deliver it to them at the frontier. He then bought up that commodity, paying Tyrian coin of the value of four Attic drachms for four amphorae and proceeded to sell half an amphora at the same price. As Galilee is a special home of the olive and the crop had been plentiful, John, enjoying a monopoly, by sending large quantities to districts in want of it, amassed an immense sum of 5 See R. Marcus, ed., Josephus: Works, vol. VII, Appendix c, ‘The early Seleucid Rulers and the Jews’, Cambridge, Mass., 1943, repr. 1966, pp. 737–42.

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However tendentious and exaggerated the attack, Josephus must have assumed that it would at least sound plausible to Jewish readers. The oil supplied OŽ FK ÙOQHµNXP in this passage is the equivalent of the oNNQHµNQP ‡NCKQP in the passage from Antiquities rst quoted. When Josephus returned to the same incident in his later account in the Vita (74–6), he gave a slightly different version of the same events. MC­ FGWV‚TCP +XlPPJY …RGKU‚HGTGP RCPQWTI¬CP ‡HJ ImT +QWFC¬QWY VQ¶Y VŽP (KN¬RRQW -CKUlTGKCP MCVQKMQ·PVCY, UWIMGMNGKUO‚PQWY MCVm RTQUVCIŽP VQ· DCUKN‚XY ¹RÀ /QF¬QW VQ· VŽP FWPCUVG¬CP FKQKMQ·PVQY, RGRQOH‚PCK RTÀY C¸VÀP RCTCMCNQ·PVCY, …RGKFŽ Q¸M ‡ZQWUKP ‡NCKQP Õ ZT¬UQPVCK MC[CT¿P, RQKJUlOGPQP RT¿PQKCP G¸RQT¬CP C¸VQ®Y VQµVQW RCTCUZG®P, OŽ FK oPlIMJP e'NNJPKM¥ ZTÒOGPQK Vm P¿OKOC RCTCDC¬PXUKP. VC·VC F Q¸Z ¹R G¸UGDG¬CY ‡NGIGP +XlPJY, FK CÖUZTQM‚TFGKCP Fƒ HCPGTXVlVJP. IKPÒUMXP ImT RCTm OƒP …MG¬PQKY MCVm VŽP -CKUlTGKCP VQ¶Y FµQ L‚UVCY FTCZOÈY OKnY RXNQWO‚PQWY, …P Fƒ VQ®Y )KUZlNQKY VQ¶Y ÂIFQMQPVC L‚UVCY FTCZOšP VGUUlTXP, RnP VÀ ‡NCKQP ÄUQP ÌP …MG® FKGR‚OECVQ, NCDÓP …LQWU¬CP MC­ RCT …OQ· VÀ FQMG®P Q¸ ImT †MÓP …R‚VTGRQP, oNNm FKm H¿DQP VÀP oRÀ VQ· RN[QWY, OŽ MXNµXP MCVCNGWU[G¬JP ¸R C¸VšP. UWIZXTUCPVQY Q¾P OQW RNG¬UVXP ZTJOlVXP Ù

+XlPPJY …M VÈY MCMQWTI¬CY VCµVJY G¸R¿TJUG.

This knavish trick John followed up with a second. He stated that the Jewish inhabitants of Caesarea Philippi, having, by the king’s order, been shut up by Modius, his viceroy, and having no pure oil with which to anoint themselves, had sent a request to him to see that they were supplied with this commodity, lest they should be driven to violate their legal ordinances by resort to Grecian oil. John’s motive in making this assertion was not piety, but proteering of the most barefaced description; for he knew that at Caesarea two pints were sold for one drachm, whereas at Gischala eighty pints could be had for four drachms. So he sent off all the oil in the place, having ostensibly obtained my authority to do so. My permission I gave reluctantly, from fear of being stoned by the mob if I withheld it. Thus, having gained my consent, John by this sharp practice made an enormous prot.

The story as a whole is more plausible in this version. Only the Jews of Caesarea Philippi are involved, and it is easier to imagine economic interchange of this sort in the middle of a war if it took place between the rebels in Galilee and the subjects of the Jewish, if pro-Roman, king Agrippa II, than to credit the claim in B.J. that John traded with ‘all the Jews in Syria’, a province rmly controlled by the Roman enemy. In this case the kosher oil, described as pure (MC[CT¿P), is contrasted to a specic form of gentile oil, namely Grecian oil (†NNJPKM¿P). It is asserted

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that the concern of the Jews in Caesarea Philippi was over the use of such oil for anointing themselves (if, as I think preferable, the minority manuscript reading ZT¬UQPVCK is read rather than ZTUQPVCK). Again, it is signicant that Josephus took it for granted that his readers would appreciate the issues at stake—unlike his earlier works, Josephus’ Vita was aimed primarily at a Jewish audience. For such readers the statement that Jews using Grecian oil would transgress the laws (Vm P¿OKOC RCTCDC¬PXUKP) would sound like a straightforward statement that such behaviour involved breaking the Torah. If such an attitude was so standard among Jews at the end of the rst century CE, some explanation needs to be found for the remarkable statement dropped into the Mishnah tractate Abodah Zarah (2.6), redacted a little over a century later.            

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                     — These things of gentiles are forbidden, but it is not prohibited to derive any benet from them: milk that a gentile milked but no Israelite watched him, and their bread and their oil—Rabbi and his court permitted the oil—boiled or preserved vegetables into which it is their custom to put wine or vinegar, and hashed, pickled sh, and brine in which no sh is distinguishable (with no sticklebacks oating in it), and the nless sh, and drops of asafoetida, and lumpy salt. Behold, these are forbidden, but it is not prohibited to have any benet from them.

‘Rabbi and his court permitted the oil.’ The clause looks like a later insertion into a list of the forbidden food of idolaters. It does not t its present context either in its meaning or in its grammar. In the Babylonian Talmud (b. Abodah Zarah 37a) it is in one place assumed that it was not R. Judah I but his grandson, R. Judah Nesiah, who took the lenient decision described. Since the Mishnah was compiled by R. Judah I, the lack of editing to incorporate the words into the surrounding texts ts well into the tradition that the reform took place two generations after his time. However, both Talmuds also referred the reform at other places to R. Judah I.6 Perhaps in the case of a controversial decision which re6 See b. Abodah Zarah 36a and y. Abodah Zarah 2.8, 41d, both cited below. H. Albeck, Shisha Sidrei Mishnah, Seder Nezikin, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1953, p. 331, asserts simply that the Mishnah refers to R. Judah Nesiah.

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lied on the authority of the issuing court and which elicited opposition (as the gemara attests [see below]), both patriarchs felt impelled to issue decrees, just as Roman emperors sometimes reissued laws when they were not widely observed. The Mishnah text itself gave absolutely no explanation either for the original ban or for its lifting. This is not unusual for halakhic decisions recorded in tannaitic texts, but this particular case rather puzzled the amoraim, as can be seen from an examination of the discussion of the point in the Babylonian Talmud. The most relevant part of the text, to be found at b. Abodah Zarah 35b–36a, reads as follows.      

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Section 1: And their oil. As regards oil Rab said: Daniel decreed against its use; but Samuel said: The residue from their unclean vessels renders it

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prohibited. Is this to say that people generally are concerned to eat their food in a state of ritual purity!—Rather the residue from their prohibited vessels renders it prohibited. Section 2: Samuel said to Rab: According to my explanation that the residue from their prohibited vessels renders it prohibited, it is quite right that when R. Isaac b. Samuel b. Martha came he related that R. Simlai expounded in Nisibis: As regards oil R. Judah and his Court took a vote and declared it permitted, holding the opinion that [when the forbidden element] imparts a worsened avour [the mixture] is permitted. But according to your statement that Daniel decreed against it, [can it be thought that] Daniel made a decree and R. Judah the Prince then came and annulled it? For have we not learned: A Court is unable to annul the decisions of another Court, unless it is superior to it in wisdom and numerical strength! Section 3: Rab replied to him: You quote Simlai of Lud; but the inhabitants of Lud are different because they are neglectful. [Samuel] said to him: Shall I send for him? [Rab] thereupon grew alarmed and said: If [R. Judah and his Court] have not made proper research, shall we not do so? Surely it is written, ‘But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not dele himself with the king’s meat nor with the wine of his drinking’—the verse speaks of two drinkings, the drinking of wine and the drinking of oil! Rab was of the opinion that Daniel purposed in his own heart and decided similarly for all Israel; whereas Samuel was of the opinion that he purposed in his own heart but did not decide similarly for all Israel. Section 4: But did Daniel decree against oil? Behold Bali declared that Abimi the Nabatean said in the name of Rab: Their bread, oil, wine and daughters are all included in the eighteen things! Should you argue that Daniel came and made the decree but it was not accepted, and then the disciples of Hillel and Shammai came and made the decree and it was accepted; in that case what was the purpose of Rab’s testimony?—But Daniel decreed against the use of the oil in a city, and [the disciples] came and decreed against its use even in a eld. Section 5: How, then, was it possible for R. Judah the Prince to permit [what was forbidden by] the ordinance of the disciples of Shammai and Hillel, seeing that we have learned: A court is unable to annul the decisions of another Court, unless it is superior to it in wisdom and numerical strength! Furthermore, Rabbah b. Bar Hanah has said in the name of R. Johanan: In all matters a Court can annul the decisions of another Court except the eighteen things, for even were Elijah and his Court to come we must not listen to him!—R. Mesharsheya said: The reason is because their prohibition has spread among the large majority of Israelites, but the prohibition concerning oil did not so spread.

The amoraim were concerned to establish whether the original interdiction was a precaution against contamination by vessels rendered

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unkosher by other ingredients or was the result of a decree issued either by Daniel (relying on the pleonastic ‘wine of his drinking’ in Daniel 1.8, which they took to include oil as a second forbidden beverage after wine) or by the Houses of Hillel and Shammai as one of the eighteen decisions of the disciples at the start of the great revolt against Rome. The main rabbis cited, Samuel and Rab, taught in the second quarter of the third century or later and, since they appear to respond to it, presumably after the lifting of the ban by R. Judah Nesiah. Two reasons are given in this passage for that lifting. According to R. Simlai, as quoted by R. Isaac b. Samuel b. Martha, R. Judah held that the forbidden element in the oil imparts a worse avour, and therefore the oil is permitted. The second opinion is put forward in the name of R. Mesharsheya, that the ban was in any case not in general accepted by Jews. Discussion of the various opinions put forward by the sages in this passage may be further complicated by noting a variant reading of line 3, which is to be found in the early commentaries.7 These texts, which read      instead of     , imply in the light of t. Abodah Zarah 4(5).8 that Samuel’s opinion was that it was not the discharge of the impure or forbidden vessels in which oil was stored that made it unt, but that they were deled through the gentile habit of sprinkling olives with wine or vinegar to facilitate the removal of the pits. This understanding of the Mishnah’s prohibition brings the ban on oil into the same category as the vegetables which are mentioned next in the text, since they too are prohibited because sprinkled with wine or vinegar. However, no reference is made to such sprinkling in the ban on gentile milk and bread, which appear immediately before the ban on oil in the Mishnah text. Reference to the discussion of the same Mishnah in the Yerushalmi ( y. Abodah Zarah 2.9, 41d) produces more opinions but no greater clarity on any of these issues.

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7 For the rest of this paragraph, see Z.A. Steinfeld, ‘Concerning the Prohibition against Gentile Oil’, Tarbiz 49 (1980), pp. 264–77.

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                        1: Who forbade the oil? Rab Judah said, ‘Daniel forbade it: “And Daniel resolved, etc.” ’ 2: And who permitted it? Rabbi and his court. In three settings R. Judah the patriarch is referred to as ‘our rabbi’, in the context of writs of divorce, oil, and [producing an abortion in the shape of a] sandal. In consequence they referred to his court as the court that permitted anointing [with oil]. Any court that gave a lenient ruling in three matters is called a permissive court. 3: Said R. Judan, ‘Rabbi’s court differed from him in the matter of the writ of divorce’. What is [the issue]? That [the woman] is permitted to [re]marry. R. Haggai said, ‘She is permitted to marry’. R. Yose said, ‘She is forbidden to marry’. 4: R. Aha, R. Tanhum bar Hiyya in the name of R. Haninah, and some say it in the name of R. Joshua b. Levi: ‘Because they were going up to the Royal Mountain and being put to death on it’. 5: Isaac bar Samuel bar Marta went down to Nisibis. He found Simlai, the southerner, sitting and expounding: ‘Rabbi and his court permitted oil’. He said [the rule before] Samuel, but Rab did not accept the rule for himself or eat. He said to him, ‘Samuel ate. If you do not do the same, I shall decree concerning you that you are a “rebellious elder”.’ [Rab] replied to him, ‘When I was still there [in the Land], I know that Simlai,

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chapter sixteen the southerner, rejected’. [Samuel] said to him, ‘Did [Simlai] say this in his own name? Did he not say it in the name of R. Judah Nesiah?’ Samuel nagged him about the matter until he too ate. 6: R. Yohanan raised the question: ‘And have we not learned in the Mishnah that a court has not got the power to nullify the opinion of another court unless it is greater than it in wisdom and in numbers? Now how is it possible that Rabbi and his court should permit what Daniel and his colleagues had prohibited?’ 7: R. Yohanan is consistent with his opinion expressed elsewhere. For R. Yohanan said, ‘I have received it as a tradition from R. Eleazar of the school of R. Sadoq that any decree a court should issue, and which the majority of the community should not accept upon itself, is no decree’. They looked into the matter and found in the decree against oil and they did not nd that the majority of the community had accepted upon itself.

The view ascribed in the Babylonian Talmud to Rab, that the ban was initiated by Daniel, was here attributed to his pupil R. Judah bar Ezekiel ( . end of third century). No mention was made of any discussion by the Houses of Hillel and Shammai. Some modern scholars have assumed that the obscure statement given by R. Aha and (?) R. Tanhum bar Hiyya in the name of R. Haninah or R. Joshua b. Levi, the last named being an amora contemporary with R. Judah Nesiah, that something happened ‘because they were going up to the Mountain of the King and being killed (on this account? on the mountain?)’ was given as an explanation of the acceptance of Daniel’s prohibition, on the grounds that Jews thus avoided the gentiles who inhabited the mountain.8 But this is not the only possible interpretation of the phrase, for other scholars have supposed that, on the contrary, it was intended to explain the lifting of the ban, on the grounds that the mountain was farmed by Jews and was therefore the best place to get pure oil.9 It also seems to me possible that neither of these hypotheses is correct and that the statement 8 Cf. J. Neusner, The Talmud of the Land of Israel: a Preliminary Translation and Explanation, vol. 33, Abodah Zarah, Chicago, 1982, p. 99. In favor of this interpretation, note that in the parallel version of this passage in y. Shabb. 1.5, 3d section 4 is placed immediately after section 1. 9 Cf. A. Oppenheimer, The ‘Am Ha-aretz: a Study in the Social History of the Jewish People in the Hellenistic-Roman Period, trans. I.H. Levine, Leiden, 1977, p. 65. G. Alon, The Jews in their Land in their Talmudic Age (70–640 CE), trans. G. Levi, vol. II, Jerusalem, 1984, p. 736, also understood the text in this way and suggested that the enthusiasm of R. Simlai of Lod for the lifting of the ban was occasioned by the greater threat to safety in the south than in Galilee, since the royal mountain is to be located in the Judaean hill country.

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may have referred not to oil at all, but to the issue raised in the immediately preceding discussion in the talmudic text, which concerned the remarriage of a widow whose husband had given her a writ of divorce to become valid if he did not return within twelve months but had died within that period. These diverse explanations by the amoraim of the ban on gentile oil seem to me irreconcilable and the distinction proposed anonymously in the Babylonian Talmud passage (Section 4) between decrees valid in a city and those valid in a eld strikes me as a counsel of desperation by an editor or editors determined to resolve discord whenever possible. Such irreconcilability is not altogether uncommon in rabbinic texts. More signicant is the weakness of each of the amoraic opinions when they are examined individually. Such weakness can only be demonstrated by looking at each opinion in some detail. Following the order in the Babylonian Talmud, I shall start with the views of Rab, who ascribed the ban both to Daniel and to the eighteen decisions of the Houses of Hillel and Shammai. Neither notion is very convincing. Rab’s exegesis of Daniel 1.8 was hardly the obvious reading of the biblical text and seems to have been unknown to earlier commentators on the passage. Thus Josephus described Daniel and his friends as determined to stay vegetarian but prepared to eat any non-animal food provided to them (AJ 10.190–194). As for the ascription of the decree to the eighteen decisions of the Houses in 66 CE, the link was not mentioned in the discussion of oil in the Jerusalem Talmud or in the earliest extant rabbinic lists of the components of the decrees. In the Mishnah (m. Shabb. 1.4) the precise contents of the decrees were not spelled out and the whole discussion in b. Shabb. 13b–17b presupposes great uncertainty as to what they were. In y. Shabb. 1.5, 3c, the list of eighteen things ascribed to R. Shimon bar Yohai ( . mid second century) did not include oil, although oil was included in an anonymous baraita in the same passage.10 But in any case it is hard to reconcile an origin of the custom in 66 with Josephus’ assertion that the taboo was already long-standing in Antioch by that time, and it can be reckoned most unlikely that Josephus would have mentioned the custom with apparent approval if it had originated in a

10 On the decrees, see the recent discussion of the tradition in I. Ben-Shalom, ‘The Shammai School and its Place in the Political and Social History of Eretz Israel in the First Century AD’, Ph.D. thesis Tel Aviv, 1980, pp. 562–98 (in Heb.).

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t of anti-Roman zealotry. It is worth noting that the Jews of Syria and/ or Caesarea Philippi who observed the taboos in 67 CE were presumably not strongly anti-Roman since they had not gone south to join their compatriots in revolt. ( Josephus stated [Vita 74] that the Jews had been shut up in Caesarea Philippi by Modius, Agrippa II’s viceroy, but if John of Gischala’s kosher oil could get in, presumably Jews could get out.) Attempts have been made in the past to circumvent this problem of an apparent conict between the evidence in Josephus and the evidence in the Talmud by distinguishing the ban described by Josephus from that ascribed to the Houses.11 Thus, as Hoenig pointed out, the prohibition to which Josephus referred was observed in the diaspora and is not explicitly attested in Judaea, where the Houses issued their decree. Hoenig claimed that this is best explained if the diaspora ban was observed only as a way of avoiding idolatry, and the xenophobic decree of the Houses was therefore something new and specically Judaean. The idea is not impossible but, although oil was indeed one ingredient in pagan ritual, this fact is not given as a reason for avoiding gentile oil in any ancient text. It may be added in support of Hoenig that Josephus seems to have envisaged a taboo on the use of gentile oil as an ointment whereas the rabbinic texts include oil in the list of forbidden foods but, again, I am not sure how much can be made of this. It may be assumed that any substance considered unt as ointment was a fortiori reckoned unsuitable as food. (The only reason I can nd to doubt this is the testimony of Josephus [B.J. 2.123], that Essenes, who may well have used oil of some kind in their food, refused to put any oil on their bodies, reckoning it as a delement [MNKFC]. But the case was not strictly parallel, for Essenes simply wished to keep their skin dry.) In any case the contrast betwen oil as food and oil as ointment may be spurious, for the word used to designate oil in one place (Section 2) in the Jerusalem Talmud passage quoted above was  , i.e. ‘anointing’. Rather more convincing than Rab’s ascription of the ban to a decree at one time or another is the explanation for the ban put forward according to the Babylonian Talmud by Mar Samuel, that the oil was in some way contaminated by gentiles’ additives. This view ts in with

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Hoenig, ‘Oil’, passim. G. Alon, Jews, Judaism and the Classical World, trans. I. Abrahams, Jerusalem, 1977, pp. 156–57, suggested that the eighteen decrees (including the ban on oil) were a reinforcement of non-biblical halakhot about gentile food which were not sufciently observed in some circles. This is possible, but there is no rst-century evidence for such failure to observe the taboo on oil.

