Paul of Samosata, Zenobia, and Aurelian:
The Church, Local Culture, and Political
Allegiance in Third-Century Syria
*Introduction
What we call the ‘‘eastern frontier’’ of the Roman Empire was a thing of shad-
ows, which reflected the diplomatic convenience of a given moment, and
dictated the positioning of some soldiers and customs officials, but hardly
affected the attitudes or the movements of the people on either side.^1 Noth-
ing more than the raids of desert nomads,^2 for instance, hindered the endless
movement of persons and ideas between Judaea and the Babylonian Jewish
community.^3 Similarly, as Lucian testifies, offerings came to the temple of
Atargatis at Hierapolis/Bambyce from a wide area of the Near and Middle
*Originally published inJRS (): –. I was very grateful, for discussion and correc-
tion, to Professor A. D. Momigliano, Professor G. D. Kilpatrick, Professor P. R. L. Brown,
Professor P. J. Parsons, Dr. J. Rea, Professor T. D. Barnes, and especially to M. Henri Seyrig.
. See Philostratus,Vit. Ap. Ty. , , for Apollonius’ famous confrontation with the
customs official at Zeugma. The only evidence known to me of the frontier actually pre-
venting movement comes in Jerome,Vita Malchi(PLXXIII, ), where Malchus, from
Nisibis, relates that (sometime in the first half of the fourth century) ‘‘because I could not
go to the east, because of neighbouring Persia and the Roman military guard, I turned my
feet to the west.’’
. Note Herod’s establishment of a colony of Babylonian Jews in Batanea for the pro-
tection of caravans of pilgrims coming from Babylonia to Jerusalem. Jos.,Ant. , –;
Vita, –.
. For visitors from Mesopotamia, see J. Jeremias,Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus(),
–, and for the cultural and personal relations of the two communities the successive
volumes by J. Neusner,A Historyof the Jews in BabyloniaI:TheParthianPeriod^2 (); II:The
Early Sasanian Period(); III:From Shapur I to Shapur II(); IV:The Age of Shapur II
(); V:Later Sasanian Times().