108 A History of Judaism
and presented cumulatively in retrospect, as in Josephus’ narrative, they
may appear to reflect a society on the edge of breakdown. But this per-
spective, informed by hindsight after Jerusalem had been destroyed, is
highly misleading. Jews had lived peacefully for many years in many
parts of the Roman world, and diaspora communities in Asia Minor,
Syria, Egypt and indeed Rome itself had long been permitted by the
Roman state to observe their own customs, such as the Sabbath, on the
grounds of their venerable antiquity. Diaspora Jews were allowed to
send offerings to the Jerusalem Temple, and Herodian kings intervened
on behalf of Jews in Asia Minor and Alexandria when their relations
with local gentiles became difficult. The Romans recognized the whole
Jewish world as a single community of Jews, as (according to Josephus)
the emperor Claudius noted in an edict specifically extending the privi-
leges of the Jews in Alexandria to all the Jews ‘throughout the empire
under the Romans’. When the Jerusalem Temple came under threat
from Gaius Caligula (see above), the Alexandrian Jew Philo abandoned
the mission of his embassy on behalf of the Alexandrian Jews in order
to devote himself to trying to prevent the desecration of the national
shrine.^32
Judaea itself was only lightly governed, with a small number of aux-
iliary troops and a quite junior governor who was not of senatorial
rank, and it seems unlikely that the province was viewed by the Romans
as potentially dangerous. Remarkable among the unique privileges per-
mitted to the Jews were the pilgrimage festivals held three times a year
in Jerusalem (see Chapter 3), at which enormous numbers gathered in a
fashion not permitted elsewhere in the Roman world. The Roman gov-
ernor stationed a second cohort in Jerusalem at the time of the festivals
to help with the management of the crowds, and it was evidently known
that these mass gatherings could be a time for trouble, but, as transpired
in 66 ce, a few thousand troops were of little use when faced by a
densely packed mass of people in the narrow streets of the city. If the
50s and 60s ce were really a time of growing tension in the province,
the Roman state was impressively sanguine in its response and made no
attempt to increase its military presence. It would be quite wrong to
imagine first- century ce Judaea as an occupied country with a Roman
soldier on every street corner. For most Jews, most of the time, Roman
rule was more or less invisible.^33
Josephus claimed specifically that four years before the outbreak of war,
the city was in a state of ‘peace and prosperity’. A prophecy of doom