ENEMIES OF ROME 65resistance. In the nature of the evidence such mild opposition can usually
only be surmised rather than documented. Surviving artefacts from defeated
provinces most commonly reveal conformity to Roman values: Latin or
Greek inscriptions set up in the sort of urban setting approved by Rome,
recording the successful operation of local magistrates controlling the
provincials as the empire required. But beneath this façade a different culture
fl ourished in some provinces. The emergence in the third century of a Syriac
literature in Northern Mesopotamia and Coptic writings in Egypt owes
much to the infl uence of burgeoning Christianity, and to some extent may
represent the voice of the less privileged classes, which had little share in
Greco-Roman civilization even in areas where the elite was thoroughly
assimilated. But the elite as well as the poor adopted Syriac in some cities,
such as Edessa, and in Gaul it was the patronage of potters by rich
landowners that revived Celtic art forms in the same period. The simplest
explanation of the evidence is that such provincials, even in the
early Principate, retained strong loyalty to their local traditions, but that it
was only in the third century and later that such loyalty was publicly
advertised.^23
Such passive resistance to Rome did not in all cases involve sentiments of
hostility, although a text like the Potter’s Oracle reveals that it might do so.
In the well- documented case of the Jews a variety of attitudes may be traced.
Nearly all the main pillars of Judaean society were destroyed in AD 70.
Jerusalem, the Temple and the priesthood were in ruins. Jews hoped
enthusiastically for the rebuilding of the sanctuary, but with decreasing
optimism: Josephus in the nineties still wrote about the Jerusalem cult as the
fi rst element in his summary of Jewish worship (c. Ap. 2.193–8), but by the
time of the compilation of the Mishnah in the early third century AD
discussion of the nature of the restored cult may have become theoretical.
The failure of two more rebellions in AD 118 and 135 encouraged in due
course a search for new strategies, religious as well as political. Immediately
after 70 the author of 4 Ezra took refuge in hope of divine vengeance on the
wicked enemy. More constructively, the rabbis, as scholarly interpreters of
the law, were in time to evolve new forms of personal piety that might act as
a partial substitute for the Temple ritual.^24
Despite the voluminous remnants of rabbinic teaching, it is not entirely
easy to establish the main religious concerns of the rabbis: the laws discussed
in the Mishnah are wide- ranging, covering the rules governing festivals and
the sabbath, and the tithing of foodstuffs and preservation of their unpolluted
state, in addition to the regulation of the Temple cult and a mass of criminal
and civil law. But in general individual sanctity, through which the pious
could atone for misdeeds and request divine aid, seems to lie in the
preparation of kosher meals and the preservation of the greatest possible
purity in family life. It cannot be assumed that rabbinic Judaism became
normative anywhere immediately after 70 – the views of the rabbis may
have been in a minority even in Palestine down to the fourth century – but