JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES, VOL. L, NO.

2, AUTUMN 1999

The Patriarchs and the Diaspora

SETH SCHWARTZ
Jewish Theological Seminary ofAmerica
n this paper, I would like to provide an account of what little is known
1about the relations between the Palestinian patriarchs and the Roman di-
aspora. I would like furthermore to try to explain what we know and in the
course of this explanation to offer a thesis which is to the best of my knowl-
edge original and revisionist. Everyone who has studied the patriarchate has
assumed that the Jews of Palestine constituted the patriarchs' primary power
base. Even those who, like me, believe that the patriarchs accumulated power
only gradually after 70 (see below), think they acquired it first in Palestine
and only later in the diaspora;I and those who suppose that the patriarchs did
not need to accumulate power nevertheless suppose that the patriarchate was
first and foremost a Palestinian institution. By contrast, I would like to argue
that the extension of patriarchal authority in Palestine and the diaspora pro-
ceeded hand in hand, that in several important respects the patriarchs were in
fact more influential in the diaspora than in Palestine, more interested in culti-
vating the good-will of the diaspora Jewish communities, and that in the end,
their agendas were more profoundly shaped by the diaspora than by Palestine.

Some Assumptions
I will assume here, and argue elsewhere, that whatever the origins of the office
of the patriarchate may have been, before c. 200 CE the patriarchs played
no role of any importance in the Jewish world, whether in Palestine or in the
diaspora; that the office first began to acquire significance in the third century;
that it reached a peak only in the later fourth century, and that even at the
patriarchs' peak there were strong limits not only on their legal rights and
jurisdiction, but even on their practical authority.
In fact, I would like to push this revisionist position further than it has ever
been pushed, by arguing that even the best accounts, for example that of L.
Levine, go too far in their tendency to view the history of the patriarchate in
institutional terms.2 Every story about the exercise of authority by a patriar-

Much of the research for this paper was done while I was a member of the Early Christianity
Project at the King's College Research Centre, King's College, Cambridge, for whose support
and constant intellectual stimulation I am most grateful. I would especially like to thank Martin
Hyland and lain Fenlon, conveners of the Research Centre, its managers, and Keith Hopkins,
for criticism, encouragement and provocation. An early version of this paper was presented at
the Skirball Conference at New York University in 1996, whose organizers and participants I
would like to thank, and would have appeared in the proceedings of that conference if not for my
inefficiency.
i E.g. S. Cohen, 'Pagan and Christian Evidence on the Ancient Synagogue', The Synagogue
in Late Antiquity, ed. L. Levine (Philadelphia, 1987), pp. 159-81, especially 170-75.
2 L. Levine, 'The Jewish Patriarch in the Third Century', Aufstieg und Niedergang der Romis-
THE PATRIARCHS AND THE DIASPORA 209

chal figure is interpreted as evidence for the authority of the patriarchal office
and these stories are then used to patch together an account of the patriar-
chate as an institution. This perspective receives some support in the Rabbinic
literature itself, with its discussions of such issues as the patriarchal rights of
minui (appointment of Judges) and calendation.3 But on the whole the Rab-
binic stories are susceptible of a very different and I would argue much more
plausible line of interpretation, one which recognizes that many of the stories
about patriarchal authority make more sense if one supposes that the indi-
vidual patriarchs were powerful not because they occupied the patriarchal of-
fice, but because as individuals they painstakingly acquired authority, which
they held at first only informally, mainly as powerful patrons, and which only
gradually, mainly in the fourth century, came to be institutionalized. So the
talmudic stories, and their counterparts in the works of the Church Fathers,
should be read not as parts of a seamless institutional history, but as stories
about how the patriarchs struggled to have their power institutionalized.4
The source of the common institutional-historical account lies in two types
of serious misunderstanding, one about the character of Roman rule, and the
other about the nature of Jewish life in Palestine under Roman rule. The first
is best exemplified by David Goodblatt in his recent book The Monarchic
Principle.5 Goodblatt supposes that the source of the patriarchs' authority,
starting soon after 70, was Roman appointment, and the only problem the
historian needs to confront is why the Romans chose Rabban Gamliel II to
be the representative of the Jews and not someone more suitable. The trouble
with this view, which I once more or less shared, is that it fails to acknowledge
the implications of Roman annexation. By annexing a province, the Roman
state explicitly deprived its inhabitants of their autonomy by placing them
under the direct control of the Roman governor and his staff and of the city
councils.6 In no province, whatever the circumstances of its annexation, did
the Romans feel they required the services of an intermediary between the na-
chen Welt 11 19.2, eds. H. Temporini and W Haase (Berlin and New York, 1979), pp. 649-88;
idem, 'The Status of the Patriarch in the Third and Fourth Centuries', JJS 47 (1996), pp. 1 32;
contrast M. Goodman, 'The Roman State and the Jewish Patriarch in the Third Century', The
Galilee in Late Antiquity, ed. L. Levine (New York and Jerusalem, 1992), pp. 127-39.
3 On minui, see YSanh. 1.2, 19a; the discussion in any case concludes that in its day (third-
fourth centuries?) the patriarchs no longer enjoyed the exclusive right of minui. This at least is
confirmed by the many stories in the Yerushalmi in which non-patriarchal rabbis are described as
appointing other rabbis to all sorts of posts (for discussion of the sources on both patriarchal and
non-patriarchal minui, see M. Jacobs, Die Institution des Jiidischen Patriarchen (Tuibingen, 1995),
pp. 171 90). Anyway, such schematic pseudo-histories should always be treated with scepticism.
For a characteristic historicizing discussion, see G. Alon, 'Those Appointed for Money', Jews,
Judaism and the Classical World (Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 374-435, especially 401-10; also, Levine,
'The Status of the Patriarch', pp. 7 10. For calendation, see Levine, 'The Patriarch', pp. 669-71.
4 A fundamental attempt to provide a non-institutional history of the patriarchs has now
been made by K. Strobel, 'Jiudisches Patriarchat, Rabbinentum und Priesterdynastie von Emesa:
Historische Phanomene innerhalb des Imperium Romanum der Kaiserzeit', Ktema 14 (1989), pp.
39-77; cf. S. Schwartz, review of Goodblatt (see next note), JJS 47 (1996), pp. 167-69.
5 The Monarchic Principle: Studies in Jewish Self-Government in Antiquity (Tubingen, 1994),
pp. 141 75.
6 See P. Garnsey and R. Sailer, The Roman Empire: Economy, Society and Culture (Berkeley
and Los Angeles, 1987), pp. 21 26, 34-40.
210 JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES

