Early Judaism- A Comprehensive Overview

for his behavior, exiled, and then put to death (Flacc.109–15, 121–26, 147–51,

169–70, 181, 185–91).

When the next emperor took power, the need to settle the Alexandrian

question on a more stable base was urgent, and this time we are fortunate

enough to have a reliable document. Preserved in a Greek papyrus (CPJ

2:153), it is a letter written by Emperor Claudius to the Alexandrians show-

ing that the situation was far less complimentary to the Jews than Josephus

would like us to believe. Again, an apathetic attitude emerges: Claudius

states right away that he does not wish “to make an exact inquiry” into

what transpired and limits himself to ordering the two parties “to keep

peace”: “I adjure the Alexandrians to behave gently and kindly towards the

Jews who have inhabited the same city for many years...[and]...toallow

them to keep their own ways.” The Jews, on the other hand, are ordered not

to aim at more than they have previously had “since they enjoy what is

their own, and in a city which is not their own they possess an abundance

of all good things” (CPJ2:53). This statement is amazing. The claim of Al-

exandrian Greeks that the Jews were strangers in Alexandria, which had

been accepted by the prefect Flaccus some years before, is now endorsed

for the first time by a Roman emperor.

Obviously, Claudius’s policy did nothing to solve the underlying con-

flict. Two generations later, when a violent clash took place in Alexandria

in the theater of the city, the Roman prefect, Tiberius Julius Alexander, a

nephew of Philo and a renegade Jew who had made a brilliant carrier in

Roman administration, seems to have crushed the disturbance with ruth-

less cruelty (J.W.2.487-97).

When public order was menaced, the Roman response was typically

immediate and harsh. This happened also when the Jews took up arms

during the reign of Trajan in 116 to 117. The Roman prefect, Rutilius Lupus,

seems to have participated in the engagements, and Trajan took serious

measures to suppress Jewish disorder by sending his best generals: Gaius

Valerius to Cyprus, with a detachment of soldiers on a military expedition

(ILS3:9491), and Marcius Turbo to Egypt, with land and sea forces includ-

ing cavalry. Turbo “waged war vigorously...inmanybattles for a consid-

erable time and killed many thousands of Jews, not only those of Cyrene

but also those of Egypt” (Eusebius,Hist. Eccl.4.2.3-4). In Libya, during the

war against the Jews, a Romanpraefectus castrorummentioned by

Artemidoros Daldianus (Oneirocriticon4.24) was killed. In Egypt, a victo-

rious battle against the Jews took place in the vicinity of Memphis (CPJ

2:439), and the Roman historian Appian states that in his day Trajan “ex-

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miriam pucci ben zeev

EERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
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