Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1 , spring 2006
Review Article
1. Introduction
y accident, Seth Schwartzs powerful and persuasive essay on Jewish history in Judaea/Syria Palaestina in the Graeco-Roman period was not
reviewed in JJS when it was first published in 2001. So the issue of a paperback edition in 2004 oers a welcome opportunity to make amends.1 Such an
opportunity needs to be taken, for this is an important and challenging book,
which everyone concerned with Jewish history should read.
Its first significant characteristic is the long sweep of time coveredeven
if, in reality, not quite as long as the title suggests. For the book concludes,
broadly speaking, in the Late Imperial period, with a discussion of the Judaism, or Judaisms, revealed by rabbinic writings on the one hand, and the
elaborate synagogues with mosaic floors constructed in these centuries on the
other. But, while it, for instance, makes good use (esp. pp. 26374) of sixthcentury piyyutim, it could not really be said to tackle the external position of
the Jewish communities of Palestine in the sixth and seventh centuries, the attitudes to them of the Christian empire or of Christian writers, or the impact,
in all senses, of the Islamic conquest. For these subjects we still need to turn
to a couple of brilliant and penetrating papers by Averil Cameron.2
To say that we need, for these centuries, to consult the work of a specialist
on the Christian culture of Late Antiquity, is implicitly to admit, with regret, the generally modest conceptual and scholarly level of historical writing
on this period from within Jewish Studies, still marked by a not suciently
critical approach to rabbinic sources, and to the essential question of what
historical evidence they can oer about what, and by an inadequate grasp of
the wider backgroundpagan and then Christianwithin which not just the
Jews of the Diaspora, but those of Judaea/Palaestina itself, lived. The absence
of the relevant perspective in many modern studies can be seen at once in the
titles of two famous works by one of the justly revered masters of rabbinic
studies, Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine (1942) and Hellenism in
Jewish Palestine (1950). The implications of both titles are wholly mislead1 Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 BCE to 640 CE. Princeton University
Press, Princeton / Oxford, 2001 (pb., 2004), xi, 320 pp. ISBN 0-691-08850-0 (hardback); 0-69111781-0 (paperback).
2 A. M. Cameron, The Jews in Seventh-Century Palestine, Scripta Classica Israelica 13
(1994), 75; Blaming the Jews: the Seventh-Century Invasions of Palestine in Context, in V. Deroche et al. (eds.), Mlanges G. Dagron (Travaux et Mmoires 14, 2002), 57.
140
ing: there was no moment after the Bar Kochba war when the area which, as
a province, the Romans now called first Syria Palaestina, then Palaestina
and finally Palaestina I, II and III (or Salutaris), was predominantly Jewish. On the contrary, it was, first, divided between an expanding network
of Greek cities with their dependent territories, and then, at least symbolically, colonised by a comparable network of Christian communities, bishoprics and churches. There was indeed, in the Late Empire, a genuinely Jewish Palestinebut it was confined to the relatively remote and un-urbanised
region of north-eastern Galilee and the western Golan. Elsewhere, there were
also significant Jewish communities, but ones living in a predominantly gentile environmentpagan and then Christianin a way which was not entirely
dissimilar to the situation in the Diaspora.
Seth Schwartzs sweeping and provocative historical essay, covering seven
or eight centuries in a little over 300 pages, marks a vast step forward in several dierent ways: in its capacity to see the successive phases, or contexts, of
Jewish life in Judaea/Palaestina in perspective, and to compare them; in its
awareness of the wider Imperial framework; and in its methodological selfconsciousness, in being for a start, as he says (p. 2), moderately positivistic,
meaning that the available evidence has to be taken seriously, but that it is not,
and cannot be, a simple mirror of reality, and always requires interpretation,
which itself is impossible without some hypothesis, or hermeneutical model.
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Finally, he argues (see the helpful Summary on pp. 1416), the rise of
Christianity, and the Christianisation of the Late Roman state, stimulated the
re-emergence of a conscious Jewish identity, expressed both in the extensive
corpus of rabbinic writing and in the construction and adornment of synagogues.
Since various substantial reservations will be entered below, I should say at
once, firstly, that, both in method and to a large extent in its conclusions, this
book seems to me not only to be a salutary challenge, but to be convincing,
and to represent a very significant step forward in the study of this period.