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Josephus’ description of Jewish oil as ‘pure’ (Vita 74), and, as Samuel is made to point out in the Talmudic passage (Section 2), it did at least make sense of the reason for lifting the ban attributed to R. Judah by R. Simlai, that when the forbidden element in a mixture imparts a worsened avour the mixture is permitted. But that reason itself has an air of improvization. The residue or sprinkling believed to make oil forbidden consisted probably of gentile wine suspected of use in libations, although it cannot be shown that other contaminants were not also envisaged. If ‘residue’ is read, it is possible that an amphora or other container once used for wine and reused for oil might impart a taste to the oil; if it was resinated wine, the taste of the oil might be rather unpleasant, so that the alleged reason for lifting the ban would also make sense. However, there is not much evidence for such re-use of amphorae or other vessels, for reasons which are clear enough: if the wine residue made the oil taste worse, gentiles will only have re-used vessels when no more appropriate container was available. Since the quantity of pottery produced throughout the Roman empire was vast, this was surely a rare occurrence, and it is hard to imagine that suspicion of such delement was the main reason for the banning of gentile oil. Similar arguments apply to the sprinkling of olives with wine or vinegar by gentiles, if   is read rather than   (see above). The practice certainly occurred, for it is explicitly described at t. Abodah Zarah 4(5).8. But it can surely be assumed that, unless the gentiles concerned were very foolish, the custom was not believed to impart a worse taste to the oil. It seems to me best to stop looking for biblical proof texts or specic occasions for the ban and to accept instead that the confusion of the amoraic sources may have reected a genuine lack of considered reasons for the prohibition. That is to say, the widespread custom among Jews of avoiding gentile oil may have been based neither on biblical exegesis nor on a decision by an accepted authority but on a pervasive religious instinct which was all the more powerful for its lack of rationale. The instinct to avoid gentile foodstuffs of various common kinds was a novel phenomenon among Jews of the late Persian or early Hellenistic period. It had no explicit connection with a concern for levitical purity. Since it occurred after the composition of most of the holy books eventually reckoned canonical, the phenomenon was hardly attested in biblical texts which could be used as justication for the custom. The late books in which the practice is assumed (e.g. Judith 10.5; 12.1–4; Tobit 1.10–11) were not included in sacred scripture, apart from the book of

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Daniel.12 It is a plausible hypothesis (which by its very nature can neither be proved nor disproved) that this extension of food taboos to separate not just holy from profane but, more specically, Jew from gentile, is best explained by social and cultural changes in the lives of Jews in this period rather than the development of novel religious theories. If this is correct, it may be misleading to describe intertestamental Judaism as did the amoraim, as if it consisted essentially in a number of competing systems of halakhah which differed either because of the decrees of competing religious authorities or because of their divergent methods of interpreting the Bible. Biblical interpretation was undoubtedly one generating force in religious innovation. But in many cases where a biblical text was cited in support of particular behaviour, the impetus for that behaviour was already present in the form of custom or instinctive attitude. Whether such custom counted as part of the Torah for any set of Jews was perhaps only a matter of terminology. It might also depend on the audience addressed: some of the unexpected items in Josephus’ list of the Jewish laws in C. Ap. 2.190–219, such as the Jewish ban on taking spoils from the corpses of their enemies (212), might be seen by some Jews as custom rather than law, but it suited Josephus’ apologetic when writing for gentiles to include such philanthropic behaviour within the law.13 If the taboo depended on instinct rather than biblical interpretation or a religious authority, why and how was it successfully abolished? It cannot be said that the reasons given in the rabbinic sources themselves for the decision by R. Judah and his court are very convincing. The view attributed to R. Judah by R. Simlai, that mixture with a forbidden substance did not invalidate oil because it left a bad taste, has been discussed above and found not impossible but rather implausible. Little can be achieved by expatiating on the strange reference, also discussed above, to death on the King’s Mountain. It is hard to know how much credence to give to the claim of R. Mesharsheya that the ban was easily lifted because it was not observed by the majority of Israel; since Mesharsheya spoke in the name R. Samuel b. Abba, who in turn quoted R. Yohanan, the younger contemporary of R. Judah Nesiah, he himself probably taught a considerable time after R. Judah and may not have preserved 12 Note that among the gentile foodstuffs avoided by Judith was gentile oil ( Judith 10.5). 13 See G. Vermes, ‘A Summary of the Law by Flavius Josephus’, NT 24 (1982), pp. 289–303.

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accurate traditions about religious attitudes which prevailed long before his birth. It is difcult to explain why Jews should have dropped the traditional aversion to gentile oil which had apparently been so keenly felt in Josephus’ day. It may be worth pointing out that, according to the Jerusalem Talmud passage quoted above (Section 7), Yohanan taught not that the nasi’s lifting of the ban was justied but that it was unnecessary, because any decree which the majority of Jews ignore is not a decree, and this was the case with Daniel’s prohibition of gentile oil. If adoption of any one of the amoraic opinions is not satisfactory, the only way to account both for R. Judah’s action and for the diversity of rabbinic opinion about it is to construct a plausible model into which the disparate evidence can be seen to t. Various more or less fanciful pictures can be imagined. It is not impossible, for example, that R. Judah issued a deliberate challenge to his contemporaries’ deep religious feelings in order to demonstrate his authority by imposing his will; some evidence survives of a power struggle between the nasi and the sages in his day and the issue of gentile oil might have been a trial of strength.14 More plausible is an economic motive, although quite what it would be is hard to envisage: the Jews in Galilee for whom R. Judah Nesiah is most likely to have legislated in the mid-third century inhabited one of the more favoured olive producing regions of the Near East and, whatever other goods they may have lacked, it is implausible that Jewish olive oil was a scarce commodity. If there were other, more complex, economic reasons for lifting the ban, no evidence of their nature survives.15 It seems to me that a more plausible model may be constructed by trying to explain rabbinic legislation about gentile oil against the background of a general picture of the development of Jewish law in the Hellenistic and early Roman periods. There are good reasons to suppose that much of the law enshrined in the Mishnah was not originally 14 On the relationship of the nasi to the rabbis, see L.I. Levine, ‘The Jewish Patriarch (Nasi) in Third Century Palestine’, ANRW II (Principat) 19, part 2 (1979), pp. 678–80. 15 Cf. M. Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee, AD 132–212, Totowa, NJ, 1983, p. 276, with a brief discussion of other possible (but hypothetical) economic arguments, such as the possibility that high quality Galilean oil might be exported at a sufciently high price to pay for imports of low grade foreign (gentile) oil, while leaving a surplus for other purchases. S. Applebaum, ‘Judea as a Roman province: the countryside as a political and economic factor’, ANRW II (Principal) 8 (1977), p. 373 n. 84, puts forward an ingenious argument that the ban was lifted to benet middlemen who purchased olives for resale. The Jews who would benet most might be those in the Diaspora, but there no evidence that a third-century nasi would legislate with them primarily in mind.

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enacted by rabbis but existed before 70 CE in the form of customary law. Thus the marriage, divorce and contract law in use in the early second century in the Dead Sea area had much in common with the law presupposed by the Mishnah.16 This does not require (though it does not preclude) the origin of that law having been in rabbinical schools but it is more likely that the Mishnah consists to a large extent of the rationalization of an existing legal system. Such rationalization involved deduction following a series of rules, some of which were at some time codied as the thirteen middoth of R. Ishmael (Sifra Lev. 1). Whenever possible a rule was to be derived from an existing rule or directly from a biblical text. In most cases a rationale of current behaviour could be found but not all existing custom could pass the rabbis’ logical test. The hypothesis I wish to propose is that R. Judah could nd no such valid arguments for the ban on gentile olive oil, and that he therefore decided that it should be abolished. How plausible is this reconstruction of events? It cannot of course be proved, but the curious data from Josephus and the rabbinic texts discussed in this paper can all, I think, be accounted for more or less satisfactorily if it is taken as correct. It may be assumed that the tradition mooted after R. Judah’s decision by Rab, that the ban was one of the eighteen decisions of the Houses in 66 CE, was not accepted by (or known to?) the patriarch since, as Rabbah b. Bar Hanah stated in the name of R. Yohanan in the Babylonian Talmud passage (Section 5), it was not permitted to overthrow such decisions and R. Judah would therefore have been courting unnecessary trouble by doing so. It may further be assumed that, if he was aware of Rab’s other suggestion that the prohibition derived from Daniel 1.8, he found it unreasonably farfetched—according to Rab in the extract quoted above from the Babylonian Talmud (Section 3), of course, he was ignorant of the Daniel proof text because he had failed to undertake proper research. To sum up. What I suggest is that, since no reason for the ban could be found by extension of existing halakhah or by biblical exegesis, R. Judah was forced to surmise an explanation of the taboo. All he could come up with was the supposition that contamination from the vessels or gentile sprinkling habits must have been the issue. But such

16 See P. Benoit, J.T. Milik and R. de Vaux, Les Grottes de Murabba{at (Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, vol. II), Oxford, 1960.

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an explanation seemed to him patently unsatisfactory. His only possible reaction was to lift the ban. If this hypothesis is accepted, the whole saga may bear a lesson of somewhat wider signicance. Codication may sometimes have implied leniency. If so, the general picture derived both from the rabbinic tradition itself and from the hostile depiction of Judaism in some early Christian texts may usefully be adjusted. According to that picture, halakhah was a system that constantly increased the burden of the law by seeking new ramications for its effective imposition. But in some cases at the start of rabbinic codication in the tannaitic and early amoraic period the same processes of ‘legalism’ may have had an opposite effect. If my suggestion is correct, it was precisely the rationalization of the halakhah that eventually abolished the concept of gentile olive oil as unkosher. At any rate, since soon after the time of R. Judah Nesiah, all Jews, it seems, have used such oil with a good conscience.17

17 I am grateful to participants at the Symposium on Jewish Food, held in Yarnton in June 1989, and to the members of the regular Yarnton discussion group in October 1989, for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE JEWISH IMAGE OF GOD IN LATE ANTIQUITY* The significance of the depiction of the sun god as the central figure of the zodiac mosaics found in many Palestinian synagogues of late antiquity has been long debated. The most artistically sophisticated of these depictions, that found in the Hammat Tiberias mosaic, variously dated between the beginning and the end of the fourth century CE,1 was only one example of a common motif which appears also in a less impressive form at Naaran and in near-caricature in the sixth-century synagogue at Beth Alpha, while the synagogue mosaic at Sepphoris simply illustrated the shining sun.2 Both inscriptions and the distinctively Jewish iconography of the other mosaic floors in the synagogues demonstrate that the buildings in question served a religious purpose for Jews.3 So what, in the mind of the artist ( Jew or gentile) or the commissioning patron or patrons or community, was the function of the apparently pagan image situated so as to confront Jews at their feet as they worshipped? Over the years various suggestions have been made. An early hypothesis that the synagogue decoration reflected the taste of nonJewish, perhaps imperial, patrons has come to seem less attractive

* I am grateful for comments on this paper from Jas’ Elsner and the editors of this volume, and to participants in seminars on this subject in Oxford, London and Southampton as well as in New York. 1 M. Dothan, Hammat Tiberias: Early Synagogues and the Hellenistic and Roman Remains ( Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983). On the date, see M. Goodman, “The Roman State and the Jewish Patriarch in the Third Century,” in Galilee in Late Antiquity (ed. L.I. Levine; Jerusalem and New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992), 130, n. 11, and J. Magness, “Archaeological Testimonies: Helios and the Zodiac Cycle in Ancient Palestinian Synagogues,” in Symbiosis, Symbolism and the Power of the Past (Albright Centennial Volume) (ed. W.G. Dever and S. Gitin; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 363–89. 2 Z. Weiss and E. Netzer, Promise and Redemption: A Synagogue Mosaic from Sepphoris ( Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1996). 3 For the inscriptions from Hammat Tiberias, see Dothan, Hammat Tiberias, 52–62; on the common Jewish symbols (lulavim, shofar, etc.) found in the other mosaics, see E.R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Graeco-Roman Period (13 vols.; New York: Pantheon Books, 1953–1968).

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as the wide extent of the phenomenon has come to be realized.4 Nor does the ascription of such motifs to deviant, non-rabbinic Jews carry much weight since the discovery that the Hammat Tiberias mosaic was dedicated by, among others, a member of the household of the patriarch.5 Claims that the zodiacs were primarily intended as calendrical reminders of the passing months are possible in the general sense that they may celebrate the order inherent in God’s universe,6 but as strict calendars their use is questionable in the light of the inaccuracies of the Beth Alpha mosaicist, who failed to correlate the signs correctly with the seasons;7 but in any case, the hypothesis fails to explain the depiction of the sun god in human form, presumably a deliberate choice at Hammat Tiberias, Naaran and Beth Alpha since the Sepphoris mosaicist took a different path and showed the sun as a shining orb.8 The assertion by Morton Smith that the sun god depicted “a great angel, important for the liturgy,”9 based on the image of Helios as a celestial figure in the mystical treatise Sefer Harazim, has the merit of connecting the visual to the literary remains from late antiquity but raises the difficult question, so far unanswered, of the reason why Jews might depict this angel as so central a figure in their iconography. My suggestion in this paper is that all previous discussions of these mosaics have shied away unnecessarily from the interpretation that the divine figure depicted in the center of a Jewish place of worship may have been intended to represent the God of the Jews. In the context

4 See the discussion in E.L. Sukenik, Ancient Synagogues in Palestine and Greece (London: Milford, 1934), 62–63. 5 For this argument, see Goodenough, Jewish Symbols; on the inscription by Severus, see Dothan, Hammat Tiberias, 57–60. The view that the mosaic is “non-rabbinic” is also proposed by L.I. Levine, The Rabbinic Class of Roman Palestine in Late Antiquity ( Jerusalem and New York: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi and Jewish Theological Seminary, 1989), 178–81. 6 Calendrical argument in Dothan, Hammat Tiberias, 49; S. Fine, This Holy Place: On the Sanctity of the Synagogue during the Graeco-Roman Period (Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity Series 11; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 124, 200–1 (with extensive bibliography). For the more general interpretation and wide discussion, see G. Foerster, “Representations of the Zodiac in Ancient Synagogues,” ErIsr 18 (1985): 380–91; idem, “The Zodiac in the Ancient Synagogue and its Place in Jewish Thought and Literature,” ErIsr 19 (1987): 225–34 (both in Hebrew). 7 Cf. G. Stemberger, “Die Bedeutung des Tierkreises auf Mosaikböden spätantiker Synagogen,” Kairos 17 (1975): 23–56. 8 Weiss and Netzer, Promise and Redemption, 35–36. 9 M. Smith, “Helios in Palestine,” ErIsr 16 (1982): 199*–214*, esp. p. 210*.

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of any other religious cult place in the Roman world archaeologists would have taken for granted that the god depicted in a shrine was likely to be the (or a) god worshipped in that shrine. My intention in this study is not to give a full interpretation of the images of the sun god in synagogues, which can be achieved only by analyzing their role within the zodiacs and the role of the zodiacs themselves, but to elucidate one possible way that Jews in late antiquity might have understood them when confronted by them as they prayed. Standard interpretations of the sun god image in synagogues derive their timidity from the ambiguous and contradictory Jewish traditions as to whether God has any form and, if so, whether that form is anthropomorphic.10 The contradictions go back to the Bible, where Pentateuchal passages which presumed that God can be seen by humans, including the Revelation on Mt. Sinai (Exod. 24: 9–10; cf. 33:17–23), co-existed with assertions that “God has no form that humans can see or imagine” (Deut. 4:12–24) without any attempt having been made in the biblical period to conflate or clarify these conflicting images.11 Nonetheless, among those biblical passages which do presuppose a specific divine form, the predominant image is anthropomorphic on the basis of the statement in Genesis 1:26–28 that God made man in his likeness; most vivid of these in the imagination of later interpreters of the biblical text was the human figure on a chariot which appeared to Ezekiel “as the appearance of the semblance of the presence of the Lord” (Ezekiel 1:26). On the other hand, significant for the present discussion is

10 For general bibliography on this topic, see A. Marmorstein, The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God (2 vols., London: Oxford University Press, 1927–1937); M. Smith, “The Image of God,” BJRL 40 (1958): 473–512; idem, “On the Shape of God,” in Religions in Antiquity. Essays in Memory of Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough (ed. J. Neusner, Leiden: Brill, 1968), 315–26; C.C. Rowland, “The Visions of God in Apocalyptic Literature,” JSJ 10 (1979) 137–54; J. Neusner, The Incarnation of God: The Character of Divinity in Formative Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988); P. Schäfer, The Hidden and Manifest God (transl. A. Pomerance; Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992); H. Eilberg-Schwartz, ed., People of the Body: Jews and Judaism from an Embodied Perspective (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992); D. Stern, “ ‘Imitatio Hominis:’ Anthropomorphism and the Character(s) of God in Rabbinic Literature,” Prooftexts 12 (1992): 151–74; A. Goshen-Gottstein, “The Body as Image of God in Rabbinic Literature,” HTR 87 (1994): 171–95; E.R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines (Princeton: Princeton University Press: 1994), chap. 1; S.D. Moore, “Gigantic God; Yahweh’s Body,” JSOT 70 (1996): 87–115; D.H. Aaron, “Shedding Light on God’s Body in Rabbinic Midrashim,” HTR 90 (1997): 299–314. 11 Cf. J. Barr, “The Image of God,” BJRL 51 (1968–1969): 11–26.

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the evidence that some Jews, with or without the approval of their brethren, thought of the divine form as being like the sun (cf. 2 Kgs 23:11; Ezek 8:16),12 and of God as subsisting in fire (Exod 3:2; Deut 4:11–12, 14; Dan 7:9). If the biblical text permitted varied and contradictory views on this issue, there are good grounds to expect similar variety and contradiction in post-biblical Judaism, both because all later Judaism was based to a greater or lesser extent on biblical interpretation and this is particularly likely to be true of a theological issue such as the imagining of the divine form, and because post-biblical Judaism was particularly variegated at least up to the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and probably far beyond.13 In addition, extensive speculation, for which there is much evidence, about the surroundings of God in the heavenly realm, and especially about the roles and hierarchies of angels,14 may have encouraged the speculation about the divine figure at its centre to be found eventually in the Shiur Komah texts. Some Jewish writers in late antiquity reasserted the notion that God has no image of any kind. In the first century CE Josephus claimed that “it is impious to conjecture the form and magnitude of God, which cannot be described, depicted or imagined” (C.Ap. 2.190–2), having stated (not wholly plausibly) in the passage immediately preceding that all Jews agree about the nature of God (2.181). This extreme view was found also in the rather hamfisted efforts of Aristobulus in the second century BCE to use allegory to demonstrate that it is not necessary to take literally the biblical references to the hands, arms, face and feet of God (ap. Eusebius, Praep. ev. 8.10) and in the arguments of Philo in the first century CE that because God is unlike anything else he must be without body or

12 Cf. J.G. Taylor, Yahweh and the Sun (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), with critique by S. A. Wiggins, JSOT 71 (1996): 86–106, with reply by Taylor. 13 On the extent of variety in late Second Temple Judaism, see M. Goodman, “Josephus and Variety in First-Century Judaism,” in Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Proceedings; Volume VII, No; 6 ( Jerusalem: 2000) 201–13 [Chapter 3 above]; on continued variety after 70 CE, M. Goodman, “Sadducees and Essenes after 70 CE,” in Crossing the Boundaries: Essays in Biblical Interpretation in Honour of Michael D. Goulder (ed. S.E. Porter, P. Joyce and D. Orton; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 347–56 [Chapter 13 above]. 14 Cf. I Enoch 82:14–20; C.A. Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985); M.J. Davidson, Angels at Qumran (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992); 3 Enoch 18.

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form (Philo, Spec. 2.176).15 In later antiquity rabbinic texts generally used periphrases such as “divine presence” to refer to God16 and in particular the targumim applied circumlocutions to avoid translating some of the blatant anthropomorphisms in the biblical texts from which they derived.17 On the other hand, the embarrassment about anthropomorphisms sometimes displayed by the targumists was by no means consistent,18 and sometimes Jews talked freely about God as having a human form. One of the accusations made by Justin Martyr against the teachers of the Jew Trypho was, according to the Dialogue he published, their penchant for taking the human image of God literally (Dial. 114). Justin’s claim was doubtless polemical, but there is also evidence in early rabbinic literature for such literalness.19 Attempts have been made to distinguish anthropomorphic schools and their opponents within early rabbinic texts, but without clear results:20 a great variety of human images of God were adopted in rabbinic literature of all kinds.21 At some time in the Hellenistic period Ezekiel the Tragedian had envisaged God as an impressive king seated on a throne (ed. Jacobson, lines 68–72), a picture reflected also in I Enoch 14:18–22, but according to y. Yoma 5:2 end, R. Abbahu interpreted as God the old man dressed in white whom the High Priest Simon the Just used to see in the Holy of Holies. Most references to the human form of God are vague about gender, but there is no doubt that he is generally envisaged as male,22 and speculation on his physique reaches its peak in the images of a bearded youth of unimaginable proportions and strength on which dwell the Shiur

15

Cf. H.A. Wolfson, Philo (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1947), 2:97. Cf. Marmorstein, The Old Rabbinic Doctrine, 1:54–107; M.E. Lodahl, Shekhinah/ Spirit: Divine Presence in Jewish and Christian Religion (New York: Paulist Press, 1992). 17 C. McCarthy, “The Treatment of Biblical Anthropomorphisms in the Pentateuchal Targums,” in Back to the Sources (ed. K.J. Cathcart and J.F. Healey; Dublin: Glendale, 1989), 45–66. 18 See the arguments of M.L. Klein, Anthropomorphisms and Anthropopathisms in the Targumim of the Pentateuch ( Jerusalem: Makor, 1982). 19 Cf. Marmorstein, Old Rabbinic Doctrine, 2:48–56. 20 See Goshen-Gottstein, “Body as Image,” 171–72. 21 See Marmorstein, Old Rabbinic Doctrine, 2:23–93 on anthropomorphism in the Aggadah. 22 On the texts as vague in this respect, cf. H. Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus and Other Problems for Men and Monotheism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994); on the male image, cf. 'Abot R. Nat. A, 12 (God as circumcised); Neusner, Incarnation, 168. 16

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Komah texts, from 3 Enoch 48A to the medieval recensions of these texts preserved by the mystics.23 At the same time the biblical notion that the divine form subsists in fire flourished throughout the late Second Temple period down into late antiquity. Thus 1 Enoch 14:18–22 described the surrounds of the divine throne as like the shining sun, with rivers of burning fire flowing from beneath it, and the raiment of God as brighter than the sun. According to Sif. Deut. 49, “because God is fire, it is impossible to go up to the heavens to join him.”24 On the basis of such passages it seems hard to avoid concluding that Josephus’s strange depiction of the Essenes as offering prayers to the sun was not as peculiar to ordinary Jews as is sometimes imagined. According to Josephus, B.J. 2.128–129, “before the sun is up, [the Essenes] offer to him certain prayers . . . as though entreating him to rise.” That they are meant to be treating the sun as divine seems reinforced by a slightly later passage (2.148–49), which describes how the Essenes “cover their excrement to avoid offending the rays of the deity.” The claim that these Essenes were deviant Jews like those opposed in Deut 4:15–24; 17:3; I Kgs 21:3; Jer 8:2, 19:13, and elsewhere founders on the strong approval of them as pious Jews voiced by Josephus.25 Morton Smith’s suggestion that they revered the sun “like an angel, not God” encounters the simple objection that the sun is described by Josephus at B.J. 2.148 not as an angel but as “the god”—it is true that angels are sometimes called “gods” in the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but such ambiguity is not likely in Josephus’s Greek. Enough has been said to show that Jews in late antiquity were quite capable of imagining God both in human form and as the sun, but it is quite another step to demonstrate that any Jews might 23

For these texts, see M.S. Cohen, Shiur Qomah: Texts and Recensions (TSAJ 9; Tübingen: Mohr, 1985). Discussions of date and significance in M.S. Cohen, Shi"ur Qomah: Liturgy and Theurgy in Pre-Kabbalistic Jewish Mysticism (Lanham: University Press of America, 1983), 66–67; D.J. Halperin, The Face of the Chariot (TSAJ 16; Tübingen: Mohr, 1988), 362; Schäfer, Hidden and Manifest God, 7–8. In general, see J. Maier, “Die Sonne im religiösen Denken des antiken Judentums,” ANRW 2:19/1 (1979): 346–412. 24 Cf. Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 43–44, on the Shekhina as light; GoshenGottstein, “Body as Image,” passim; D.H. Aaron, “Shedding Light,” 312–13 (despite numerous disagreements with Goshen-Gottstein, “no question that within the vast array of rabbinic materials one can find imagery that posits God’s body as light”). 25 So Smith, “Helios in Palestine,” 204*.

