A jurisdiction of their own in criminal cases, in the complete sense of the expression, was certainly not conceded to the Jews in most places. On the other hand, not only do we meet with undoubted instances of the exercise of a correctional police authority (see Mommsen, Zeitschrift fiir die Neutest. Wissenschafé, ii. [1901] 88 f.), but this would even appear to have been permitted by the State authorities. It is from this point of view that we are to understand how Saul of Tarsus applied to the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem for full powers to punish Jewish Christians living outside Palestine (Ac 9? 22 26"). He himself was after- wards as a Christian scourged five times by the Jews (2 Co 11%); in these instances we are cer- tainly to think, not of Palestinian but of foreign Jewish communities. At Corinth the proconsul Gallio leaves it to the Jews to proceed against St. Paul according to their own judgment, for he himself will not act as judge when an offence
104 DIASPORA
DIASPORA
against the Jewish religion is concerned (Ac 1812-16),
In addition to the freedom of initiative secured for the Jews in the instances we have just de- scribed, the Roman toleration paid a very large regard to their religious sensibilities. One chief difficulty concerned the question of military ser- vice. Such service was quite impossible for a Jew in a non-Jewish army, for on the Sabbath day he might neither bear arms nor march more than 2000 cubits. This question became a specially practical one when, on the outbreak of the civil war between Ceesar and Pompey in the year B.c. 49, the party of Pompey commenced the enrolment of troops on a large scale all over the East. In the Province of Asia alone the consul Lentulus raised two legions of Roman citizens (Cesar, Bell. Civ. i. 4). Amongst these were included the resident Jews who possessed the Roman citizenship. At their own request, however, Lentulus exempted them from military service, and gave his conscription agents every- where instructions to the same effect (Jos, Ant. XIv. x. 13, 14, 16, 18,19). Six years later (B.C. 43) Dolabella, with express appeal to the earlier edicts, confirmed the privilege of dorpareta to the same Jews (Ant. XIv. x. 11, 12). Further privi- leges enjoyed by the Jews were the following :—41. By a statute of Augustus they were exempted from citation before a court on the Sabbath day (Ant. XVI. vi. 2, 4). 2. If a public payment of money or delivery of corn fell on a Sabbath, the Jews were to receive their share on the following day (Philo, Legatio ad Gaium, § 23 [ed. Mangey, li. 569]). 8. Instead of the oil furnished by the communes, the use of which was forbidden to the Jews, they received a money equivalent (Jos. Ant. XII. iii. 1).
The whole political standing above described was never in later times essentially and perma- nently altered. The measures taken by Tiberius against the Roman Jews affected only the city of Rome. The great question of the cult of the Emperor, which afterwards became the main occa- sion of the bloody persecutions of the Christians, led in the case of the Jews to a merely transitory and local persecution. Augustus and Tiberius were, indeed, gratified when the provincials volun- tarily offered them divine honours after the Greek fashion, but they did not demand that this should be done. Caligula was the first to make such a demand universally. Since the Jews on account of their religion could not comply with it, a bloody persecution began at Alexandria, due at first to the anti-Jewish mob, but afterwards carried on by the governor himself. But Claudius hastened to issue an edict of toleration by which all the rights and privileges of the Jews were restored (Jos. Ant. XIX. v. 2-3). No subsequent attempt was ever made to compel the Jews to take part in the cult of the Emperor. It came to be regarded as an ancient privilege that they were exempt from this. They had thus the advantage over the Christians in that their ibd Se had been long established before the cult of the Emperor became the State religion, and was demanded of subjects as a test of loyalty. While the Christians had to atone by bloody martyrdom for their refusal to sacrifice to the Emperor, no such demand was ever made upon the Jews.
It is true, indeed, that certain vacillations in their attitude to the Jews are found on the part of the Emperors. Claudius himself felt compelled to take measures against the Jews in the city of Rome. But these were local, and were not thoroughly carried out. The great war of Ves- pasian and the destruction of the temple at Jeru- salem led, in the case of the Jews of the Diaspora, to the result that the former temple tax of two
drachme had now to be paid to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus (Jos. BJ VII. vi. 6; Dio Cassius, lxvi. 7). This must certainly have been repugnant to the feelings of the Jews. But their religious freedom was not otherwise interfered with by Vespasian. Their political rights were even expressly protected by him, for instance in Alexandria and Antioch (Ant. XII. iii. 1, BJ VII. v. 2). Domitian exacted the two drachme tax with the utmost rigour (Sueton. Domit, 12), and inflicted severe penalties on any Romans who passed over to Judaism (Dio Cass. lxvii. 14). But the existing rights of the Jews were not annulled. Under Nerva a milder condition of things was inaugurated, in so far as he forbade any one to be accused for ‘living in the Jewish manner’ (Dio Cass. Ixviii. 1). By this order the ‘calumnia fisci Judaici,’ z.¢. accusations laid by informers in the interests of the Jewish jiscus, was abolished (cf. coins inscribed ‘calumnia fisci Judaici sub- lata’).