142
143
which we now possess throw any light on what Jewish society was like, in
its governing institutions, legal procedures, customs or religious observance,
when the yoke of foreign domination was twice briefly thrown o. Without it
being appropriate here to go into the much more extensive documents from
the Bar Kochba war, with their characteristic references to years of the Redemption of Israel or of the Freedom of Israel and to Simeon ben Kosiba,
Prince of Israel (NY YRL), not to speak of the coins of both Revolts,11
the same question should be relevant also for 1325. In a dierent way, we
can also now take advantage of a fair number of documents dating from between the wars, and potentially illuminating Jewish values and social institutions in the six decades concerned. Once again, the priceless find of documents from the Wadi Murabba at comes into play. For instance, we might
want to discern some forerunners of S.s de-judaised, or assimilated, Jews of
post-135 in the Greek re-marriage contract of CE 124 from Bethbassi in the
toparchy of Herodium (DJD II, no. 115). The parties all have Jewish names,
but nothing in the text refers explicitly to Jewish law, or any Jewish institutions (unless, as Hannah Cotton suggests to me, the dierentiation between
sons and daughters here is a Jewish rule). But then what of DJD II, no. 20,
a marriage-contract written in Aramaic which seems to date to CE 117, and
also seems (almost certainly) to refer to the law of Moses? It would not be
in the least surprising if there were, as at all times, diering degrees of attachment to the Jewish Law. What is certain at least is that those elements which
rejected both assimilation and foreign domination were strong enough to fuel
a revolt which, seen from the Roman side, was once again not a minor local
disturbance but a major military challenge.12
What is certain also is that, as Hannah Cotton has pointed out several
times,13 out of some 60 known documents stretching from the First Revolt
to near the end of the Second, and reflecting Jewish life in Judaea and also
over the permeable border with the province of Arabia, there is not a single reference to a rabbi, and a fortiori not to a rabbi as a source of religious
or legal authority, nor to any actual court applying Jewish law. Still less is
there any hint, during either Revolt or in the period between them, of the
existence of a rabbinic Nasi, as opposed of course to the title as used by
and of Bar Kochba himself.14 S. is properly sceptical here, sharing this scepticism of course with Martin Goodmans fundamental State and Society.15
11 See now M. Goodman, Coinage and Identity: The Jewish Evidence, in C. Howgego, V.
Heuchert and A. Burnett (eds.), Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces (2005), 163.
12 See F. Millar, The Roman Near East 31 BCAD 337 (1993), ch. 10, and W. Eck, The Bar
Kochba Revolt: the Roman Point of View, Journal of Roman Studies 89 (1999), 76.
13 See H. M. Cotton in DJD XXVII (n. 8 above), 153 f.; The Rabbis and the Documents, in
M. Goodman (ed.), The Jews in a Graeco-Roman World (1998), 167; Jewish Jurisdiction under
Roman Rule: Prologomena, in M. Labahn and J. Zargenberg (eds.), Zwischen den Reichen: Neues
Testament und Rmische Herrschaft (TANZ 36, 2002), 5.
14 See esp. M. Jacobs, Die Institutionen des jdischen Patriarchen (1995), and now Peter Schaefer, Bar Kokhba and the Rabbis, in P. Schaefer (ed.), The Bar Kochba War Reconsidered (2003),
1, and S. Stern, Rabbi and the Origins of the Patriarchate, JJS 54 (2003), 193.
15 M. Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee (1983); second edition, with a valuable
review of developments in the intervening period (2000).
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But, by bringing out more clearly the importance of contemporary documents, S. could have grounded his picture of the period much more firmly.
It follows that if we are to be asked to believe that either the Jerusalem or
the Babylonian Talmud, both of which were put together centuries later, preserve veridical evidence of a chain of evolution of rabbinic authority starting
very soon after the destruction of the Temple, then the case needs to be made
on the basis of a rigorous analysis of the material (and not just the repetition of anecdotes from later sources), and above all by relating it to the now
extensive documentary evidence.
In short, there is so to speak a missing chapter, or perhaps three separate
missing chapters (the First Revolt, the Inter-War Period, and the Second Revolt), in S.s book, covering CE 66135, and with that a certain, rather surprising, old-fashionedness of approach, in not using all the quite extensive
documentary evidence now available.
