Early Judaism- A Comprehensive Overview

situation. When Marcus Agrippa heard about the offenses against the

rights of the Jews of Ionia, he immediately ruled in their favor (Ant.16.58-

61). When the Jews of Asia and Cyrenaica again experienced discrimina-

tion and the confiscation of the money they had raised for the Temple tax,

they complained directly to Augustus, who ruled in their favor (Ant.

16.160-65). Although these incidents testify to periodic tension between

Jews and non-Jews, in general Diaspora Jews were tolerated by their pagan

neighbors.

The Diaspora community about which we know the most is Alexan-

dria. The Jewish community of this city had thrived under the later

Ptolemies because of direct royal patronage. During this period, the Jews

enjoyed a civil status almost equal to that of their Greek neighbors. How-

ever, the situation changed with the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty. When

Augustus took control of the country, he demoted them to a status equiva-

lent to that of the native Egyptians because it was consistent with his pol-

icy of entrusting the government and political power to the Greeks of the

eastern Mediterranean. Such relegation was extremely irksome to many

Alexandrian Jews, who felt themselves to be fully immersed within the

wider Greco-Roman culture, despite maintaining their distinct Jewish

identity. The history of Alexandrian Jewry during the Roman period is

marked by a consistent drive to remove the ignominious burden of the

laographia(poll tax) and achieveisopoliteia(political autonomy).

The troubles of the Alexandrian Jews reached a dangerous level in 38

c.e., when the newly appointed King Herod Agrippa I visited Alexandria

on his way to Judea. His presence in the city stirred up an unruly mob of

non-Jews, who publicly insulted him by parading a local madman into the

arena and using him to parody Agrippa. Then the mob started calling for

graven images to be placed within the synagogues of the city. As a result,

the mob attacked and desecrated the synagogues and eventually started at-

tacking the Jews themselves, shutting them off into one section of the city

and causing hundreds of casualties. Homes were ransacked and businesses

were destroyed (Philo,Flacc.25–85, 95–96). In hisEmbassy to Gaius,Philo

again describes the anti-Jewish riots of 38, but in this text he blames the vi-

olence on Emperor Gaius and the anti-Jewish Alexandrians rather than on

the Alexandrians and Flaccus.

Once peace had been restored to the city, both sides sent embassies to

Gaius in order to exonerate themselves of blame for the riots and to seek

an imperial edict codifying the position of the Jews within the city. Ac-

cording to Philo, the emperor was stirred against the Jews by a small group

61

Jewish History from Alexander to Hadrian

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