Recognizing and Cataloguing Reasons for the Devaluation of others and their Re-imaging

People do not persist toward death to defend dogma. They die to expose tyranny and injustice to demonstrate to those who matter most that they will protect them with their lives. The only way to “die for Jesus” is to die for the security of the beloved communion, to ensure that they are not violated or betrayed, and to provide courage to the unbelieving. When there is a betrayal, a statement is made that there is something more precious than faithfulness and relationship. Various parties in a family or society may at times injure its own members but it does not oblige the end of their solidarity, unless one or some members decide that the journey they share is no longer worth the costs involved––the hard work of practicing humility and

exercising forgiveness.102 It may be true that both or all parties have played a

causative role in the distress but the one who wins dominance over the other is responsible for clearing the path for a reunion.

Doctrinal standardization was not the lone force that drove Gentile- and Christian- Christian apart. This thesis does not hypothesize as much. However, there is a connection between the formation of orthodoxy and the disunion. These actuality

101

Hoornaert, The Memory of the Christian People, 247-264

102 _{In John 15 Jesus teaches his disciples to “abide in me.” The discourse culminates in his vision for their life} together, in vv. 12-13, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”

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Christian histories tend to overlook and Jewish histories cannot ignore. In any divorce, any breakup, a plethora of causes may be called, “the reason.” There may be numerous contributing factors and it will be helpful to specify seven of the Jew- Christian issues here. The last one is the one upon which I am focusing.

I. The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem

The loss of the Temple brought radical changes to Jewish religious practice, first in Judea and to a lesser extent, in the Diaspora. One might imagine that it marked the end of Temple-centric Christianity, at least for Gentile Christians who held such affections and some Judeo-Christians. Not all responded alike but they remembered the words of Jesus. “So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place…then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” Matthew 24.15-30

The psychological eminence that Jewish Christians held among Christians in general would slowly begin to decline. Many Judeans who escaped death or enslavement fled to Mesopotamia, Parthia, Egypt, and other places where the groundwork would be laid. Consequently, the church would be exposed to an even wider variety of cultures. However, many Jews, empty-handed, stayed home. The difference between the Jews and Judaea-Christians is that the latter had a ready theological and eschatological framework in place. On the other hand, Simon calls these events the “victory of Pharisaism.” He credits them for Palestine’s quick adaptation to their new post-Temple conditions, for they had already organized their religious life

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around the synagogue.103 Having less political cache than the Sadducees and more

moderation than the Zealots, they would begin to define the kinds of Judaisms that the world we begin to know. Not long but perhaps centuries before the aftermath of the Jewish-Roman War eventuated in anything that could be called a “Victory of Pharisaism.” The role of the Pharisees in creating the catastrophe must be reckoned. The Jewish people were audience to the teaching of the rabbis and Zealots who were anxious to discredit the rulers of the Temple. They helped to foment apocalyptic ambitions that were unrealistic from the beginning. It would happen again sixty years later, to see that there was no miracle, no divine strategy to vindicate them in battle. The credibility quotient of the teachers was in question. Their position before the Bar Kochba Revolt reveals sharpened political sensibilities; they were leaving dreams of governmental power behind, as evidenced by the putative late 1st-century council of Yavneh.

That loss of credibility would also slacken the bonds between Jews and Christians. Each of their modes of proselytization would speak much to their relative degrees of success. Rabbinic Judaism would work at making candidates into Jews, whereas Christians would offer a new memory, independent, or less dependent on ancient history and the nuances of a single society. The new Judaism, trying to leave Sadducean Hellenophilia in its wake, labored to Jewishness attractive to the world. Even though the Pharisees found certain elements of Hellenism appealing, they averred to convince their people of their faithfulness to Israel’s law and prophets. Their defeat at Roman hands rendered them, however, powerless to acquire the credibility to sell to the world their history as the precursor to a desirable future. They were devastated, but not annihilated.

103

Marcel Simon, Versus Israel: A Study of the Relations Between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire AD

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Since the end of the Temple did not affect the legal status of Jews, Simon notes that for those in the Diaspora there was something of an advantage with the loss of the Temple. No longer would they be viewed as second-class members of their

community as non-residents of the Land, unable to keep the whole law.104 Socially,

Jews continued to stand in important places, as indicated by Berenice and Agrippa II in the imperial court, along with Josephus. In the rabbis’ minds, their martyrs to who in reality could be described as taking on a folly rather than a mission were paying for the price for Jewish hopes.105

The church, on the other hand, as it drifted from its Jewish identity drew increased

attention as a new entity, externa superstitio, and thus, hostility, diverting trouble

from Jews. Romans delineated religions as legitimate or foreign. Cities defined and protected their national identity by their gods. It is true that Cicero had long before declared:

…Neither new gods nor strange gods, unless publicly acknowledged, are to be worshiped privately — let the temples which our fathers have constructed in the cities, be upheld — let the people maintain the groves in the country, and the abodes of the Lares — let men preserve the customs of their fathers and of their family — let the gods who have been accounted celestial be worshiped, and those likewise who have merited celestial honors by their illustrious actions, such as Hercules, Bacchus, Aesculapius, Castor, Pollux, and Quirinus.106

104 _{Ibid. 39}

105 _{Akiva ben Joseph and Hananiah ben Teradyon are seen as the most famous martyred rabbis.}

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Notwithstanding, Christians would see in the Roman threat the same thing that Jews before them had. They summoned stamina, as did Daniel and so many other heroes who went before them.