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produce a physical object to illustrate such images. The prohibition on making images of God of any kind had a strong biblical base (cf. Exod 20:23; Lev 19:4; Deut 27:15, etc.) and was evidently generally observed by Jews both in biblical times26 and down to the end of the Second Temple period, when Josephus asserted that “all material is unworthy for an image of Him, however expensive, and all artistic skill is useless for thinking about his representation” (C.Ap. 2.191). In so far as any physical object could be said to embody the divinity it was the scroll of the Torah, which was carried in Titus’s triumph through the streets of Rome at the end of the procession of cult objects from the Temple as a symbol of the Jewish God ( Josephus, B.J. 7.150). That Jews had no physical image of their God was well known to pagans, who generally viewed it as a bizarre trait (Hecataeus, ap. Diodorus 40.3.4; Livy, ap. Scholia in Lucanum 2.593; Strabo, Geog. 16.2.35; Cassius Dio 37.17.2), but occasionally as admirable (Varro, ap. Augustine, Civ. 4.31), and they interpreted Jewish reverence for Torah scrolls as equivalent to their own piety towards their own cult statues.27 However, Jewish reluctance to depict the divine in any physical medium was in part a product of a general reluctance to use physical images of almost any kind: Josephus explained the uprising in Jerusalem in 4 BCE when Herod set up an eagle image above the entrance to the Temple by stating that it was “contrary to ancestral laws, because it is unlawful to have in the sanctuary an image or bust of any living thing” ( Josephus, B.J. 1.648–55), and he claims to have persuaded the people of Tiberias to destroy the palace of Herod Antipas on the grounds that it contained figures of living creatures (Vita 65). This attitude evidently changed during the following centuries, when two-dimensional representations of human and animal figures became common in Jewish buildings, both in mosaics like those under discussion here and in the rather earlier complex narrative pictures of Bible stories found in the Dura Europos synagogue of the mid third century CE.28 The simultaneous avoidance 26 See R.S. Hendel, “The Social Origins of the Aniconic Tradition in Early Israel,” CBQ 50 (1988): 365–82. 27 See M. Goodman, “Sacred Scripture and ‘Defiling the Hands’,” JTS 41 (1990): 99–107 [Chapter 6 above]. 28 For the Dura paintings, see C.H. Kraeling, The Excavations at Dura-Europos, Final Report VIII, Part I. The Synagogue (New Haven and London: Yale University Press and Oxford University Press, 1956).

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of three-dimensional art is almost certainly significant, demonstrating an ability among Jews as among Christians to distinguish between images made for worship and those made for decoration.29 Once Jews accepted in principle the notion that they could depict some images in two dimensions, could they envisage depicting God? The answer is equivocal. In a number of narrative pictures from Dura Europos and in some of the mosaic depictions of the binding of Isaac the right hand of God can be clearly seen emerging from the sky.30 Here is a physical equivalent to the literary depictions of the divine as anthropomorphic, even if the size of the divine hands—much larger than those of humans—are (not surprisingly) not as gigantic as the dimensions of God’s hands should have been according to the Shiur Komah texts, but the restriction of the representation to the divine hand may have been intended precisely to avoid depiction of the rest of the divine image. So who was the sun god on the synagogue mosaics meant to represent? An image of God as a human figure and as a bright sun-like fire pervades Jewish literature both in the period when the mosaics were commissioned and before. God on his chariot would bring to the mind of any late-antique Jew the intensely mystical and powerful images in the first chapter of Ezekiel.31 It was standard in rabbinic parlance to refer to God by his location in the heavens when making vows, offerings, prayers and oaths.32 Pagans sometimes thought that the Jewish God was to be identified with the heavens (Hecateus, ap Diodorus 40.3.4; Strabo, Geog. 16.2.35),33 although at other times they might suggest that he was “really” Jupiter (Varro, ap. Augustine, Cons. 1.22.30 [Werhrich])—a sky god, of course—or, as the third century antiquarian Cornelius Labeo asserted from the Clarian Oracle of Apollo (ap. Macrobius, Sat. 1.18.19–20), the name

29 See S. Stern, “Figurative Art and Halakha in the Mishnaic–Talmudic Period,” Zion 61 (1996): 397–419 (Hebrew); idem, “Pagan Images in Late Antique Palestinian Synagogues,” in Ethnicity and Culture in Late Antiquity (eds. S. Mitchell, and G. Greatrex; London and Swansea: Duckworth and Classical Press of Wales, 2000), 241–52. 30 Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, 1:246–8; 10:107; 180–4; examples in 3: figs. 602, 638, 1039. 31 Cf. Halperin, Faces of the Chariot, passim. 32 So Marmorstein, Old Rabbinic Doctrine, 2:105–7. 33 Cf. M. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (3 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974–1984), ad loc.

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Iao (often ascribed to the Jewish God) is actually to be identified with Liber (i.e. Dionysus), Hades, and Zeus, and all of them in turn are to be identified with the sun. I do not for a moment wish to leave an impression that the problem is simply solved by all this. After all, other pagan texts in the second and third centuries CE reveal their awareness of the Jewish belief that their God has no image at all (Numenius of Apamaea, ap. Origen, Cels. 1.15; Cassius Dio 37.17.2). There is good rabbinic evidence that too literal a worship of the sun as divine would incur the hostility of at least some fellow Jews: according to t. Ber. 6 (7):6, “if one says a blessing over the sun, this is heterodoxy” (“another way”). Much is to be said for the seeming paradox that Jews could indulge boldly in human and solar images of the divine precisely because they took it as axiomatic that God does not in fact possess a physical form of any kind.34 If the images on the mosaics were reminders of the God worshipped in the synagogues, rather than cult objects for worship in themselves, it would be unsurprising if a Jew could walk over the mosaic without scruples. There is no evidence that any pagan polytheists who depicted Olympian or other gods on a mosaic floor, a common practice, ever felt concerned about sacrilege. It is unlikely that these mosaics were ever the central focus in liturgy, since nothing suggests that worshippers looked down at their feet when praying, so the depiction of the sun-god as a much smaller figure in the synagogue mosaics than in contemporary pagan zodiacs is irrelevant for determining the meaning of the figure depicted for either the artist or the commissioning patron. Up to now I have tried to explain these images to be found in the later Roman synagogues in terms of internal developments within Judaism, but it would be quite wrong to ignore the impact of the wider religious changes in the contemporary world which encouraged the flowering of this specific iconography at this specific time. The image of the sun at Hammat Tiberias is quite clearly the image of Sol Invictus and Helios as found widespread in imperial religious propaganda in the third and fourth centuries CE.35 That the sun

34 Cf. Stern, “Anthropomorphism and the Character(s) of God,” 152: all anthropomorphic statements are “to be understood figuratively precisely because it is assumed as axiomatic that the Rabbis could never have believed that God actually possesses a human, let alone a corporeal, form.” 35 So Dothan, Hammat Tiberias, 42. These imperial images, found especially on

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became the symbol of monotheism within late-antique paganism of the fourth century is well attested, most coherently in the emperor Julian’s Hymn to King Helios,36 but what has been less often noted until recently is the way that Christians certainly, and Jews probably, latched on to this identification to give legitimacy to their own forms of monotheism. In a useful article on the cult of the highest god Theos Hypsistos, Stephen Mitchell has suggested how pagan worshippers of this divinity identified him (or very occasionally her) with the God of the Jews, and later the Christians.37 Mitchell argues that this identification was accepted by many Jews: Philo used the term Hypsistos to denote the Jewish God (Legat. 278), as did Josephus when quoting a decree by Augustus in favor of the Jews ( Josephus, A.J. 16.163). Closer to the time of the Hammat Tiberias mosaic, according to John Lydus, De Mens. 4.53, the emperor Julian still described the Temple to be rebuilt in Jerusalem as the shrine of Theos Hypsistos. Any Jew who recognised pagan worshippers of the highest god as god fearers could very easily adopt some of the religious mentality of these pagan monotheists.38 One characteristic of the cult of Theos Hypsistos was its lack of iconography: references to the god tend to abstractions, and anthropomorphic images are strikingly rare in the context of standard Graeco-Roman customs.39 Also highly unusual was the mode of worship by devotees, who used prayer rather than sacrifice and practised their cult in open sanctuaries facing the east, gazing up at heaven and the sun. The essence of the divinity was encapsulated in an oracle of Apollo of which a copy was engraved in an inscription at Oenoanda in Asia Minor: Born of itself, untaught, without a mother, unshakeable, not contained in a name, known by many names, dwelling in fire, this is god . . . Aether coins, are much closer to the images found in the synagogues than the images of local solar deities in Syria for which, despite Tacitus, Hist. 3.24–5, there is much less evidence than is often supposed, cf. H. Seyrig, “Le culte du Soleil en Syrie à l’époque romaine,” Syria 48 (1971): 337–73; F. Millar, The Roman Near East, 31 BC–AD 337 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 522. 36 See P. Athanassiadi and M. Frede, eds., Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), 18–19. 37 S. Mitchell, “The Cult of Theos Hypsistos,” in Athanassiadi and Frede, Pagan Monotheism, 81–148. 38 Mitchell, “Theos Hypsistos,” 110–15. 39 Mitchell, “Theos Hypsistos,” 101.

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is god who sees all, on whom you should gaze and pray at dawn, looking towards the sunrise.40

This, so Mitchell argues, is the cult adopted by the father whose decision to worship nothing but the clouds and the spirit of heaven would, according to Juvenal (Sat. 14.96–106), in time lead to his son becoming Jewish.41 Crucial for present purposes is the extensive evidence from both literary descriptions and from inscriptions of prayers to the rising and setting sun, and the major role in worship of lamps and fire. The best source from the fourth century comes from Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 18.5, in the funeral oration for his father: writing about his father’s early errors he stated of the group to which he belonged in his youth that its followers reject the idols and sacrifices of the former [i.e. pagans] and worship fire and lamplight; they revere the Sabbath and are scrupulous not to touch certain foods, but have nothing to do with circumcision. To the humble they are called Hypsistarians, and the Pantokrator is the only god they worship.42

Here the connection between the Pantokrator and fire seems clear. But in any case the identification of solar worship with monotheistic belief was so widespread in the fourth century as to need little demonstration to anyone at the time. It can be plausibly argued that Constantine’s notorious continued adherence to the sun-god after his conversion to Christianity is best understood as his identification of the sun-god with the Highest God worshipped by Christians.43 At the same time the commonly expressed reluctance of Christians in the first three centuries to depict God44—a reluctance which coexisted (as with Jews) with many visual metaphors of the divine in literary texts,45 some of them also apparently portrayed physically in images of the good shepherd and such like46—gave way during the

40

Text cited from Mitchell, “Theos Hypsistos,” 86. Mitchell, “Theos Hypsistos,” 120. 42 Text cited from Mitchell, “Theos Hypsistos,” 95. 43 On Constantine and the sun-god, see M. Wallraff, Christus Verus Sol: Sonnenverehrung und Christentum in der Spätantike ( JAC Erg. Bd. 32; Münster, Aschendorff, 2001). 44 P.C. Finney, The Invisible God: the Earliest Christians on Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). 45 Finney, Invisible God, 279. 46 D.T. Rice, The Beginnings of Christian Art (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1957), 26. 41

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fourth century to a new iconography. In this iconography, Christ was portrayed no longer only as a human figure within a depiction of a Gospel narrative47 but at times as a grand image of an enthroned monarch.48 This occurred precisely during the period of affirmation, after the Counsel of Nicaea, that the Christ portrayed was to be treated not as human but as an integral element in the three-fold divinity worshipped by Christians. Christians adopted much of their iconography from pagan types, to some of which they gave new meaning, while some seems to have been treated simply as decoration.49 So, for instance, the mausoleum of Constantine’s daughter, built in the 320s, combined originally Dionysiac imagery with sacred scenes from both Old and New Testaments.50 But treating the image of the sun as purely decorative rather than significant does not seem to have been an option. At least by 427 CE some Christians seem to have come to state openly that some of their pictures were images of the divine, for a law of that year (Cod. Just. 1.8) forbade the placing of Christ’s image on the ground because it was seen as sacrilege. The issue of the same law reveals, of course, that floor mosaics depicting Christ must have existed. It seems likely that this is precisely what is to be found in the late fourth-century mosaic from Hinton St. Mary in Dorset, in which a head almost certainly of Christ, embellished with the Chi-Rho, was depicted alongside some strikingly pagan scenes.51 The emperors in 427 CE may not have approved of the practice, but other Christians must have found reasonable the notion of putting an image of the divine on the floor of a sacred building. So too, I suggest, did the Jews of Tiberias. At a time when the identification of the Highest God with the sun was made by both

47 Finney, Invisible God, 221, on depictions of Jesus as a magus; but note (293) that one of the most striking characteristics of early Christian art is the rarity of even such images of Jesus. 48 R. Milburn, Early Christian Art and Architecture (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1988), 217 (St. Pudenziana); 224 (St. George at Salonika). This view, once unquestioned, has been strongly contested by T. Mathews, The Clash of Gods (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), but still seems to me broadly correct; see the review of Matthews by Peter Brown in Art Bulletin 77 (1995): 499–502. 49 Finney, Invisible God, chapter 6. 50 See H. Stern, “Les mosaïques de l’église de Sainte-Constance à Rome,” DOP 12 (1958): 159–218. 51 See J.M.C. Toynbee, “A New Roman Mosaic Pavement found in Dorset,” JRS 54 (1964): 7–14.

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pagans and Christians, the notion that the Jews who chose to commission the same image for their synagogue at Hammat Tiberias can have done so without awareness of its iconographie import is deeply implausible. It seems to me much more likely that their choice demonstrated their confident conviction that the God to whom both pagans and Christians paid greatest observance was the God of Israel.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

SACRED SPACE IN DIASPORA JUDAISM

Many if not all diaspora Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman periods shared the reverence felt by their Palestinian co-religionists for the Temple in Jerusalem.1 It is highly likely, though not strictly provable, that they also espoused explicitly or implicitly the belief to be found in a variety of Palestinian Jewish texts that the world is divided into a series of concentric circles in which the sanctity of places diminished with distance from the Temple. The most sacred place on earth according to this view was the Holy of Holies, into which no-one could enter except the High Priest, whose own access was permitted only once a year after elaborate precautions to avoid sacrilegious pollution. Next in sanctity came the court of the priests, then the courts of Israel, of women, and of gentiles. Even less sacred than any of these courts were the regions of Jerusalem which lay outside the Temple precincts. Jerusalem, the holy city, was more sacred than the rest of the land of Israel, but Israel had greater sanctity than the diaspora.2 The theological explanation of this preeminence of the Jerusalem Temple as sacred place was straightforward. It was in the Holy of Holies that the divinity specially dwelt: the emptiness of the innermost shrine signified not the absence of the deity but the inability of humans to portray him. When the Romans succeeded in capturing the Temple they did so only because its divine resident left the building to its fate. A voice was heard in the sky above Jerusalem proclaiming “We are departing from this place” ( Jos. B.J. 6.300). Whether diaspora Jews who espoused such notions might be expected to feel constantly or even occasionally concerned at their

1

See E.P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah (1990), 283–308. See J.N. Lightstone, Society, the Sacred and Scripture in Ancient Judaism: a sociology of knowledge (1988), 36. On the protection of sacred space from pollution, note Acts 21.28–29 and CIJ II 1400 on the prevention of gentiles penetrating too far into the Temple. 2

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distance from the centre of holiness is dubious,3 but it does seem hard to imagine such Jews positing with conviction that any place in their own vicinity could be holy in the same way that the Temple was. I intend in this paper to discuss how it came about that, despite this strong disincentive, some Jews in some places at some times apparently came to see their synagogues in precisely this way.4 The main function of synagogues in antiquity was as a meeting place where Jews could be taught the Torah: as Philo put it (Leg. 156), Jews have “houses of prayer for training themselves on the sabbath in their ancestral philosophy”. Josephus believed that regular weekly reading of the Law was so integral a part of Judaism that it must have been instituted by Moses (C.Ap. 2.175). But neither writer implied that such a role rendered the site of this activity sacred. The Torah could be read almost anywhere. So, for example, Ezra’s legendary public reading of the Law to all the people is said by Nehemiah to have taken place “in the street before the water-gate” (Nehemiah 8.1–2). The second main function of synagogues, as the site of communal prayer, might seem more likely to cast a holy aura upon the building or place where it occurred. That such communal worship was a central feature of synagogue ritual, at least in parts of the diaspora, seems fairly certain from the standard term proseuche used for synagogues in Egypt in the Hellenistic period. But in Israel certainly, and in the diaspora probably, prayer did not require a designated building to be efficacious, so there was no reason for such a building when it existed to be reckoned sacred.5 Rather less directly, the permanent presence in synagogues of Torah scrolls might perhaps be expected to import a special aura into such buildings if I am right to argue, as I have done elsewhere, that Jews sometimes treated such scrolls as sacred objects analogous to pagan idols.6 Pagans could certainly treat Jews’ scrolls in this

3

Sanders, Jewish Law, 258–271. For a more extensive treatment of other aspects of the notion of sanctity in diaspora Judaism, see the interesting study by J.N. Lightstone, The Commerce of the Sacred (1984). 5 See M. Hengel, ‘Proseuche und Synagoge’, in Tradition und Glaube: Festgabe für K.G. Kuhn (1971), 157–184. Cf. the term eujion in CPJ 432. On liturgy, see J. Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud (1977). 6 M. Goodman, ‘Sacred scripture and “defiling the hands” ’, Journal of Theological Studies 41 (1990), 99–107 [Chapter 6 above]. 4

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way: thus the soldier who deliberately destroyed a scroll in Judaea in the fifties CE was publicly executed by the Roman governor Cumanus for the sacrilege ( Jos. B.J. 2.228–231), and the author of the Letter of Aristeas (which narrated in romantic form the origin of the Septuagint) invented for his readers a striking vignette in which Ptolemy Philadelphus greeted the arrival of the scrolls and translators from Jerusalem by bowing down seven times before the copies of the Torah. Similar Jewish attitudes are harder to document—unsurprisingly given Jewish aversion to anything smacking of idolatry—but it seems to me possible that the strange notion in rabbinic texts that scrolls of scripture when correctly written on parchment “defile the hands” reflects the same attitude (cf. m. Yadaim 4:6). In the late fourth century John Chrysostom, bishop of Antioch, was aware of, but did not share the notion that sacred books might sanctify the building that housed them. He told a story in one of his bitter sermons “against the Jews” about a Christian woman who had been forced into a synagogue by another Christian in order to take a business oath; John remarked grumpily that some Christians assumed wrongly that synagogues are appropriate places for such proceedings because of the presence of sacred books (Adv. Judaeos 1.3.3). Nothing quite so explicit can be found in Jewish sources although various rabbinic texts do imply that it is indeed from the scrolls that sanctity flows (e.g. m. Megillah 3.1). If, despite the centrality in their world-view of the Jerusalem Temple, sanctity thus could be ascribed to synagogue buildings by diaspora Jews, that need not imply that sanctity was so ascribed. I intend in the pages which follow to examine the evidence for such ascriptions. Since it is reasonable to expect that the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem might have made some difference in this regard, I have chosen to present first the evidence for the period before 70 CE and then the material for late antiquity, although in fact far less difference emerges than might be predicted. Only when the evidence has been weighed will I turn to discuss the difficult issue of why diaspora Jews espoused the attitudes revealed. From the period before 70 CE there is good evidence of impressive synagogue structures and fine decoration in diaspora synagogues. So, according to a reference by the second-century tanna R. Judah to a building apparently no longer extant, the great synagogue in Alexandria, which was shaped in the form of a double stoa “like a basilica” was a “glory to Israel” (t. Sukkah 4.6). According to Philo