tive population and themselves, apart from the local bouleutai (city council-
lors).7 Did not the Nabataeans have as long a tradition of self-rule, and nearly
as long a tradition of ethnic self-consciousness, as the Jews? And yet when the
Romans annexed their kingdom in 106, under circumstances apparently far
more tranquil than those which preceded the annexation of Jewish Palestine
in 70, they appointed no ethnarch of the Arabs, comparable to Goodblatt's
Jewish ethnarch. As we know from the Babatha archive (henceforth PYadin),
all legal authority in Roman Arabia was held by the governor and the city
councils.8 Inasmuch as the Great Revolt of 66-70 demonstrated to the state
the failure of the old system of indirect rule through native agents over partly
autonomous ethne, when the emperors created the province of Judaea in 70
and transformed it into the province of Palaestina in 135, they were moti-
vated in part precisely by the desire to deprive the Jews of their autonomy,
and to subject them to Roman laws. It is thus overwhelmingly unlikely that
the Roman state was responsible for creating and maintaining the office of
the patriarchate.9
The second type of error I would call romantic nationalist.'0 This approach
to the patriarchate successfully avoids misreading Roman policy; what it mis-
reads instead is the Jewish reaction to Roman policy. Here the source of patri-
archal authority is not the Roman state, but the 'Jewish nation', imagined as a
simple organism with a single will, usually in opposition to the Roman state.
It is this body which in the immediate aftermath of the destruction happily
yielded to, or even created by consensus, the authority of the last remaining
embodiment of Jewish national self-determination, the patriarchate (the Ro-
mans may then have recognized the patriarchs as afait accompli). In this view,
patriarchal authority paradoxically reached its lowest ebb among the Jews at
precisely the moment when the patriarchs achieved their most comprehen-
sive recognition by the Christian Roman state, in the 390s, the same period
in which the relations between patriarchs and rabbis were at their weakest,
and the patriarchs were at their most 'assimilated'.1I This view seems to me
self-evidently absurd, but it may not seem so to others: some expansion is
Cf. Goodman, 'Roman State and Jewish Patriarch', p. 139 note 49.
8 Y Yadin, The Documents of the Bar Kokhba Periodfrom the Cave of Letters: Greek Papyri,
ed. N. Lewis (Jerusalem, 1989). See discussion in H. Galsterer, 'Roman Law in the Provinces:
Some Problems in Transmission', L'impero romano e le strutture economiche e sociali delle
province, ed. M. Crawford (Como, 1986), pp. 13-27; H.J. Wolff, 'Romisches Provinzialrecht in
der Provinz Arabia', Aufstieg und Niedergang der Romischen Welt 11.13 (Berlin and New York,
1976), pp. 763-806; in general G. Bowersock, Roman Arabia (Cambridge, MA, 1984); M. Good-
man's important review of P. Yadin, 'Babatha's Story', Journal of Roman Studies 81 (1991), pp.
169-75.
9 See Goodman, 'Roman State and Jewish Patriarch', pp. 132-34.
10 It is in fact characteristic of G. Alon (see for example the ringing first paragraph on p. 86
of The Jews in their Land in the Talmudic Age (Cambridge, MA, 1989)) and of much subsequent
Israeli, and some subsequent American, scholarship. That, therefore, it constitutes the error of a
'school' rather than of individuals, and has an obvious ideological foundation, does not make it
any less an error. No human collectivity has ever behaved the way Zionist scholarship alleges the
ancient Jews behaved.
1l This view is still embraced by B.-Z. Rosenfeld, 'The Crisis of the Patriarchate in Eretz Israel
in the Fourth Century', Zion 53 (1988), pp. 239 57.
THE PATRIARCHS AND THE DIASPORA 211

