190 CHAPTER SIXTertullian describes what is probably the Jewish tax as the fine Jews are com-
pelled to pay for their observance of the Jewish laws (Apol18.9). This may
not be meant entirely literally but may nevertheless reflect a common under-
standing of the relationship between those Jews who insisted on maintaining
their separateness and the state: they were, barely, tolerated, and taxed.^29
Other information on the status of the Jews in the high empire comes from
much later legal sources. Two of the leading jurists of the early third century,
Ulpian and Modestinus, preserved, respectively, fragments of a constitution
and a rescript concerning the Jews, both extant in the Digest. According to
Modestinus, Antoninus Pius had permitted the Jews to circumcise their sons,
but not others (Digest 48.8.11; Linder, no. 1), while Ulpian wrote that Severus
and Caracalla had “permitted those who follow the Jewishsuperstitioto ac-
quire honors [i.e., serve as decurions], but also imposed on them such obliga-
tions [i.e.,munera publica, liturgies] as do not harm theirsuperstitio.”^30
The comments of Bardesanes and Tertullian may be taken to mean that
the Jews were generally left to their own devices after 135, while the two legal
fragments indicate that the Jews retained some of their traditional exemptions,
at least in theory. For we must wonder why, if the state’s intervention to pre-
serve Jewish privileges was anything other than sporadic and ad hoc, there are
so few laws (and no stories to speak of) about the conflicts between these
privileges and the Jews’ civic obligations—in sharp contrast to the situation
in the first century. To be sure, our information is very incomplete. But why
has rabbinic and Christian literature so little to report? Perhaps because the
Jews’ traditional privileges were in fact widely recognized and thus rarely gen-
erated conflict and new legislation.^31 But it would be very surprising if city
councils throughout the eastern part of the empire suddenly acquiesced in a
legal situation so disadvantageous to them—in that the Jews’ traditional privi-
leges had exempted them from many civic duties—after having resisted it for
centuries previously.^32 Perhaps, rather, in many places the Jews themselves
were disinclined to press their privileges, that is, they were willing to perform
this rule, but the evidence is all from the late republic and the first century of the empire. See
also J. Rives,Religion and Authority in Roman Carthage from Augustus to Constantine(Oxford:
Clarendon, 1995), pp. 234–49.
(^29) Though a literal interpretation is not impossible—see E. M. Smallwood,The Jews under
Roman Rule(Leiden: Brill, 1981), p. 345; cf. Origen,Epistula ad Africanum28a (PG 11, col.
81).
(^30) See commentary of Linder for interpretation;superstitiomay be value-neutral, something
like “religion.”
(^31) So F. Blanchetie`re, “Le statut des juifs sous la dynastie constantinienne,” in E. Fre ́zouls,
ed.,Crise et redressement dans les provinces europe ́ennes de l’empire(Strasbourg: AECR, 1983),
p. 128; Rabello, “Legal Condition,” pp. 686–90, argues that the silence of the sources is acciden-
tal and even that such lost legal collections of the third century as the “Codex Gregorianus” and
the “Codex Hermogenianus” had separate chapters on the Jews.
(^32) See Garnsey, “Religious Toleration,” 11.