The Nature of the Jewish and Roman Relationship

There can be no doubt that the Roman occupation of Judea proved to be one of the unhappiest times for the Jews in all their history. The relationship between the Roman rulers and the Jewish inhabitants of the land was one of ruthless overlordship on the one hand, and bitter, simmering resentment on the other, representing a mutual contempt, distrust and inflexibility that frequently erupted into open clashes between the two irreconcilable forces. Such was the enmity between Roman and Jew that we are left to ponder the degree of antipathy towards the Jews that would make the Emperor Hadrian resolve, in the words of the historian Judd Teller, “to dispose of the Jews for all time” – a declaration with a familiar ring about it, for many despots, in the course of history, have contrived to settle the so-called Jewish problem.

There is a Scriptural explanation as to why this diabolical objective has never been accom­plished, for we read in the Mosaic record: “For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God, and the LORD hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto Himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth” (Deut. 14:2).

This Divine pronouncement was conveyed by Moses to the Israelites after he returned from Mount Sinai with the God-given commandments and Law. The unique status of the Jews in the sight of God is also emphasised by the prophet Amos, who wrote: “You only have I known of all the families of the earth . . .” (Amos 3:2).

The stiff-necked Jews

“And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people” (Ex. 32:9).

We gather from the concordance that the word “stiffnecked” derives from the Hebrew qasheh, which basically is said to mean ‘obstinate’ or ‘stubborn’, but can also be interpreted as ‘impudent’ and ‘hardhearted’. The prophet Isaiah wrote at a later date:

“Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass . . .” (48:4).

These are the words of the God of Israel conveyed by the prophet to a people inclined to behaviour incompatible with their calling as the people of God. While the traits of self-will, stubbornness and pride brought the Israelites punishments from their God, it could be suggested that these very characteristics were instrumental in the maintenance of their essential Jewishness and survival as a people during their dispersion among the nations after A.D. 70.

It will be recalled that Moses, in listing blessings for well-doing and cursings for disobedience, warned as to what would befall Israel:

“The LORD shall bring a nation against thee from far . . . as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand” (Deut. 28:49).

This is regarded as a reference to the Romans, who had the eagle emblazoned on their standards and spoke the unknown tongue of Latin.

Deuteronomy 28 also warns that the invading nation would “besiege thee in all thy gates”, and that “the LORD shall scatter thee among all people”, and “among these nations shalt thou find no ease . . . the LORD shall give thee there a trembling heart . . . thy life shall hang in doubt . .. thou .. . shalt have none assurance of thy life” (vv. 52,64-66). We know only too well how these distresses came upon the Jews in the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans, and also during their dispersion in many lands.

Devastation by Rome

The Assyrian invasion of the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 B.C., the attack by the Babylonians against the southern kingdom of Judah in 586 B.C., and the ensuing captivities, were calamitous for the people of God, and gave them great anguish of heart and mind. However, it was Roman overlordship which dealt the most devastating blow to the hopes and aspirations of the Jewish people, for there was a lengthy occupation of their land by the iron-fisted Romans, who were ever ready to stamp out with swift, brutal retaliation anything that looked like a protest from any of its subject peoples. The ultimate indignity thrust upon the Jewish people by their captors was when Titus directed that a statue of the Roman god Jupiter be placed upon the site where the Jewish temple had stood. The Roman oppression ignited bitter Jewish enmity, and their well-known nationalistic traits of obstinacy, pride and rebelliousness propelled them into open revolt against their Roman masters. Judd Teller wrote: “Even when the Temple collapsed on the ninth day of the Jewish month of Ab in 70, a date still annually commemorated in Jewry with fasting and prayer, Jewish resistance continued for several years from three Dead Sea fortresses, the last of which, Masada, was taken by the Romans only in 73”.’

