Читать онлайн "Jews and Greeks in ancient Cyrene" - Эпплбаум Шимон - RuLit

The Cyrene lamp is the Jewish response to this iconic propaganda, hence it may be supposed that it too represented a group of symbols emphasizing — as against the unity of the pagan worship concentrated about the Roman victory — the unity of Judaism about the One God.[1279] It is clear from the angle of the menorah-figure and from its relation to the object by it, that it was not one of a pair of candlesticks flanking a central figure, as often seen in a later period on Jewish lamps, frescos, sculptures, glassware and mosaics. It apparently occupied a central position over other symbols. It may be conjectured that these symbols were ranged round one central object, and if this was a symbol of God, it could only have taken the form of the Temple or the Ark of the Covenant. It is probable enough that the other symbols were of the type appearing on later Jewish lamps and more especially on the “Gold Glass” bowls[1280] which have been found chiefly at Rome and Cologne. These are the lulab, etrog, and incense shovel, the cruse of oil and the other vessels of the Temple service. On the other hand the menorah figure seems to have been emphasized, despite its relative smallness.

The Cyrene lamp, then, may be interpreted as interesting evidence of the “cold war” between pagan worship and Judaism in the period preceding the revolt against Trajan in the years 115-117. This hypothesis finds some support in the distribution of a decorated Jewish lamp-type bearing the menorah symbol in the Hebron — Beth-Govrin — Gaza area of Judaea.[1281] Typologically these lamps are Herodian, but are known to have lasted down to the time of the Second Revolt (132-135), while the widespread use of the menorah as a decorative symbol does not generally precede the year 70 (above). It is probably significant, therefore, that the distribution of these lamps coincides with one of the focal areas of the Second Revolt. The Cyrene lamp shows, moreover, that the struggle was being conducted in the urban centres of Cyrenaica, and that the preparation for the violent outbreak which took place in Trajan’s reign, if it was based on the countryside and on the fringes of the desert, was not restricted to it.

CHAPTER SIX

THE CYRENEAN REBELLION AND THE ZEALOT MOVEMENT

The destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70 did little to alter the basic status of Judaism in the Roman Empire, for this was determined not by a general legislative act but by the policy of the Emperors and the laws of the Greek cities of the eastern Mediterranean.[1282] If a written political treaty had previously existed between the Roman Senate and the Jewish nation in Judaea, this now ceased to be valid,[1283] and we must assume that the Jews of Judaea now became dediticii, meaning, a conquered people without internal autonomous rights or external representation. But one grave discriminatory measure was imposed upon the Jews in all provinces of the Empire, namely, the diversion of the half-sheqel contribution till then paid to the Temple of Jerusalem, to a Fiscus ludaicus to be devoted to the cult of Jupiter Capitolinus. An additional contribution (ἀπάρχη) was also imposed upon them.[1284] In the words of Baron,[1285] “for the first time, the Jews of the whole empire became a special source of revenue. Here was born the idea of the Jew as a specific tax-payer, to play so important a role in later fiscal history.”

The struggle between Jews and gentiles had indeed been growing steadily during the ist century of the common era. The resistance of the Greek cities to Jewish influence had begun as early as in the middle of the 2nd century B.C. with the collision between Antiochus IV and the Hasmoneans, while in Egypt there grew up contemporarily an anti-Semitic propaganda literature and a Jewish literature of counter-propaganda.[1286] This continued antagonism found expression in the attempt of the hellenic cities to abolish the autonomous rights of their Jewish communities, whose confirmation was demanded and implemented by Rome (thus in Ephesus, Alexandria, Tralles, Laodicea, Miletus and Cyrene itself)[1287] Closely associated with this conflict was the continual refusal of the Greek towns to admit a status of equality between their own urban organizations and the Jewish politeumata existent in their midst. The prevailing Jewish attitude seems to have been to demand recognition of such equality, whereas the Greeks desired to impose the supremacy of their city government upon all Jews and other non-citizens resident within the city’s territory.

This struggle however did not persist with equal intensity in every place. We have no record of it in Asia Minor after the beginning of the ist century of the present era.[1288] Yet it is clear from events at the time of the outbreak of the Jewish revolt of 66, that hatred for the Jews burned strongly among most of the Greek populations of the Syrian cities, and no less among the Greeks of Alexandria by Egypt.[1289]

The Greeks justified their attitude by pointing to the nonparticipation of Jews in their cults, to their missionary activity, to their self-seclusion from gentile society and (in Alexandria) to their attacks upon the city’s gymnasia. Greek hatred found expression, more particularly in Alexandria, in fierce and bloody inter-communal collisions such as occurred in the reign of Gaius, Claudius and Nero. Some scholars have further found as a cause of Greek hatred for the Jews in Egypt the factor of economic competition, and it has been stated that the Egyptian grain trade and transport branch were the monopoly of Roman and Jewish groups in the imperial period.[1290] This alleged factor, added to the Roman government’s defence of Jewish rights, it has been claimed, diverted against the Jews the hatred which the Greeks and Egyptians feared to express openly against the imperial rulers. I do not think however, that there is sufficient evidence of the real part played by the Jews of Egypt in the country’s trade in this period, to enable a decision on this question to be made,[1291] but the study of the so-called Acts of the Pagan Martyrs[1292] shows that there is a measure of truth in the idea of a “transference” of hatred, since the Acts frequently exhibit a desire to discredit the Roman administration by claiming it to be the ally of the Jews, also to discredit the Jews by pointing to their connections with the administration. The Jews indeed, like every minority, were interested in stable government, hence their leadership inclined to support, first the Ptolemies, later the Roman regime.

These factors, notwithstanding, were superficial, compared with one basic characteristic deeply inherent in Judaism, namely, the close identity between the Jew’s religious consciousness and his ethnic-national awareness. The decline of the religion of the city-state in the hellenistic period had caused a growing separation between the Greek community’s religion and the religion of the individual. The taboos bound up with the purity and destiny of the city, which had imposed certain cultic rites upon the community and certain restrictions upon the behaviour of its citizens, retreated before rationalism and the growth of larger political entities. The cults of the rulers of the hellenistic states and their successors, the emperors, were mere political instruments (albeit successful ones), and religious experience was relegated to the sphere of the individual, who now sought an answer to his spiritual needs in the philosophical schools or in the collective experience of the mystery cults. The attention of the individual turned to problems of personal moral behaviour, while the masses sought satisfaction and an outlet for their emotions in new symbologies. Throughout the Empire no single major group existed to advocate a conscious ethical code operable both in individual life and equally in politics — with the exception of the Jews. Some cultured and conscientious Roman officials believed, doubtless, in Rome’s civilizing mission and in the Stoic doctrine which saw in them the servants of humanity, but the character of their task and their class derivation restricted the realization of their outlook.[1293] Only from Trajan’s day were emperors chosen who were faithful to such conceptions and strove to carry them out. Yet it was precisely the first two of these, Trajan and Hadrian, in whose reigns the most violent conflicts between Rome and the Jews occurred. The Greek Cynic agitator might seek, indeed, to fan the spark of liberty among the populace of the eastern Mediterranean,[1294] but the disappearance of the Greek polis as a political factor robbed it of its moral content and uprooted the social tradition capable of serving as the basis of a community wishing to realize its teaching. It was, in fact, Cynic influence that appears to have contributed in Alexandria to anti-Semitic violence.