therefore in order.
The Jews' response to the destruction and their consequent loss of auton-
omy was very varied. In thinking about the issue we would do well not to
ignore the disconcerting effects on behaviour and ideology of the very facts
ofdestruction and dislocation. We can get some idea ofthe most sophisticated
responses from the works of Josephus and from such post destruction books
as 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch.12 In fact all these writers share nostalgia for the old
regime, and continuing devotion to the Torah and the temple. Ultimately, such
people, to the extent that they would survive the awful consequences of their
own millenarianism, would be the main constituency of the Rabbinic move-
ment. But their works hint at the existence of very different sorts of responses,
too. 4 Ezra's despair could just as easily have ended in complete rejection of
the God of Israel as in irrational and unconvincing affirmation of faith. The
author of 2 Baruch and Josephus were both keenly aware that many Jews
did not share their conservative response to the destruction: many concluded
from it, as both writers admit, that God had abandoned his people and so
that there was no point in observing the covenant any longer.13 The deraci-
nated formerly Jewish actors and urban debauchees who are important minor
characters in the Epigrams of Martial, the Jewish men who had to be forcibly
recircumcised in the days of Bar Kokhba according to T.Shabb. 15(16):9, de-
serve to be taken no less seriously as reactors to the destruction than Rabban
Yohanan ben Zakkai and Josephus.14 If recent interpretations of the famous
coin legend of Nerva (calumniafisci Iudaici sublata) are correct in supposing
that one of the two groups affected by the emperor's relaxation of his pre-
decessor Domitian's 'harshness' in levying the Jewish tax were Jews who had
abandoned Judaism and concealed their origins, then we learn from it that
a quarter century after the destruction, concealment and abandonment were
still demographically significant ways of dealing with one's Judaism. And it
would be rather silly to attribute this entirely to a desire to avoid paying the
two-denarius tax to thefiscus Iudaicus.15
12 My understanding of the book is derived from the work of M. Stone, e.g. in M. Stone,
ed., Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period (CRINT 2.2, Assen and Philadelphia, 1984),
pp. 412 14; for a general discussion of the post-destruction apocalypses, see C. Rowland, 'The
Parting of the Ways: The Evidence of Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic and Mystical Material',
J. D. G. Dunn, ed., Jews and Christians: Parting ofthe Ways, AD 70 to 134 (WUNT 66, Tubingen,
1991), pp. 213-37.
13 See S. Schwartz, Josephus and Judaean Politics (Leiden, 1990), pp. 176-77. Josephus, Antiq-
uities 4.145 9 seems, for example, to reflect arguments against legal observance used by Jews in
Josephus' time-arguments which, interestingly enough, depend for their appeal on a critique of
submission to authority and of the Law's empowerment of its mediators, exemplified by Moses.
The account as a whole (126-155) is a warning to such scoffers. Cf. also Syriac Baruch 41.3,
'those who forsake the covenant'.
14 For Martial, see the passages quoted in M. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and
Judaism I. For T.Shabbat, I adopt the interpretation proposed by G. Alon, The Jews in their
Land in the Talmudic Age, p. 587, and followed by Peter Schafer, 'The Causes of the Bar Kokhba
Revolt', Studies in Aggadah, Targum and Jewish Liturgy in Memory of Joseph Heinemann, edd.
J. Petuchowski and E. Fleischer, Jerusalem 1981, pp. 74-94, esp. 90-94. Also, idem, Der Bar
Kochba-Aufstand, Tiubingen 1981, pp. 45-50.
15 See M. Goodman, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the
Roman Empire, Oxford 1994, pp. 120 25.
212 JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES