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First, there were vast losses of life and destruction of villages in the war itself (50 notable fortified positions and 985 villages destroyed, and 580,000 military casualties alone, according to Cassius Dios Roman History LXIX.14.1;
we need not take these figures literally, but they can be taken as suggesting the
exceptional scale and ferocity of the conflict). Second, there was the foundation of Aelia Capitolina as a Roman colonia with pagan temples, from whose
territory Jews are reported to have been banned. Third, there was the reshaping of the ocial landscape of Palestine by the refounding of existing
places as Greek cities, thus adding them to those which already existed all
along the coast, and in Samaria at Sebaste, or, in the case of Scythopolis,
in the Jezreel Valley: from south to north, Beth Guvrin/Eleutheropolis; Emmaus/Nicopolis; Lydda/Diospolis; Mabartha, re-founded as Flavia Neapolis;
Caporcotani/Legio, later Maximinianopolis; and Sepphoris-Diocaesarea in
Galilee, joining with Tiberias on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, and
Hippos on its east. The full significance of this process is brought out for the
first time only by the very important book of Nicole Belayche, published in
the same year, 2001, as Imperialism and Jewish Society, and which obviously
S. could not have used.17
The prime relevance of Belayches book is its emphasis on local structures
and circumstances, and its reflection of these in maps: contrast for instance
the map on p. 52, The Religious Geography of Judaea and the Decapolis in
66 CE, with that on p. 280, The Religious Geography of Palestine in the third
century. Judaea/Palaestina had always had a mixed Jewish and gentile population; but by the third century, while there were (perhaps) once again some
Jews in Aelia Capitolina, those living in Caesarea, Diospolis and Scythopolis,
as in Hippos and Gadara, will have represented no more than a substantial
proportion of the population of cities whose nature and structure were Greek
and (it seems) pagan. One thing which Belayches invaluable book does lack
is a map showing the geography of known pagan temples, as attested by literary, documentary or archaeological evidence, to match the map of theatres
on p. 75.
But the distribution of temples is in fact a crucial question. We know that
there were pagan temples in (for instance) Aelia, Sebaste, Neapolis, Caesarea,
Scythopolis, Gadara and Hippos (for the marginal zone of Sepphoris and
Tiberias see below). Even in such places, where public pagan sacrifices necessarily took place, at least until the fourth or early fifth century CE, a sort of
compromise was in principle available, at any rate for Jews whose commitment
to the Law was not too rigid. Ulpian reports that Septimius Severus and his
son Antoninus (Caracalla) had laid down that Jews could hold city oces
(honores) and that functions could be imposed on thembut only such as did
not oend their superstitio.18 Short of the eective operation of any such compromise, we have to imagine the Jewish communities, in those Graeco-Roman
cities in Palestine where they represented a minority, as conducting their col17 N. Belayche, Iudaea-Palaestina: the Pagan Cults in Roman Palestine (Second to Fourth Century) (2001).
18 Digest L.2.3.3, see A. Linder, The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation (1987), no. 2.
146
lective lives, following the Law and, in some cases building synagogues, in
contexts which were not wholly dissimilar to those which obtained in the Diaspora (and not forgetting that marginal zone as between native Jewish territory and the gentile world represented by neighbouring cities like Tyre, Gerasa
or Damascus). Here, there is again great value in Nicole Belayches map (p.
83) of the distribution of synagogues in Palestine, secondfourth centuries,
to be compared with that in the relevant volume of the Tabula Imperii Romani
series, itself a priceless source of historical information.19 Synagogues are attested archaeologically in a scatter of places in southern Palestine, including
ones which were or became Greek cities, such as Ascalon, Gaza and Beth Guvrin/Eleutheropolis; also at Caesarea and in Scythopolis and its territory (the
famous cases of Beth Alpha and Rehov), and at Hammat Gader in the territory of Gadara, and in the cities of Tiberias and Sepphoris/Diocaesarea. But
the bulk of archaeologically attested synagogues belong very clearly in the
non-urbanised zone west of the Sea of Galilee and the upper Jordan valley,
and to the east on the Golan. However, the dating of the known synagogues
notoriously keeps changing, and Belayches label, secondfourth centuries,
should probably be seen as misleading. It seems more likely now that the characteristic period for synagogue construction was the fifthsixth centuries (the
sixth century, in the reign of one or other of the two Emperors called Justin,
is at any rate certain for the mosaic floor at Beth Alpha).20 If that general
pattern is correct, it has profound implications for Schwartzs argument, as
we will see, and indeed could well be seen as reinforcing it.