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(Leg. 133) synagogues in the same city were hung with shields, gilded crowns and inscriptions. In the main Antioch synagogue, according to Josephus (B.J. 7.45), costly offerings were similarly displayed. Such expenditure on buildings need not imply a belief that the building itself is sacred, but at least in the case of the Antioch synagogue such an attitude was explicit, for Josephus (ibid.) described the place as a hieron, a term usually applied only to temples such as that in Jerusalem. This terminology was not just a quirk of Josephus’ Greek, for Philo also at times implied the sanctity of synagogues by similar terms: in his description of the Essenes, Philo wrote that when they gather they come together to “sacred places which are called synagogues” (Q.o.p. 81). Such terminology suggests that the distinction between the sanctity of the Jerusalem Temple and that of synagogues was not always precisely observed by Jews. Josephus (A.J. 14.260) told of the granting of a request by the city of Sardis to the local Jews in the first century BCE after the Jews had asked to be permitted to continue to carry out sacrifices (thusias) in their specially designated place in the city; it is possible that this reference to sacrificial cult reflected a misunderstanding of Jewish religious practice by the city authorities, but, if so, it is worth noting that Josephus was not sufficiently taken aback to comment. Nor did the Jewish historian comment on the claim by Onias in the second century BCE that the building of a new Temple for the Jews in Leontopolis in Egypt was desirable because the multiplicity of hiera (temples) in Egypt was contrary to Jewish customs and it was better to build just one naos (shrine) for them; it is hard to see what the hiera to which he referred could have been if they were not synagogues ( Jos. A.J. 13.66–7). Jews set up inscriptions in their proseuchai in Egypt in which the buildings might be designated as places of asylum (CIJ II 1449) and when gentiles tried to set up statues in Egyptian synagogues this was treated by Jews as sacrilege (Philo, Leg. 134). All of which might seem to show beyond much doubt that some Jews even before 70 CE saw their synagogues as sacred places. But a story about an event in Caesarea Maritima in 66 CE may encourage caution in jumping to such a conclusion. For this purpose Caesarea may count as part of the diaspora, since the problem which arose came from the position of Jews as a minority in a gentile community in a fashion comparable to that in more strictly diaspora cities. According to Josephus (B.J. 2.285–91), the Jews of Caesarea tried

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to buy land near the synagogue. The gentile owner of the land refused and some local youths compounded the Jews’ discomfiture by sacrificing a cock in the alleyway in front of the building in mockery. Josephus recorded that this act was seen by the Jews as a pollution (miasma) of the place, but their consequent actions were curious. Rather than defend their holy site, as they did so bravely in the Jerusalem Temple four years later, the Caesarean Jews took up their scroll of the Torah and retreated with it to a safe place some distance away. Their actions implied that for them it was not to the place but to the object of public liturgy that prime sanctity should be ascribed. The evidence for the period after 70 CE is more extensive but differs little in its ambiguous import. A straightforward attribution to synagogues of the sanctity that the now defunct Jerusalem Temple had once had might have been possible but does not seem to have happened despite the celebrated comparison of synagogues to the “small sanctuary” of Ezekiel 11.16 found in b. Megillah 29a. Some rites previously confined to the Temple, such as the priestly blessing, were now practised outside the Jerusalem sanctuary, but the rabbinic texts which report this transfer do not presuppose any special building or place for such practices.7 The most important elements of the Temple liturgy, libation and sacrifice, ceased altogether. It is worth recalling that Jewish hopes that the Temple would be rebuilt were by no means unreasonable before Constantine. Restoration of destroyed sanctuaries was normal custom in the pagan world and it was quite possible that later emperors might drop the special hostility to the Jewish cult which had been adopted by the Flavian dynasty for the purposes of Roman political propaganda. Thus rabbinic texts are ambivalent about the sanctity of synagogues. On the one hand synagogues are definitely not temples—so, for instance, there is no evidence that there was ever a dedication ceremony to mark the erection of new synagogue buildings. On the other hand there are preserved in the Tosefta (t. Megillah 3(2):7) quite strict rules for correct conduct in synagogues, and Mishnaic injunctions in the names of R. Meir and R. Judah about the permitted uses of money raised by selling a synagogue site presupposed that such sites are at any rate special (m. Megillah 3:2–3); but it is of

7

See J. Neusner, A Life of Yohanan ben Zakkai, 2nd ed. (1970), 205–210.

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course significant that such a site could be sold. Such texts might in theory apply only to rabbinic attitudes in the land of Israel, but the anonymous baraita preserved in b. Shabbat 72b was presumably felt relevant by the Mesopotamian sages who redacted the Babylonian Talmud. According to this baraita, a Jew who bows down before a pagan shrine in the mistaken belief that it is a synagogue is not committing a sin. The significant fact here is that paying such respect to synagogues was apparently taken for granted. Examination of the architectural forms of extant remains of diaspora synagogues provides no clearer indication of the sacred or profane status of such buildings in the eyes of local Jews who may or may not have shared the attitudes to be found in rabbinic texts. The most striking fact about such styles is their variety.8 The hypothesis that common elements, such as the Torah shrine and the meeting hall, were the Jewish equivalents of the inner shrine and pronaos of a pagan temple is plausible but unprovable.9 Whether the huge basilica in Sardis would have looked to a contemporary observer like a religious building depends somewhat on the date of the observation. If Helga Botermann is right to suggest that it might have become a synagogue only in the mid fourth century,10 this transformation of a secular building will have coincided with the establishment of the basilica form as the most appropriate style of religious architecture for Christian churches.11 Alternatively, large basilica-type buildings may have been found as meeting-places for Jews long before they were adopted by Christians if the tradition that this was the shape of the great Alexandrian synagogue was correctly transmitted in the Tosefta (t. Sukkah 4:6; see above). The clearest evidence that some Jews treated synagogues as sacred space comes not from rabbinic discussions nor from the architecture of the synagogue buildings, but from the inscriptions found within those buildings. The adjective hagiotatos, “most holy”, was applied to synagogues so regularly in inscriptions from the second or third centuries CE and after that it appears to have become a cliché. 8 See A.T. Kraabel, ‘The diaspora synagogue: archaeological and epigraphic evidence since Sukenik’, ANRW II 19 (1979), 477–510. 9 See G. Foerster in L.I. Levine, Ancient Synagogues Revealed (1981), 48. 10 H. Botermann, ‘Die Synagoge von Sardes: Eine Synagoge aus dem 4. Jahrhundert?’, Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 81 (1990), 103–121. 11 J.B. Ward-Perkins, ‘Constantine and the origins of the Christian basilica’, Papers of the British School in Rome 22 (1954), 69–90.

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The usage is geographically widespread: it is found in Macedonia (Stobi), Asia Minor (Philadelphia and Hyllarima) and southern Palestine (Gaza).12 How literally to take such ascriptions of sanctity is not entirely obvious from the Greek word alone. The meaning of many solemn words was debased in the late-Roman world, and hagios could be used as a polite epithet for bishops and even, in the medieval period, for emperors.13 However, a fifth-century inscription from the Decapolis city of Gerasa lends support to a more literal reading. From this place comes an inscription on two pillars which reads Ñagio[tãtƒ] tÒpƒ. ÉAmÆn. Selã. ÉErÆnh tª sunagvgª (Lifshitz, no. 78). The inscription provides a useful link with a large number of Aramaic texts from nearby synagogue sites in the land of Israel. In these inscriptions the term atra kadisha appears as a standard cliché.14 It is asking too much of coincidence not to see the Greek hagiotatos topos as a direct equivalent. In that case it is likely that the Greek term was intended on these inscriptions to convey the force of the Aramaic kadisha, which retained its strong sense throughout antiquity. What emerges from all this is that synagogues sites could be treated by diaspora Jews as holy but that attitudes varied. It seems clear that rabbinic sages lacked any coherent rationale for their attitudes; similarly and all the more so, it may be surmised, non-rabbinic Jews; thus whatever prompted the reverence revealed in the inscriptions was probably not legislation by any central authority. There is more evidence of attributions of sanctity in the period after 70 CE than in the Hellenistic and early Roman periods, but that may reflect only the greater survival of diaspora inscriptions from the later era than from the earlier; thus it may be unwarranted to try to explain Jewish attitudes as a reaction to the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. The causes of the phenomena I have described are likely to lie elsewhere, in more general, ill-defined religious instincts which by their very nature allowed for the ambiguity I have noted but also, precisely because such instincts often remained unstated, cannot be proven. 12 B. Lifshitz, Donateurs et Fondateurs dans les Synagogues Juives (Cahiers de la Revue Biblique, 7) (1967), nos. 10, 28, 32, 73a. 13 E.A. Sophocles, Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods (1990), s.v. ëgiow. 14 J. Naveh, On Stone and Mosaic: the Aramaic and Hebrew inscriptions from ancient synagogues (1978), nos. 16, 26, 46, 60, 64, 65 (in Hebrew).

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A number of such religious instincts, such as a human desire to designate as sacred some place close enough to the locus of secular activity for ordinary people to feel that sanctity is accessible to them, can reasonably be postulated. But in this paper I want to pursue just one of these possible explanations, both because it is generally overlooked and because, if I am right, the type of explanation offered may throw some light on the history of other aspects of diaspora Judaism. The factor on which I shall concentrate is the likely effect on diaspora Jews of the attitude to their synagogues espoused by their gentile neighbours. Comments about synagogues in extant Greek and Latin pagan writings are rather sparse—a fact which, as will become clear, I think may be significant.15 Pagans were fascinated by such Jewish peculiarities as the Sabbath and dietary laws, but Jewish houses of worship apparently did not strike them as anything out of the ordinary. In some cases this may have been because synagogues were just seen as meeting places: Augustus’ decree on behalf of the Jews of Asia protected the scrolls and money they kept in their sabbateion but not the building itself ( Jos. A.J. 16.164). But more often the reason was that synagogues looked to pagans like a Jewish equivalent of pagan shrines. In the Hellenistic period the Seleucid kings donated gifts to hang on the walls of the Antioch synagogue ( Jos. B.J. 7.44) and the Ptolemaic kings awarded to at least one synagogue in Egypt the right of asylum (CIJ II 1449). In a legal deposition of 218 BCE by a gentile woman whose cloak had been stolen, the guardian of the Jewish prayer-house ( proseuche) was described as a nakoros, a title usually reserved for the warden of a religious sanctuary (CPJ 129). In the first century CE anti-Jewish rioters in Alexandria attacked the synagogues (Philo, Flacc. 41–3), an action which gentiles could see as equivalent to desecration of a sanctuary: according to Josephus (A.J. 19.300–3, 305), when gentile youths in the land of Israel put a statue of Gaius in the synagogue of Dora, the Roman senator Petronius complained that by their behaviour they had “prevented the synagogue from existing”, since “the emperor’s statue would be

15 For a collection of the evidence and many interesting suggestions, see S.J.D. Cohen, ‘Pagan and Christian evidence on the ancient synagogue’, in L.I. Levine, ed., The Synagogue in Late Antiquity (1987), pp. 159–181. My arguments were formulated separately, but they may be seen as following on logically from the ideas on pages 163–165 of his article.

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better in his own shrine (naos) than in someone else’s”. When in the early second century CE Tacitus wrote that Jews have no images in their cities, nedum templis (Tac. Hist. 5.5.4), he may have intended to refer to synagogues by the plural templa. The right of asylum granted to an Egyptian synagogue by the Ptolemies (CIJ II 1449; see above) was confirmed according to an addendum in Latin by a king and queen (rex et regina); it is likely that the monarchs in question were either the rulers of Palmyra in the mid third century CE or the last Ptolemaic dynasts in the first century BCE. Christian writers from the third century onwards sometimes made similar assumptions. Tertullian in the early third century wrote that Jews pray by the sea shore on fast days, templis omissis (De Jejuniis 16, PL II 1028). John Chrysostom described how Christians took oaths in synagogues (see above) and how they sometimes slept overnight in the synagogue of Matrona at Daphne in their search for health cures (Adversus Iudaeos) 1.3, PG XL 847–8.16 In the sixth century Procopius described how the ancient shrine (neos) of the Jews of Boreon in North Africa was changed into a church by Justinian (De Aed. 6.2). In accordance with this attitude Christian writers sometimes assumed that synagogues were administered by priests like pagan sanctuaries. Thus Epiphanius in the 370s told a story about events under Constantine in which it was presupposed that synagogues were under the immediate control of archisynagogoi, priests (hiereis), elders and hazzanim (Pan. 30.11.4). A similar assumption is found in an imperial enactment of 330 CE by which Constantine released from munera the hiereos and archisynagogos and “all those others who administer the synagogues” (C.Th. 16.8.4). It is possible that these priests were simply cohanim whose public prominence was ensured simply by their role in the priestly blessing, but it is hard to see why such a minor function would merit tax exemption. It seems to me more likely that this is another aspect of Roman treatment of synagogues as temples. The same attitude explains the belief of emperors from the fifth century onwards that synagogue buildings could easily be converted into churches. Thus Theodosius II laid down in 423 CE that Jewish communities should be granted compensation when their synagogues had been “seized or ecclesiis vindicatae or indeed consecrated to the

16

See R.L. Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews (1983), 79–80.

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venerable mysteries” (C.Th. 16.8.25). In 535 CE, in less liberal times, Justinian decreed that “we do not grant that their synagogues should stand, but we wish them ad ecclesiarum figuram . . . reformari” (Novella 37); the use of the word reformari suggests that some architectural changes were deemed necessary. In such legal stipulations by the state gentile attitudes to synagogues are seen at their clearest. Thus in about 370 CE the emperors Valentinian and Valens told the Master of the Offices that he should warn soldiers who occupied “synagogues of the Jewish law” in their search for lodging (hospitium) that they were required to vacate such premises. The emperors argued that such hospitality should be enjoyed in the houses of private people, not in “places of religions” (religionum loca). This law, found in the Theodosian Code (C.Th. 7.8.2) but repeated, therefore presumably still reckoned valid, in the sixthcentury Justinianic Code (C.J. 1.9.4), presupposed that the state had a duty to protect synagogues as places sacred to Jews.17 Evidence of intermittent state hostility to synagogues, from the instructions issued by Theodosius II to the patriarch Gamaliel to destroy all synagogues in unoccupied places (C.Th. 16.8.22) to Justinian’s demand that all synagogues be changed into churches (see above), does not show that this assumption was not genuinely held, only that Christian emperors wavered in their willingness to appease or provoke Jewish religious susceptibilities. The attitude of gentiles in the Roman empire to Jewish religious buildings revealed a tendency I have noted elsewhere to understand other societies and cultures in terms of their own.18 Sacred space was a concept of great power and importance in the religious life of most inhabitants of the Roman world. The landscape was littered with altars to divinities. Each altar was reckoned more or less sacrosanct and most public religious activity consisted in processions to a sacred place or a dramatic ritual by a priest at such a place. Gentiles who came to Jerusalem found it quite natural to offer sacrifices to the Jewish God in the Temple, and the obvious way to express respect for Judaism in Rome in 139 BCE was, according to

17 On this text see A.M. Rabello, “The legal condition of the Jews in the Roman empire”, ANRW II 13 (1980), 723; A. Linder, The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation (1987), no. 14. 18 M. Goodman, The Ruling Class of Judaea: the origins of the Jewish revolt against Rome, AD 66–70 (1987), 35.

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Valerius Maximus (1.3.2), to set up altars in honour of the foreign deity.19 For gentiles thus predisposed, synagogue ritual might seem to fit neatly into the standard pattern of temple rites, with chanting by crowds of worshippers in a fine ornamented building, an object extracted from an inner sanctum and carried in procession to a visible spot for a ritual act to be undertaken before it was returned to its sanctum. Synagogues differed only in that the object concerned was a scroll not an idol, and the act performed was a reading, not a sacrifice or libation. The term hagios topos, although not used in the inscriptions set up in their shrines in the same formulaic way it was used by Jews in synagogues, was quite intelligible to such pagans, and bore the clear implication that the place in question was sacred space.20 For pagan polytheists respect for the sacred places of the cults of other people was instinctive. The behaviour of Pliny the Younger when governor of Bithynia and Pontus may illustrate. When the inhabitants of a Bithynian city wanted to build on the site of a temple of the Phrygian Great Mother, Pliny (Epp. 10.50) wrote to the emperor Trajan to enquire whether he should prevent them. Trajan replied that there was no restriction on such building in Roman law, but what is significant is the fact that Pliny felt it necessary to ask. Polytheists knew that infringing the rights of any divinity is a dangerous game. The ambivalence of Christian legislation about synagogues was a product of the conflict between this instinctive pagan liberalism and the theologically motivated anti-Judaism which pervades much of the rhetoric of the legislation by Roman emperors of the fourth to sixth centuries CE. A useful parallel to pagan attitudes to synagogues may be found in pagan attitudes to Christian churches in the first four centuries CE.

19 See E. Bickerman, ‘The altars of gentiles’, in Studies in Jewish and Christian History, Vol. II (1980), 324–346. Note the story reported in y. Megillah 1.13, 72b about the Roman emperor “Antoninus” being helped by R. Judah haNasi to build an altar. 20 Apart from the Jewish uses of the collocation hagios topos, the phrase appears very occasionally in Christian inscriptions in reference to a church (e.g. R. Merkelbach, ed., Die Inschriften von Assos (1976), number 33), but nowhere (so far as I can discover) in pagan inscriptions. But note the use of the phrase in the story recounted by Plutarch (Camillus 31.3.7) about the attempts made by Roman senators to mollify the people by pointing out the chorion hieron kai topon hagion which Romulus or Numa had consecrated.

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Christian liturgy in the early years did not require special sacred places for its performance. Christians, much like Jews, met together to eat in company, hear readings from the scriptures and listen to sermons. For this purpose private houses sufficed. As congregations grew such houses might be adapted, with enlarged interior rooms or the erection of a platform for the clergy, and the “house of the Christians” might become an impressive hall and a local landmark, but before Constantine there was felt no need for a specifically religious architecture which might mark off churches from the secular world.21 One result of this fact was a scarcity of comments in pagan authors about churches, as about synagogues.22 Nonetheless the pagan philosopher Porphyry in the mid third century could refer scornfully to the “great buildings” of the Christians which “imitate the construction of temples” (Adv. Christianos, frag. 76). When the pagan Roman aristocracy, led by the emperor, began from the time of Constantine onwards to demonstrate, without much theological understanding, their adhesion to the imperially favoured cult of Christianity, they imported such pagan presuppositions into their disposition of their wealth in favour of the new religion. Instead of the erection of large public temples by which they had previously demonstrated their allegiance to the pagan gods, Roman aristocrats began to build the grand monumental basilica churches which quite rapidly because common despite the inappropriateness of this architectural form for Christian liturgy. Eusebius’ description of the new church dedicated in Tyre by the young rich bishop Paulinus in 317 CE explicitly compared the building to the Jerusalem Temple in the days of Zerubbabel (Eus. H.E. 10.4.33–6): this was God’s house on earth (H.E. 10.4.1–2) and, like that of pagan temples, its completion was celebrated with a great festival of dedication (H.E. 10.3.1). In 431 CE the emperor Theodosius, granting to churches rights of sanctuary, unselfconsciously referred to them as “temples of the Great God” (C.Th. 9.45.4).23

21 See now L.M. White, Building God’s House in the Roman World: architectural adaptation among pagans, Jews and Christians (1990). 22 On pagan views of Christianity in general, see R.L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (1984). 23 See now White, Building God’s House, chapter 2 and passim. White argues (p. 136) that the church at Tyre was not a basilica but an elaborate hall with basilica-type features.

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At this crucial stage in the argument, when I want to suggest the possible effect of such gentile perceptions of synagogues on the attitudes to their religious buildings of Jews themselves, I must confess that evidence fails. Nonetheless, some connection may plausibly be posited. It is quite possible that Jews first elected to imitate the customs and architecture of others and to see their buildings as holy, and that only then did pagans come to ascribe sanctity to Jewish synagogues. But it seems to me no less conceivable that the line of causation went in the opposite direction. If gentiles tended to assume that synagogues were sacred places, Jews might feel it wise to concur: on the most cynical level, this pagan attitude evidently helped to protect the synagogue site and to win exemption from liturgies for synagogue officials. More insidiously, if gentile neighbours treated the synagogue building as sacred it might become natural for Jews to copy their reverence even when they did not have any formal, legal reason within the Jewish religious system for such an attitude. If there is any truth in this, it may be worth pondering similar factors in other aspects of Jewish history in the diaspora. It is inherently unlikely that diaspora Jews developed social or religious institutions entirely regardless of comments made by their gentile compatriots. But, since it is also inherently unlikely that Jews would explicitly ascribe changes in their society to their reactions to such comments, the demonstration of the causal link between the development of diaspora Jewish customs and outsiders’ views about those customs will always be formidable.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

JEWS AND JUDAISM IN THE MEDITERRANEAN DIASPORA IN THE LATE-ROMAN PERIOD: THE LIMITATIONS OF EVIDENCE

Modern interpretations of the nature of Judaism in the Mediterranean diaspora in the late-Roman period have been based mainly on the evaluation of archeological and epigraphic data. Such interpretations are mostly quite possible, but all involve eisegesis and (often undeclared) assumptions which are here systematically questioned. In particular, evidence customarily used to reconstruct a picture of a liberal diaspora Judaism is scrutinized to see how much of it in fact may have been produced by pagan polytheists who revered the Jewish God. The evidence from Sardis is treated as a test case. In the final section a decrease in the variety within Judaism, and a decline in the numbers of pagan polytheists worshipping the Jewish God, are postulated for the period after 388 CE, when Roman emperors began to attack pagan shrines and to give state support to the Jewish patriarchs. No one doubts that the population of the Mediterranean core of the Roman Empire at its height, from the first to the fifth century CE, contained a large proportion of Jews. Estimates of their number vary quite widely,1 but that they constituted a group of sufficient size to exercise considerable influence over Mediterranean society is generally agreed. What elicits much less agreement is the nature of their Judaism in the centuries which followed the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE. It will be evident from the title of this article that I believe it to be helpful to study diaspora Judaism in this period separately from the religion of Jews in the land of Israel. This separation is desirable despite the similar geographical and economic constraints on Jewish communities in all parts of the Mediterranean world, despite the

1 Cf. S.W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952) vol. 1, 167–171, 370–372.

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comparative ease of transport between such communities in the first century CE because of the pax Romana and extensive inter-regional trade,2 and despite the common obeisance of all Mediterranean Jews to the same Torah by which God bound Israel in covenant on Mount Sinai.3 Despite all this, the special role of Israel as a holy land necessarily influenced religious behaviour, and may well have caused the religious outlook of Jews who lived there to be different from that of diaspora Jews. In Jews’ religious geography, the centre of the world, the core of purity, lay in the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem. The rest of the world was relegated to spheres of decreasing purity in a series of concentric circles, from the Temple to the city of Jerusalem to the boundaries of the land of Israel and thence to the diaspora.4 The probability that diaspora Judaism in the Mediterranean world differed from that of Jews in the homeland is strengthened by the fact that most evidence about Judaism in this period happens to derive either from the land of Israel or from the Jews of Mesopotamia who, since they lived outside the Roman empire, had little contact with the western diaspora. This same fact means that disagreement about the nature of Judaism in the Mediterranean diaspora begins from uncertainty about how much, if at all, to rely on the rabbinic evidence from late antiquity: some scholars assume that all Jews followed rabbinic norms until proved otherwise, others that none did until shown to have done so.5 Both views are possible, but I should confess that my own preference is for skepticism about the applicability of rabbinic evidence outside the immediate circles for which it was composed.6 The preservation

2 Cf. K. Hopkins, “Taxes and trade in the Roman Empire (200 BC–AD 400),” Journal of Roman Studies 70 (1980) 101–125. 3 E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: a Comparison of Patterns of Religion, (London: SCM, 1977); Idem, Judaism: Practice and Belief: 63 BCE–66 CE (London: SCM, 1992). 4 Cf. M. Goodman, The Ruling Class of Judaea: The Origins of the Jewish Revolt Against Rome, AD 66–70 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) 106. 5 Contrast the assumption by Schiffman, Who was a Jew? (New York: Ktav, 1985), that rabbinic discussions in the land of Israel were capable of bringing about the split between Judaism and Christianity to the assertion by Kraabel, “Impact of the Discovery of the Sardis Synagogue” in Sardis from Prehistoric to Roman Times, ed. G.M.A. Hanfmann (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983) 178–193, that rabbis had no influence at all in Asia Minor. 6 Cf. M. Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee, AD 132–212 (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983) 5–14.

