120 CHAPTER THREEto an account of patriarchal and rabbinic history—it is inadequate. Archaeo-
logical remains impose the most important qualifications on this account.
Here I will briefly note that patriarchal wealth (enormous as it was) and influ-
ence (enormous as it is said to have been) left no material tracesin Palestine,
not even as a single synagogue dedication.^55 (This is interestingly not the case
in the Diaspora.) Furthermore, though patriarchal and rabbinic authority may
have increased between 150 and 350, patriarchs and rabbis always remained
in important ways marginal, so that there is much about Palestinian society
that this change does not tell us.
Indeed, the written remains themselves offer clear indications of the con-
straints on rabbinic and patriarchal influence. In the third century rabbinic
and patriarchal authority were unquestionably limited. The rabbis and patri-
archs had become more aggressive—a policy that apparently yielded real re-
sults. Yet the Palestinian Talmud itself, interested though it is in playing up
rabbinic authority, never describes the rabbis as possessing jurisdiction in the
technical sense.^56 No one was compelled to accept rabbinic judgment. The
rabbis could threaten, plead, and cajole but could not subpoena or impose a
sentence.^57 Only the Roman governor and his agents had such authority. An
eastern law of 398 quoted in Theodosian Code 2.1.10 (Linder, no. 28)—
posted when the patriarchs and theirprimateswere at the height of their
power, in conditions far more amenable than those of the third century to
rabbinic judges—is of interest for what it fails to authorize. Theprimatesare
granted authority only over religious law; for all other purposes the Jews are
obliged to attend regular courts (of course the state cannot, and does not
attempt to, control the use ofarbitri ex compromisso, i.e., informal arbitrators,
and yields to them what it cannot deny, a certain de facto authority).^58 From
(^55) Thelamprotatoi patriarchaiof Lifshitz,Donateurs et fondateurs, no. 76 (Hamat Tiberias)
are mentioned only as masters/patrons of a donor.
(^56) My position is only a small step beyond the conclusion reached a century ago by H. P.
Chajes, “Les juges juifs en Palestine de l’an 70 al’an 500,”REJ39 (1899): 39–52: “il n’existait pas de tribuneaux au ve ́ritable sense du mot, fonctionnant d’une maniere permanente. Nous
trouvons surtout des juges isole ́s, ayant des pouvoirs plus ou moins e ́tendus, mais exerc ̧ant leur
action dans un domaine restreint, avec l’autorisation ou, du moins, la tole ́rance des autorite ́s” (p.
52). G. Alon’s subsequent “disproof” (“Those Appointed for Money,” pp. 382–36), is based en-
tirely on rabbinic passages that are exegetical, prescriptive, or found only in the Babylonian Tal-
mud. See also J. Me ́le`ze-Modrzejewski, apud D. Sperber,A Dictionary of Greek and Latin Legal
Terms in Rabbinic Literature(Jerusalem: Bar Ilan University Press, 1984), pp. 213–14. See also
J. Neusner,Judaism in Society: The Evidence of the Yerushalmi(Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1983), for the material collected rather than Neusner’s comments.
(^57) See, e.g., Y. Moed Qatan 3:1, 81d; the only means of compulsion Rabbi Joshua ben Levi
has is the threat of excommunication, which he refuses to use on principle; Y. Nedarim 9:4, 41c,
Rav resorts to a curse to punish a man who refused to appear before him. Though Rav was
Babylonian, the story is set in Palestine.
(^58) The following remarkable passage from the early seventh century (?)Ma’asim Livnei Eretz
Yisrael(apparently extrapolating from a halakhah like that attributed to R. Aqiva in B. Bava Qama