If we return to the secondthird centuries, it might seem unsurprising that
the Jews of the province, now deliberately re-labelled Syria Palaestina, are
almost invisible in our epigraphic and archaeological evidence. Given the
massive scale of losses, the creation of a pagan colonia as a substitute for
Jerusalem, from whose territory Jews were excluded, and the step-by-step
creation of a network of Greek cities, whose territories between them came
to occupy almost the whole provincial area, we might be struck rather by the
fact that Jewish communal life, Jewish observance and the use of Hebrew survived at all. On the other hand, it could be thought that the low profile of
Jewish communities in this period might be due rather to the low level of the
epigraphic habit in most of these cities, compared (for instance) to those of
Asia Minoran equally pagan environment, where Jews have left a significant number of communal inscriptions.21
S.s particular contribution to the interpretation of what Palestinian Judaism in this phase did or did not amount to is a very valuable one (esp., ch.
4: Jews or Pagans? The Jews and the Greco-Roman Cities of Palestine, p.
129f.). The evidence is slight, but enough to show, for instance, people with
Jewish names (or the daughter of someone with a Jewish name) making pagan
19 Y. Tsafrir, L. di Segni and J. Green (eds.), Iudaea. Palaestina: Eretz Israel in the Hellenistic,
Roman and Byzantine Periods (1994), Map 4.
20 E. L. Sukenik, The Synagogue of Beth Alpha (1932); J.-B. Frey, Corpus Inscriptionum Judaicarum II (1952), no. 1165, for the Aramaic inscription mentioning King Ioustinos (either
Justin I, 51827, or II, 56578).
21 See W. Ameling (ed.), Inscriptiones Iudaicae Orientis II: Kleinasien (2004).
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dedications in Scythopolis, or someone with a Jewish name acting as agoranomos in Ioppe. S.s important discussion highlights, for instance, coins (p.
136f.), inscriptions and pagan artin particular the well-known pagan mosaics of Sepphoris (p. 142f.) and Tiberias (p. 145f.), places which appear in
the rabbinic sources as centres of rabbinic learning.22 It thus becomes possible to imagine various contrasting patterns: eective extinction of Jewish life
as an eect of the Bar Kochba war; wholesale assimilation to the pagan environment, with abandonment of Jewish names; retention of Jewish names
(and identity), but acceptance of some forms of pagan cult; participation in
a (predominantly) gentile public life, but with avoidance of pagan rituals (as
in the ruling by Severus and Caracalla, above); the observance of Judaism
in communities living invisibly in a pagan/gentile environment; Jewish communities constructing monumental synagogues in spite of living in a wider
gentile environmentas unquestionably happened later, when the context in
question had become predominantly Christian; or a substantial Jewish minority, or even majority, in what was nominally a Greek city like any other,
successfully preventing the construction of pagan temples or the communal
observance of pagan public rituals, such as animal sacrifice. A comparable
pattern, from the early period of Christian expansion, in the fourth century,
is presented in the famous account by Epiphanius (Panarion 30, 412) of the
Comes Josephus of Tiberias, a prominent Jewish convert to Christianity of
the time of Constantine. Once converted, so the story in this notoriously unreliable source runs, he attempted to construct churches in Galilee in Tiberias
itself and in Diocaesarea (Sepphoris) and in Capernaum and others (cities,
that is, though Capernaum strictly was not a city). Allegedly, there was one
previous temple, to the Emperor Hadrian, in Tiberias, but it had subsequently
been used as a bath-house (30.12). Since the architecture of a temple is wholly
distinct from that of a bath-house, this idea seems entirely unconvincing.
Probably there had always been a bath-house named after Hadrian. Against
opposition from a Jewish crowd, Josephus is said to have succeeded in constructing a small Christian church on the site, before retreating to Scythopolis,
and later in getting churches built in Diocaesarea and other places.
The impression of a border-zone, where a gentile world, first pagan and
then progressively Christianised in the fourth century, confronted a predominantly Jewish zone, is surely correct. S. is surely justified also in emphasising
the fact that both in the world of gentile cities and even in the relatively remote, un-urbanised Jewish hinterland in the extreme north of Palaestina, Judaism and Jewish observance left very few physical, documentary or literary
traces of its existence in the couple of centuries after the Bar Kochba war.