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of so much rabbinic literature by Jews of later generations encourages the impression that the rabbis predominated in Jewish society of the time when the literature was composed, but it is in principle not justified to take the survival of material as evidence of its original importance. Rabbinic texts from late antiquity are extant only because their contents interested enough Jews through the medieval to the early modern period for them to be continuously copied and eventually printed. In contrast, Jewish texts written in Greek were totally ignored by the later rabbinic tradition, which operated primarily in Hebrew and Aramaic. Thus it is entirely possible that diaspora Jews composed just as many literary works in Greek after 70 CE as before that date, but that all such literature has disappeared simply because the religious traditions which eventually triumphed had no interest in their preservation: on the one hand, the rabbis, who only preserved writing in Semitic languages, and on the other, the Christian Church, which treasured and appropriated Jewish texts written in Greek before c. 100 CE but which treated later Jewish compositions as the product of an alien faith.7 The possibility of a misleading bias in the preservation of the evidence is not the only factor which complicates the use of rabbinic texts. The rabbis took it for granted that their view of the world was normative for all Israel, but such a view can quite well persist regardless of reality. It is entirely possible, even if in the final analysis unprovable, that, even within the communities in which they operated, the rabbis were sometimes met with indifference.8 If rabbinic literature can be used only with care to reconstruct the religious outlook of Jews in the land of Israel where it was composed, it will be all the more difficult to use it to understand the Judaism of Alexandria, Antioch, Sardis, Rome. For some scholars the non-rabbinic nature of (some) diaspora Judaism in late antiquity is simply taken for granted,9 and over the past few decades many attempts have been made to construct a picture of an alternative Judaism based on different kinds of evidence.10 7 Cf. G. Vermes and M. Goodman, “La literature juive intertestamentaire à la lumière d’un siècle de recherches et de découvertes” in Etudes sur le Judaisme Hellénistique, eds. R. Kuntzmann and J. Schlosser (Paris: Editions du CERF, 1984) 19–39. 8 M. Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee, 93–111. 9 E.g. A.T. Kraabel, “Impact of the Discovery of the Sardis Synagogue,” 178. 10 E.g. E.R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, 13 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953–1968); Kraabel, idem, 188–90.

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Such attempts are encouraged by the abundance of non-rabbinic material found in the diaspora. So, for instance, in the corpus of Jewish inscriptions from the diaspora the proportional increase in documents dated after 70 CE is quite striking,11 and not simply part of any general increase in epigraphic evidence in the late-Roman period. Archeological evidence is similarly much more abundant than in earlier times, especially from excavations of buildings at DuraEuropos, Sardis and elsewhere, and from investigation of Jewish catacombs at Rome.12 These material remains are supplemented by a considerable corpus of comments about Jews by pagan and (more especially) Christian writers.13 Of these, the most illuminating are often the Roman laws about Jews, which repay close study.14 This non-rabbinic evidence has been used in the past to produce dramatically disparate pictures of diaspora Judaism. In earlier generations the standard stereotype, molded perhaps by a Christian perspective and the assumption that right-thinking Jews ought really to have joined the Church, portrayed diaspora Judaism as the religion of small, embattled groups who adopted syncretistic ideas in order to ingratiate themselves with their gentile neighbours.15 A more recent stereotype reverses many of these judgments. It is now commonly claimed that diaspora Judaism was the religion of prosperous, selfconfident, outgoing people, who were fully accepted as Jews by their gentile neighbours, unconcerned by surrounding idolatry, uninclined to syncretise, and keen to proselytise.16 It is worth stressing that this revised picture is almost entirely, and quite overtly, dependent on analysis of archeological evidence and

11

J.B. Frey, Corpus Inscriptionum Judaicarum (vol. 1, rev. New York: Ktav, 1975; vol. 2 Rome: Pontifico Istituto di archaeologia christiana, 1936). 12 E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, vol. 3.1, rev. and eds. G. Vermes, F. Millar and M. Goodman (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1986) 1–176. 13 M. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, 3 vols. ( Jerusalem: Israel Academy of the Sciences, 1974–86); J. Juster, Les Juifs dans l’Empire romain: leur condition juridique, économique et sociale, 2 vols. (Paris: Geuthner, 1914) 1: 43–76. 14 A. Linder, The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1987). 15 Cf. the critique in A.T. Kraabel, “The Disappearance of the ‘God-Fearer,’ ” Numen 28: 113–126 (1982). 16 P.R. Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

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inscriptions, and especially the material from Sardis.17 It is claimed, for instance, that the size of the Sardis synagogue, its position at the centre of the city, and the presence in it of inscriptions set up by gentile Godworshippers show the important role of Jews in the civic community and the acceptance of that role by their gentile neighbours.18 Such an interpretation is of course possible, but it is hardly necessary. The great synagogue of Alexandria was also huge, according to Tosefta Sukkah 4:6, but this fact can hardly have signified good relations with the local Greeks since the Jews and Greeks of Alexandria were more or less openly hostile to each other throughout the first and early second centuries CE.19 It is quite possible that in both Alexandria and Sardis the erection of a large, prominent synagogue may have signified bravado by an embattled minority in a hostile environment. Similarly, gentile Godworshippers who gave money to Jewish institutions may have done so for a variety of reasons, without approving of either Judaism or Jews: so, for instance, if Jews were indeed rich and powerful, it might have seemed sensible for a gentile politician to donate money to their synagogue, regardless of his real view about them or their religion.20 From the point of view of a polytheist, the term theosebes (“God-worshipper”) was sufficiently anodyne for any pagan to accept it as a title. I raise these other possible interpretations not to advocate them but simply to show the vulnerability of archeological and epigraphic material of this kind to imaginative exegesis. In the rest of this paper I intend to sketch more fully the limitations of the evidence for Judaism in the Mediterranean diaspora in the period, with an epilogue to suggest why and how the radical uncertainty which I shall advocate in interpreting the remains from earlier periods may be inappropriate in the fifth century CE and after. Radical uncertainty in interpreting Jewish-type material down to c. 390 CE is based on two factors which in principle bear no relation to each other. First, there may have been much variety within

17 Kraabel, “The Disappearance of the ‘God-Fearer’ ”; Idem, “Impact of the Discovery of the Sardis Synagogue.” 18 Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor, 57. 19 V.A. Tcherikover, A. Fuks and M. Stern, Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957–64) 1: 48–93. 20 J. Murphy-O’Connor, “Lots of God-Fearers? ‘Theosebeis’ in the Aphrodisias Inscription,” Revue Biblique 99/2 (1992) 418–424.

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diaspora Judaism, to the extent that it may be more accurate to talk of Judaisms in the plural.21 Second, and even allowing for great variety and for different definitions of who was a Jew, some material commonly ascribed to Jews and Judaism may not reflect Jews of any kind, by any definition in antiquity or today. The first issue has been much discussed, and I shall consider it here only briefly. The second issue, which I believe is undeservedly overlooked in much of the scholarly literature, I shall tackle at greater length. Variety in Diaspora Judaism Any individual type of Judaism consists of a single religious system, encompassing most aspects of life. Unlike most other ancient cults, Judaism could be contrasted in antiquity not just to other religions but to other cultures in the broad sense: the first use of the term ioudaismos (2 Macc. 2:21) specifically compared Judaism to Hellenism, and both gentile and Jewish Greek writers sometimes described the Jewish way of life as a philosophy.22 Thus, when they viewed their own lifestyles from within their systems, Jewish writers tended to assume that there was only one Judaism. So, for example, to the rabbis Jewish identity was defined in rabbinic terms, in what Sacha Stern has described as a solipsistic sense of Jewishness, to the extent that only adult male rabbinic Jews were thought of as fully part of Israel, and the Judaism of women and children, let alone proselytes and slaves, was left ill-defined.23 It is notoriously unwise to rely on a group’s self-depiction to produce an accurate picture of that group, but in the study of the late-antique diaspora the non-Jewish evidence, plentiful though it is, is not entirely helpful in balancing out the picture. Greek and Latin pagans after the early second century CE seem largely to have fallen into literary clichés when writing about Jews,24 and little that they 21 Cf. for the first century, J. Neusner, W.S. Green and E.S. Frerichs, Judaisms and their Messiahs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 22 J.G. Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes Towards Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). 23 “Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings,” Unpublished D. Phil. Thesis, Oxford University. 24 Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism; idem, “The Jews in Greek and Latin Literature” in The Jewish People in the First Century, eds. S. Safrai and M. Stern (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976) vol. 2, 1101–1159.

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wrote sheds any light on the Jews of their own day; in any case, they lacked any interest in differentiating between one sort of Jew and another, simply lumping them all together as one despicable superstitio.25 The evidence of Christian authors about Jews is almost equally unsatisfactory, but for rather different reasons.26 In the early Church the term “Jew” was generally applied to one of three groups: either to the Israel of the Old Testament (usually on occasions when they disobeyed divine commands, since the positive aspects of Israel’s heritage were appropriated by the Christians themselves);27 or to the Pharisees who opposed Jesus according to the Gospels’ narrative, with whom Jews as a whole were often identified;28 or to Christian literalists, since in the internal debate within the early Church about the correct way to interpret the Old Testament, those who took the biblical commands to apply to themselves were readily attacked by their opponents as Jews.29 Since in all these cases the terms “Jews” and “Judaism” were more or less terms of abuse, there was no incentive to distinguish between one kind of Jew and another. Those Christians like Hippolytus (c. 170–c. 236 CE) who referred to the different sects of Judaism culled their information from earlier sources, which normally described the Judaism of the land of Israel before 70 CE.30 But despite this lack of direct evidence for diversity in the Judaism of the late-Roman diaspora, there remain good grounds for believing variety to be probable. First is the direct evidence of Josephus that one and the same individual could claim the perfect unity of Judaism

25

Cf. Tacitus, Hist. 5.8.2–3; Ann. 2.85. Cf. in general M. Taylor, “The Jews in the Writings of the Early Church Fathers (150–312): Men of Straw or Formidable Rivals?” Unpublished D. Phil. Thesis, Oxford University, 1992. 27 Cf. M. Simon, Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations Between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (135–425) (Oxford: Littman Library, 1986). 28 R. Reuther, Faith and Fratricide: the theological roots of anti-semitism (New York: Seabury Press, 1974). 29 D.P. Efroymson, “Tertullian’s Anti-Judaism and its role in his theology,” Unpublished PhD Thesis, Temple University, 1976. 30 Miriam Taylor, “The Jews in the Writings of the Early Church Fathers (150–312),” points out that Simon, Verus Israel, may be wrong to assume that because Christian writers came up against real Jews, they therefore described them as they really were. It is almost as easy to impose a stereotype on real people as on imaginary ones. 26

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while also being aware of considerable variety. Thus Josephus wrote in Contra Apionem 2.179–180, a work composed in Rome in the nineties CE, that one remarkable fact about Jews was their unity on all matters of theology and worship: one God, one Law, one Temple. Nor was this a passing remark, since Jewish unity constituted an important element of his proof in Contra Apionem of the superiority of Jews over Greeks, whose cults, myths and beliefs he characterized as hopelessly jumbled. But the same Josephus could write in three other works about the three (or sometimes four) distinctive philosophies of the Jews (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and the “Fourth Philosophy”), whose tenets he was at pains to delineate.31 It appears that for Josephus these two opinions, which he proffered as part of two different arguments, were quite easily correlated. Variety within Judaism presumably lay in his eyes on a different level from its unity: all Jews accepted the one Torah, even if they disagreed about its significance. If someone like Josephus could write about diversity within Judaism in his histories of the land of Israel before 70 CE, it is clearly at least possible that such diversity continued in the late-Roman diaspora. When Josephus was writing he was living in the diaspora in Rome and after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, but he wrote about the varied philosophies of Judaism not as a past but as a present fact. The factors which had encouraged a diaspora Jew in the mid-first century like Philo of Alexandria to evolve his curious blend of Platonic philosophy and allegorical exegesis of the Bible32 were just as potent after the destruction of the Temple as before; indeed, since Philonic types of theology were to become popular among some Christians during the late-Roman period, it was evidently possible for Jews also to continue thinking in such ways. So far as is known, no authority existed within diaspora Judaism to impose rules of practice and belief. Such a role has often been claimed for the rabbinic patriarch (nasi ) in the land of Israel whose formal jurisdiction under the auspices of the state over Jews throughout the Roman empire I shall discuss in the epilogue (below).33 But

31

B.J. 2.119–166; A.J. 18.11–25; Vita 10–12. Cf. S. Sandmel, Philo of Alexandria: An Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). 33 Cf. L.I. Levine, “The Jewish Patriarch (Nasi ) in third century Palestine,” Aufsteig und Niedergang der römischen Welt 19/2 (1979) 649–88. 32

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I believe not only that the evidence that he had any such authority before the late fourth century is not compelling,34 but also that there are positive reasons to deny that he had such a role at any earlier date: first, it was contrary to normal Roman practice in the high empire for a single spokesman to be appointed or recognized either for an ethnic group such as Spaniards or Gauls, or for a religious movement such as Mithraists or Isiacs; secondly, the fact that the third-century Christian writer Origen referred to the nasi by the title “ethnarch,”35 whereas fourth-century Roman sources consistently call him “patriarch,” suggests that the nasi in his time was not a Roman official at all, since the Roman state was normally very careful and precise in the conferring of titles.36 If there was no authority to impose uniformity, there was also no incentive to suppress variety. Opinions might vary wildly between one community and another on crucial questions of Jewish status such as the validity of conversions and the status of the offspring of mixed marriages,37 let alone less public aspects of Judaism, from domestic liturgy and behaviour to philosophical speculation on the hidden meanings of Torah. After 70 CE there did not even exist any more the Temple as the symbolic focus of unity to which all Jews could show their solidarity by contributing their annual offerings, as the Jews of Asia Minor had done in the mid first century BCE.38 Nor was there any more a high priest to act as ruler and leader of the nation, as Josephus had claimed he should.39 It would be reasonable to expect Judaism in the Mediterranean diaspora to have become more varied after 70 CE, not less.

34 The only extant inscription from the diaspora which may show the rabbinic patriarch exercising some authority in the diaspora is a text from Stobi in Macedonia, of the second or third century CE. Cf. M. Hengel, “Die Synagogeninschrift von Stobi,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 57 (1966) 145–83, but the huge fine payable to the patriarch according to the inscription would have been unenforceable (cf. Schürer, History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, 3:67). 35 Ep. Ad Africanum 20 (14). 36 Cf. M. Goodman, “The Roman State and the Jewish Patriarch in the Third Century” in Galilee in Late Antiquity, ed. L.I. Levine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992) 127–139. 37 Cf. M. Goodman, “Identity and Authority in Ancient Judaism” Judaism 39 (1990) 192–201 [Chapter 2 above]. 38 Cf. Cicero. Flac. 66. 39 C.Ap. 2.193–194; cf. A.J. 20.251.

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Whatever their divergences, one common denominator for all Jews was that each thought of himself or herself as belonging within a system defined as Judaism. Outsiders may have been uncertain whether any particular individual should be considered a Jew, but the individual himself would always know whether he was bound by the covenant between God and Israel. This was not just a matter of theological logic. I have argued in detail elsewhere40 that when the emperor Nerva in 96 CE reformed the collection of the fiscus Judaicus, the special poll tax imposed by the Roman state on all Jews within the empire after the Judean revolt of 66–70 CE, he exempted Jewish apostates, thereby ensuring that the selection of those liable to the tax should be by religious self-definition: those who professed Judaism (whether native-born or proselytes) were required to pay two denarii a year towards the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol in Rome. In return for this tax, self-professed Jews were exempted from the normal requirement to take part in the pagan ceremonials of the state. If this theory is correct, in practice any Jew will have been quite clear about the distinction between himself and the gentiles. Conversely, non-Jews who were interested in worshipping the Jewish God would be entirely clear that their devotion to this divinity did not in itself make them into Jews unless they also wished to embrace the (or a) whole system of Judaism (including exclusive monotheism) and, as a corollary, to pay the fiscus Judaicus to Rome. The best evidence up to now that some polytheistic gentiles were indeed interested in worshipping the Jewish God has emerged only comparatively recently, with the publication in 1987 of a long inscription from Aphrodisias in Caria, in modern Turkey.41 This inscription, tentatively dated by its editors to the early third century CE,42 contains a long list of names of donors to a Jewish institution whose precise nature is obscure. The names on side A and at the

40 M. Goodman, “Nerva, the fiscus Judaicus and Jewish Identity” Journal of Roman Studies 79 (1989) 40–44. 41 J. Reynolds and R. Tannenbaum, Jews and God-Fearers at Aphrodisias, Cambridge Philological Society, supplementary volume, 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society, 1987). 42 Ibid., 19–22.

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top of side B of the list are most distinctively Jewish and include three individuals specifically designated as proselytos.43 In contrast, on side B, under a separate heading entitled “and these [are] the godreverers,”44 are found fifty-three non-Jewish names, of whom the first nine are described as bouleutes, city councillor.45 It is clear that these latter individuals were gentiles honoured by the Jewish community in Aphrodisias. It is likely that they were polytheists, since all city councillors could normally expect to take part in civic cults, unless, like Jews, they were specifically exempt.46 It is also likely that the appearance of their names on the list reflected their interest in Judaism and not just in Jews in their locality: the inscription starts with an invocation to the helping God (theos boethos),47 and their designation as “God-reverers” (theosebeis) suggests that they were devoted in some way to the Jewish God. Over the past twenty years or so the problem of these pious gentiles, usually designated as “Godfearers”48 has attracted a huge literature,49 but I believe that more can and should be said. Most scholars have been primarily interested in the role of Godfearers in the Acts of the Apostles as the recipients of Christian mission in the interlude between the rejection of the Gospel by the Jews and the full-blooded mission to the gentiles.50 The scholars who have approached the topic primarily through the epigraphic evidence, including the Aphrodisias inscription, have tended to portray such gentiles from the Jewish point of view, describing them as on the fringes of Judaism, “of but not in.”51 I do not doubt that ancient Christians and Jews may indeed have taken such a view of gentiles, but I wonder whether these depictions also reflect the self-perception of the gentiles themselves. City councillors in Aphrodisias who became Godfearers did so voluntarily, presumably because they found religious meaning in the act. They

43

A, lines 13, 17, 22. B, line 34. 45 B, lines 34–38. 46 Cf. Reynolds and Tannenbaum, Jews and God-Fearers at Aphrodisias, 58. 47 A, line 1. 48 Cf. Acts of the Apostles 10:2, 22; 13:16, 26. 49 E.g. F. Siegert, “Gottersfürchtigen und Sympathisanten”, Journal for the Study of Judaism 4 (1973) 109–64. 50 Cf. critique by Kraabel, “The Disappearance of the ‘God-Fearer’ ”. 51 Reynolds and Tannenbaum, Jews and God-Fearers at Aphrodisias, 88. 44

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could have become full proselytes and part of the covenant if they had wanted to do so, as the open designation of individuals as proselytes at Aphrodisias shows,52 but since they chose not to, it may be that worshipping the Jewish God as a gentile had a meaning for them as polytheists quite different from that experienced by those who entered the exclusive covenant of Judaism. For a pagan polytheist there were many reasons to worship the Jewish God. The main reasons, as with any deity, lay in his power: he was the Lord of the Universe, the highest god (theos hypsistos).53 A deity’s power could be divined from his activity in the world: as Josephus put it, in a curious reversal of the arguments of later theologians, only God could have created the irregularities of the heavenly bodies.54 The aura of the divinity was not necessarily diminished by the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE, for pagans could presumably accept (if they wished to) the claim addressed to them by Josephus that the outcome of the Jewish revolt had been God’s will,55 since it was through God’s support alone that the Romans held their empire.56 The lack of a single cult centre might even have been a positive attraction to polytheists, who devoted themselves in increasing numbers in the high Roman empire to divinities such as Isis, Mithras or Jupiter Dolichenus, who had been displaced from their actual or alleged place of origin;57 it may be that lack of local roots made more plausible each god’s claims to universal significance. It is likely also that knowledge of the existence of Jewish communities throughout much of the Empire, full of initiates devoted to God to such an extent that his laws shaped their entire lives, would encourage interested polytheists to believe that this must be a divinity worth cultivation. Large public temples dedicated by non-initiates to divinities like Isis to whom initiates were also known to be devoted are found in many cities in the Roman empire.58

52 If there was indeed a prohibition by the Roman state on conversion to Judaism, it seems to have been blatantly ignored by some, cf. ibid., 43–44. 53 Cf. Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor, 127–44, 163–64. 54 A.J. 1.155–156. 55 Cf. B.J. 6.250. 56 B.J. 2.390. 57 Cf. M.J. Vermaseren, Mithras, the Secret God (London: Chatto and Windus, 1963). 58 Cf. R.E. Witt, Isis in the Graeco-Roman World (London: Thames and Hudson, 1971).

