FOUR

JEWS OR PAGANS? THE JEWS AND THE

GRECO-ROMAN CITIES OF PALESTINE

I

F THE RABBIS and their Torah were marginal, and the constitutional
role of the Torah was now assumed by the Roman government, where did
that leave the apparently still numerous part of post–Bar Kokhba revolt
Palestiniansociety that remained Jewish,however tenuously?A partial descrip-
tion of high imperial Jewish Palestine can be made because the evidence is
fairly abundant. What this description teaches us—that in important and sur-
prisingrespectsJewishPalestinewasindistinguishablefromother eastern prov-
inces—raises profound questions about the character of Jewish identity in an-
tiquity, and about the survival of local ethnic identities under the basically
unifor msurface of high i mperial urban culture. My main contention will be
that the core ideology of Judaism, discussed in the first part of this book, was
preservedinprofoundlyalteredbutstillrecognizableformmainlybytherabbis
but had a weak hold, if any, on the rest of the Jews. Yet the Jews, or some of
them, must have retained some consciousness of being separate from their
Greco-Syrianneighborsortheycouldnothavebeguntoreemergeinthefourth
century as a clearly defined, Torah- and synagogue-centered ethnic/religious
group in northern Palestine. Their neighbors may have contributed to this
sense of separation: in the middle of the second century pagan Scythopolis
(Beth Shean) adopted the suggestively overdetermined title “Nysa, also called
Scythopolis,theHolyandInviolate,OneoftheHellenicCitiesofKoileSyria.”
TheScythopolitanshadgoodreasonsfortheirculturalanxieties—thepresence
of large Jewish and Samaritan communities in their city, and the importance
of people of Jewish (and Samaritan?) origin among the city’s “Greeks,” for
example. But presumably they were also trying to distinguish themselves from
their Jewish, and perhaps Arab, neighbors.^1 What the separate consciousness
of the high imperial Palestinian Jews consisted of remains to be discussed.

(^1) For the title, see G. Foerster and Y. Tsafrir, “Nysa-Scythopolis: A New Inscription and the
Title of the City on its Coins,”INJ9 (1986–1987):53–58. The suggestion that the Scythopolitans
wereworried about the Jewish and Samaritancommunities withinthe city is theirs. For pagansof
Jewish origin, the evidence is two altar bases of the second centuryC.E., one inscribed, “To Good
Fortune. Abselamos son of Zedokomos (or Zelokomos) the builder dedicated (this),” and the
other, “To Good Fortune. Theogene daughter of Tobias dedicated this to Zeus Akraios.” Absel-
amos is probably but not certainly Jewish (or Samaritan), Tobias seems certain. SeeSEG 28
(1978):1446(but alsoJ. andL. Robert,BullEp, 1964,no. 516);and Y.Tsafrir, “FurtherEvidence
oftheCultofZeusAkraiosatBethShean(Scythopolis),”IEJ39(1989):76–77.Forrecentexcava-
tions at Scythopolis, see the special issue ofQadmoniot27 (1994). On the “Arab” or “Semitic”