It did not leave none at all, however. Firstly there is the major necropolis of Beth Shearim, interestingly discussed by S. on pp. 1538, but perhaps
not given quite enough weight as a counter-example to the generally low archaeological and documentary profile of the Jews of Palaestina in (roughly)
22 For the pagan mosaic of, it seems, the early third century, with scenes representing episodes
from the myths of Dionysus and Heracles, found at Sepphoris, see now R. Talgam and Z. Weiss,
The Mosaics of the House of Dionysos at Sepphoris (2003).
148
149
written down, whenever that was, and devoted in part to the memory of the
Temple and for the rest to the disputed rules as to how to conduct a Jewish
life in an environment in which pagans were ever-present, must be seen as
an extraordinary, even unique, aspect of the cultural history of the Roman
provinces. Perhaps the co-existence of Greek and Egyptian culture in Egypt
might oer some parallel. But neither Palmyra, where an extensive bi-lingual
corpus of inscriptions oers a real insight into local religious practice,26 nor in
Phoenicia nor in Nabataea/Arabia do we find anything remotely comparable.
Early Syriac literature might oer the closest comparisonbut Christianity
very rapidly becomes dominant in it.
The historical study of the Mishnah demands an approach to a whole series
of factual questions, which can be no more than hinted at here. Does it, within
the existing text, proclaim its own authorship, origin, place of composition,
or purpose? No. If not, is there any later account which does? The astonishing answer is that the nearest to systematic evidence is presented by the Letter
() of Rab Sherira, written in Babylonia in CE 987.27 The recent study
by Margarete Schlter oers what seems to be the first translation into any
European language, and is thus invaluable. But a truly historical treatment
remains to be undertaken. The basis, and the status, of the historical knowledge of the world of the Roman provinces as it had been in the second and
third centuries which prevailed in Babylonia in the late 10th century would
be a taxing and evocative subject. It is significant that while the author, Rab
Sherira Gaon, used the Seleucid era for dating he did so only for the rabbis of Babylonia, beginning (para. 155) with the move of Rav to Babylonia
in the year 530 (CE 219), and in the days of R(abbi Yehuda), and continuing through the second half of the work to the 10th century. No dates are
oered for the Judaean/Palestinian material in the first half of the work. Talmudic references to Rabbi Yehuda, however, universally regard him as having
been the progenitor of the Mishnah, and some make him the contemporary
of a Roman Emperor called Antoninuspossibly Caracalla (CE 21117) or
Elagabal (CE 21822)but do not to my knowledge oer precise dates. Even
if they do, the same question arises.
In other words no context, place or date is supplied for us, either explicitly
within the text of the Mishnah, or (on any normal critical principle) in any
external report (unless detailed study were to show a firm basis for Sheriras
dating). The world from which the Mishnah emerged, and to which it relates, can only be reconstructed step-by-step from within the text itself: from
place-names, technical terms for local institutions or Roman ocial posts,
personal names, allusions to the ruling power. However, as an approximate
date of compilation, let us accept provisionally the normal assumption that it
26
150
belongs CE 200. The task of examining what sort of world we can discern
between its lines was best performed in Martin Goodmans State and Society
(n. 15 above). By contrast, any treatment claiming to provide a valid historical account which proceeds, without further methodological discussion, to
combine with the evidence of the Mishnah other material (sayings or stories)
drawn from later Talmudic or midrashic works, must be open to question.
Any such historical reconstruction, entered on without preliminary study of
the date, social setting and geographical origins of each text used, must by its
nature fly in the face of all basic principles of historical criticism.
Paradoxically, while the history of the Jewish communities of Syria
Palaestina remains, to put it politely, in its infancy, the fact that a work in
Hebrew of the scale and nature of the Mishnah could be compiled, and (as
is evident) could come into use in written form, in an area largely covered
by Greek cities and their territories, is in itself of enormous historical significance. For the clear and undeniable implication is that a complex and detailed
view of the way of life which Jewishness ought to entail could be compiled in
a world in which Jewish communities shared village and city life, in varying
proportions, with their gentile neighbours. The Mishnah presents a world in
which a network of Jewish communities did actually exist, even if they were
largelybut not entirelyinvisible in the archaeological and documentary
record.
