298 A History of Judaism
evidence of the intensive epistolary contact between communities which
bound together scattered Christian groups from the very beginnings of
Christianity. But it is possible that rabbinic influence was spread in the
fourth and early fifth centuries through authority delegated by the
Roman state to the rabbinic patriarch in Palestine. As we noted in Chap-
ter 11, inscriptions from the synagogue of Stobi in Macedonia record in
(probably) the third century ce a threat by the donor of the buildings of
an enormous fine to be paid to the patriarch by anyone who infringed
the financial arrangements stipulated for the donation:
The year 311[?], Claudius Tiberius Polycharmos, also named Acyrios,
father of the synagogue at Stobi, having lived my whole life according to
Judaism, have, in fulfilment of a vow, [given] the buildings to the holy
place, and the triclinium, together with the tetrastoon, with my own
means, without in the least touching the sacred [funds]. But the ownership
and disposition of all the upper chambers shall be retained by me, Claudius
Tiberius Polycharmos, and my heirs for life. Whoever seeks in any way to
alter any of these dispositions of mine shall pay the Patriarch 250,000
denarii.If this patriarch is to be identified with the nasi in Palestine, as is prob-
able, it constitutes the earliest evidence for the extension of the
patriarch’s power into the Mediterranean diaspora.^14
We saw in Chapter 11 that by the late fourth century the Christian
Roman state was treating the Palestinian patriarch as responsible for
the appointment of religious leaders for communities of Jews through-
out the empire. On 3 February 398 the patriarchs were given the right,
like Christian clerics within their own communities, to decide civil cases
between Jews and to have those decisions upheld by the state. At the
peak of its influence, in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, the
office of the patriarch brought with it high Roman rank and protection
of dignity by the state – ‘if anyone shall dare to make in public an insult-
ing mention of the illustrious patriarchs, he shall be subjected to a
vindicatory sentence’ − and the right to raise taxes from Jews in all the
empire. But by 415 the patriarch Gamaliel had fallen into disfavour
because (so the emperor Theodosius alleged) he ‘supposed that he could
transgress the law with impunity all the more because he was elevated
to the pinnacle of dignities’. A law of 30 May 429 confiscated to the
imperial treasury the taxes which had previously come to the ‘primates’
of the Jews in Palestine and other provinces, referring to the ‘ending of
the patriarchs’ and their custom in earlier times of exacting such taxes