110 CHAPTER THREEthe surgical restoration of the foreskin, were recircumcised in the days of Bar
Kokhba; the most plausible explanation is that their epispasm was to enable
full and unembarrassing participation in pagan municipal life, and that their
subsequent recircumcision was forcible.^16 For still others, the mere fact of
dislocation—the destruction of native villages, the violent deaths of family
members, resettlement in coastal Greek cities or Galilean or Golanite towns
and villages—must have eroded adherence to a way of life that no longer
seemed validated by common sense.^17 Were these among the ancestors of the
pagan and Christian villagers of Palestine mentioned by writers of the fourth
century and later, and so prominent in the archaeological record? Or perhaps
rather (or also) of the Jewish villagers of the Palestinian Talmud and the dis-
tinctively Jewis hpart of late antique Palestinian arc haeology?
For many, or even most, Palestinian Jews, especially those outside Judaea
proper, the revolts had caused less drastic disruptions.^18 Here the main
changes, aside from an influx of Judaeans of unknown extent, were produced
by the collapse of the central institutions—no more pilgrimages, no enforced
deference to representatives of the Temple and Torah, no obligatory gifts to
the priests. Whatever formal constitutional authority the Torah and its inter-
preters had had was now abrogated; authority resided almost exclusively in
the Roman government and its representatives.
Rabbis an dPatriarchs after 135
There is serious disagreement among Jewish historians concerning the effects
of the Destruction and the Bar Kokhba revolt on the Jewish leadership. For
some, there was no significant discontinuity: the Pharisees had exercised the
predominant influence on Jewis hreligious life before 70, and t heir spiritual
descendants, the rabbis, continued to do so afterward. For others, the Pharisees
were an insignificant sectarian organization that disappeared in the late first
century, and the rabbis and patriarchs who gradually became the leaders of
the Jews had an undeniable but complex relationship with their predecessors.
(^16) I adopt the interpretation proposed by G. Alon,The Jews in Their Land, p. 587, and followed
by Peter Scha ̈fer, “The Causes of the Bar Kokhba Revolt,” in J. Petuchowski and E. Fleischer,
eds.,Studies in Aggadah, Targum and Jewish Liturgy in Memory of Joseph Heinemann(Jerusalem:
Magnes 1981), 74–94, esp. 90–94. Also, Scha ̈fer,Der Bar Kochba-Aufstand(Tu ̈bingen: Mohr,
1981), pp. 45–50. Other explanations—e.g., Graetz’s view (apud Alon,Jews in their Land,p.66
n. 35) that they were trying to avoid having to pay the tax of twodenarii per annumto thefiscus
Judaicusimposed on Jews after 70—are unconvincing.
(^17) My usage here is informed by C. Geertz, “Common Sense as a Cultural System,”Local
Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology(New York: Basic, 1983), pp. 73–93.
(^18) W. Eck, “The Bar Kokhba Revolt: The Roman Point of View,”JRS89 (1999): 76–89, has
now argued that the revolt spread outside Judaea, but the evidence is poor; at any rate, Galilee
was certainly less damaged than Judaea by its failure.