6. Rabbinic Judaism
Since the vast majority of the potentially relevant evidence consists of a huge
mass of internally directed and mutually referential rabbinic texts, one possible stratagem, perfectly legitimate in itself, is just to abandon the search for
any anchor in a datable and geographically locatable historical context, and
simply to explore the nature of the world, whether imaginary or real, which
the texts construct. A perfect model of how to do this is in fact provided by the
late Moses Finleys classic The World of Odysseus, analysing the society represented in the text of Homers Iliad and Odyssey, without (for the most part)
asking when, if ever, it had really existed.28 In those terms Catherine Hezsers
impressive book on the rabbinic movement can be fully justified in method.29
But if the claim is to be writing history, namely reconstructing events, social
structures and relationships as they had actually been in the Syria Palaestina
of the second and third centuries (or even in the Judaea of the earlier period) by using the Jerusalem or Babylonian Talmuds, then I submit that we
must suspend belief, not permanently of course, but while the claims of these
works to report veridically on earlier periods are critically examined. This is
of course no more than standard procedure. But, to my knowledge, it has not
been systematically carried out in this area. S.s treatment, on pp. 112f., does
challenge conventional reconstructions, but in my view not radically enough.
Much of the latter part of S.s book is in fact devoted to an analysis of
28
29
151
rabbinic Judaism which is interesting, fruitful and valid in the terms stated,
namely as an analysis of the world represented by the relevant texts. But some
of it is also devoted (pp. 215f.), again extremely fruitfully, to that (apparently)
other, and (supposedly) dierent, Judaism represented by the known synagogues, their mosaic floors and their inscriptions, in Hebrew, Aramaic and
Greek. But if such a contrast is to be drawn, and real history is to be written,
then time, place and social context all become crucial.
So also does any evidence that we can derive from contemporary outside
observers. It is thus disappointing that S. alludes only very briefly (and only
on the ethnarch, or patriarch) to the evidence of Origen, writing in Caesarea
towards the middle of the third century, and does not cite Nicholas de Langes
book of 1976.30 For, while he devotes a valuable section (ch. 5) to The Rabbis
and Urban Culture, he perhaps does not stress suciently the fact that this
will necessarily have meant that the rabbis in question fulfilled their functions
in a bi-lingual and bi-cultural environment, whether in Sepphoris, Tiberias,
Scythopolis, Akko/Ptolemais or Caesarea itself. Origen, coming from Alexandria, certainly did not speak fluent Aramaic or Hebrew, and the discussions
which he reports with learned Jews will have been conducted in Greek.
The same will apply to the sharpest and closest observer of the Palestinian
world of Late Antiquity, Jerome, who rates only one mention in S.s book (p.
118), referring to Letter 57.3.2, on the Patriarch Gamaliel and his influence
with Theodosius I. But, as we can follow step by step in J. N. D. Kellys masterly biography,31 Jerome was resident in Palestine from the mid-380s to his
death in 420. He was not in fact perfectly placed geographically for observation of contemporary Jewish life, in that his monastery was situated in Bethlehem, in the territory of Aelia Capitolina, which had been ethnically cleansed
after the Bar Kochba revolt. But he still provides invaluable evidence, including quite clear references to what we would describe as rabbinic Judaism.
True, he seems to use the word rabbi himself only once, and that when commenting on a passage of the NT where the word is alluded to as an honorific
form of address; he does however at least explain that it means magister.32
But he also refers to having acquired the help of a legis doctor (teacher of the
Law) from Tiberias, much admired among the Hebraei, with whom he studied the book of Chronicles.33 Moreover, in Letter 121, written in about CE
410, he refers to Jewish teaching by using the Greek term deuterosis, literally
repetition, and also deploys sophoi, the wise, as a term for Jewish teachers.
The texts of these two passages will be worth setting out and translating:
Letter 121.10.1920: Quantae traditiones pharisaeorum sint, quas hodie vocant, et quam aniles fabulae, revolvere nequeo . . . Praeterea, quia
iussum est, ut diebus sabbatorum sedeat unusquisque in domo sua et non
egrediatur nec ambulet de loco, in quo habitat... solent respondere et dicere:
Barachibas et Symeon et Helles, magistri nostri, tradiderunt nobis, ut duo mil30 N. R. M. de Lange, Origen and the Jews: Studies in JewishChristian Relations in ThirdCentury Palestine (1976).
31 J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Works and Controversies (1975).
32 Jerome, Com. In Ev. Matt. IV (PL XXVI, col. 169), on Mtt 23:7.
33 Jerome, Com. In Chron., Praef., in Migne, PL XXIX, cols. 4234.
152
Brief as they are, these two passages reveal that there was a characteristic pattern of teaching by the wise; give an example of a possible subjectmatter, namely the rules limiting movement on Shabbat;34 and name three
well-known teachers (magistri), who were not necessarily contemporaries.
