History of the Jews in the Roman Empire
The history of the Jews in the Roman Empire traces the interaction of Jews and Romans during the period of the Roman Empire. A Jewish diaspora had migrated to Rome and to the territories of Roman Europe from the land of Israel, Anatolia, Babylon and Alexandria in response to economic hardship and incessant warfare over the land of Israel between the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires from the 4th to the 1st centuries BC. In Rome, Jewish communities thrived economically. Jews likely became a significant part of the Roman Empire's population in the first century AD, though there is no agreement in academia about the exact numbers and most numbers are speculative at best.
Roman general Pompey conquered Jerusalem and its surroundings by 63 BC. The Romans deposed the ruling Hasmonean dynasty of Judaea and the Roman Senate declared Herod the Great "King of the Jews" in 40 BC. Judea proper, Samaria and Idumea became the Roman province of Judaea in 6 AD. Jewish–Roman tensions resulted in several Jewish–Roman wars between the years 66 and 135 AD, which resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple and the institution of the Jewish Tax in 70.
In 313, Constantine and Licinius issued the Edict of Milan giving official recognition to Christianity as a legal religion. Constantine the Great moved the Roman capital from Rome to Constantinople 330, and with the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, Christianity became the state church of the Roman Empire. The Christian emperors persecuted their Jewish subjects and restricted their rights.
Roman Republic
Even before Rome annexed Judea as a province, the Romans had interacted with Jews from their diasporas settled in Rome for a century and a half. Many cities of the Roman provinces in the eastern Mediterranean contained very large Jewish communities, dispersed from the time of the sixth century BC. Though the Romans guaranteed the practice of Jewish religion, they resented the spread of foreign religions among Roman natives and for this reason expelled the Jews from Rome in 139 BC.Before the Roman got involved in Judaean politics, they supported the Maccabean Revolt and Judah Maccabee obtained an alliance with the Roman Republic. Rome's deeper involvement in the Eastern Mediterranean dated from 63 BC, following the end of the Third Mithridatic War, when Rome made Syria a province. After the defeat of Mithridates VI of Pontus, the proconsul Pompeius Magnus remained to secure the area, including a visit to the Jerusalem Temple. The former king Hyrcanus II was confirmed as ethnarch of the Jews by Julius Caesar in 48 BC. In 37 BC, the Herodian Kingdom was established as a Roman client kingdom and in 6 AD parts became a province of the Roman Empire, named Iudaea Province. Herod's temple was world-famous and important gentiles offered sacrifices for pious reasons, such as Herdod's friend Marcus Agrippa, who offered a hecatomb in 15 BC.
Roman Empire
During the first century AD, Roman rule in Judaea was often clumsy and unsuccessful. Due to chronic insolvency, raids on the Temple were frequent and led to outrage, there were numerous bands of brigands and the mixed Greek-Jewish populations in the towns often led to tensions. There were at least three uprisings: one led by Judas of Gamala in 6 AD, another one in 44 AD led by Theudas and in the time of Procurator Felix. With the slow adoption of Emperor Worship, relations deteriorated swiftly between the once allies and Jewish refusal to participate in the formalities of state worship was seen as disloyalty. Roman hostility was enthusiastically supported by Greek intellectuals and especially Alexandria, a large Jewish center, was a center of anti-Semitic propaganda. These included slanders that the Jews had no claim on Israel, that the Jews worshipped asses and had an ass's head in the temple or that they conducted secret human sacrifices in the temple. Feldman suggests that the many messianic movements in Judaea around the first and second century AD were likely a source of anxiety to the Romans.The efforts of Caligula to install a statue of himself in the Temple, which required the intervention of Philo of Alexandria and Herod Agrippa to prevent, has been proposed as the "first open break between Rome and the Jews"; although problems were already evident during the Census of Quirinius in 6 AD and under Sejanus. The emperor Tiberius had rectified the latter by intervening and ultimately recalling Pontius Pilate to Rome. During the time of Emperor Nero the Jews seem to have had some influence at the court, possibly through the Jewish actor Alityros and even the emperor's wife, who might have been a symphathiser with the Jews.
In the Greek cities in the east of the Roman empire, tensions often arose between the Greek and Jewish populations. One major point of contention were the privileges granted by certain Roman rulers to the Jews. Writing around 90 AD, the Jewish author Josephus cited decrees by Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Augustus and Claudius, endowing Jewish communities with a number of rights. Central privileges included the right to be exempted from polis religious rituals and the permission "to follow their ancestral laws, customs and religion". Jews were also exempted from military service and the provision of Roman troops. Contrary to what Josephus wants his readers to believe, the Jews did not have the status of religio licita as this status did not exist in the Roman empire, nor were all Roman decrees concerning the Jews positive. Instead, the regulations were made as a response to individual requests to the emperor. The decrees were deployed by Josephus "as instruments in an ongoing political struggle for status".
