Was there a Roman Charter for the Jews?

Abstract

In the cities of the pre-Christian Roman empire, Jewish groups were in general free to pursue their own religious and social practices and, at any rate until Hadrian, they were not persecuted by the Roman government; even the exceptional and provocative demands for worship which came from a tyrannical emperor such as Gaius Caligula do not amount to planned persecution. There is a contrast with the subsequent fate of the early Christians, whose cult was, of course, often suppressed by the emperor and his governors. There is also a contrast with the later plight of the Jews themselves under Christian rule.Since, at the local level, Jews on the one hand and Greeks and natives on the other were often profoundly hostile to one another, the fact that the central government was on the whole proof against anti-Jewish pressure coming from below is indeed noteworthy. The edict of L. Flaccus as proconsul of Asia, by which in 62/1 B.C. he had confiscated the Jewish Temple contributions collected for export from his province, was never repeated, so far as we know (Cic., Flac. 66–9). Not only that: the Romans appear at times to have chosen to put their influence behind Jewish communities in dispute with their neighbours, as occurred to some extent in the cases which we shall discuss here, and did not cease even after A.D. 70.

Judging Empire: Courts And Culture in Rome's Eastern Provinces

“…Provinces such as Egypt were not, it appears, regulated by a basic provincial law, 50 nor, does it seem, were the Jewish populations of the Empire. 51 Whereas previous generations of scholars thought that these individual provincial laws were instantiations of a single juridical framework into which the Romans placed their provinces, the most recent work emphasizes the patchwork nature of the legal structures of the Empire: during expansion into the East-a long and messy processindividual cities, territories, and confederations made a variety of arrangements with the Romans against their neighbors. Some of these agreements were preserved when these areas became provinces or parts of provinces, as a sign of respect to useful and helpful allies; 52 sometimes, however, they were not.…”

Taking on goliath: The Jews against Rome, AD 66–73

“…The outbreak of a revolt against Rome led to a civil war, and for three and a half years the two wars raged side by side. 75 The war was begun with little advance planning, and was run by men like Josephus who were priests and not trained military commanders. 76 Add to this the divided loyalties and the lack of a unified command and the result does not spell success.…”

Main trends in modern Josephus research

“…Finally, there is a whole series of investigations which illustrate topics within ancient Judaism, dealing with Josephus' and the contemporary Rabbinical interpretation of the Bible (cf. Jacobs, Runnalls and Schwartz (1981)), the sabbatical year (Blosser), prophecy (Aune), the Temple in Leontopolis (Hayward) and the doc-uments cited by Josephus (Rajak (1984), Saulinier and Schäublin). With these works, in many cases, we are already far into topics such as Josephus' literary methods and theology.…”