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Did the Jews Enjoy a Privileged Position in the Roman World?*

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Did the Jews Enjoy a Privileged Position in the Roman World?* Miriam PUCCI BEN ZEEV Department of History. Ben Gurion Univ. DID THE JEWS ENJOY A PRIVILEGED POSITION IN THE ROMAN WORLD?* The subject of Jewish rights in the Roman world [I century BCE-I century CE] received a full and detailed treatment by J. Juster at the beginning of this century: the work was done so well that his monumental Les Juifs dans l'Empire romain, which appeared in 1914, has remained the standard work on the topic for almost seventy years. No substantial change in the picture drawn by Juster was made by subsequent research until the 1980s, when a veritable revolution occurred in the field. Two articles by Tessa Rajak challenged elements of the picture which had never been contested, such as the legal value to give to the documents mentioned by Josephus and the existence of a Magna Carta of Jewish rights1. The time has come to think again about the whole subject. I would like to start from the very beginning, from the commonly accepted assumption that Jews enjoyed a privileged position in the Roman World. It is Josephus who supports this interpretation, calling the Jewish rights dikaia, dikaiomata, axiomata, philanthropa, dedomena, synkechoremena. Some of these terms, like philanthropa and synkechoremena, are in fact technical expressions in use in his time to denote a privilegium2. According to Juster, each right mentioned by Josephus was a privilegium, which would mean a legal enactment concerning a specific person or case and involving an exemption from common rules. Almost a century after Juster wrote his book, virtually every contemporary research dealing with this topic accepts and repeats the idea that the Jews enjoyed a privileged position in the Roman world. The main *. I wish to express my gratitude to Prof. David Asheri for his valuable suggestions. 1. T. Rajak, “Was There a Roman Charter for the Jews?”, JRS, 74, 1984, pp. 107-123; “Jewish Rights in the Greek Cities under Roman Rule: a New Approach”, Approaches to Ancient Judaism, ed. W.S. Green, vol. 5: Studies in Judaism and Its Greco-Roman Context, Brown Judaic Studies, 32, Atlanta 1985, pp. 19-33. We should not forget also the critical evaluation of Josephus' testimony by H. Moehring, “The Acta pro Judaeis in the Antiquitates of Flavius Josephus”, Christianity, Judaism, and other Greco-Roman Cults, I-IV, Studies for M. Smith at sixty ed. J. Neusner, Leiden 1975, pp. 124-158. 2. R.K. Sherk, Roman Documents from the Greek East, Baltimore 1969, p. 193. Revue des Etudes juives, CLIV (1-2), janvier-juin 1995, pp. 23-42 24 DID THE JEWS ENJOY A PRIVILEGED POSITION IN THE ROMAN WORLD? features of this commonly-accepted picture can be summarized as follows: Romans granted the Jews, as Josephus clearly and often stresses, the right to live by their own laws. This is interpreted as meaning that the Jews were granted a special, privileged position, because of the special character of their religion: they were in need of a special status, because their Deity could not be inserted in the pagan Pantheon and the normal principle of religious toleration could not operate. The Romans, therefore, had only two options in dealing with the Jews among them: persecution or the granting of a privileged status. Since the Jews were forbidden by their religion to perform acts of worship whose non-performance was considered by the Gentiles to be a criminal offence, toleration of Judaism meant that the criminal character from the non-performance of these acts had to be removed. The Jews, it is maintained, were given all the rights they needed, and at the same time were exempted from all those duties and responsibilities which they declared to be in conflict with their own laws3. One of the most conspicuous examples of this extraordinary position of the Jews would have been their exemption from participation in the cult of the Roman emperor. Is it still possible to consider this picture valid today? Eighty years of epi- graphical discoveries and of contemporary research make fresh examination mandatory. The first question to be asked is what should be considered a privilege: that is, what were the privileges usually granted by the Romans to conquered peoples. The best known case is that of the Greeks. When we examine documents relating to Roman policy towards conquered peoples in the Greek world4, we find that the most common privileges were: the granting of Roman citizenship (politeia), which sometimes appears together with the bestowal 3. J. Juster, Les Juifs dans l'empire romain, I, Paris 1914, p. 213; on the nature, formation and evolution of the Jewish privileges, see pp. 213-242; A.M. Rabello, A Tribute to J. Juster. The Legal Condition