reflections on a range of conquered and absorbed peoples and assess the content against the particular rhetorical aims of each given source.
Romans understood themselves to be deeply pious, and their sanctity (pietas) was tightly linked to a conservative embrace of tradition and loyalty to the state. Foreign cults were tolerated when ancient and untroublesome but could become enemies of the state when they breached established boundaries and practices or otherwise offended Roman sensibilities. As such, religious communities could provoke Rome by subtler assaults than armed conflict—such as proselytization, sacrilege and other perceived threats to Roman mores.
Tacitus weaves these themes together in all of their complexity. As anticipated, Tacitus is inspired by an instance of military conflict. In the middle of his account of Titus’s leadership in the Judean war of 66–73 CE, the Roman historian takes the opportunity to introduce his Roman readers to the Jews. The author packs his text with information, and the few pages provide us a masterclass in the multiple tropes, conventions, and functions of ancient ethnography.
Tacitus serves up several theories on the origins of the Jews, affording us a glimpse into the sources circulating in elite Roman circles. It is notable that these sources include neither the Greek Torah (Septuagint) nor Josephus. His sources were primarily polemical anti-Jewish texts:
Some say the Jews were refugees from the island of Crete who settled in the remotest parts of Libya […] Others believe that in the reign of Isis the surplus population of Egypt was evacuated to neighbouring lands under the leadership of Hierosolymus and Juda. Many think that the Jews are descended from those Ethiopians who were driven by fear and hatred to leave their homes during the reign of Cepheus. Some say that a group of Assyrian refugees, lacking their own land, occupied a part of Egypt […]. Others again posit a famous ancestry for the Jews in the Solymi, a tribe celebrated by Homer in his poems: these people allegedly founded Jerusalem and named it after themselves.44
The grab-bag of theories is collectively incoherent and without basis, so why include them? With its use of »some say,« »others believe,« and the like, Tacitus flags that he is going to reject these positions, but intends a residue of their innuendo to remain. We get a better sense of Tacitus’s purpose as the text progresses.
Whatever their origin, these observances are sanctioned by their antiquity. The other practices of the Jews are sinister and revolting, and have entrenched themselves by their degeneracy. All the worst types abandoned the religious practices of their forefathers and donated tribute and contributions to the Jews in heaps. That is one reason why the resources of the Jews have increased, but it is also because of their stubborn loyalty and ready benevolence towards fellow-Jews. Yet they confront the rest of the world with a hatred reserved for enemies. They will not eat or sleep with gentiles, and despite being a most lecherous people, they avoid sexual intercourse with non-Jewish women. Among themselves nothing is barred. They have introduced the practice of circumcision to show that they are different from others. Converts to Judaism adopt the same practices, and the very first lesson they learn is to despise the gods, shed all feelings of patriotism and consider parents, children and brothers as readily expendable.45
Tacitus’s frontal assault claims that Jews are the pure opposite of Romans. Yet a closer reading of these two passages shows a different dynamic at work. In the early 2nd century, Rome was a sprawling empire and ethnic patchwork. With so many foreign peoples as part of the empire, gaining success, citizenship, and other types of enfranchisement, what is a »Roman« anymore? This anxiety drives Tacitus, an aristocrate of senatorial family. From this angle the Jew—with his Cretan, Ethiopian and Syrian origins—stands in for all of the foreignness in the empire bundled into one. The final sentence quoted lets us know that the problem for Tacitus is less Jews as Jews. His problem, instead, is with Romans who are drawn to Judaism: »Converts to Judaism adopt the same practices, and the very first lesson they learn is to despise the gods, shed all feelings of patriotism and consider parents, children and brothers as readily expendable.«
For Tacitus, Jewishness stands for the permeability, and thus fragility, of what he values in Romanness. Tacitus’s depiction of the Jews sits adjacent to his ethnography of the Germans tribes against whom the Flavians were also fighting (Tacitus admires the German character), allowing us to see in even sharper relief how Jews and other ethnic enemies function to define Roman’s own self-understanding.46
For Christian polemicists, Jews are not just one religious group among many, but Judaism was precisely that against which many Christian authors define themselves. As such »real Jews« vanish ever more deeply behind »rhetorical Jews«—meaning Jews as depicted in polemical writing, created by authors to serve arguments that have little or nothing to do with actual Jews.
11 The Jesus Movement and Early Christianity
At some point in the first century, a movement of Jews, then increasingly of gentiles, found themselves attracted to the teachings of a Judean Jew named Jesus of Nazareth and his followers. Jesus emerged from the theological and political cauldron of the first century, and his reformist thought, such that it can be reconstructed, is run through with apocalyptic ideas with a political bent, much like other charismatic religio-political figures depicted (and derided) by Josephus (see section on Zealots and Jewish extremism above). The history of early Christianity has no shortage of chroniclers.47 Though the movement collected Jewish followers, at some point around the turn of the second century, its rapid growth shifted to gentile populations, as is chronicled in Acts of the Apostles, for example, as well as the letters of Paul.48 Despite this evolution, outside of polemical literature there was no hard and fast line separating »Christianity« from »Judaism« until rather late.49 Indeed Christian texts that vociferously proclaim the distinction (such as Justin Martyr in the second century, church fathers Tertullian, third c., and fourth c. John Chrysostom) offer evidence that their audiences were not yet clear on the lines dividing Jew from Christian. Though they share cities and towns with the growing Christian movement in the Galilee and elsewhere, 2nd–3rd century rabbis are virtually silent on the topic of Christianity.50
12 The Rabbinic Movement
The second century is thin on primary sources in Hebrew or Aramaic, and it is difficult to know what most Jews were thinking and doing in this post-war period in Judea/Palaestina. Seth Schwartz argues that the majority assimilated into an increasingly Hellenized landscape, becoming unremarkable Roman provincials who wore their Judaism lightly.51 A small group of Jews however, the earliest rabbis (rabbi = my teacher, master), was wrestling with the problem of how to understand Judaism without a temple, and how to live and thrive as Jews under foreign domination. At the turn of third century these Jewish intellectual elites emerge on the scene as the creators of an extraordinary document known as the Mishnah (ca. 200 CE). The Mishnah will become, alongside Scripture itself, the core articulation of the movement, the basis of both the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, and the deep architecture of rabbinic Judaism—what to this day is thought of as normative Judaism.52
Rabbinic Judaism grew out of the sun-bleached landscape of the Roman Empire, and this imperial context was formative. Rabbinic Judaism sets Rome at the center of its own creation myth. A few rabbinic sources say that the movement was authorized by none other than Vespasian himself. According to one well-known version, while Vespasian was besieging Jerusalem during the Jewish War, one Yohanan ben Zakkai, having failed to moderate the Zealot factions controlling the city, escaped and beseeched the soon-to-be emperor to grant him and his fellows a quiet vineyard in a place called Yavneh, in which he could »teach his disciples, establish a house of prayer, and perform all the commandments.«53
Rabbinic Judaism, thus, bears deep scars left by the tumultuous history that preceded it. While the story of the founding of Yavneh may not be historically accurate,54 it tells us a great deal about how the rabbis imagine themselves. Unlike the Zealots in Jerusalem, or the more proximate Bar Kokhbah insurgents, the movement signals from the start that is not in the bloody business of rebellion. Yohanan ben Zakkai requests permission to found something akin to an academy, where obedience to Jewish law, as well as Jewish institutions, can peacefully