Then they came near and said before the king, concerning the injunction, “O king! Did you not sign an injunction, that anyone who makes petition to any god or man within thirty days except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions?” The king answered and said, “The thing stands fast, according to the

law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be revoked.”107

A season of respite transpired for Jews, while the trouble for Christians was merely starting. Jewish Christians had experienced extreme pressure in some places, as evidenced by the Epistle to the Hebrews, written before the fall of the Temple. Hebrews exhorts believers to endure suffering with joy but most of the troubles to date came, not from Rome, but from their Jewish brethren. A notable exception was what Nero did in 64 CE, in the words of Tacitus, to scuttle speculation that he was responsible for the great fire of Rome.

Therefore, to suppress the rumor, Nero substituted as culprits, and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices, which the crowd styled Christians. Christus, the founder of their name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus. The deadly superstition was checked for a time only to break out again, not only in Judaea, the source of the evil, but even in the capital itself….

First self-acknowledged Christians were arrested. Then, on their evidence, a large number were found guilty…. Their deaths were made an object of

107 _{Daniel 6.12}

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mockery. Covered with the skins of wild beasts, they were torn in pieces by dogs or fastened on crosses, and, when daylight failed, they were set alight to serve as torches by night.108

Therefore, persecution of Christians had theretofore been a Jewish or popular phenomenon, not a thing with which government powers wasted much time. Pontius Pilate tried his best to avoid involvement in the uproar over Jesus. The injustice brought upon Christians by Nero was evidence that they were distinguishable from Jews. As generations passed, the differences became more noticeable, especially after the Destruction of the Temple and the Bar Kochba catastrophe. Nero was successful in carrying out his campaign against Roman Christians because of his exploitation of preexisting questions and derision among the people. Nero’s campaign would have not been effective had Christians been able to maintain their

cover behind Jews who had religio licita status. Furthermore, it was easier to

expedite the cause to Christians because they were poor. This impoverished area is

where the fire started. The Roman poet Juvenal wrote, “Now, the grove with its

sacred spring and the shrine are rented to Jews, whose worldly goods are no more than a basket and some hay. The wood has become the haunt of beggars.”109

When Vespasian entered Rome in 69 CE, he knew that the Judean War was costly, but the plunder was great. Still, the treasury he found in Eternal City was wanting.

After the Temple’s destruction, he established a tax on Jews, the fiscus Judaicus.

108 _{Tacitus, Annals, 15.44.27-9} 109 _{Juvenal, Satires 3.12-16} 110

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His heir, Domitian would seek to multiply the tax base to those who “appeared to live a Jewish lifestyle,” which would of course, mean Christians, who eschewed participation in the imperial and traditional cults. Brian Jones is troubled that this is a Christian invention inasmuch as no ancient pagan source make mention of

Domitian’s attacks against Christians110 There is an important response to that

misgiving.

During the reign of this emperor the distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish Christians appears to have been a very important factor. In this respect it is not surprising that the word ‘Christian’ is not found in the short account of Suetonius about the fiscus Judaicus. Apart from the fact that not only Christians were prosecuted (but, e.g., also apostate Jews), it was found that Jewish Christians were prosecuted as Jewish tax evaders and non-Jewish Christians could be convicted and even executed as ‘atheists’ on a charge of ‘living a

Jewish life improfessi’. The punishment that both categories shared was the

confiscation of their property in case of a conviction.111

If Jewish Christians failed to pay the fiscus Judaicus, they could be prosecuted for

non-payment as any other Jews. Non-Jewish Christians, however, were not liable for the tax but could be charged with the more serious crime of atheism. Consequently, we see the unease this could cause between Christians, Jews and Gentile. Each helped to self-define in different ways. The most important bond between Christians and Jews was the presence of Christian Jews in both communities.

111

M. Heemstra, “How Rome’s administration of the Fiscus Judaicus accelerated the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Groningen, 2009), 109

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II. The defeat of Bar Kochba

It is commonly held that one of the great causes of strain on Jewish and Gentiles relations in community as well as Jewish Christians with other Jews, religious and otherwise, was the Bar Kochba rebellion (132-6 CE). Both elevated a competing messiah and brought disgrace to Jews in the empire in a way that reduced incentive to identify with any Jewish community. The earlier war of 66-70 has been said to have a minimal impact on the status of Jews in the Diaspora. It had such an insignificant effect on intra-ethnic Jewish relations and between Jews and Gentiles, Reconsideration, however, is warranted as to how much the first war set the stage for the second, especially when the dynamics of relations between Jews, Christians and Rome are factored. Rome had seen the capacity that its Jewish population had to disrupt the civil state of the whole empire. Jews were a formidable presence throughout, occupying fully a quarter of one of the major cities, Alexandria. The newer subversive threat was the church.