of the Jews under Visigothic Kings, brought up-to-date, Jersualem 1976, p. 220; E. Mary Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule, Leiden 1976, pp. 120-143; A.M. Rabello, “The Legal Condition of the Jews in the Roman Empire”, ANRW, II, 13, 1980, pp. 691-692. The same ideas are found in Rabello's article, which appeared in 1984 (“L'obser- vance des fêtes juives dans l'Empire romain”, ANRW, II, 21, 2, 1984, p. 1289 and in his book, which appeared in 1987 (A.M. Rabello, Giustiniano, ebrei e samaritani alla luce delle fonti storico-letterarie, ecclesiastiche e giuridiche, I, Milano 1987, vol. I, p. 46; vol. II, 1988, p. 667); M. Reinhold, Diaspora — The Jews among the Greek sand Romans, Sarasota and Toronto 1983, p. 74; H.R. Moehring, “Joseph ben Matthia and Flavius Josephus: the Jewish Prophet and Roman Josephus”, ANRW, II, 21, 2, 1984, pp. 896-7. 4. They have been collected and commented by Sherk, op. cit. 1969 [in n. 2], (hereforth cited as RDGE) and translated by the same R.K. Sherk, Rome and the Greek East to the Death of Augustus, Cambridge 1984 (henceforth cited as RGE). DID THE JEWS ENJOY A PRIVILEGED POSITION IN THE ROMAN WORLD? 25 of priesthoods, honors, and other non-defined privileges [see the letter of Octavian concerning Seleukos of Rhosos, written between 42 and 30 BCE: Letter II, ll. 9-29: REDGE 58=RGE 86]; the granting of freedom and autonomy (eleutheria, autonomia), freedom and immunity, or inviolability (asylia); and a number of financial exemptions: immunity from compulsory public service (alsitourghesia), exemption from the payment of taxes or tribute (aneisphoria), and freedom from billeting of any kind (anepistath- meia), granted both to holy cities and to private properties. These kinds of privileges are perhaps the most amply documented by sources5. Other privileges mentioned by inscriptions are the right to import and export without taxes [see the letter of Octavian concerning Seleukos of Rhosos, written between 42 and 30 BCE: letter II, ll. 9-11: “[Caesar] imperator...conferred (Roman) citizenship and tax-exemption for all present property on the following terms. ll. 49-52: he may import or export for his own use [from] the city or from the country [- - -] he may export from his own possessions and his cattle for his own need; no government or publican [shall levy on him] a tax for these things]” [RDGE 58=RGE 86], and privi- leges connected with the military sphere: freedom from military service (astrateusia) [see the letter of Marcus Antonius to the Koinon of Asia con- cerning the Association of Victorious Athletes: documents published to- gether in RDGE 57=RGE 85, 42-41 or 33-32 BCE]; the right not to give hospitality to Roman soldiers during the winter [see the Antonian law concerning Termessus Maior in Pisidia, 72 or 68 BCE, col. II, ll. 7-10: “No magistrate or promagistrate (or) legate or anyone else shall introduce soldiers into the town of Termessus Maior in Pisidia for the sake of wintering over...”] [RGE 72]; and exemption from war contribution [see the conclusion 5. Sources are numerous: a letter of the praetor M. Valerius Messalla to the city of Teos in 193 BCE (RDGE 34 = RGE 8), two letters from the praetor Spurius Postumius (189 BCE) and a decree of the senate (the date is unknown) (RDGE 1 = RGE 15) concerning the city of Delphi and its territory; the exemption of sacred territory from the revenue contracts of the publicans (89-87 BCE): RGE 59. Of similar content is the document pertaining to the land of Oropos and the publicans (73 BCE): RDGE 23 = RGE 70. Tax-exempt status was granted also to the temple of Nysa (I BCE): RDGE 69 I = RGE 107. In the first century BCE, the grant of freedom and autonomy was granted also to Ilium (RDGE 53) and to Pergamum (RDGE 54). The same privilege was granted to private associations, such as that of the Dionysiac artists (RDGE 44,11.1-9 = RGE 37, written after 146 BCE and RDGE 49 = RGE 62, which include documents written about 84 and 81 BCE) and that of the victorious athletes (42-41 or 33-32 BCE): RDGE 57 = RGE 85. The same privilege was granted also to private citizens in reward of special merits; often the cause was military assistance, such as in the case of three Greek naval captains in 78 BCE (RDGE 22 = RGE 66) and that of Seleukos of Rhosos (between 42 and 30 BCE): RDGE 58 = RGE 86. Sometimes, immunity from taxation was granted along with the citizenship, as in the case of Cyrene: RDGE 31 = RGE 102 (7/6 BCE). 26 DID THE JEWS ENJOY A PRIVILEGED POSITION IN THE ROMAN WORLD? of a letter by a Roman magistrate to the Dionysiac Artists, written after 146 BCE: RDGE 44, ll. 1-9=RGE 37]. We find also minor privileges which the Romans sometimes granted to the Greeks, such as the right of a truce in the course of the festivals and the right to use the purple stripe on their clothing.
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