Teller also makes the comment:

“Roman invasion of the Sudan was called off when the Judean uprising erupted. The Roman presence, albeit small in numbers, discouraged potential Judean allies and probably prevented Alex­andrian Jewry from decisive action, such as sabotaging the harbor and preventing the delivery of provisions to the Roman forces. This is the reason also that a Jewish people of seven million in the Roman Empire, and nearly two million of this number in the East, could only marshal 25,000 warriors to defend Jerusalem. Hostile Romanized cities located between Judea and other Jewish population centers cut off Jewish reinforcements and prevented co­ordinated Judean action. Above all, under Herod the Judeans had turned to quietism and, with the revolt erupting suddenly, they had no time for adequate training”²

Another revolt by the Jews occurred fifty years later, caused by the Emperor Trajan’s onslaught eastward against the Parthian Empire. This proved calamitous for the Romans because of the vigorous support for the Parthians provided by the Babylonian Jews, as Teller explains:

“The emperor pulled out of Parthia, but even his retreat was enveloped in catastrophe. Rebellion flared wherever there were Jewish communities. It spread to Cyprus and to Africa. It was an astonishing eruption by a stateless people. Rome’s leading commanders rushed to douse the conflagration. Had there been a Judean state, with a central military command, the Jews might have brought the empire down“.³

Rome’s characteristics

Chaim Potok makes this interesting comment concerning the state of the Roman republic about a century before the birth of Jesus Christ:

“By the end of the second century B.C.E. the Roman republic had been in existence about four hundred years. Its victories had gained it the awe, fear, and admiration of the world. Rome teemed with slaves, freedmen, unemployed peasants, aristocrats of noble blood, merchants of knightly rank, craftsmen, circuses, gladia­torial slaughter, practitioners of a thousand esoteric cults . . . criminals, astrologers, magicians, philosophers, diviners. At the same time, the city seethed with tension as plebeians and patricians, citizens and strangers, generals and senators vied for influence and power”.⁴

This description gives a good portrayal of the cosmopolitan nature of Rome, where debauchery and corruption were rife, and where intrigue and conspiracy posed a continual threat to those occupying the highest positions in Roman administration.

Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C., which saddened the Jews of Rome because of his benevolent attitude towards them during his reign. Octavian followed Caesar, and took on the name of Augustus, he in turn being succeeded by Tiberius, whom Potok describes as a

“re­served, passive, introverted man, somewhat too timid an emperor for a military autocracy like Rome”.⁵

Julius Caesar had desired peace and contentment for the subject peoples of the Roman Empire. How different it was in A.D. 38, writes Potok, when “a demented Caligula sat on the throne of Rome waiting to receive word that the giant statue of himself as Zeus had been erected and placed in the temple of the Jews in Jerusalem’ ,⁶ knowing full well just how much the Jewish population would be incensed by such an outrageous insult to them, and by the desecration of their most holy site!

The land of Judea had been in a ferment since the appearance of Coponius, the first procurator, in A.D. 6, who ordered that there be a census. The Jews feared that there would be higher taxation, and were also apprehensive of Divine punishment as a consequence of numbering the people, as happened under King David hundreds of years earlier. According to Potok, Pontius Pilate (the seventh procurator, who held office from A.D. 26 to A.D. 36) built up an evil reputation because of his vengeful disposition and the death sentences that he frequently meted out to those who were brought before him. Pilate, known for his Jew—baiting, directed that Roman  shields and standards be publicly displayed, and, according to Potok, “issued coins with pagan symbols, and treated Jews and Samaritans alike with utter contempt”. Of course, it is not surprising that his callous disregard for Jewish sensibilities incurred the deep enmity of the Jewish people, and led to his subsequent recall.

Grecian administration was, by contrast, generally benign in its treatment of subject peoples, showing a facility for reasoned argu­ment and conciliation. As a result Greek culture and the Greek language became widely accepted and admired in the Mediterranean world and beyond. A favourable assessment of Grecian rule is given by the historians Sarson and Phillips:

“After 301 B.C. Palestine was at peace, for, though wars were continually being waged between the powers, Seleucid armies never penetrated farther south than Damascus. The role of the Ptolemies was for the most part beneficial to the Jews. Alexander had suffered them to abide under their ancient laws, and had remitted the payment of tribute every Sabbatical year . . . Ptolemy I (322 B.C.) pursued a like liberal policy towards them”?

