Abstract
Few Roman emperors are as well known today as the one who ruled Rome from 54 CE until his suicide in 68 CE, Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus. Thanks in large part to the unflattering, albeit prejudiced, descriptions of his reign from the Roman historians Suetonius, Tacitus, and Cassius Dio, Nero has become a symbol of extravagance and despotism in Western culture, an icon of power run amok. Witness the 1951 epic Quo Vadis? (based on Henry Sienkiewicz’s Nobel prizewinning novel), in which Peter Ustinov gives the timeless cinematic portrayal of Nero as an arrogant, insatiable, and diabolical tyrant who thrills in the suffering of others and in his own orgiastic frenzies.1
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Notes
Henry Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis?, trans. Stanley F. Conrad (New York: Hippocrene, 1992).
On the relationship of Poppaea to Pompeii, in addition to the graffiti, see James L. Franklin Jr., Pompeis Difficile Est: Studies in the Political Life of Imperial Pompeii (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 101–30.
Josephus, The Life of Flavius Josephus (hereafter Life), 16, in LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926), 1:8; Jewish Antiquities (hereafter A.J.), 20.189–96, 252, in LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), 9:490–94, 522.
Salo W. Baron, ed., A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), 1:370–72, estimates the world’s Jewish population in the mid-first century CE at eight million souls.
Adolf von Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, trans. James Moffatt, 2nd ed. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1908), 1:1–8, offers a more conservative four million.
See further Louis Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 293. For the purpose of this thought experiment, a precise figure is not necessary.
Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999);
Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
For the view that many Jews in antiquity considered Jewish identity to be unattainable by Gentiles, even through circumcision, see Matthew Thiessen, Contesting Conversion: Genealogy, Circumcision, and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
On the issue of ancient monotheism and its possible distinction from what moderns understand by that term,
see Paula Fredriksen, “Mandatory Retirement: Ideas in the Study of Christian Origins whose Time Has Come to Go,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 35, no. 2 (2006): 241–43; Fredriksen “Judaizing the Nations: The Ritual Demands of Paul’s Gospel,” NTS 56, no. 2 (2010): 240–44.
A similar, though not identical, approach to ancient Jewish identity has been proposed by Maurice Casey, From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1991), 12–13. Smith, Imagining Religion, 8, likewise demurs from proposing a full-scale polythetic classification of “Jew/Judaism” in the ancient world, though he suggests what it would require; most importantly, it would call upon one to “identify a set of characteristics and begin to trace their configurations.”
Shaye J. D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 149, who on the basis of statements like those found in Cassius Dio, concludes that at times “a gentile might be mistaken for a Jew.”
“God-fearers” refers to Gentile men and women in Greco-Roman cities who participated, to varying degrees, in Jewish synagogues and communities without going “all the way,” so to speak, by becoming proselytes. The term originally came from the Gospel of Luke, where the author uses it to characterize Cornelius and other anonymous Gentiles. Controversy over the status of God-fearers in ancient Jewish communities was stirred three decades ago by the discovery of an inscription at Aphrodisias that mentioned God-fearers as a category of individuals alongside Ioudaioi and proselytes. See Robert S. MacLennan and A. Thomas Kraabel, “The God-Fearers: A Literary and Theological Invention,” BAR 12, no. 5 (1986): 46–53;
Robert F. Tannenbaum, “Jews and God-Fearers in the Holy City of Aphrodite,” BAR 12, no. 5 (1986): 54–57;
Louis Feldman, “The Omnipresence of the God-Fearers,” BAR 12, no. 5 (1986): 58–63.
According to Cohen, Beginnings, 4, “The boundary was fluid and not well marked.” John J. Collins, Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 275, speaks of “a gray area that existed between Jew and Gentile in this period,” while
J. Andrew Overman, “The God-Fearers: Some Neglected Features,” in Diaspora Jews and Judaism, ed. J. Andrew Overman and Robert S. MacLennan (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 151, describes “a soft boundary line.”
