Jews and Non-Jews in Ancient Cities: Alexandria, Antioch, Caesarea, Rome

Abstract

The investigation of hostility towards Jews in antiquity remains limited in scope by the nature and quantity of the sources. Research has focused most of all on the opinions expressed by ancient Greek and Latin authors in various periods. There is much material here that has been interpreted along different lines by numerous scholars. The disadvantage is that such information is restricted to opinions expressed by upper-class authors. We cannot know what people in pubs in Rome or Antioch were saying about minorities in general and Jews in particular. It is true that a different type of information is conveyed by policy and measures of the authorities with regard to Jews. However, this has the same disadvantage, for it shows what upper-class rulers and administrators did, rather than what they thought. The present paper will focus on a specific phenomenon that is instructive in a somewhat different manner. Several major urban centers had a substantial Jewish population in the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods. There was a good deal of tension between Jews and other groups in cities, tension that at times led to minor or major outbursts of violence as reported by various authors. These also describe measures taken by the local and imperial authorities on those occasions. This paper will offer a brief survey of such events in an attempt to show that we may gain an extra perspective on the position of the Jews in the ancient world. The topic, in other words, is the interaction between authorities and urban population in times of stress between Jews and non-Jews in cities.