The clash with Rome

H. Breasted says:

“The Jews . . . were to be found in increasing numbers in all the larger cities. Strabo, the geographer, said of them, ‘this people has already made its way into every city, and it would be hard to find a place in the habitable world which has not admitted this race and been dominated by it’. The Roman world was becoming accustomed to their synagogues; but the Jews refused to acknowledge any god besides their own, and their exclusiveness brought them disfavor and trouble with the government”.⁸

The Jews at all times exhibited a detestation of emperor—deification, contrasting rather sharply with other subject peoples of the empire, most of whom complied willingly with Roman practices. The result was that Jews were under constant surveillance and marked out for swift Roman retribution upon the slightest pretext. Sarson and Phillips make the striking comment in regard to the Roman general Pompey that

“Pompey himself entered the Holy of Holies, and was awed to learn, through the absence of images, that the Jews worshipped an unseen God”.⁹

He failed to understand that the Jews were a unique, exclusive people, who could not be destroyed even by the most disciplined and ruthless military machine of those times. Moses comforted the Israelites in an age gone by with these words:

“for the LORD thy God is a merciful God . . . He will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers which He sware unto them” (Deut. 4:31).

The Romans were relentless in their provo­cation of the Jews, and nothing could have been calculated to incite the Jews more than the decree of the tyrannical and power—hungry Caligula that a statue of the Roman god Jupiter should be placed on the temple site in Jerusalem. This resulted in countrywide opposition from Jews enraged that their sacred beliefs had been set at naught in what had now become a familiar pattern of persecution and punishment. Caligula made many enemies by his heartless, heavy—handed methods, and met his end when assassinated by an officer of the palace guard. He was followed as emperor by Claudius, who allowed freedom of worship for the Jews in the empire, but in A.D. 41 prohibited the Jews in Rome from trying to make proselytes, and, because of a public disturbance by Jews in A.D. 49, expelled them from Rome, as we find confirmed in Acts 18:2. They were permitted to return at a later date.

The reign of King Agrippa I is considered by some historians to have been the last golden age of the Jews in antiquity. It is said that the Jews of Judea and also those of the dispersion regarded him with affection and trust because of his abiding interest in their welfare during his kingship, which lasted from A.D. 37 to A.D. 44. But the comparatively peaceful scenario soon changed when Claudius made Judea, Galilee and Peraea a Roman province and installed Caspius Fadus as procurator, with the result that there were disturbances and clashes between Jews and pagans in the Hellenistic cities of the province. Predictably, the Roman authorities showed bias in favour of the pagans, and the Jews found the unrelenting Roman prejudices and oppression unbearable.

Final days

It was at this time that Roman rule lost some of its grip in Judea, and there was a breakdown of law and order in the land. There were assassinations and public unrest, and the Jewish leaders warned their people against the anticipated brutal Roman clamp—down that would follow any active Jewish protest in public places. If the Jews showed a tendency to rebellion at different times it was because their Roman overlords had persisted in their policy of seeking to strip them of every vestige of personal dignity and national pride. The Senate in Rome expected its procurators in Judea to maintain law and order, and this was generally done with ruthless efficiency and zeal.

Antonius Felix was appointed procurator of Judea in A.D. 52, and was given adverse appraisal by the Roman historian Tacitus, who expressed the opinion that he practised “every barbarity and lust”, and that he “exercised the power of a king in the spirit of a slave”. Two years later the Emperor Claudius died and was succeeded by Nero, and violence erupted in Caesarea as Jews and pagans clashed in regard to the status of the city and the civil rights of Jews. The Jews maintained that it was a Jewish city, but the pagans were adamant that it was originally a pagan settlement known as Strato’s Tower. Not surprisingly, the Roman garrison took the part of the pagans. Felix ordered the Jews out of public places and, upon their refusal, directed his soldiers to repel the Jews, and a number of them were killed. Naturally, the Jews found the situation intolerable and the dis­turbances continued. In the words of Chaim Potok:

“the case was brought before Nero, who ruled against the Jews, relegating them to the position of second—class citizens. Jews seethed at the decision, gained as a result of Syrian influence in the court of Nero”.’°

The year A.D. 70 brought tragedy and great suffering to the Jewish people because it was the occasion when the Roman armies under Titus attacked and besieged Jerusalem, and, writes Potok, “the city was leveled house by house”. Masada, the elevated stronghold of Jewish resistance, finally fell in A.D. 73, having been *valiantly defended by something like a thousand men, women and children, who chose mass suicide rather than surrender to the Roman oppressors of their nation. The rebellion had been crushed and the tenth legion stood guard over the ruins of Jerusalem.

The Jewish state had come to a sad end. The Sanhedrin and high priesthood likewise were no more. The ruthless, inflexible Romans forbade the rebuilding of the temple, and, to add insult to injury as far as the Jews were concerned, compelled them to pay a temple tax for the new temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, an imposition that they bitterly resented.

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