136 CHAPTER FOURted that the high imperial Palestinian cities were participants in a religious
cultureofenduringvitalityifperhapseverchangingcharacter.^17 Thesefactors,
I would argue, require us to regard the use of pagan objects and decoration
by Jews, mainly before 350, and the incorporation of pagan iconography in
synagogues,mainlyafter350,asdistinctphenomena.Clearly,useofidentical
items of pagan imagery would have had a very different meaning in syna-
gogues in the fifth and sixth centuries, and in town squares, public baths,
private houses, theaters, and temples in the second and third. Finally, the
recognition that between 70 and 350, at earliest, the rabbis were marginal
figures, suggests that whatever else we do we should certainly avoid Avi-Yo-
nah’s (unconsciously?) rabbinizing approach to the material. As we shall see,
the rabbis’ dismissal of much of the pagan material as “meaningless” was part
of their attempt to cope with life in the Palestinian cities. There is no reason
to suppose that their views were shared by many of their compatriots.
The Evidence
COINS^18Like some 500 other cities in the high imperial Roman East, Tiberias, Sep-
phoris,andLyddaissuedbronzecoins.Thesecoinsservedforsmall-scaleday-
to-day transactions within the city. Since the value of bronze city coins was
whollyfiduciary(unrelated tothemarketvalueofthe metal)andtheminting
authority was the city and not the provincial or imperial governments, the
coinstendednottocirculateinaregularwayeveninareasadjacenttothecity.
The coins were also an important expression of local patriotism, indisputable
evidence of the city’s autonomy (though of course a city could not officially
mint without the emperor’s approval), and one of the main media for the
expressionoftheclassinterestsofthemunicipalleadership—thecitycouncil-
lors, great landlords, and so on. It was they who chose and commissioned the
design of the coins and they who initiated the minting. This factor makes
separate treatment of the coins convenient.
(^17) E.g., MacMullen,Paganism in the Roman Empire, pp. 62–94; R. Lane Fox,Pagans and
Christians(London: Penguin, 1986); North, “Development of Religious Pluralism”, J. Lieu, J.
North,andT.Rajak,eds.,TheJewsamongPagansandChristiansintheRomanEmpire(London:
Routledge, 1992), pp. 174–93; and, most cogently, Frankfurter,Religion in Roman Egypt;M.
Beard, J. North, and S. Price,Religionsof Rome,vol.1,AHistory(Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1998), passim.
(^18) The basic corpus is M. Rosenberger,The Rosenberger Israel Collection, 3 vols. (Jerusalem:
n.p., 1972–1977) (vols. 2–3 entitledCity-CoinsofPalestine); some discussion and additional ma-
terialinY.Meshorer,CityCoinsofEretzIsraelandtheDecapolisintheRomanPeriod(Jerusalem:
Israel Museum, 1985); for updating, see A. Kindler and A. Stein,A Bibliography of the City
Coinage of Palestine from the Second Century BC to the Third Century AD, BAR International
Series 374 (Oxford: BAR, 1987), with further information in the journalNumismaticLiterature.