9
From Pagan Rome to Islam and
Medieval ChristendomThe capture of Jerusalem in 70 ce changed irrevocably the relations
between the Roman state and the Jews. Whether or not the Temple had
been destroyed on purpose, once it had happened the new imperial dyn-
asty headed by Vespasian treated its destruction as a boon to the
imperial peace. In the triumph through the streets of Rome in 71 ce in
which the appurtenances of the Temple were carried in procession, at
the culmination was a copy of the Jewish law. Jews were no longer to be
allowed by Rome to worship with sacrifices and offerings in Jerusalem.
All Jews in the empire were required instead to pay to the imperial
treasury a special tax, originally designated for the rebuilding of the
temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in Rome. Of the ancient privileges they
had once enjoyed for the celebration of their ancestral religion, Jews
could now boast only the scant comfort of a negative right to decline
participation in religious rites directed to other gods.^1
Josephus, writing in the aftermath of destruction, seems to have
believed that the real meaning of the dream of Nebuchadnezzar revealed
centuries earlier by the prophet Daniel about the eventual destruction of
successive empires of gold, silver, bronze and iron by a great stone was
that Roman power too would come to an end in time through the inter-
vention of the God of the Jews, but despite Jewish hopes for retribution
on the ‘wicked kingdom’, it was to be many years before this part of the
divine plan was fulfilled. Imperial Rome flourished, expanding its fron-
tiers in the second century not least in the Near East. There were
setbacks on the northern and eastern frontiers in the third century, but
the state emerged intact and prosperous in the early fourth, only to
undergo a remarkable transformation, with the conversion of Constan-
tine to faith in Christ and the gradual Christianization of wider Roman
society, particularly from the end of the century. As Roman power in the
north of Europe and the western Mediterranean crumbled under assault
from Germanic invasions during the fifth century, the successor states