The Christian Church and the Jews of the Diaspora observance was illegal. It does embody an intended, and very significant,
limitation on the public roles open to Jews, and by its nature expresses an
unquestioning hostility. But the Emperor’s position remains that of formal
maintenance of the law, and is in no way an example of overt persecution,
or of forced conversion.
This brief survey of relevant imperial pronouncements relating to the
Greek East, often discussed,^15 is intended to do two things: to illustrate Chris-
tian attitudes, as expressed by emperors, whose pronouncements could not
by their nature be divorced in tone and context from those of contemporary
bishops. If anything, however, for all his proclaimed Christian piety, Theo-
dosius’ position was that of attempting to restrain Christian hostility to Jews
(but also Jewish hostility to Christians). What needs to be stressed again is
that, like late Roman ‘‘legislation’’ in general, these pronouncements, in the
form of letters to senior office-holders, are visibly the results of continually
conflicting and changing pressures. None of the pronouncements concerned
happens to identify a region or locality more precise than the two major
Prefectures of Illyricum and Oriens into which the eastern empire was di-
vided (as many other such pronouncements in fact did). But equally there
is no specific reason to think of any of them as relating to the three prov-
inces into which Palaestina was now divided. In a general way, they evoke a
conception, which other evidence shows to be valid, of uneasy co-existence
between Jews and Christians, occasionally breaking out into either ritualised
expressions of hostility or actual violence. As it happens, newly published, or
newly re-examined, documentary and archaeological material, when taken
together with other long-known evidence, some of which could profitably
also be re-examined, gives a very powerful impression both of the number
of Jewish communities attested in the cities of the Greek East, of the appar-
ently flourishing state of their communal organisation, and, in some cases, of
their capacity to attract ‘‘God-fearers’’ (theosebeis) or (in one case) full converts
(prosēlytoi). The number of late Roman Greek cities which have been subject
to systematic excavation and analysis is small, so it is striking that at least four
of those which have—Sardis, Aphrodisias, Apamea in Syria, and Gerasa—
provide very clear evidence of a Jewish presence in the heart of the city.
Above all, however, we ought to be conscious, in looking at this evidence, of
the vast gulf which separates the situation which obtained in the first three
centuries, when both Jewish and Christian communities were minority ele-
. See, e.g., B. S. Bachrach, ‘‘The Jewish Community of the Later Roman Empire as
Seen in theCodex Theodosianus,’’ in J. Neusner and E. S. Frerichs, eds.,‘‘To See Ourselves as
Others See Us’’: Christians, Jews and ‘‘Others’’ in Late Antiquity(), .