Because of their one-sided viewpoint, the authenticity of the decrees has been questioned many times, but they are now thought to be largely authentic. Still, Josephus gave only one side of the story by leaving out negative decisions and pretending that the rulings were universal. This way, he carried out an ideological message showing that the Romans allowed the Jews to carry out their own customs and rituals; the Jews were protected in the past and were still protected by these decisions in his own time. However, Romans seem to have been opposed in general to Jewish missionary activities.
Though Jews seem to have been numerous in the Roman Empire, there is no consensus on the number of Jews in the Roman Empire. Some authors have suggested as high as 7 million people. but this estimation has been questioned. Speficially, the number seems to be based on the misreading of a medieval text of the 13th-century author Bar Hebraeus.
Jewish–Roman wars
In 66 AD, the First Jewish–Roman War began after a Graeco-Jewish lawsuit in which the Greek party won. Violence escalated when the Roman governor Gessius Florus plundered the Temple treasury, followed by the suspension of sacrifices at the temple in honour of the people and the emperor of Rome and the massacre of several civilians as well as the Roman garrison. The revolt was both a civil war between the Greek and the Jews as well as between various Jewish factions, specifically the Hellenised Jews and more traditional Jews. The revolt was ultimately crushed by the future Roman emperors Vespasian and Titus. During the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD, the Romans destroyed the Temple and plundered its artifacts, including the menorah, and its inhabitants killed or enslaved. In the aftermath of the anti-semitic sentiment continued to spread and the fall of Jerusalem was taken as evidence that God hated the Jews, such as by the author Philostratus or Tacitus who repeated also previous Greek anti-semitic smears. Nevertheless, the Romans did not reverse their policy of toleration of the Jews and did not diminish the privileges granted to Jewish communities across the empire, with the only retribution being the conversion of the Temple tax into a humiliating poll tax called the Fiscus Judaicus for the upkeep of temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.According to rabbinic sources, Yohanan ben Zakkai, a prominent Pharisaic leader who had opposed the revolt, was smuggled out of Jerusalem in a coffin and was able to obtain permission from the Roman authorities to set up a center for regulation of the Jewish religion at Jamnia. Both Yohanan and the synagogue of Jamnia became normative institutions in Judaism and established many Jewish rules while also completing the canonization of the Tanakh. Yohanan's pupil Joshua ben Hananiah urged the Jews to accept Roman suzerainty and it is likely that many rabbis were reconciled with Roman rule. The Jewish leaders of Alexandria even handed over 600 Sicarii, who had fled after the defeat to Egypt, to the Roman authorities in order to prove their loyalty and restore the relation. Under Emperor Domitian the fiscus iudaicus was collected strictly and converts to Judaism punished, but this seems to have ended under Emperor Nerva and also the Diaspora Revolt in 115-117 did not change Roman policy.
Jews continued to live in their land in significant numbers, until Sextus Julius Severus devastated the region while crushing the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132–136. Hadrian had been initially friendly to Judaism, but he became increasingly hostile towards Eastern religion and Judaism, with a particular dislike of circumcision. Hadrian's plan to establish a Roman colony on the ruins of Jerusalem, and a possible ban on circumcision, sparked this Jewish rebellion—the last major attempt at regaining independence. Under Simon bar Kokhba, the rebels established a short-lived state, but the Romans soon amassed a large force and brutally crushed the revolt. 985 villages were destroyed and most of the Jewish population of central Judaea was essentially wiped out—either killed, sold into slavery, or forced to flee. Survivors were banished from Jerusalem and its surroundings, and the Jewish population shifted to Galilee.
After the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135, Hadrian rebuild Jerusalem under the name Aelia Capitolina, repopulated it with Greek-speakers and forbid Jews to enter it on pain of death. This law might not have been enforced very strictly and the Jews were able to get permission to visit the Wailing Wall on the anniversary of its destruction. Hadrian also renamed the province of Judaea to Syria Palaestina, maybe in an attempt to erase the historical ties of the Jewish people to the region. Other explanations have also been proposed, and Ronald Syme suggested that the renaming efforts preceded and helped precipitate the rebellion. The unsuccessful revolt was followed by several draconian measures against many Jewish observances, but these were alleviated by Hadrian's successor Antoninus Pius. The official policy seems to have been to tolerate and protect Judaism so long as it posed no threat, through attempts at proselytising, to the state cult or social order.