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Jews in the Diaspora
Judeopagan Conflict Berlin Papyrus Inv. 8877; CPJUD. II 156C, Col. 2 Isidoros: “My Lord Augustus, with regard to your interests, Balbillus (e.g. leader of the Alexandria mission) indeed speaks well. But to you, Agrippa (King of Judaea), I wish to retort in connection with the points you bring up about the Jews. I accuse them […]
Judeopagan Conflict/ The Temple Mount and Statue of Caligula Both the Jews and the Greeks (e.g. sent emmisaries to Rome) continued to plead their respective causes before the emperor. A Greek delegation, composed of “elders” (gerontes), left for Rome just after the advent of Emperor Caligula, soon to be followed by another, whose members included […]
Jews and Synagogues of Alexandria/ Judeopagan Conflict/ Murder/ Statue of Caligula in Synagogues The Jews of Hellenistic Egypt met with a certain amount of “anti-Judaism,” even during the period of their greatest influence, but things did not turn noxious until the Roman period. Ethnic strife and urban violence in Alexandria caused serious damage to the […]
Circumcision Circumcision was particularly abhorrent to the Romans: the novelist Petronius describes a slave who has “only two faults… he is circumcised and he snores”, and Tacitus includes circumcision in his list of “abominable and base” Jewish customs. Source: Satyricon, 68:4-8, in Stern 1976, 442.; Contra Apionem, 2. 123; Rajak 1992, 18. Dr. Joan Goodnick […]
Passover Corinthians I Cor. 5:7-8, NIV “For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth”
Jews in the “Circus” of Rome De Re Rustica, III, 8:1, 2, 4 She (e.g. Nature) has adorned Germany with armies of exceedingly tall men, but she has not wholly deprived other nations of men of exceptional stature. For Cicero bears witness that there was once a Roman citizen, Naevius Pollio, who was a foot […]
Lighting Lamps on Sabbath and Proselytizing by Jews Seneca’s references to Jews derive from works that he composed in the sixties of the first century C.E., that is, at the height of the Jewish proselytizing movement and the diffusion of Jewish customs throughout the Mediterranean world. What mattered to Seneca was the spread of the […]
Jewish Doctors Cornelius Celsus compiled an encyclopaedic work, of which only the medical part has remained. It is noteworthy that among the authorities quoted by this Latin author, who apparently lived in the time of Tiberius, we find a Jewish medical writer, Iudaeus; cf. the commentary. First Celsus states that among the plasters useful for […]
Under the Ptolemies, the Jews had been part of the community of “Hellenes,” the dominant group of Greek-speaking conquerors. When the Romans, in their turn, conquered Egypt, the situation was altered from top to bottom. There was no room within the limits of Roman law for the community of Hellenes, a cultural rather than a […]
The Time of Isaiah (750 B.C.E. – 675 B.C.E.) 800 B.C.E. Greek and Roman Gods 590 B.C.E. Pharaoh Psamtik II 570 B.C.E. – 495 B.C.E. Pythagoras 525 B.C.E Cambyses II The Jews of Egypt 300 B.C.E. Theophrastus 300 B.C.E. The Jews of Greece 48 B.C.E. – 44 B.C.E. Julius Caesar 64 B.C.E. ― 10 B.C.E. […]