I use the term “religious” with full awareness that the concept of religion as we understand it was forged later than the period under discussion. Lacking a more precise term, however, I use “religion” to refer generally to aspects of life having to do with beliefs about gods and human interactions with them. For more on the development of the concept of religion and its application to cultures outside of the modern “West,” see the following: Jonathan Z. Smith, “Religion, Religions, Religious,” in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. Mark Taylor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 269–84;
Russell T. McCutcheon, “The Category ‘Religion’ in Recent Publications,” Numen 42 (1995): 284–309. For treatments of the Latin term religio,
see Michel Despland, La Religion in Occident: Evolution des Idées et de Vécu (Montreal: Fides, 1979);
Ernst Feil, Religio: die Geschichte eines neuzeitlichen Grundbegriffes von Frühchristentum bis zur Reformation, 3 vols. (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986–2001).
This is a summary of the thesis maintained in Cohen, Beginnings, 69–139. For an extensive critique of Cohen’s thesis, see Steve Mason, Josephus, Judea, and Christian Origins: Methods and Categories (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2009), 141–84.
See the earliest concerns over the translation of Ioudaios in Malcolm F. Lowe, “Who were the IOUDAIOI?” NovT 18, no. 2 (1976): 101–30;
A. T. Kraabel, “The Roman Diaspora: Six Questionable Assumptions,” JJS 33, nos. 1–2 (1982): 445–64.
A concise summary of the debate over translating Ioudaios is provided by Caroline Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 11–15.
See, too, Amy-Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), 159–66;
John H. Elliott, “Jesus the Israelite Was Neither a ‘Jew’ nor a ‘Christian,’” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 5, no. 2 (2007): 119–54;
Philip F. Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2003), 63–74; Mason, Josephus, 141–84;
Joshua D. Garroway, “Ioudaios,” in The Jewish Annotated New Testament, ed. Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Brettler (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 524–26;
William S. Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity (London: T & T Clark, 2006), 2–6.
See for example, Cohen, Beginnings, 110–19; Richard Horsley, Galilee: History, Politics, People (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1995), 42–45. As Cohen observes, most historians either scrap Strabo and Ptolemy in favor of Josephus’s testimony, or they fail to call attention to the discrepancy between the three witnesses (116).
See also Aryeh Kasher, Jews, Idumaeans, and Ancient Arabs (Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1988).
See, above all, Cohen, Beginnings, 13–24. See also Peter Richardson, Herod: King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 42;
Albert Baumgarten, “On the Legitimacy of Herod and His Sons as Kings of Israel” (Hebrew), in Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple, Mishnah, and Talmud Period: Studies in Honor of Shmuel Safrai, ed. Isaiah Gafni et al. (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1993), 31–37.
Lawrence Schiffman, Who Was a Jew? Rabbinic and Halakhic Perspectives on the Jewish-Christian Schism (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1985), 12–13.
While proposed dates for the book of Judith have ranged from the fifth century BCE to the second century CE, most scholars opt for a date in the Hasmonean era. See, for example, Morton S. Enslin and Solomon Zeitlin, eds., The Book of Judith (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 26–31. Feldman, Jew and Gentile, 289, proposes that the book of Esther provides the earliest description of conversion. Many people “become Jews” (mithyahadim) in the wake of Haman’s destruction, although the precise meaning of that Hebrew term has been debated. According to
Solomon Zeitlin, “Proselytes and Proselytism during the Second Commonwealth and the Early Tannaitic Period,” in Harry Austryn Wolfson Jubilee Volume on the Occasion of His Seventy-Fifth Birthday, ed. Saul Lieberman (Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1965), 2:873, the term refers to people pretending to be Jews out of fear.
Assessing the frequency of such conversions is an impossible task. The frequency probably depended on the alacrity with which Jews proselytized in antiquity, an issue of considerable controversy. Advocates for active missionary activity include Bernard J. Bamberger. Proselytism in the Talmudic Period (Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 1939), 13–24; Feldman, Jew and Gentile, 288–382. Alternative perspectives have been put forth by
Scot McKnight, A Light among the Gentiles: Jewish Missionary Activity in the Second Temple Period (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1991), 49–77;
Martin Goodman, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 60–90. For more on the openness of Jews to interactions with Gentiles,
see Pamela Eisenbaum, Paul Was Not a Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 99–115.
See, for example, Paula Fredriksen, “Judaism, the Circumcision of Gentiles, and Apocalyptic Hope: Another Look at Galatians 1 and 2,” JTS 42 (1991): 537.