Perhaps more important still, the two passages make quite clear that there
was an established vocabulary in Greek which could be deployed in explaining to Jerome what Jewish religious teaching was like. The inscriptions from
the mosaic floors of Late Roman synagogues in Palestine confirm the bi(or tri-) lingual nature of Jewish religious life there, as a function or reflection of a local society exhibiting a mixture of languages, religious adherence
and ethnicity.35 It is worth noting that Jerome, though normally resident in
Bethlehem, did also visit Galilee, and that when he was there he experienced
a sort of Jewish religious tourism, in which sites with Biblical associations
were shown and identified to visitors, in a way which was now common in
the Christianised landscape of Palestine. In this case he records being shown
by local Jews a small ruined village called Elcesi, identified as the home of
the father of the prophet Nahum.36 His evidence on contemporary Palestine,
which would deserve much fuller exploration,37 certainly represents crucial
external testimony to the role and character of the Jewish elementbut as
one element among others.
Jerome also provides some of the most important evidence for the
new factor which S. rightly emphasises, especially in ch. 7, A Landscape
Transformednamely the (almost) all-embracing symbolic Christianisation
of the land, whereby not only sites mentioned in the New Testament but
also some from the Old were given a Christian meaning, and received organ34
The rule relating to 2000 cubits is attested in M. Eruvin 4:5 and elsewhere.
For a sketch of these patterns of diversity in the Late Roman Near East see F. Millar, Ethnic
Identity in the Roman Near East, 325450: Language, Religion and Culture, Mediterranean
Archaeology 11 (1998), 159, and also the very stimulating essays in A. Kofsky and G. Stroumsa
(eds.), Sharing the Sacred: Religious Contacts and Conflicts in the Holy Land, FirstFifteenth
Centuries (1998).
36 Jerome, Com. in Naum, Praef. (Corpus Christianorum, series Latina LXXVIA, 526).
37 See now, however, S. Weingarten, The Saints Saints: Hagiography and Geography in Jerome
(2005), esp. ch. 2: The vita Hilarionis: The Christianisation of the Roman World, and ch. 4:
Jeromes ep. 108 and the Christian Appropriation of the Holy Land.
35
153
154
155
156
280), but surely, even in our present state of very incomplete information, deserved more attention. What is claimed in the reports so far available is that
the archaeological record shows three successive phases: (1) an original structure of the fourth century CE, destroyed by fire; (2) rebuilding at the end of
the fifth century CE; (3) extensive modifications between the fifth and the seventh centuries CE, above all in the construction of a narthex, or entrance-hall,
at the north end.
The most remarkable feature of phase (3) is the 29-line Hebrew inscription from the mosaic floor of the narthex containing prescriptions on tithing
and the Sabbatical Year. More remarkably still, the successive sections of the
text closely resemble passages from Talmudic texts: yDemai and Shevi it VI;
Tosefta Shevi it IV; Sifre Deuteronomy 51. Photos, transcriptions and translations of this important text are readily available.44 We thus have documentary
versions (also providing evidence for spelling and letter-forms for these texts
as they were at the relevant period) which are centuries earlier than any of the
medieval mss on which printed texts depend, and are found in the context of
a synagogue lying in the territory of a Greek, and now Christian, city which
in the sixth century was in a spectacular phase of urban development.45 In
the light of this inscription, the notion of a division between rabbinic and
synagogal Judaism seems bizarre.
But that is not all, for the summary account, with references to earlier literature, published in 1993 in the New Encyclopaedia (to my knowledge, the
latest discussion) records that the columns which belonged to phase (2), attributed to the late fifth century, bore inscriptions in red paint (all, it seems,
unpublished), written in Hebrew or Aramaic, and containing benedictions,
dedications, a list of the priestly courses and a copy of a letter dealing with the
laws of tithes and the Sabbatical year (the same text as that later incorporated
in the mosaic of the narthex?).46 So, as it seems, the documentary expression
of rabbinic Judaism at Rehov goes back further still, and is here contained
in a painted text, and thus one whose lettering must have been much closer to
manuscript lettering than mosaic lettering could be. So, were the people who
selected these passages, first, for painting on a column and then (as it seems,
considerably later) for incorporation in the floor-mosaic, implicitly quoting
from established written texts which were already in circulation? It might well
be the case that this synagogue, like others of the fifthseventh centuries, postdates the main period of the redaction of rabbinic texts in Palestine. Or, are
we witnessing the deployment of stretches of text which had not yet been
incorporated in larger works? In either case we are brought, thanks to the
discovery of this synagogue, into direct contact with the written discourse of
rabbinic Judaism in a way which medieval manuscripts by their nature cannot make possibleor at least we would be so brought if the final report on
Encyclopaedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land IV (1993), 12724.
