RELIGION AND SOCIETY BEFORE 70C.E 95believed they numbered 1,500 (AgAp1.88). Josephus claimed that in his day,
presumably before the revolt, there were 20,000 priests. This number is obvi-
ously an approximation, arrived at by the impossible assumption that each of
the four priestly “tribes” (whatever precisely these were) had precisely the
same number of members.^120 It may also include only officiating priests, that
is, adult males, which would raise the total number to around 60,000, which
is flirting with absurdity. Nevertheless, Josephus’s number at least suggests that
in the first century the priests were very numerous, and it would be fair to
assume that they lived disproportionately, though not exclusively, in the vicin-
ity of Jerusalem. Both of these suppositions, in addition to Josephus’s priestly
chauvinism, would explain their disproportionate importance in Josephus’s
account of the history of Judaea in the first century, as well as their substantial
overlap with the sectarians—including the Pharisees—for which Josephus’s
worksagainprovideevidence,andtheirprominenceamongtheearlyrabbis.^121
Priests or not, many of the well-to-do are also likely to have been idle, since
the ne wconditions probably enriched many more people than the temple
and city administrations, about which very little is known, could supply with
honorable sinecures. Josephus, who by his own report had very little, except
for some dabbling with the sects, to keep him busy before the outbreak of the
revolt in 66, when he was twenty-nine years old, may not have been atypical
of his class.
These conditions, combined with the unwillingness or inability of the Her-
odian rulers and Roman prefects and procurators to impose religious unifor-
mity, favored the growth of the sects. Here I follow Baumgarten, who argued
(to abbreviate drastically) that in ancient Judaea sectarianism was in part a
response to sudden economic growth, as it was in England in the seventeenth
century. However, Baumgarten was mistaken to date this economic spurt to
the second centuryB.C.E., when there is no evidence for it and no reason in
the absence of evidence to think it might have happened. Though Goodman
did not say as much, the conditions he describes were peculiar to the last
century of the Second Temple period, for reasons that are not difficult to
reconstruct. Herod rebuilt Jerusalem in the wake of the Hasmonean expan-
sion, which had greatly increased the size of the Jewish population of Pales-
tine, and of the establishment of the Roman Principate, which had eased
travel and enabled pilgrimage from the Diaspora on a large scale.^122 As a result
of these developments, Judaea’s economy and society became abnormal.
(^120) Schu ̈rer-Vermes 2: 247 suggest that Josephus’s “four tribes” is a scribal error for “twenty-
four.” This would explain the otherwise enigmatic tribes by identifying them with themishmarot
but would render the number nonsensical—which is not a compelling argument against the
correction.
(^121) Josephus, pp. 200–205; Hezser,Social Structure, pp. 70–71.
(^122) For further discussion, see S. Schwartz, “King Herod: Friend of the Jews.”