For the last of these, see P. W. van der Horst, Ancient Jewish Epitaphs (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1991), 72. The other expressions appear widely.
Gary Porton, The Stranger within Your Gates (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 17 (italics mine).
H. Albeck, ed., M. Bikkurim (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1952), 1:4.
Joshua Levinson, “Bodies and Bo(a)rders: Emerging Fictions of Identity in Late Antiquity,” HTR 93, no. 4 (2000): 348. Levinson’s treatment of this passage, as well as m. Bik. 1:4 and others, is particularly incisive.
CD, XIV.3–4, in Qumran Cave 4, XIII: The Damascus Document (4Q266–273), ed. J. M. Baumgarten, DJD 18 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 109. See further Chaim Rabin, The Zadokite Documents, 2nd rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1958), 54;
see also Philip R. Davies, “Who Can Join the ‘Damascus Covenant’?,” JJS 46 (1995): 138–39. Of course, it is possible that gerim in this passage does not mean proselyte at all, but something akin to the resident alien in biblical texts.
4QFlorilegium, I.3–4, in Qumran Cave 4.I (4Q158–4Q186), ed. John M. Allegro, DJD 5 (Oxford: Clarendon: 1968), 53. Three alternative readings have been proposed for this line according to George J. Brooke, Exegesis at Qumran: 4QFlorilegium in Its Jewish Context, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 29 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1985), 100–103. Citing the work of J. M. Baumgarten, “The Exclusion of ‘Netinim’ and Proselytes in 4QFlorilegium,” Revue de Qumran 8 (1972): 87–96, Brooke concludes that ger = proselyte is the preferred reading. This finds further support from
Daniel R. Schwartz, Agrippa I (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1990), 128.
Yigael Yadin, Temple Scroll, English ed. (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983), 39:5 and 40:6. See also Schwartz, Agrippa I, 128.
A.J. 19.332–34. See Schwartz, Agrippa I, 124–30, for an extended analysis of this account. For the inscriptions on the Temple mount, see Emilio Gabba, Iscrizioni Greche e Latine per lo Studio della Bibbia (Turin: Marietti, 1958), 24.
For more on proselytes in Greco-Roman Jewish inscriptions, see Ross S. Kraemer, “On the Meaning of the Term ‘Jew’ in Graeco-Roman Inscriptions,” HTR 82, no. 1 (1989): 35–53; van der Horst, Epitaphs, 68–72.
According to Ellen Birnbaum, The Place of Judaism in Philo’s Thought (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996), 197–99, Philo never uses the term prosēlytos, “proselyte,” unless he is drawing on a biblical text that uses it. He employs epēlys, an apparently synonymous term, more liberally. According to Birnbaum, “It may be that Philo prefers epēlys and its variations to prosēlytos because these words are more familiar to his readers. Prosēlytos appears almost exclusively in Jewish and Christian writings, while epēlys and its variations can be found in classical Greek writings, in which these terms denote a foreigner and indicate only a civic standing. By using epēlys and its variations to signify one who abandons polytheism to come over to belief in God, then, Philo adds a religious connotation to these words” (198).
Gary Gilbert, “The Making of a Jew: ‘God-Fearer’ or Convert in the Story of Izates,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 44 (1991): 299–313. For the standard approach,
see John J. Collins, “A Symbol of Otherness: Circumcision and Salvation in the First Century,” in “To See Ourselves as Others See Us”: Christians, Jews, and “Others” in Late Antiquity, ed. Jacob Neusner and Ernest S. Frerichs(Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985), 163–86.
Jean Baptiste Frey, ed., Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaicarum (Rome: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1952), 2:742.
Philippe Bruneau, “Les Israélites de Délos et la Juiverie Délienne,” Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 106 (1982): 465–504.
See also A. T. Kraabel, “New Evidence of the Samaritan Diaspora Has Been Found on Delos,” Biblical Archaeologist 47 (1984): 44–46.
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 219.
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© 2012 Joshua D. Garroway
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Garroway, J.D. (2012). The Gentile-Jew. In: Paul’s Gentile-Jews. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137281142_2
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