Finally, as we shall discuss at length below, Jews across Italy, Greece-Macedonia,
Asia Minor, the northern Levant, and Roman Africa seem to have formallyorgan-
ized their lives together as a community in much the same fashion (M. Williams
1998; see also Rutgers 1998: 171–98). They did so in service of what appears to
be much the same ends, and they required and received from non-Jewish authorit-
ies much the same social, cultural, and legal “space” to so organize their lives together.
Writing at the close of the first century ce, Josephus argues this point extensively
throughout Antiquities 14by reproducing (or forging – it matters little for our
purposes) edicts from Roman authorities at the end of the republic and beginning
of the imperial period. He thereby intends to help assure that this “space” will con-
tinue to be there. Sanders (1999: 2) summarizes the list of rights and privileges which,
according to Antiquities 14(cf. Antiquities 16), were granted Roman Diaspora Jews
by Roman edicts. Moreover, he documents the number of times each right or
privilege is mentioned. These include the right: to gather and have a place, that is,
a synagogue, in which to do so (five times); to observe the Sabbath, including dis-
pensations from Roman and or civic service to do so (five times); to have appropri-
ate (“ancestral”) food, including shops offering meat not only from “clean” species
and appropriately slaughtered, but also from animals that do not come from the
pagan-temple-based cattle market (three times); to administer themselves, that is,
to have their own councils and to be subject to their decisions (twice); and, lastly,
to levy taxes for communal use and services, as well as to send to the Land of Israel
(twice) (Smallwood 2001: 133 – 43; Suet. Caesar42.3; Jos. Antiquitates Iudaicae
14.213–16, 241– 6, 256 – 64; see also 14.235, 16.27–57, 162–5, 172f.; Philo,
Legatio158.)
In sum, there is ample reason for seeing Greco-Roman Diaspora Jews and
Judaism as a relatively coherent and consistent social construct with respect to
social and communal organization, culture, and religion, inevitable local variation
notwithstanding (see Kippenberg 1995). And it is upon this larger general common
construct that this chapter focuses.Drawing the general from the particularAs has just been intimated, there is an attendant methodological difficulty in our
proposed examination. Such an exercise will involve trying to draw general conclu-
sions about a broad spectrum of communities. How much local distinctiveness must
there be to invalidate generalizations? To what extent does a general description mask
idiomatic local constructs? There are no cookbook answers to these questions. How
one proceeds is a matter of scholarly taste and judgment. And the exercise is made
more difficult by the fact that our evidence is episodic, diverse, and grossly incom-
plete. If one had nearly comprehensive evidence for Jews and Judaism from each
of a significant array of the Greco-Roman Diaspora communities, generalizations
would be better founded, even while local distinctiveness would stand out in sharp
relief. But such is not the state of the evidence for any of these communities, indeed,
is hardly ever the case in the study of peoples and societies of antiquity or late
antiquity.
348 Jack N. Lightstone