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How would such a polytheist convinced of God’s power normally be expected to worship? It can be said immediately that it would not be at all obvious to carry out part, but not all, of the lifestyle of a full Jewish initiate, as in the standard picture of Godfearers as gentiles who chose to follow an arbitrary selection of some of the injunctions of the Torah.59 Of course, a polytheist might behave in such a way, perhaps keeping the sabbath but not the dietary laws or the requirement to circumcise sons,60 but if such behaviour was intended to mark devotion to the Jewish God, rather than just imitation of attractive Jewish customs, it suggests an individual on the way to becoming a Jew61 rather than a pagan polytheist simply honouring a powerful divinity. At any rate, for most pagans there might seem to be no religious advantage in listening to synagogue services run by Jews: they might hope to derive some philosophical insights from readings from the Bible,62 but it would not be very uplifting to listen to catalogues of legal injunctions which, as nonJews, they believed did not apply to them. The standard way for ancient polytheists to worship a divinity was through offerings on altars. This form of worship, hallowed by antiquity, was still widespread and popular in the second and third centuries CE, as numerous inscriptions attest.63 Among such inscriptions are some which are more plausibly ascribed to gentiles devoted to the Jewish God. An inscription on a small altar from Pamphylia dated to the first or second century CE and published in 1992 reads: “For the truthful god who is not made with hands (in fulfillment of ) a vow;64 since the most striking aspect of the Jewish God in the eyes of outsiders was the remarkable fact that he has no image, it is most likely that the inscription was addressed to him. Similarly, an altar of the second century CE from Pergamon, with an inscription which reads at the top: “God, Lord, who is One for ever,” and on the bottom: “Zopyros [dedicated] to the Lord the

59 E.g. Siegert, “Gottersfürchtigen und Sympathisanten”; Reynolds and Tannenbaum, Jews and God-Fearers at Aphrodisias, 65. 60 Cf. Juvenal, Satires 14.96–99. 61 Cf. Juvenal, Satires 14.96–106. 62 Cf. J.G. Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism, 75–76. 63 R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century AD to the Conversion of Constantine (Harmondsworth: Viking, 1986) 69–72. 64 P.W. van der Horst, “A New Altar of a Godfearer,” JJS 43 (1992) 32–37.

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altar and the support with the lamp,” is most plausibly ascribed to a pagan worshipper of the Jewish God.65 The general attitude of Jews to such gentiles’ worship can only be suggested through the logic of a somewhat complex argument, as follows. There is good evidence in Palestinian rabbinic texts, from the Tosefta66 and Sifra,67 both probably redacted in the third century CE, to the Jerusalem Talmud,68 redacted probably in the late fourth century, that some rabbis sometimes assumed that gentiles (unlike Jews) were permitted to make offerings to God outside Jerusalem; the debate in the Jerusalem Talmud text was only over whether Jews should allow themselves to help gentiles to do this. Such approval by rabbis quoted in these texts is particularly significant because in these same texts can also be found strong disapproval of gentiles’ worship of other gods; the prohibition of alien worship (avodah zarah) was a consistent element in the so-called Noachide laws considered by the rabbis to be incumbent on all humans, gentiles as much as Jews, and first attested in the Tosefta.69 Unlike these rabbis, some Jews in the diaspora apparently did not object to the pagan practices of gentile God-worshippers, for they honoured gentile city-councillors who almost certainly took part in civic cults,70 so it will have been comparatively easy for them to accept the much less obviously objectionable practices of gentiles who made offerings not to idols but to the Jewish God. If gentiles did regularly make such offerings, what would one expect the archeological evidence to look like from the buildings in which they worshipped? First, and most obvious, there could be no cult statue: pagans knew that what distinguished the Jewish God from other deities was the lack of any image.71 To indicate the

65 B. Lifshitz, Donateurs et fondateurs dans les synagogues juives, Cahiers de la Revue Biblique, supplementary volume 7 (Paris: Gabalda, 1967) no. 12; cf. E. Bickerman, “The Altars of Gentiles” in idem, Studies in Jewish and Christian History, part 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1980) 341–42. 66 Zevakhim 13:1, which refers even to Samaritans. 67 83c., ed. Weiss. 68 y. Megillah 1.13, 72b (ed. Krotoschin). 69 Avodah Zarah 8:4; cf. D. Novak, The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism: A Historical and Constructive Study of the Noachide Laws (New York and Toronto: Edwin Mellen, 1983) 3–4, 107–48. 70 See sup. 71 Cf. Varro, apud Augustine, De Civitate Dei 4.31.

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Jewishness of the divinity, therefore, one might expect characteristic Jewish iconography on mosaics or wall paintings: as the reliefs on the Arch of Titus in Rome demonstrate, pagans were aware of such Jewish images as the candelabrum (menorah) and incense shovels of the Jerusalem Temple. One might also expect to find in the shrines of such gentiles fragments of Hebrew words and letters, since, regardless of its incomprehensibility, the divinity’s special language might be thought to have an intrinsic power, as can be seen from the use of Hebrew in non-Jewish magical papyri. In all other respects the building might be expected to look like any other pagan temple—a fact, however, of dubious advantage in identification, since such temples varied greatly in plan from one place to another and from one shrine to another. Such gentile worshippers would not necessarily have any collective name for themselves, any more than (for example) worshippers of Apollo or Jupiter Dolichenus did. Since they were not Jews (or, as they might think of it, ‘initiates of the Jewish God’), their worship of the divinity formed only one part of their religious lives, let alone their political and social identity; Jews, Christians, Mithraists and Isiaci were unusual in ancient religious history in their adoption of a group name to describe themselves.72 Nor did such gentiles necessarily espouse common myths or uniform rituals: each shrine might quite well follow its own local rules, as was common in ancient paganism.73 This variation and anonymity will, of course, make such gentiles difficult to identify in the surviving evidence from late antiquity. Nonetheless, it is not just an entirely theoretical hypothesis that such people may have existed, nor that they may have set up altars and special buildings. In 407 CE the emperors Theodosius, Arcadius and Honorius issued a law against a ‘new crime of superstition’, which has ‘claimed the unheard name of heaven-worshippers (caelicolae),’74 ordering that

72 Cf. J.A. North, “The Development of Religious Pluralism” in The Jews among Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire, eds. J. Lieu, J. North and T. Rajak (London: Routledge, 1992) 174–93. 73 Cf. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World, 64–101. 74 The assertion by the emperor in each reference to the caelicolae that he has never heard of them before (cf. Linder, The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation, 256) may show only his ignorance or their adoption of a new name, and not necessarily that they were a new religious phenomenon.

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their buildings (aedificia), ‘which contain meetings of some new dogma,’ should be vindicated to the churches, i.e. confiscated.75 The evidence about the caelicolae, found in this law, in another similar law issued in 409 CE, and in a few remarks by Latin patristic writers,76 is strangely ignored in the standard modern discussions of Godfearers,77 but it seems very likely that the term describes individuals of the same type as those called theosebeis (“God-worshippers”) in Greek. In the law of 409 CE the emperors moved straight from condemning the caelicolae to condemning those who dare to convert Christians to Judaism.78 The caelicolae were included in the heading of a title of the Theodosian Code along with Jews and Samaritans; despite this link with Jews, they seem to have been pagan polytheists.79 The term caelicolae (“heaven-worshippers”) seems to be a direct analogue to the Hebrew yir"ei shamayim (“heaven-fearers”) used in rabbinic texts of the third to fifth century CE to refer to gentiles who respect the Jewish God.80 At any rate, if the caelicolae were indeed pagans who revered the Jewish God, the most significant datum to emerge from the Roman legal texts is the fact that they possessed buildings for worship,81 in which case modern scholars might be thought to have every reason to hunt for evidence of such buildings in the archeological remains of the late-Roman period.

75

Codex Justinianus 1.9.12. Cf. Juster, Les Juifs dans l’Empire romain, vol. 1, 175, n. 3. 77 E.g. Siebert, “Gottersfürchtigen und Sympathisanten;” contrast Linder, The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation. 78 Codex Theodosianus 16.8.19. 79 Linder (The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation I, 257) takes the caelicolae to be Christian renegades, oddly translating “nisi ad. . . . venerationem . . . Christianam conversi fuerint” as “unless they return to . . . the Christian veneration.” This interpretation seems to go back to Juster (Les Juifs dans l’Empire romain, vol. 1, 175, n. 3). Juster was (rightly) keen to counter claims by previous scholars that caelicolae were Jews, but he did so by a misinterpretation of Codex Theodosianus 16.5.43. He took quamvis Christianos esse se simulent (“although they pretend that they are Christians”) at the end of that decree to refer to all previously mentioned groups, which included the caelicolae. But this is not plausible, since another group mentioned previously in the same law were the gentiles (“pagans”), who by definition did not claim to be Christian. The words at the end of the decree (“pretend to be Christians”) most obviously refer to the group mentioned in the final sentence of the law, immediately preceding this phrase—that is, the Donatists, who were indeed a Christian heresy. The Christian writer Philastrius (Haer. 15, CSEL 38, 6–7) thought that the caelicolae were Jews, who worshipped with sacrifices the goddess Caelestis, who personified the heavens. 80 Reynolds and Tannenbaum, Jews and God-Fearers at Aphrodisias, 52–53. 81 Codex Theodosianus 16.8.19. 76

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It is time to make explicit the relevance of such questions to the study of Jews and Judaism in the late-Roman diaspora. How much evidence customarily ascribed by scholars to Jews and used to reconstruct “Judaisms” might actually reflect gentiles of this kind, who may have worshipped the Jewish God without any contact at all with Jews? I stress the word “might.” My aim is not to estimate the most plausible explanation of the surviving archeological and epigraphic evidence, but to illustrate the fragility of the scholarly assumptions which lie behind attempts to describe diaspora Judaism in the Mediterranean region. I shall concentrate on just one, celebrated, case study: the late-Roman “synagogue” at Sardis. Possible Re-interpretations of the Evidence It will be recalled that the modern re-evaluation of diaspora, and especially Asia Minor, Judaism has been based to a considerable extent on the alleged implications of the huge building at Sardis which the excavators identified as a synagogue (see above). The building is a large basilica built originally in the early Roman period as part of the gymnasium complex in the centre of the city. The basilica was identified as a synagogue in its later phases on account of the discovery of fragmentary Hebrew inscriptions and the iconography of its decoration.82 Numerous mosaic depictions of candelabra (menorot) were discovered, and fragments of one actual, stone menorah. The mosaics included pictures of a ram’s horn (shofar) and other objects which have been discovered in a number of synagogue sites in the land of Israel.83 There were also two small fragments of Hebrew inscriptions, one beyond clear decipherment, one reading shalom (“peace”). Since the building has been firmly decreed by the excavators in 1962 to be a synagogue on the basis of these finds, when the first inscriptions came to be published in 1964 the framework was already taken for granted.84 The mosaic inscription of a certain Aurelius

82 Cf. D.G. Mitten, “The Synagogue” in Report of the Fifth Campaign at Sardis (1962), Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 179 (1963) 40. 83 L.I. Levine, The Synagogue in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1987) 185. 84 L. Robert, Nouvelles inscriptions de Sardes (Paris: Librarie d’Amérique et d’Orient, 1964) 37.

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Olympios from the tribe of the Leontii,85 unique among Jewish inscriptions according to its editor,86 was nonetheless presumed to be Jewish simply because is was known to come from what was believe to be a synagogue. A rough graffito incised on the neck of a jar found in a shop outside the building to the south, with the name “Jacob” and four other letters (prou), was reconstructed to read “Jacob the elder” and ascribed to a “councillor of the Jewish community” mainly because a Jewish community could be expected to have such officials and because a shop next to a prominent Jewish public building was likely to be owned by a Jew.87 All such interpretations may be entirely correct, but it may be worthwhile to consider briefly other, quite different, ways of explaining the same evidence. What factors might encourage the belief that the Sardis building might not have been a Jewish synagogue at all, but might rather have housed a cult of gentile, polytheist God-worshippers? Negative reasons to suggest that the building might not have been a synagogue are easily enumerated. First, it is many times bigger than any other synagogue yet identified.88 Secondly, its size might seem to militate against its usefulness as a synagogue where the main focus of ritual was to hear the Law read and explained: in a throng of over a thousand people, the reader might sometimes be hard to hear. Third, the plan of the building is unparalleled among ancient synagogues.89 Fourth, the huge marble table in the centre of the hall is unique in Jewish buildings and the edifice lacks the stone benches standard in synagogues elsewhere.90 Fifth, at least one donor to the building came from outside Sardis (from nearby Hypaepa),91 which was odd for a communal synagogue intended for the use of Jews who lived close enough to come regularly to hear the Law read. Sixth, and in contrast to donors’ names in synagogues elsewhere, the

85

Ibid., no. 6. Ibid., 46. 87 Ibid., 57, on no. 22. 88 A.R. Seager, “The Synagogue and the Jewish Community: The Building” in Sardis from Prehistoric to Roman Times, ed. G.M.A. Hanfmann (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983) 177. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 91 Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor, 46. 86

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mosaic inscriptions in Sardis do not apparently stress rank, honour and prestige within the Jewish community; instead, they emphasize civic status, and in particular, for those who could boast it, the rank of bouleutes, city councillor.92 None of the inscriptions refers to Jews, Israel, Hebrews, synagogues, or anything else specifically Jewish. Positive reasons to suggest that the building might have been a place for God-worshippers to reverence the Jewish God are rather less numerous, but not negligible. First is the designation on the mosaics of six donors as theosebeis, “God-worshippers;”93 none has a Jewish name and, in the light of the proximity of Sardis to Aphrodisias, it is much more plausible that the theosebeis here, as at Aphrodisias, were gentiles.94 The Jewish iconography (such as the shofar) will then have been taken over by these non-Jews as symbolic representations of their cult of the Jewish God. Such appropriation of the images of other faiths was common in late antiquity: Christians sometimes used Jewish images,95 just as Jews sometimes used pagan symbols,96 so it should not surprise if the pagans who revered the Jewish God borrowed Jewish motifs. Whoever the worshippers were in the building in its last phase, they seem to have kept a scroll of the law, or something similar, in the formal niche designated by the archeologists as the “Torah shrine.” The evidence lies in the discovery around the niche of a marble inscription with the word nomophylakion (“guarding-place of [the] law”?),97 and in the probable depiction of Torah scrolls in the form of two stylized spirals.98 Such appurtenances of worship might seem too obviously appropriate to Jewish synagogue liturgy for any other explanation to be worth considering, but in fact even Torah scrolls might have a function in pagan worship. There is good evidence that non-Jews sometimes treated Jews’ veneration for their scrolls as the direct equivalent of pagan veneration of idols:99 when

92

Robert, Nouvelles inscriptions de Sardes, 54–57. Ibid., 39–45; Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor, 158–59. 94 Cf. ibid., 159. 95 Cf. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, vol. 2, 13. 96 Ibid., passim. 97 Kraabel, “Impact of the Discovery of the Sardis Synagogue,” 189. 98 Y. Shiloh, “Torah Scrolls and the Menorah Plaque from Sardis,” Israel Exploration Journal 18 (1968) 54–57. 99 Cf. M. Goodman, “Sacred Scripture and ‘defiling the hands’ ”, Journal of Theological Studies 41 (1990) 99–107 [Chapter 6 above]. 93

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a soldier burnt a Torah scroll in first-century CE Judea, the Roman governor had him publicly executed,100 and in the triumph held by Titus and Vespasian in Rome to celebrate the suppression of the Jewish revolt, the procession of booty contained, after the impressive loot from the Temple itself, a scroll of the Jewish law.101 It would be easy for pagans to imagine that the scroll of the law embodied the divinity—and for those who worshipped the divinity to keep, in a wall oriented towards Jerusalem, a special copy of the scroll as the central focus of their worship, even if they did not actually read it, let alone understand the meaning of its contents. Nor need the presence of a Hebrew inscription in the building signify that this was a synagogue: a word like “shalom”102 is just the sort of word non-Jews enthusiastic about the Jewish God might employ as a sort of talisman (see above). If I push possibilities to their limit, I could even argue that the presence among the inscriptions of two characteristically Jewish names (out of thirty altogether), like a certain “Samoe, priest and wise teacher (sophodidaskalos),”103 does not necessarily bear any significance for the nature of the building as a whole. Jewish names appear in pagan contexts elsewhere, like those in an ephebe list from a gymnasium in Cyrene in the early first century CE.104 It would not be particularly strange if some Jews (albeit, in the eyes of some rabbis, bad ones)105 decided to show public support for a pagan shrine erected in honour of the Jewish God, just as some Jews nowadays will attend Christian services, making mental reservations during elements of the liturgy incompatible with Jewish theology—and just as some pagans in ancient times made offerings in synagogues (see above). It will be recalled that my aim in discussing the Sardis building was only to push the possible explanation of the evidence to

100

B.J. 2.229–231. Ibid., 7.150. 102 Seager, “The Synagogue and the Jewish Community: The Building,” 171. 103 G.M.A. Hanfmann and J.B. Bloom, “Samoe, Priest and Teacher of Wisdom” Eretz-Israel 19 (1987) 10*–14*. 104 G. Lüderitz, Corpus jüdischer Zeugnisse aus der Cyrenaika, Beihefte zum Tübinger Atlas des vorderen Orients, Reihe B. nr. 53 (Weisbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert, 1983) no. 7; cf. T. Rajak, “Jews and Christians as Groups in a Pagan World” in “To See Ourselves as Others See Us:” Christians, Jews, “Others” in Late Antiquity, eds. J. Neusner and E.S. Frerichs (Chico: Scholars Press, 1985) 247–261. 105 Cf. y. Megillah 1.13, 72b (ed. Krotoschin). 101

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the limit of reasonableness—to see what might have been, and not to suggest what is more plausible. To balance the picture, and to avoid misleading readers, I should make it clear that the hypothesis I have just outlined is no more probable than the traditional suggestion that the building was a synagogue, and that some factors are difficult to explain on this view just as they are if the traditional view is taken. So, for example, if the building was used by pagan polytheists, the emphasis by many donors on their enjoyment of the citizenship of Sardis106 is strange since it might be thought an attribute local pagans could take for granted. Again, the apparently deliberate hiding of the image of other deities when an ancient stone on which images of Cybele and Artemis were carved was re-used in the floor of the forecourt would be an odd thing for polytheists to do.107 If the latter behaviour took place in the fifth century, it could be argued that it marked a change of use of the building from pagan shrine to Jewish synagogue (below), along perhaps with the (undatable) decapitation of the eagles that flanked the marble table,108 but I do not wish to press the issue, since I hope that in any case the methodological points I wish to make are sufficiently clear: the Sardis building, with its distinctive iconography and large number of donor inscriptions, might in the third and fourth century CE have housed a Jewish synagogue, in which case the Judaism of those who worshipped there may have been of a distinctive type, but it also might have housed a cult of non-Jews who revered the Jewish God without any intention of entering the fold of Judaism. Explicitly Jewish identification in the epigraphical and archeological material from the late-Roman Mediterranean diaspora is much rarer than one would like. So, for instance, of the eighty-five inscriptions from the diaspora included in Lifshitz’s collection of donors and founders in synagogues,109 only twenty-four contain any clearly Jewish reference, such as “Jew,” “synagogue,” or “Hebrew,” although the surmise that they were indeed set up by Jews is much stronger in some cases than in others.

106 107 108 109

Robert, Nouvelles inscriptions de Sardes, 55–56. Seager, “The Synagogue and the Jewish Community: The Building,” 176. Ibid., 170. Lifshitz, Donateurs et fondateurs dans les synagogues juives.

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In the light of all this, it is worth asking what, if historians totally lacked the benefit of evidence from literary texts, they would deduce about Judaism from archeology and inscriptions. I doubt if they would ever discover that Judaism was distinguished from most other ancient religions by being a system, or a number of systems, with a complex mythology based on the covenant and revelation on Mount Sinai. It would be clear that there were indeed religious groups who identified themselves as Jews and set up communal buildings and hierarchies,110 but I suspect that few scholars would guess the significance of this fact: if they operated by analogy, I suspect that they would (probably quite wrongly) interpret hierarchical titles as evidence of grades of initiation like those in Mithraism, so that “Father of the synagogue” could be seen as parallel to the Mithraic pater.111 Not much else could be deduced about Judaism from the vast majority of Jewish sites and inscriptions.112 The nature of Jewish religious beliefs would surely be totally obscure from the iconography of menoroth, lions, incense shovels, birds, lulavim, and so on.113 I doubt if we would even be able to recognize lulavim (palm branches) for what they are, or to distinguish the significant elements of the iconography (menoroth, lulavim) from the (probably) purely decorative (lions and birds); only with literary knowledge can such distinctions be made, and even then the significance of incense shovels remains obscure. None of the archeological and epigraphic evidence gives any hint of the really distinctive traits of Judaism as it appears in late-antique Jewish and Christian sources: the centrality of a written scripture, and its proclamation and explanation in public assemblies. To deduce that, we would need more inscriptions affirming the status of liturgical readers, which are curiously rare. Nothing in the iconography would give a clue to the main Jewish identity markers as we know them from elsewhere: shabbat, kashrut (dietary laws), and circumcision.

