The Jews of the Graeco-Roman Diaspora found at Salerno in Italy,^68 or the Latin inscription from Emerita (Mérida)
in Spain mentioningRebbi Se[nior]andRebbi Ja[cob], which is probably medi-
eval.^69 From Volubilis in Mauretania Tingitana, where a Greek inscription
of the third century confirms that there was a ‘‘synagōgēof theIoudeoi,’’aHe-
brew inscription which may be of the fourth century reveals a daughter of
a Rabbi, MṬRWN’ BT RBY YHWDH NḤ.^70 Few as they are, these inscrip-
tions are invaluable, because they are firmly located in space, if less so in time.
Through them, as through the inscription of from Catania (text to n.
and following above), the late Roman diaspora does speak. They tend to con-
firm the importance there too of the study of the Law, the gradual revival
of Hebrew, and the coming into currency of the termrabbi—or ratherrebbi,
now treated as a Latin word which can be declined and given a genitive (reb-
bitis) and a plural (rebbites). But there our strictly Jewish evidence, so far as I
can determine, stops. New evidence may one day enable the diaspora of the
late Roman world to speak for itself. But so far it does not.
The Christians and Judaism
If we want to know more of the late Roman diaspora, we have no choice
but to see it through Christian eyes, with all the problems that that entails.
The first problem in fact is whether or to what extent Christian writings
allow us to see the actual contemporary diaspora at all, as opposed to that
Judaism which Christians took as being revealed to them by the Bible. For
the claims of Christianity to the inheritance of the Old Testament, to the
right to see the fundamental message of the Old Testament as having been
the foretelling of Christ, to the assertion that Christ had indeed been the
Messiah foretold, and to the status of being the ‘‘true Israel’’^71 all meant that
Judaism was integral to Christian writing. If we look for Jews and Judaism
in the overwhelming mass of the Christian writing of the period, in Greek
and Latin, we shall find too much. If Jewish writing (all from the Holy Land)
paid little overt attention to Christianity (though rather more to problematic
features of paganism as it affected normal life), while pagan writers, Julian
excepted, paid almost no attention to Judaism, Christian writers amply make
up for the averted gaze of their neighbours by the centrality of Judaism for
. Frey (n. ), no. Noy (n. ), no. .
. Frey (n. ), no. a; see Noy (n. ), no. , dating it to the eighth to ninth century.
. Y. Le Bohec, ‘‘Inscriptions juives et judaïsantes de l’Afrique romaine,’’AntiquitésAfri-
caines (): , nos. –.
. TheVerus Israelof the fundamental work of Simon (n. ).