RABBIS AND PATRIARCHS ON THE MARGINS 119from curial duties.^52 It would be naive to suppose that wealthy Jews failed
without exception to take either of the first two options, which would have
required their conversion to Christianity. The christianization of the cities, to
be discussed below, may have been to some extent an internal development
produced by systemic pressures, rather than a purely foreign implantation;
and a difficult Sepphorite inscription apparently commemorating a gift to a
synagogue by aclarissimus(i.e., senatorial)comescalled Gelasios, a descen-
dant of archisynagogues, may provide an example of the third.^53 But for the
remainder of thecuriales, the progressive marginalization of their class in the
third and fourth centuries may have forced more and more of them to seek
the protection of the patriarch, further tilting the balance of the patriarchal
clientele away from the rabbis. We may further speculate that this provides a
partial explanation for the abolition of the patriarchate in the 420s. With the
Christianization of the cities and the newly enhanced dependence of the
northern Palestinian Jewish elites on the patriarch, he now for the first time
in history had a power base that made him an open rival of the local govern-
ment and the church.
TheLimitsofPatriarchalandRabbinicAuthorityThis narrative is, as I suggested, unobjectionable and, with some quibbling
over details, would probably be accepted by many specialists in the field,
though I have intentionally made it rather more minimalist than is usual and
have toned down the institutional history elements of the standard account,
which I find uncongenial for reasons to be discussed below.^54 Nevertheless, as
an account of the history of Jewish Palestine from 100 to 400C.E.—as opposed
(^52) On the decline of the curial classes, see the classic account inLRE1.737–57, wit ht he
important qualifications of M. Whittow, “Ruling the Late Roman and Early Byzantine City: A
Continuous History,”Past and Present129 (1990): 3–29.
(^53) CIJ2.991 = Lifshitz,Donateurs et fondateurs, no. 74, dated by Schwabe to the first half of
the fifth century.
(^54) A minimalist approac his not unprecedented. It was already adumbrated by Ronald Syme,
“Ipse Ille Patriarcha,”Emperors and Biography(Oxford: Clarendon, 1971), pp. 17–29. S. J. D.
Cohen extended Syme’s claims, arguing strongly that the explosion of interest in the patriarchate
in legal and Christian and pagan literary sources in the later fourth century indicates a sudden
expansion of patriarchal power, especially in the Diaspora; his assumption that patriarchal power
was well established in Palestine earlier requires examination: see “Pagan and Christian Evi-
dence,” pp. 170–75. See also M. Goodman, “The Roman State and the Jewish Patriarch in the
Third Century,” inGalilee, pp. 127–39. A minimalist approach to patriarchal authority in dias-
pora communities is implicit also in T. Rajak and D. Noy, “Archisynagogoi: Office, Title, and
Social Status in the Greco-Jewish Synagogue,”JRS83 (1993): 75–93; see also Strobel, “Ju ̈disches
Patriarchat.” I find it not unsurprising that a maximalist approach, in the tradition of Alon, still
finds new adherents (and/or people outside Israel willing to publish their work): e.g., E. Habas
[Rubin], “Rabban Gamaliel of Yavneh and His Sons: The Patriarchate before and after the Bar
Kokhva Revolt,”JJS50 (1999): 21ff.