110

Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, 3:87–107. Cf. Vermaseren, Mithras, the Secret God; Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, 3:101, n. 51. 112 The great exception is the synagogue at Dura-Europos, with its remarkable frescoes, to which there is no parallel elsewhere ( J. Gutmann, The Dura-Europos Synagogue; a Re-evaluation [Chambersburg, PA: American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature, 1973]). 113 Cf. Levine, The Synagogue in Late Antiquity. 111

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Inevitably, then, all interpretation of such archeological and epigraphic material carries with it a great burden of assumptions derived from the literary evidence which survives from antiquity through the Christian Church and rabbinic Judaism. The hope that archeological evidence can act as an objective, untainted corrective to those literary traditions is therefore in many cases over-optimistic. Epilogue: The End of Uncertainty Even for the most skeptical historian, the radical uncertainty I have been advocating in the study of Mediterranean Judaism will no longer seem even marginally plausible by the medieval period. By (say) the tenth century CE no one would seriously suggest that Jewish-type evidence is likely to have derived from pagan God-worshippers, nor that non-rabbinic Judaism was widespread in the region, apart from among those Jews like the Karaites who self-consciously broke away from the rabbinic mainstream. It is worth asking from what date, and for what reason, this increased certainty in the interpretation of Jewish-type material becomes overwhelmingly plausible. I suggest, tentatively, a fairly precise date: the late fourth century CE. If that date is correct, it will have been brought about by a specific agent, the Roman state, and, as often in Jewish history, change will have come about because of actions not by Jews, but by outsiders—in this case, the militantly Christian emperors of Rome and Constantinople from the time of Theodosius the Great. All Roman emperors were Christian from the conversion of Constantine in 312 CE, with only a very brief interlude under Julian the Apostate in 361–363 CE, but the earliest Christian emperors, whatever their personal predilections, made no attempt to impose their faith upon their subjects. In the late 380s CE this liberal stance was to change quite dramatically. Theodosius the Great, impelled by personal conscience and zealous Christian clerics, began the systematic closure of pagan temples.114 By the end of the century most temples in the main cities of the Roman empire were either deserted

114

N.Q. King, The Emperor Theodosius and the Establishment of Christianity (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960).

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or converted into churches, and paganism, though not eradicated, was confined to the countryside.115 Thus by the fifth century it is very unlikely that a large public building in a major city would be a pagan shrine, even to the Jewish God, and whatever the Sardis building was in its earlier stages, it is most likely that by the fifth century the Jewish motifs found on the mosaic floors do indeed show it to have been a synagogue. The attitude of Theodosius and his successors to the erection, repair and preservation of synagogues was not exactly favourable, but it was much more ambivalent than their thoroughgoing hostility to pagan temples.116 Furthermore, if in the fifth century the building was a synagogue, it is likely that by that time the Jews who worshipped there had come under the influence of the rabbis of the land of Israel. There is evidence in the Roman legal codes that from the 380s until at least the 420s the Jewish nasi (patriarch) in Palestine was accorded by the Roman state power and authority over the Jews throughout the empire. By this period, Roman emperors took for granted the backing of the Roman state for the patriarch’s collection of funds from the diaspora.117 They assumed that he had the right to excommunicate deviants from Jewish communities,118 which presumably implied the right to define what is deviant. Finally, and of most significance for the Sardis building, they took for granted his power to found and dismantle synagogues throughout the empire.119 The patriarch by no means represented all rabbis, since the talmudic sources reveal conflict between individual nesiim and individual rabbis over questions of authority and halacha during many generations,120 but he did at least come from within the same type of Judaism that the rabbis

115 J. Geffcken, The Last Days of Greco-Roman Paganism (Amsterdam and Oxford: North-Holland, 1978). 116 B.S. Bachrach, “The Jewish community of the Later Roman Empire as seen in the Codex Theodosianus” in “To See Ourselves as Others See Us:” Christians, Jews, “Others” in Late Antiquity, 399–421. 117 Cf. Codex Theodosianus 16.8.17. 118 Ibid., 16.8.8. 119 Cf. ibid., 16.8.22. 120 L.I. Levine, The Rabbinic Class of Roman Palestine in Late Antiquity ( Jerusalem and New York: Yad Izhak ben Zvi and Jewish Theological Seminary, 1989).

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espoused.121 After all, the foundation document of rabbinic Judaism, the Mishnah, had been codified by R. Judah ha-Nasi, patriarch at the end of the second century CE and the beginning of the third, and it was descent from him that gave later patriarchs their authority. It is possible, then, to end on a reassuring note. Whatever the nature of the building in Sardis in which gentile God-worshippers dedicated their mosaic inscriptions in the mid-fourth century or earlier, it seems likely that the individual called “Samoe, priest and wise teacher,” whose name was inserted into the floor of the hall in the late fifth century122 was a rabbinic Jew,123 and that the building which he honoured was a synagogue. There is, after all, something that can be asserted about Jews and Judaism in the Mediterranean diaspora in the late-Roman period. Postscript I am grateful to the editors of this volume and to the Mediterranean Institute of the University of Malta for the opportunity to republish here this article, which originally appeared in Journal of Mediterranean Studies in 1994. The central thesis of the article, that students of the religious history of late antiquity need to allow for the possibility that Jewish iconography on archaeological remains may reflect the activities not of Jews but of gentile worshippers of the Jewish God, has been cast in a new light by more recent studies. As a result, I think that the hypothesis presented so tentatively in the early 1990’s can reasonably be presented now with slightly more confidence, although I must stress that my purpose in elaborating the hypothesis is still only to stimulate consideration of what might be possible rather than to describe what was certainly the case. In this brief discussion of relevant scholarship since 1994, two major advances in the presentation of the primary epigraphic evidence take

121 Cf. I. Gafni, “ ‘Staff and Legislator’—On New Types of Leadership in the Talmudic Era in Palestine and Babylonia” in Priesthood and Monarchy (In Hebrew) eds. I. Gafni and G. Motzkin ( Jerusalem: Merkaz Shazar, 1987) 79–92. 122 Hanfmann and Bloom, “Samoe, Priest and Teacher of Wisdom.” 123 Trebilco ( Jewish Communities in Asia Minor, 50) argued that the fact that Samoe was not called a rabbi in the inscription may be evidence that he (and Jews in Sardis in general) was not under rabbinic influence, but I am not persuaded by this argument from silence.

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pride of place. First is the full publication of the inscriptions from the Sardis ‘synagogue’.124 The helpful commentaries on the dossiers, completed in 1994, reflect the state of the debate in the early 1990s. Second is the brilliant reconsideration of the Aphrodisias ‘Godfearers’ stele by Angelos Chaniotis,125 in which he proposes a date in the second half of the fourth century or in the fifth century for the texts on both the inscribed faces. This redating of the Aphrodisias texts, from the early third century to the mid fourth at earliest, coincides with a trend to redate on archaeological grounds the alteration of the Sardis gymnasium basilica into a religious building and the period of its use for that purpose:126 the debate continues, but it is fair to say that all reinvestigation of the archaeological record has so far pushed the date of the building’s use well away from the second century date originally favoured into the fourth century or later. Other studies have mapped out a plausible historical context for the interpenetration of religious iconography, ideas and memberships, in which neutral religious phrases and ambiguous images were prudently favoured by public figures in the way they presented themselves to their fellow citizens and to the state.127 Jas Elsner has emphasised the use by both Jews and Christians of a common iconography shared also with their pagan contemporaries, stressing that the differences between religious groups will generally have lain less in the images they employed than in the meanings they gave to those images.128 Some scholars have even claimed that religious boundaries were so fluid that Judaism and Christianity were indistinguishable as

124

J.H. Kroll, “The Greek inscriptions of the Sardis Synagogue,” HTR 94.1 (2001) 1–127; Frank Moore Cross, “The Hebrew Inscriptions from Sardis,” HTR 95.1 (2002). 125 A. Chaniotis, “The Jews of Aphrodisias: New Evidence and Old Problems,” Scripta Classica Israelica 22 (2002). 126 H. Botermann, “Die Synagoge von Sardes,” Zeitschrift für Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 81 (1990); M. Bonz, “Differing Approaches to Religious Benefaction: the Late Third-Century Acquisition of the Sardis Synagogue,” HTR 86.2 (1993) 139. 127 For example, see R.R.R. Smith, “The Statue Monument of Oecumenius: A New Portrait of a Late Antique Governor From Aphrodisias,” Journal of Roman Studies 92 (2002). 128 J. Elsner, “Archaeologies and Agendas: Reflections on Late Antique Jewish Art and Early Christian Art,” Journal of Roman Studies 93 (2003).

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separate religions until the fourth century,129 a rather extreme view which itself may not sufficiently distinguish between ancient attitudes to group identity and the different issue of the problems faced by modern scholars in assigning a text or artefact to one such group or another.130 What now seems generally agreed is the significance of the fourth century, after the edict of toleration of Christianity in 313 CE, as a tolerant religious arena, in which it was possible for an individual both to cross religious divides and to seek wider ecumenical acceptability by adoption of ambiguous language.131 Of particular importance for study of the use of Jewish symbols has been the remarkable investigation by Stephen Mitchell of the cult of theos hypsistos (‘the highest god’).132 Mitchell suggests that the abundant epigraphic material referring to this god from all over the eastern Mediterranean world in the Roman imperial period should be attributed to a specific pagan cult, which he characterizes as an aspect of pagan monotheism. Not all have been persuaded that ‘highest god’ should always be understood as designating the divinity worshipped rather than as an adjective applied to another god,133 but even a modified form of Mitchell’s thesis would render it plausible both that Jews could easily identify their God with the divinity worshipped by such pagans (cf. Ps. Aristeas 16) and (importantly for the present study) that such pagans could identify their ‘highest god’ with the God of the Jews. The former possibility I have explored at some length in a discussion of the image of the sun god in the synagogue mosaics in late-Roman Palestine.134 The latter possibility would fit well with the suggestion in the current study about the role of the godfearers in the ‘synagogue’ in late-Roman Sardis.

129

Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Standford, CA: Standford University Press, 1999). 130 Martin Goodman, “Modelling the ‘Parting of the Ways,’ ” in The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages, eds. A.H. Becker and A.Y. Reed (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 2003) 119–29 [Chapter 15 above]. 131 Cf. Chaniotis, “The Jews of Aphrodisias,” 218, 224–5, 231–2. 132 “The Cult of Theos Hypsistos between Pagans, Jews and Christians,” in Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity, eds. P. Athanassiadi and M. Frede (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 133 Cf., for example, Chaniotis, “The Jews of Aphrodisias,” 224, n. 49. 134 Martin Goodman, “The Jewish Image of God in Late Antiquity,” in Jewish Culture and Society Under the Christian Roman Empire, eds. Richard Kalmin and Seth Schwartz (Leuven: Peeters, 2003) [Chapter 17 above].

INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS

Abbahu, R. 209 Abraham 114 Achior 94 Acts of the Apostles 45, 86, 101, 124, 129, 243 Adiabene 24, 95, 107 Conversion of royal family of Adiabene 92, 150 Aelia Capitolina 55 Agrippa I 48–49, 145 Agrippa II 66, 103, 190, 198 Aha, R. 195–196 Akedah 212 Akiba, R. 77 Alexander Jannaeus 41 Alexander the Alabarch 64 Alexander the Great 16 Alexandria 28, 37, 48, 59, 151, 226, 235, 237 Alexandrian Jews 63, 235, 237 Synagogue in Alexandria 149, 152, 221 Allegro, John 10 Altars 53, 108, 151 Ammei ha-arez 23 Ammi, R. 156 Ammonite 94 Ananias 95, 112 Ananus b. Ananus 128, 133, 147 Androgynos 172 Angels 208, 210 Annas 130 Antioch 23, 30, 74, 92, 150, 188, 197, 235 Antiochene Jews 23, 97, 222, 226, 235 Antiochus Epiphanes 92 Antiochus III 189 Antoninus Pius 25 Aphrodisias 31, 242–244, 251, 258 Apocrypha 9 Apollo 247 Aquila 77, 96 Arcadius 247 Arch of Titus 247 Aristobulus 96, 208 Artapanus 95, 112, 114

Artemis 61, 253 Asclepius 61 Asia Minor 11, 24, 52, 61, 63, 188, 214, 225 Jews of Asia Minor 226, 241, 249 Atheism 150 Augustus 54, 65–6, 214, 226 Aurelius Olympios 249 Babatha 82–83 Babylonia 52–53, 62, 101 Babylonian Jews 62–64 Babylonian Talmud 14, 156, 170, 192, 196–198, 202, 224 Bacchus, cult of 109 Bannus 35, 141, 164 Baptism 97, 107 Baptistai 155 Bar Kochba see Simon bar Kosiba Bar Kochba war 4, 7, 25, 54, 82 Barr, James 13 Barton, John 70–71 Batanaea 65 Baumgarten, Albert 162 Ben Sira 86–88 Benjamin, tribe of 149 Beth Alpha 8, 11, 205–206 Beth Shammai 33 Beth Shearim 8 Bickerman, Elias 16 Bithynia 229 Boccabello, Jeremy 176 Boethus 65 Boethusians 125, 156 Boreon 227 Botermann, Helga 224 Boyarin, Daniel 176 Büchler, Adolf 15 Caesarea Maritima 65, 97, 148, 222 Caesarean Jews 222–3 Caesarea Philippi 190–191, 198 Caiaphas 130 Cairo Geniza 6, 14, 82 Calendar 40, 50, 168, 170, 206 Cambridge 176

262

index of names and subjects

Caria 31 Cassius Dio 98, 109 Celibacy 138, 143 Celsus 179 Cfar Sakhnin 168 Chaniotis, Angelos 258 Charax Spasinou 112 Charity 106, 112 Charles, R.H. 9 Chi-Rho 216 Christ, portrayal of 183, 212, 216 Christians 55–56, 77, 139 Christianity 47, 69, 91 Circumcision 22, 25, 28–29, 47, 94–95, 97, 102–108, 149, 215, 245, 255 Citizenship 27 Clarian Oracle of Apollo 212 Codex 77 Cohen, Shaye 156, 159, 162, 165–166, 170 Community Rule 143 Constantine 18, 170, 215–216, 223, 227, 230, 255 Constantinople 255 Cornelius Labeo 212 Council of Jamnia 70 Council of Nicaea 216 Cowley Lecturership in Post-biblical Hebrew 2 Cowley, Sir Arthur 6 Creation 167 Cumanus 74, 221 Cybele 253 Cyprus 55 Cyrene 55, 252 Damascus 92, 151 Damascus Rule 6 Daniel, book of 69, 192–197, 200–2 Daphne 228 Dead Sea Scrolls 7, 9–10, 14, 34, 38, 46, 76, 126, 137, 146, 157, 161, 169, 210 Dead Sea sectarians 33, 38, 40, 50, 89, 100, 125–126, 137–143, 157, 166 Decapolis 148, 171, 225 Deeds of sale 43 Defilement 198–199 Defiling of the hands 70–73, 75–77, 80, 82, 221 Demetrius the Chronographer 95, 106 Destruction of the Second Temple 52, 84, 123, 147, 157–159,

161, 163, 178, 208, 221, 233, 240, 244 Diana 150 Diaspora Centrality of the Jerusalem Temple in the world-view of diaspora Jews 64–5, 221 Judaism in the Diaspora 48, 51–2, 56, 62–3, 65, 67, 93, 97, 100–1, 145–52, 219–231, 233–47 Dietary Laws 47, 112, 142, 167, 187, 189–190, 194, 198, 203, 215, 226, 245, 255 Dio Chrysostom 35, 139, 142 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 37 Dionysus 213, 216 Divine Name, the 81–82 Domitian 27–29, 54 Dora 227 Driver, Sir Godfrey 10 Dura-Europos 8, 11, 74, 211–212, 236 Ebionites 185 Ecclesiastes 69–72 Edom 104 Egyptian Jews 25, 55, 63, 65, 112, 222, 227 Eleazar 95, 196 Eleazar b. Dima, R. 167 Elephantine 6 Eliezer, R. 168 Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, R. 158 Elijah 193 Elsner, Jas’ 258 En el-Ghuweir 142 En Gedi 63, 154 Enoch 9 Ephesus 85, 150 Ephraim 36 Epictetus 29, 97, 107 Epicureans 167 Epiphanius 36, 153, 155, 160, 181, 227 Eschatology 40 Essenes 9, 33, 35, 38, 50, 102, 119, 135, 137–139, 141–143, 153–162, 164, 171, 185, 198, 210, 222, 240 Esther, book of 69, 71 Eupolemus 95 Eusebius 180–181, 230 Expulsion of Christians from synagogues 145 Expulsion of the Jews from Rome in 139 BCE 108

index of names and subjects Ezekiel 207, 212 Ezekiel the Tragedian 95, 209 Ezra 41, 73, 85, 105, 220 Family 105 Feldman, Louis 47 First Revolt 189 First-century Jerusalem 123 First-century Judaea 140 Fiscus Judaicus 25–28, 30, 54, 159, 227, 242 Flavian dynasty 54, 223 Form criticism 15 Formal “Assyrian” characters 76 Fourth Philosophy, the 35, 37, 45, 140–141, 165, 240 Frey, Jean-Baptiste 8 Fuks, Alexander 6 Gaius Caligula 37, 48, 52, 226 Galilee 23, 44, 48, 158, 171, 187, 189–190 Jews in Galilee 11–12, 103, 155, 201 Gallio 152 Gamaliel, R. 45, 121, 170, 228 Gaster, Moses 9 Gauls 241 Gaza 225 Gehinnom 99–100 Genesis Rabba 14 Genistai 155 Ger 101–102 Gerasa 151, 225 Gerim gerurim 24 Gibeah 81 Gnostics 170, 185 God-fearers 24, 30–32, 102, 113, 150, 214, 237, 243, 245–246, 248, 250–251, 253, 257–259 Goldsmid Professor of Hebrew 2 Goodenough, Erwin 10–11 Gospels 84–86, 124, 129 Gospel of John 129 Gospel of Matthew 99, 102, 119, 132 Goulder, Michael 162 Graetz, Heinrich 70 Grammatikos 84 Greek Jewish literature 135 Gregory of Nazianzus 215 Hades 213 Hadrian 25, 55 Haireseis 35–37, 45, 119, 125, 141, 153, 164

263

Hakhamim 35, 38–41, 43–45 Half-Jews 23, 30, 110 Hamiram 39, 72 Hammat Tiberias 12, 206, 213–4 Mosaic at Hammat Tiberias 205 Synagogue at Hammat Tiberias 217 Hananel 65 Harnack, Adolf 151 Hasidism 44 Hasmonaeans 94, 103, 146 Hasmonaean High Priests 21 Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2, 162 Hecataeus 211–212 Hekhalot 12 Helios 206, 213 Hellenianoi 155 Hellenism 16 Hellenistic Jews 170, 187 Hengel, Martin 16–17 Herod 41, 47, 49, 51, 62–3, 65–67, 94, 100, 104, 211 Herodian dynasty 94 Herod Antipas 211 Herr, Moshe David 162 High priests 50, 65, 84, 123, 128–130, 134, 147–148, 209, 219 Hillel 22, 41, 193 House of 39, 72, 194, 196–7 Hinton St. Mary 216 Hippolytus 119, 140, 239 Hoenig, S. 198 Holy of Holies 209, 219, 234 Homosexuality 106, 112 Honorius 247 Hyllarima 225 Hypaepa 250 Hypsistarians 215 Hypsistos 214 Hyrcanus 65 Iao 213 Identity 21–33 Idolatry 30, 103, 111, 180, 221, 236, 251 Idumaeans 22–23, 94, 104, 110 Image of God 205–17 Interpretation of the Torah 120–1 Irenaeus 169 Ishmael, R. 72, 202 Isiaci 241, 247 Isis 244 Ituraeans 22, 94 Izates 95, 107

264

index of names and subjects

Jacob 104 Jacob of Cfar Sima 167 Jacobs, Louis 15 James, the brother of Jesus 128–47 James, the brother of John 145 Jeremias, Joachim 17, 84 Jerusalem 8, 52, 59–63, 65, 67, 80, 154 The Jerusalem Church 147 Jerusalem Talmud 12, 14, 194, 201, 246 Jesus 83, 93, 99–100, 120, 128–130, 141, 147, 178 Jesus b. Ananias 147 Jesus b. Phiabi 65 Jewish Christians 33, 35, 38, 50, 93, 147–149, 152, 170, 180, 182, 185 Jewish law 44 Jews’ College, London 4, 15 Jezreel 11 John Chrysostom 221, 227 John Hyrcanus 43 John of Antioch 109, 130 John of Gischala 189–190, 198 John the Baptist 35, 141 Jonathan the Sadducee 43 Joseph and Asenath 95, 105 Josephus 22, 33–39, 41–42, 45–48, 52, 55, 60–61, 63, 66, 77, 80, 85, 89, 92–93, 97–98, 100–101, 103, 107, 109–110, 114, 117–120, 124, 126–128, 132–135, 137–141, 151, 154–155, 157–158, 163–165, 170, 187–191, 197–202, 208, 210–211, 220, 223, 226, 239–241, 244 Joshua ben Hananiah, R. 170 Joshua haGarsi, R. 156 Josiah 42 Jubilees, book of 9, 104 Judaea 44–5, 48, 51–55, 59, 63–67, 74, 79, 117, 119, 123, 138, 139, 148, 151, 153 Judaean Desert documents 43–44, 82 Judah, R. 71, 221, 223 Judah haNasi, R. 12, 191, 193, 195, 199–202, 257 Judah, kingdom of 36, 104 Judah Nesiah, R. 191, 194, 196, 200–201, 203 Judaizing Christians 185 Judaizing Gnostics 185 Judaizing heresies 181 Julia Severa 113