44 See e.g. R. and A. Ovadiah, Hellenistic, Roman and Early Byzantine Mosaic Floors in Israel
(1987), pp. 1204 (nos. 2068) and Pl. CXXXVVI.
45 See the brilliant survey by Y. Tsafrir and G. Foerster, Urbanism at Scythopolis-Bet Shean
in the Fourth to Seventh Centuries, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 51 (1997), 85.
46 Vitto, op. cit. (n. 43), p. 1273.
157
158
to the cost of the mosaic floor.49 Similarly, how important was the conceptualisation, or memory, of the Temple in Late Antique Judaism? 50 Once again,
Jeromes testimony is suggestive. In his Commentary on Jeremiah, written in
Palestine in about 41520, he records:51
But after the captivity which took place under Vespasian and Titus and afterwards under Hadrian, the ruins of Jerusalem are due to remain until the end of
time, although the Jews think that Jerusalem is to be restored to them, golden
and adorned with gems, and that once again (there are to be) victims and sacrifices and assemblies of the saints and the rule of on earth of the saviour Lord.
Or, finally, how do we interpret the zodiacs which play so central a part in
several synagogue floor-mosaics? 52
8. Conclusion
All of the above amounts, in essence, to saying that I believe the broad propositions put forward by S. to be correct, and certainly worth the attention of all
students of Judaism. My comments on the earlier phases of the story, up to
the third century C.E., amount to acceptance of his working principle, which
he describes (p. 2) as moderately positivistic, and are aimed only at suggesting that both within Judaism and (importantly) in the pagan world outside
and around it, there is rather more empirical evidence to be moderately positivistic about than he has actually used. As for the last phase, Late Antiquity,
between the material evidence of the synagogues on the one hand and the
vast, and dicult, corpus of rabbinic writing on the other (explicitly brought
together in the material from the Rehov synagogue), and between S.s sweeping and challenging survey on the other hand, and Zeev Weisss interpretation
of the Sepphoris synagogue on the other, we can indeed now claim to be able
to see very significant features of a re-born Jewish identity.53
49
Weiss, op. cit. (n. 46), 203 (ins. 3); 205 (ins. 6).
See now Y. Eliav, The Temple Mount, the Rabbis, and the Poetics of Memory, HUCA
74 (2003), 49, and note the dating from the destruction of the Temple found on the Jewish
Aramaic tomb inscriptions from Zoar of the fourthsixth centuries CE; see S. Stern, Calendar
and Community (2001), 87f.
51 Jerome, Com. in Ieremiam 4:15 (Corpus Christianorum, series Latina, LXXIV, pp. 1856).
52 I have no view on this question, but see now J. Magness, Helios and the Zodiac Cycle in
Ancient Palestinian Synagogues, in W.-G. Dever and S. Gitin (eds.), Symbiosis, Symbolism and
the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel and Their Neighbours from the Late Bronze Age
through Roman Palaestina (2003), 363, also discussing the role of priests in the Late Antique
synagogue, and now also S. Fine, Between Liturgy and Social History: Priestly Power in Late
Antique Palestinian Synagogues, JJS 56 (2005), 1, and Weiss, op.cit. (n. 48 above).
53 I am very grateful for comments and criticisms on the rash and sweeping sets of propositions contained in this review article to Hannah Cotton, Martin Goodman, Jodi Magness and
Sacha Stern. I also thank Jodi Magness very warmly for letting me have a copy of her unpublished discussion paper on Imperialism and Jewish Society, given at the SBL in 2003, and Yaron
Eliav for a copy of his illuminating review of in Prooftexts 24 (2004), 116. The paper has been
greatly improved, but I could not claim to have been able to address adequately all the points
raised. Responsibility for remaining faults lies with the author.
Since the above was written I have had the pleasure of visiting Sepphoris with Zeev Weiss. It
is clear that the excavations, still continuing, have the potential to contribute significantly to our
conception of complex and evolving communal and religious relationships in this area.
50