Diaspora Jews in the Greco-Roman world practiced not only infant (male) circum-
cision, but also circumcision of adult male converts and of their (non-Jewish) male
slaves serving Jewish households. To be a non-Jewish slave in a Greco-Roman Diaspora
Jewish household seems to have presumed a process of conversion (see Linder 1987),
since upon manumission former slaves joined the local Jewish community as free
members and pledged to support the synagogue of their former owners (van der
Horst 1999: 22, 33–34; see Frey 1936 –52 [1975]: I. nos. 683, 690).
Whether Roman Jews supplemented biblical life-cycle rites with others is less clear.
We do not know whether specific rituals marked boys or girls achieving the age of
majority; nor is it clear whether biblical-related rites were complemented by pagan
ones such as celebrations of birthdays or rites of attaining physical maturity, which
for non-Jewish Roman youth was marked by the donning of the toga virilisaround
their sixteenth birthday. However, it is difficult to imagine that Roman Jews did not
adopt many rites of their host society, when such rites did not run afoul of specific
Judaic prohibitions. Since many male Jewish figures in frescos of the Dura-Europos
synagogue (third century ce) are clearly depicted togate (see Goodenough
1952– 65: illustrations throughout vol. 11), indicating that some strata of Greco-
Roman Diaspora Jewish society wore togas on at least some occasions, one suspects
that some rite existed in Jewish circles too marking the first donning of the toga
virilis.Biblical dietary prescriptions
That Greco-Roman Jews respected biblical prohibitions regarding eating certain species
of animals – most notably, abstaining from eating pork and refraining from eating
food which had been dedicated to a pagan god – is widely and clearly attested in
the body of evidence. Pagan critics of Greco-Roman Diaspora Jews ridicule Jews spurn-
ing pork (e.g. Juvenal 14.96 –106; cf. Tac. Hist.5.5.1; Plut. Quaestiones conviviales
4.4.4 – 6.2; see M. Stern 1974 – 84: I. no. 258). And Paul and Peter must deal with
the question of whether, as some early Christians maintained, Gentile Christians,
like Jews, must refrain from eating species and meats deemed unfit or unclean by
biblical Judaism (Acts 10. 9–16, 11. 3–10, 15. 19–20). Furthermore, among the
privileges afforded the Greco-Roman Diaspora Jews in Roman edicts Josephus
proffers in Antiquities 14as genuine is the instruction to a city council to ensure
that food which Jews may consume is available in the city marketplace.
Sabbath and biblical calendar of festivals
Biblical literature preserves several festival lists in Exodus (34. 16 –26), Leviticus
(23), Numbers (28, 29), and Deuteronony (16). Biblical Judaism conflated these lists,
to which it added the Feast of Esther and Hannukah. Evidence for Greco-Roman
Diaspora Judaism’s calendar of festivals clearly reflects the conflated list promulgated
by biblical Judaism. Early rabbinic literature (e.g. Tractate Rosh Hashannah in Mishnah,
Tosefta, and Bavli) enjoin that legates from the Land of Israel, operating under
the authority of the rabbinic-Patriarchal courts (shaliah bet-din), travel throughout
the Diaspora setting the calendar and its festivals on the basis of astronomicalRoman Diaspora Judaism 363