Julian 56, 214, 255 Hymn to King Helios 214 Julius Caesar 24 Julius Paris 108 Jupiter 212 Jupiter Capitolinus 54 Jupiter Dolichenus 244, 247 Jupiter Sabazius 108 Justin Martyr 11, 36, 155, 156, 209 Justinian 227–228 Justinianic Code 228 Kabbalah 12 Kahle, Paul 13–14 Karaites 125, 135, 138, 161, 255 Kenyon, Sir Frederick 13 Ketubah 82 Leiman, Sidney 70 Leontii 250 Leontopolis 22, 52, 63, 108, 222 Levites 51, 86 Leviticus 142 Lewis, David 6 Libations 74, 199 Liber 213 Life after death 40, 164, 167 Livy 211 Luke 99 Lulavim 254 M. Ulpius Traianus 55 Ma'amad system 63 Maccabees 16, 104, 127 Maccabees, Fourth book of 106 Macedonia 225 Macedonians 188 Macrobius 212 Magic 185 Maimonides 57 Mar Samuel 198 Marcion 184 Marcionites 185 Marmorstein, Arthur 15 Marriage 104–105, 110, 197, 202, 241 Adultery 106 Divorce documents 43 Get 83 Marriage contracts 43 Marriage customs 44 Married couple 83 Martyrdom 146, 151 Masoretes 13

index of names and subjects Matthew 100–101 Mecca 51, 60 Megillot 71 Meir, R. 223 Menasseh 36 Menorah 247, 249, 254 Meristai 155 Mesharsheya, R. 71, 193–194, 200 Mesopotamia 55 Jews of Mesopotamia 55, 234 Messiah 56 Messianism 40 Metilius 108 Middle Judaism 1 Midrashic exegesis 16 Mikveh 40 Minim 46, 76, 135, 156, 160, 163– 173, 180, 184 Minuth 18, 166, 168, 170–172 Minyan 157 Miqsat Maasei haTorah 50, 169 Mishnah 12, 21, 22, 44, 47–49, 56, 71, 84, 158–159, 166, 171–172, 180, 192, 194, 196–197, 201–202, 257 Mission 93–4, 100, 104, 243 Christian mission 91, 95, 100, 114, 148, 150 Jewish mission 98, 103, 107, 109 Mitchell, Stephen 214–215, 259 Mithras 244 Mithraism 254 Mithraists 241, 247 Modius 190, 198 Momigliano, Arnaldo 18 Moore, George Foot 15 Mosaics 211–3, 216, 247, 249, 251, 256 Moses 41, 81, 89, 180–181, 220 Mount Hermon 187 Mount Sinai 31, 81, 254 Mucianus 188–189 Muslims 57 Mysticism 12–3, 210 Naaran 205–206 Nabataeans 83, 103 Nasaraeans 155 Nashim 172 Nehemiah 220 Nepotianus 108 Nero 53 Nerva 26, 28, 54–55, 242 New Testament 35, 83–86, 101, 124 Nicanor 49

265

Nicolaus of Damascus 66 Nicomedia 61 Niddah 155 Nisibis 193, 195 Noachide Laws 31, 246 Numenius of Apamaea 213 Oenoanda 214 Offerings on altars 245 Oil 187, 189–203 Omer offering 40 On the Sublime 96 Onias 222 Oracle of Apollo 214 Oral law 118 Oral Torah 42, 75, 85, 118 Origen 213, 241 Orpheus 106 Ossaeans 155 Paganism 73–4, 113, 150–1, 171 Palmyra 63, 227 Pamphylia 245 Pantokrator 215 Paradosis 42 Paroikos 101 Parthian territory 62–63 Parting of the ways 18, 175–186 Passover 50, 61 Paul 39, 100, 119, 145, 148–152, 169, 178 Paul’s epistles 150 Paul’s sufferings 148 Paulinus 230 Pella 103 Pentateuch 73, 75–76, 81 Pentateuch scroll 88 Pentecost 61 Pergamum 61, 245 Persecution of early Christians 146 Perspiration 52 Peter 130, 145 Petronius 226 Pharisees 9, 17, 35, 37–40, 42–3, 45, 50, 72, 75, 84–85, 98–102, 117–121, 124, 129–133, 138–139, 141, 146, 155, 161–162, 164, 166, 169, 239–240 Perushim 39, 124 Pharos 75 Philadelphia 225 Philo 8, 13, 28, 34–35, 37, 42, 45, 48, 52, 61, 67, 75, 85, 89, 92, 96–97, 101–102, 108, 110–112, 114,

266

index of names and subjects

118, 139, 141, 149, 161, 208, 214, 220, 222, 240 Philo the Elder 95 Phocylides 106 Phrygia 113 Phrygian Great Mother 229 Pilgrimage 22, 59–62, 65, 67 Pinchas 40 Pionios 151 Piyyut 56 Platonism 185, 240 Pliny the Elder 35, 61, 67, 138–9, 142, 154 Pliny the Younger 229 Pogroms 151 Polybius 37 Polycarp 151 Pompey 51, 63 Pontius Pilate 148 Pontus 229 Porphyry 230 Procopius 227 Proselytes 24, 27–32, 92–99, 105, 107– 111, 114, 151, 238, 242, 244 Proselytizing 91, 113, 236 Proselytos 100–2, 243 Psalms 73 Psalms Scroll 13 Pseudepigrapha 9, 69, 76 Pseudo-Aristeas 95, 106, 221 Pseudo-Hecataeus 49, 95, 106 Ptolemies 64, 226–7 Ptolemy Philadelphus 221 Purity 17, 40, 143 Qumran 6–7, 13, 50, 76, 84, 88, 137–138, 141, 157 Rab 192–8 Rabbinic Judaism 12, 44, 47, 69, 171–2, 182, 238, 255, 257 Rabbinic Jews 12, 171–172, 182, 238 Rabbinic texts 34, 197, 202, 235 Rabin, Chaim 10 Red heifer 40, 50, 132, 147, 169 Redaction criticism 15 Renunciations of claim 43 Resurrection 130, 132–133 Rome Jews in Rome 52 Judaism in Rome 235 Rebuilding of the city of Rome 66

Roth, Cecil 10 Rowley, H.H. 10 Sabbath 47, 88, 96, 106, 132, 187, 215, 220, 226, 245, 255 Sacrifice 47, 49, 50–52, 74, 129, 134, 147, 157–158, 214, 222–223, 228–229 Sadducees 9, 33, 35–6, 38, 40, 42, 45, 50, 71–72, 118–120, 123–135, 138–139, 141, 146, 153, 155–157, 159–161, 164, 166–167, 169–171, 185, 240 Samaritans 9, 25, 167, 248 Samuel, R. 71, 192–194, 199 Sanders, Ed 17, 85, 88, 123, 132 Sardis 8, 11, 224, 233, 235–237, 249, 251, 253 Synagogue in Sardis 237, 249–250, 252, 256–259 Saul 147 Schechter, Solomon 6 Scholem, Gershom 12 Schürer, Emil 4, 17 Schwartz, Daniel 162 Scrolls of Torah 80 Second tithe money 64 Sefer Harazim 206 Seleucids 86, 226 Charter for Jerusalem 86 Seleucus Nicator 188 Sepphoris 168, 205–206 Septuagint 13, 75, 77, 79, 81, 92, 96, 101–102, 105, 112, 221 Severus 12 Shammai 41, 72, 193 House of 72, 194, 196–7 Shelomzion 41 Shimon b. Eliezer, R. 166 Shimon b. Shetah 41 Shimon bar Yohai, R. 197 Shiur Komah 208–210, 212 Shofar 249, 251 Sibylline Oracles 95–6, 106 Sicarii 140 Sifra 246 Simon b. Gamaliel 45, 121 Simon bar Kosiba 55–6, 126 Simon b. Menasia, R. 71 Simon the Maccabee 108 Slaves 105 Smith, Morton 206, 210 Smith, Sir George Adam 17 Smyrna 151

index of names and subjects Soferim 89 Sol Invictus 213 Solar worship 205–217 Song of Songs 69–71 Sosthenes 152 Sotah 83 Spaniards 241 Spätjudentum 1 Stephen 145, 147 Stern, Menahem 6, 34, 47 Stern, Sacha 171, 238 Stobi 225 Strabo 103 Suetonius 27–28 Swete, H.B. 13 Synagogues 24, 74, 97, 113, 149, 150, 205, 207, 213, 220–4, 227–30, 251–3 Gentile perceptions of synagogues 230 Synagogue authorities 152 Synagogue services 73 Synoptic gospels 84–85, 129 Syrian Jews 63, 188–190, 198 Syria Palaestina 56 Tabernacles 61 Tacitus 35, 98, 109, 152, 227 Talmud 1, 5, 21, 172, 180, 198 Tannaim 39, 44, 56, 166, 168–171 Tannaitic law 43 Tarfon, R. 187 Targumim 14, 89, 209 Tarsus 100 Tcherikover, Victor 6 Tefillin 81, 119, 156, 167 Teicher, J.L. 10 Temple in Jerusalem 47, 53, 59–60, 61–65, 67, 72–74, 86, 88, 128–129, 134, 157, 211, 219–220, 228, 230, 247, 252 Temple cult 52, 154 Temple income 64 Temple inscription 22 Temple of Jupiter 26, 242 Temple of Pax 54 Temple of Rome and Augustus 65 Tertullian 227 Terumah 70 Testament of Abraham 106

267

Theodosian Code 228, 248 Theodosius I 247, 255–6 Theodosius II 227–228, 230 Theos Hypsistos 214 Therapeutae 35 Thucydides 37 Tiberias, Jews of 211, 216 Tiberius Julius Alexander 28, 149, 164 Timagenes 103 Titus 54, 80, 211, 252 Torah 49, 74, 76, 80, 85, 100, 183, 200, 211, 223, 234, 245 Torah shrine 251 Tosefta 22, 30, 47, 158, 171–172, 223–224, 246 Trajan 55, 61, 229 Trypho 155, 209 Tsadukim 124–125 Tumtum 172 Two Powers in heaven 167–168 Tyre 230 Uzzah

81

Valens 228 Valentinian 228 Valerius Maximus 98, 108, 229 Varro 211–212 Vermes, Geza 10, 18, 137, 187 Vespasian 26–27, 53–55, 80, 252 Vitellius 103 Wisdom of Solomon 95, 106 Wissenschaft des Judentums 2, 4, 12 Yadin, Yigael 7 Yavneh, rabbis in 52, 154, 158–159, 163, 165 Yeshua ben Pantera 167–168 Yohanan, R. 46, 196, 200–202 Yohanan b. Zakkai 22, 39, 52, 154, 163 Yose, R. 155–156 Zadok 40, 125, 126, 128 Zealots 33, 35, 38, 138–140 Zerubbabel 230 Zeus 213 Zodiac 8, 11, 205–207, 213

INDEX OF ANCIENT LITERATURE

Acts of the Apostles 2:9–11 2:11 2:46–47 4:1–7 5:17 5:40 6:5 6:9 6:9–14 7:51–60 9:1–2 12:1–19 13:43 16:21 18:6 18:12–13 18:17 19:24–27 19:35 22:25–26 23:7–8 26:10–11

243 67 101 147 129 129 146 92, 101 67 147 145 148 145 101 152 152 152 152 150 85 149 132–133 147

Alexander Polyhistor On the Jews 106 Arrian Dissertations 2.9.20 Augustine Civ. 4.31 Cons. 1.22.30 Babylonian Talmud Abodah Zarah 35b–36a Berachot 55a Megillah 29a 7a Nidd. 33b

29, 107

211

Pesahim 96a Sanhedrin 56a 91a 97a Shabbat 104a 108a 13b–17b 14a 146a 72b Temurah 14b

97 31 156, 160 113 81 156 197 70 111 224 84

Baruch 1:10–14

62

2 Baruch 72:4 82:3

158 111 111

Ben Sira 38.24–39.11 38.34–39.3

86 87

Cassius Dio 37.17.2 57.18, 5a 67.14.1–3 69.12.1–2

211, 213 98 27 55

2 Chronicles 34.13

86

212

192 81 223 71 155

Cicero De Prov. Cons. 5.10 Pro Flacco 28.66 28.66–69

26 102 52, 62

CIJ 1449

222, 226, 227

Cod. Just. 1.8

216

270

index of ancient literature

Cod. Theod. 1.9.4 7.8.2 9.45.4 16.8.4 16.8.22 16.8.25

228 228 230 227 228 228

2 Corinthians 7:12–14 11:22 11:24

104 149 148

CPJ 129

226

Daniel 1:8 7:9

193, 197, 202 208

Dead Sea Scrolls 4QMMT CD 9.10–16 Pesher Nahum

40, 125 38 36

Deuteronomy 4:11–12, 14 4:12–24 4:15–24 11:14 12:1–3 14:26 16:16 17:3 24:1–4 27:15

208 207 210 187 103 60 59 210 83 211

Diodorus 40.3.4

211–2

Eccl. 9:7–8

187

1 Enoch 14:18–22

209–10

3 Enoch 48A

210

Epiphanius Pan. 19.5.6–7 20.3.1–2 30.11.4

153 155 227

Eusebius H.E.

181

10.3.1 10.4.1–2 10.4.33–6 Praep. ev. 8.10 9.18.1 9.27.4

230 230 230 208 114 112

Exodus 3:2 20:23 22:20 22:27 23:17 24: 9–10 25.10–22 33:17–23 34.27

208 211 102 112 59 207 81 207 89

Ezekiel 1.26 3.1–3 8.16 11.16 44.18

207 81 208 223 52

Ezekiel the Tragedian 68–72

209

4 Ezra

52, 158

Genesis 1:26–28 17:12–13

207 95

Gregory of Nazianzus Or. 18.5 215 Hippolytus Refutation of all Heresies 9.18–28 140 9.28.3 119 Horace Satires I.4.142–3

98–102

Isaiah 1.6

187

Jeremiah 8:2 15.16 19:13

210 81 210

index of ancient literature

271

10.190–194 10.278 12.119–120 12.142 13–18 13.62–73 13.66–7 13.171 13.172 13.173 13.257–8 13.293 13.296 13.296–297 13.297 13.298 13.319 13.397 13.408 13.408 14 14.185–267 14.260 14.403 15.302–16 15.380 15.380–90 15.385 15.410–20 15.421–31 16 16.150–55 16.160–78 16.163 16.164 17.29–31 17.41 17.41–5 17.42 17.162 17.214 17.312–13 18 18.4 18.11 18.11–22 18.12 18.13 18.15

197 131 188 86 37 52 222 140 131 131 94 124 43 120 42, 118, 132 41, 117, 127 94, 103 103 42, 118–20 118–20 151 62 222 23, 110 67 66 66 66 48 66 151 66 62 214 226 65 43, 117, 120 100 41 66 61 64 37 45 140 141 119, 121 131 41, 100, 117, 120, 129, 134 133 127, 129, 133 45, 140 98

Jerusalem Talmud Abodah Zarah 2.8, 41d Sanhedrin 29c Shabb. 1.5, 3c Yoma 5:2

209

John 9:22

145

John Chrysostom Adversus Iudaeos 1.3 2 1.3.3

27 221

John Lydus De Mens. 4.53

214

Josephus Against Apion 1.37–41 1.42–4 1.47–56 1.199 2.102–109 2.104 2.165 2.175 2.175–81 2.179–80 2.179–81 2.179–210 2.181 2.184–7 2.185–7 2.190–2 2.190–219 2.191 2.193–199 2.210 2.237 Antiquities 1.17 1.161 1.167 4.203 4.207 10.51

194 46 197

55, 117, 139– 40, 158, 163, 164 80 80 140 49 48, 55 51 85 220 80 240 139, 163 36 208 85 139 208 200 211 55 93, 110 112 25, 37, 127, 164, 190, 191 77 114 114 63 112 42

18.16 18.17 18.23 18.81–4

index of ancient literature

272 18.121 18.259 19.294 19.300–3 19.305 20.17–53 20.17–96 20.34–5 20.34–42 20.34–48 20.38–9 20.44 20.100 20.115 20.139 20.186–7 20.199 20.200a 20.219–22 Jewish War 1.110 1.648–55 2 2.108 2.119 2.119–66 2.119–161 2.123 2.128–129 2.142 2.148 2.148–149 2.162 2.164 2.164–6 2.166 2.224 2.228–231 2.229–31 2.284–296 2.285–6 2.285–91 2.413 2.454 2.457–498 2.463 2.480 2.550–61 2.559–561 2.563 2.591–592

103 37, 141 49 226 226 24 150 113 95 92 107 95 28 74, 80 94 51 128, 131, 133–4 147 66 37, 117, 127, 164 120–1 211 37 140 140 140 35 198 210 102 210 210 120 131 131 119, 133, 135 61 221 74, 80 148 97 222 53 108 148 104 151 92 148, 151 134 189

2.592 3.49–50 3.252 4.319–21 5.184–227 5.201–206 5.210 5.212–13 6.127 6.238–66 6.268 6.300 6.300–309 6.420–27 6.425 7.41 7.44 7.44–5 7.45 7.150 7.158–62 7.218 7.420–32 7.420–36 Life 10 10–11 10–12 12 65 74 74–6 113 134 191 196–8 418 Jubilees 30.14

187 59 85 131, 134 48 64 49 49 52 54 53 219 147 50 61 23 226 74 97, 150, 222 80, 211 54 26, 54 52 22 37, 127, 164, 191 35, 127, 140 125, 141 45 141 211 198–9 190 104, 112 80 43, 120 85 80 51

Judith 10.5 12.1–4 14.10

199 199 94

Justin Martyr Dialogue with Trypho 80:4–5

155

Justinian Novella

228

index of ancient literature Juvenal Satires 14.96–106 14.97–102 1 Kings 21:3 23:11

215 29–30 210 208

2 Kings 18.32 22.3–13

187 85

Leviticus 19:4

211

2 Maccabees 2:21 9:17

238 92

Maimonides Guide of the Perplexed 3.32, 46

57

Mark 1:22 7:1–5 7:5 11:11 Matthew 3:7 7:29 15:1–3 17:10 22:23–33 23:3–4 23:5 23:15 23:28 Mishnah Abodah Zarah 2.6 Abot 1 5:21 6:9 Ber. 9:5 Bikkurim 3:3 Eduy. 5:3

84 120 120 60 132 84 120 84 132 120 119 98–99, 102 120

Erub. 6:1 6:2 Hull. 2:9 Kelim 15:6 Ketubot 4:12 Megillah 3.1 3:2–3 4:8 4:8–9 4:9 Menah. 10:3 Nedarim 9:2 Nidd. 4:2 Parah 3:7 R.Sh. 2:1 Sanhedrin 10:1–3 Shabbat 1:4 2:2 Sheqalim 2:1 2:4 Sotah 9:15 Tohorot 4:7 Yadaim 3:5 4:5 4:6 Yoma 3:10

273 132 133 167 72, 88 44 221 223 168 167 167–8 132 83 155 50, 132, 169 168 171 197 187 65 65 170 86 70, 82 76 39, 75, 132, 221 49, 158

191 41 80 86 167

Nahmanides Commentary on Lev. 1.9 57 Nehemiah 8.1–2 12.12–13

220 85

Numbers 5.11–31

83

60 72

274

index of ancient literature

Origen C. Celsum 1.15

213

Philippians 3:5

149

Philo De Spec. Leg. 4.149–50 42, 118 Flacc. 41–3 226 Leg. 133 221–222 134 222 156 220 278 214 On Provid. 2, 64 67 On the Migration of Abraham 89 97 On the Special Laws 1.51 102 1.53 112 1.56 49 1.69 61 1.74 49 1.156 49 2.44–8 112 2.176 209 4.178 111 On the Virtues 35 (187) 92 Q.o.p. 81 222 Questions and Answers on Exodus II 2 97, 102 II 5 112 Vita Mosis 2.41–2 75, 81 2.44 13 2.205 112 2.232 93 Pirkei de R. Eliezer 21 Pliny the Elder Natural History 5.14 5.17

81

154 67

Pliny the Younger Epp. 10.33–34 10.50 10.96

61 229 151

Porphyry Adv. Christianos Frag. 76

230

Procopius De Aed. 6.2

227

Pseudo-Aristeas 16 83–120 92–95 189

112, 259 62 51 112

Pseudo-Philo LAB 26

51

2 Samuel 6:7

81

Scholia in Lucanum 2.593

211

Sefer Harazim

206

Seneca On Superstition

26

Sibylline Oracles III 565 IV 164

112 97

Sifra Lev. 1

202

Sifre Deut. 49 313

210 113–4

Strabo Geog. 16.2.35

211–2

Suetonius Domitian 12.2

27

index of ancient literature Tacitus Histories 5.5 5.5.4 5.5.5 5.8.1 Targum Jonathan Deut. 32:3 Tertullian De Jejuniis 16 1 Thess. 2:15–16

23, 29–30, 93, 104 227 49 47 81

227 152

Tobit 1.10–11

199

Tosefta Abodah Zarah 4(5).8 8(9).4 Ber. 6(7):6 6(7):21 (Lieb.) Hull. 1:1 2:20

158 194–9 30

2:22–3 2:24 Kel.B.M. 5:8 Ma"aser Sheni 1:12 Megillah 3(2):7 3(4):37 (Lieb.) Nidd. 5:3 Sanh. 8:7 Shabb. 13(14):5 (Lieb.) Sheqalim 2:3 Sukkah 4:6 Yad. 2:12 2:13 2:14 4:6

275 167 168 73 60 223 166 155 167 167 64 221, 224, 237 75 76 71 71

213 167

Trypho Dialogue 114

209

167 168–9

Valerius Maximus 1.3.2

229