56 CHAPTER TWOaddition to the documents, several reports of Josephus concerning the first
centuryC.E. indicate that the Roman authorities could be expected to punish
violators of the Torah.
Thus,it wouldnot bean exaggerationtosay thatthe Torahwas theconstitu-
tion of the Jews of Palestine. Its authority rested not simply, and initially per-
haps not at all, on the consensus of the Jews, but on the might of the imperial
andnativerulersofPalestine.Furthermore,thefinalauthoritiesovertheinter-
pretation of the Torah were the high priest and his entourage (cf.Ant14.192–
95);thehigh priestwashimselftechnicallyanimperial appointee,evenbefore
the period when the Roman emperor’s agentactuallyappointed him,^19 and
the priesthood as a group had special interpretive authority granted it by the
Torah itself and confirmed by the government. Therefore, the location, physi-
cal and metaphorical, of this authoritative interpretation was the temple of
Jerusalem.^20
Obviously, imperial sponsorship is not the full explanation for the signifi-
cance—practical or symbolic—of the temple and the Torah. In the 500 or so
years preceding its abrogation in 70C.E., there was only one case in which
Judaeans publicly challenged the constitutional status of the Torah—during
the reforms instituted by the high priests Jason and Menelaus in the 170s
B.C.E. The proconstitution reaction led by the Hasmonean family may not
have been the mass national uprising imagined by Victor Tcherikover, among
others. But its long- term success does indicate that even as early as the 160s
and 150sB.C.E., some Judaeans enthusiastically supported the Torah and
many others were at least willing to comply with its restoration. Thus, for
reasons presumably lost in the obscurity of the Iron Age, or in the almost
completely blank centuries of Achaemenid and Ptolemaic rule, the Judaeans
themselves colluded in maintaining the constitutional status of the Torah.
Nevertheless, I emphasize imperial sponsorship because its importance is in-
dubitable andit isthe only factorthat iseven partlyrecoverable. Furthermore,
in the mildly sentimentalizing atmosphere that often pervades the study of
Look,”BA42 (1979): 91–92; P. Grelot, “Sur le papyrus pascal d’e ́lephantine,” in A. Caquot and
M. Delcor, eds.,Melanges Bibliques et Orientaux en l’Honneur de M. Henri Cazelles(Neuk-
irchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener-Verlag, 1981), pp. 163–72; cf. Grabbe,Judaism, 1.54–55. Contra
Grabbe, it is not clear whether the papyrus prescribes the introduction of the festival or merely
authorizes its observance. In any case, the papyrus does not suggest that the emperor tried to
impose the laws of the Torah consistently at Elephantine; or, if he did, he failed miserably, for
the Judahites continued to worship many gods and intermarry with Egyptians and non-Judahite
colonists, see Smith,Palestinian Parties, p., 209 n. 101.
(^19) See Bickerman,God of the Maccabees, pp. 37–38; D. Goodblatt,The Monarchic Principle:
Studies in Jewish Self-Government in Antiquity(Tu ̈bingen: Mohr, 1994), pp. 6–21.
(^20) Note also the rabbinic texts which indicate that the authoritative recensions of the Penta-
teuch were housed in the Temple; see S. Lieberman,Hellenism in Jewish Palestine(Ne wYork:
Jewish Theological Seminary, 1950), pp. 20–27.