In the time of Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi (“Rabbi”), there was a revolution in the relationships between the authorities and the Jews in Palestine. This revolution was linked with the special personality of Rabbi and his way of leadership, as well as the succession of the Severan dynasty to the imperial throne, and Roman policy in the provinces in general in the time of the Severans. After the Severans came the imperial crisis, which left its mark especially on the eastern provinces, which were subjected to such a heavy economic burden that many Jews emigrated to Babylonia, the home of the largest Jewish diaspora community outside the borders of the Roman empire.

The chapter argues against an influential thesis according to which Jews and Judaea were treated with extraordinary harshness in the wake of the Great Rebellion, due to the new Flavian dynasty’s political needs. It is argued that Vespasian enjoyed considerable legitimacy at the beginning of his reign; he did not need to base his legitimacy on a continuous ‘war against the Jews’; nothing he did needs to be explained by attributing this motivation to him. The harshness of the treatment endured by the defeated Jews was, fundamentally, “normal’ imperial harshness.

The reasons for the long stability and the centuries-long, uncontested Roman rule over the entire Mediterranean basin and bordering territories are a perennial topic of discussion. In that respect, the willingness of Rome to grant citizenship to former subjects is an essential chapter to be written in this history. Yet it is less often asked to what extent the induction of individuals from the subject states and peoples into the Roman Senate contributed to that stability. The positive and negative consequences of this phenomenon are discussed in this chapter.

This chapter addresses what appears to be a puzzling paradox. The Romans enjoyed a reputation for broad-mindedness in matters of religion. Their empire contained a multitude of diverse peoples with varied and sometimes outlandish rites, beliefs, and gods. Far from suppressing such practices, the Romans even imported alien cults and made them part of their own extended system of honoring divine powers. Acceptance and embrace of a wide range of modes of worship characterized Roman image and practice. Could this liberal attitude toward religious pluralism extend even to the Jews, notorious as an exclusivist monotheistic sect? The evidence, on the face of it, suggests hostility among Roman intellectuals toward Jewish separatism and offers disturbing examples of official actions against practitioners of the religion itself. How does one account for this apparent exception to general Roman policy? This chapter questions many of the assumptions behind this ostensible paradox. It argues that Jews were not as separatist as often thought, that their diaspora communities in the empire were acknowledged and supported by Roman authority, that official actions against the religion were decidedly exceptional and not at all characteristic, and that abusive comments by Roman intellectuals were no more meaningful than those expressed about numerous other cults that flourished in the empire.

The chapter addresses the question of the definition of a Jewish collectivity as it was formed in Hellenistic and Roman times by Jews. Having a single Hebrew term to designate themselves, Bney Israel (“the sons of Israel”), Jews had to do without concepts such as ethnos, genos, laos, dēmos, populus, natio, polis, and civitas when referring to themselves as a collective group. The chapter examines the notions that Jews used in order to refer to themselves as an entity, and shows that the definition of Judaism by Jews was modeled in view of different concepts of other entities that were predominant in the Greco-Roman world and was influenced by the tension between political, geo-ethnic, historical, juridical and civic definitions. Each type of collective definition served a different realpolitik and was conditioned by different political circumstances, which determined the way in which Jews demarcated themselves as a group. The chapter aims to reveal the evolution that the definition of Judaism underwent in a period of great changes and focuses in particular on the transition between the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

It is a great privilege to dedicate a chapter in honour of Prof. Benjamin Isaac, whose contribution to the studies of the Roman Army and Aelia Capitolina are well known. In recent years, as a result of archeological excavations in Jerusalem in which I was involved, and research discussing the main streets of Aelia Capitolina (under the supervision of Professor Yoram Tsafrir), I met and had long conversations and correspondence with Professor Benjamin Isaac. I would like to thank Professor Isaac for sharing his wide knowledge with me and answering my questions with detailed explanations. His opinion regarding several issues raised in our meetings contributed a lot to my views concerning the development of the Roman colony of Aelia Capitolina, near the camp of legio X Fretensis.