66 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
gradually a new sort of Judaism with its own strengths developed from the
ashes of defeat.^25
In the diaspora, where the rabbinic writ is even less likely to have run,
adaptation to defeat in those regions not directly involved in the revolt
under Trajan was even more swift. The synagogue, whose primary function
was as the setting for regular recitation of the law enshrined in the Pentateuch,
already acted as a locus of sanctity for those too far from Jerusalem for
frequent worship at the Temple. The distinctive Jewish notion that their Law
was holy even to the extent that the scrolls in which it was written were
sacred objects made religious survival after the collapse of the cult more
possible. It is even possible that political defeat was seen by some as a
de- nationalization of their religion. From now on it became easier to see all
those who took the requirements of the Law upon themselves as Jews
because no national citizenship was involved, only membership of a local
Jewish community. This attitude was encouraged by the Roman imposition
of a tax, the fi scus Iudaicus , on all Jews; at the beginning, under Vespasian,
this seems to have been understood as an ethnic designation, but after
Domitian evoked hostility by taxing apostate Jews, Nerva seems to have
changed the defi nition to refer to those practising Jewish customs, thereby
incidentally including proselytes.^26 It is possible that the four proselytes
and fi fty-three ‘god fearers’ recorded on a synagogue inscription from
Aphrodisias, dated probably to the fourth century, refl ect a new Jewish
attitude of positive enthusiasm for gentile converts and adherents; certainly
the evolution by rabbis during the second and third centuries of a theoretical
defi nition of a good gentile (the seven Noachide laws by which all gentiles
are expected to live) suggests a new interest in the moral welfare of the non-
Jewish as well as the Jewish world.^27 At any rate, continuing prohibitions of
circumcision (under pagan emperors) and of conversion (under Christians)
suggest that political defeat did not diminish, and may even have enhanced,
the attraction of Judaism as a religion.^28
In all this it did not matter much what Jews thought of Rome as a state.
Rabbinic references to Rome are overwhelmingly bitter and hostile: Rome
is identifi ed with the hereditary enemy Edom. Of only exceptional emperors
is anything favourable reported, such as the sympathetic ‘Antoninus’,
variously identifi ed with one or other Antonine or Severan ruler. Attitudes in
the diaspora may have been different – a passage in the fi fth Sibylline book,
probably composed by a Jew, eulogises Hadrian, for example – but no
literary evidence survives to confi rm or deny.^29 But even in Palestine
ideological hatred seems to have coexisted with practical amity. It is not
clear whether any rabbinic leader acquired formal recognition from
Rome before the late fourth century, but Origen in the mid third reveals that
the Jewish ethnarch had, in effect, regal power among Jews with the
connivance of the emperor, to the extent that he could put people to death
under Jewish law without any interference by the Roman governor ( Ep. ad
Africanum 14).