Jerusalem was still in ruins and many Jews had high hopes of the emperor Hadrian. When he visited there in 130, he chose to rebuild it as a city dedicated to Jupiter. He had seen already how disruptive Jews could be. Hadrian had acceded to the throne after Trajan, who had expanded Rome to its farthermost limits, except that he failed in Babylonia largely due to Jewish resistance there. Perhaps more significantly, while Trajan on the eastern front, Jewish rebellions broke out in several locations about the empire, namely Cyrenaica, Cyprus, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, known as the Rebellion of the Exile, or the Second Jewish-Roman War. All were ultimately crushed by Roman legions.

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After his accession, Hadrian relinquished some of the lands that Trajan had acquired, among the reasons being unexpected attention required to violence around Jewish enclaves in Alexandria and Africa. Ironically, the Jewish question may not have been uppermost among Hadrian’s concerns when he chose against rebuilding the city as Jerusalem and the greater concern may have been Christians. Although the habitation ban against Jews did not extend to Christians, Hadrian shared his predecessor Trajan’s concern for the growing new faith around the empire. Jerusalem would not come to its own again under Constantine’s Christian endorsements.

David Golan points to imperial suspicion regarding the growing Christian movement’s loyalty to the state just a short time earlier revealed in the more generous Trajan’s correspondence with Pliny the Younger (Plin. Ep., 10.97). By Trajan’s time, they were already seen as subversives. Hadrian would have grown up in circles where the Christian problem was discussed. His largesse was rebuffed

when he offered to place a statue of Christ in the Pantheon.112 This was not a way

of esteeming Christians so much as to bring this new dissenting creed from the East under the rubric of imperial convention. The Christians’ non-response to Hadrian’s proposal provides an incredible counterpoint to the Christians who, two centuries later, would become enamored of acceptance and images. Golan notes:

Hadrian was well aware that Rome, during her long history, had entertained many and various faiths. Yet none had ever so utterly defied Rome, the empire and its norms, and at the same time so annoyingly pretended to replace them

112

Hadrian's Decision to supplant “Jerusalem” by “Aelia Capitolina” David Golan, Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2nd Qtr., 1986), pp. 226-239

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with practices and prejudices deriving mainly from Jerusalem. No less important for Hadrian's “choice-of- Jerusalem” was another argument, not to be overlooked. Even Hadrian could have known that the Christian savior had cursed the Jerusalem of his days (Mat. 23:37-8; 24:8), and on the other hand had promised a new unspoiled and purified Jerusalem in its place (John 3:12). By Hadrian’s time Jerusalem had been lying in ruins for some fifty years, since the days of the emperor Vespasian Jerusalem of the destruction had also given meaning to a major tenet of Christianity: the first half of the prophecy concerning it was already fulfilled.113

It is arguable that Hadrian recreated Jerusalem in Rome’s image because he was forced to out of fear of losing control of the province and the empire. His assessment might seem absurd except that Christianity was indeed a juggernaut rising more rapidly than the Roman star. The connection of the failed revolts of 70 CE and 135 CE would have an unforeseen Christian connection.

The sole source of suffering for Christians during Bar Kochba rebellion was at the hands of the Jews in revolt under Bar Kochba. The empire was benign towards them, as indicated in Hadrian’s acknowledgment of advice received from his proconsul of Asia, Minucius Fundanus.

I have received the letter written to me by your predecessor, Serenus Granianus, a most excellent man: and it does not seem well to pass over this report in silence, lest both the innocent be confounded and an occasion for robbery is given to false accusers. Accordingly, if the inhabitants are able to

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sustain their accusations openly against Christians, so as to charge them with something before the tribunal, I do not forbid them to do this.114

This decree borders on being an edict of toleration and probably says much about Hadrian’s skill for gathering intelligence and perceiving that Christians were not a part of the war. As such, it made them, in some sense at least, unlike the Jews in their orbit, good citizens.

Simon’s analysis of the Destruction of the Temple in 70 CE under Vespasian is the “Pharisees' side of the story,” in the opinion of Shmuel Shepkaru, for whom the telling is less reality and more memory. Rome’s destruction of the temple marks the disintegration of the Jewish society instead of the beginning of rabbinic Judaism and the reemergence of sectarianism, the rabbis being but one of the sects. During crusade of Bar Kochba, whose vision it was to rebuild the Temple, the sages of priestly origin increased in influence while the rabbis’ regressed. The people would