Plain Jews, peasants, artisans and small merchants, who survived both re-
volts and stayed behind in Palestine had a rather different situation to con-
front than the well-to-do exiles and the educated people who wrote books
and were the main characters in those written by others. Apart from the ef-
fects of dislocation, destruction of native villages, death and enslavement of
friends and relatives, these people now lived in a country which was no longer
ruled by the laws of the Torah as interpreted by the priests and scribes. The
latter surely did not disappear; rather they turned into the Rabbis, and some
people still sought their advice on some issues.16 If you had gone to the vil-
lage scribe to have your disputes arbitrated in 65, you may have felt that there
was no particular reason not to do so also in 75, even though the scribe no
longer had any official position. This is so provided, of course, that your vil-
lage was still standing and still had a scribe, which is perhaps unlikely. But
the fact was that the only legal bodies with powers of compulsion were the
governor's office and the town councils of the two cities in still Jewish ter-
ritory, Sepphoris and Tiberias. Arbitration, including arbitration by experts
in Jewish law, was perfectly legal as far as the Roman government was con-
cerned, but what grounds have we for supposing that Rabbinic arbitrators,
rural padroni, and the like were in any position to compete with the officially
empowered governor and boulai? P7 We should rather imagine that most Pales-
tinian Jews behaved precisely as Babatha and her family did, by refering even
matters of profound halakhic significance, like marriage, divorce, inheritance
and guardianship, only to the official authorities.'8 If there was any Jewish au-
thority in Babatha's Mahoza at all, and there is no trace of one, then he would
have been left to deal with matters of relatively little legal weight. In any case,
people could probably decide well enough on their own how to observe the
Sabbath. 19
Some confirmation for this view may be found in a major unpublished
study by Shaye Cohen, written in 1983, about cases-ma'asiot-in tannaitic
literature; perhaps one day this will actually be published in the relevant vol-
ume of the Cambridge History ofJudaism, but in the meantime an extract has
appeared.20 He found that for the so called Yavneh period (roughly the period
between the revolts), the ma'asiot are relatively numerous, concern a relatively
wide range of topics-though with a special emphasis on such interestingly
backwards looking issues as purity and priestly and levitical gifts-and are
relatively widely geographically distributed. That is to say, most are set in Ju-
daea, but some are set in Galilee. Though other explanations of Cohen's data
are possible, I believe they support the notion that there was some continuity
of function among town and village scribes, judges and the like, from among
16 On the origins of the rabbinic movement see now C. Hezser, The Social Structure of the
Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine, Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997, 69-77.
17 Cf. Strobel, 'Juidisches Patriarchat', pp. 53-54.
1 See P.Yadinpassim with comments of Goodman, 'Babatha's Story'.
19 See Cohen, 'The Place of the Rabbis in Jewish Society of the Second Century', in Levine,
Galilee, p. 162.
20 'The Place of the Rabbis', pp. 157-74. I would like to thank Shaye Cohen for showing me
the complete manuscript.
THE PATRIARCHS AND THE DIASPORA 213

whose numbers the Rabbis most likely were drawn, after the destruction. The
full force of the new situation was not felt until after the Bar Kokhba revolt,
in the so-called Usha period. Now there are very few ma'asiot, and they are
overwhelmingly inner-rabbinic. The old priests and village scribes seem, if we
may draw historical inferences from the evidence so meticulously collected
and discussed by Cohen, to have fallen on hard times.
If the patriarch was, until sometime in the third century, mainly a rabbinic
figure, then his fortunes varied with those of the rabbis, but at any rate there is
little reason to suppose that outside rabbinic circles he had any more prestige
or importance than any great Torah scholar enjoyed who could invoke not
only his learning but his ancestry. Now, I should not like to dismiss this as
negligible. The Jews had lived under the rule of the Torah and its priests and
scribes for five centuries before the Romans deconstituted the Jewish nation;
that many Jews had internalized the importance of the Torah is overwhelm-
ingly likely, and for many admiration for the Torah and its interpreters is
likely to have survived, if perhaps not undiminished or unchanged, the de-
struction and dislocation caused by the revolts. Furthermore, by the second
century the rabbis had no known competitors as teachers and interpreters of
Torah. Nevertheless, I would insist that in Jewish Palestine of the second and
third centuries, legal power was mainly wielded by the governor's staff and the
city councils, and the political and cultural tone was predominantly set, not
by Torah scholars, but by the elites of the Greco-Roman cities. As far as the
cultural tone is concerned, this is confirmed by archaeology, which demon-
strates that the prevailing cultural norms of at least the larger villages in the
Lower Galilean countryside were derived from the Lower Galilean (and other
nearby) cities, and the prevailing cultural norms of Tiberias and Sepphoris
were those of cities throughout the eastern part of the Roman Empire.21 These
cultural norms were all the more attractive given the prosperity which began
mounting in Palestine following its full integration into the Roman system.
In sum, the rabbis and their patriarchal leader had in important ways to
start from scratch after the destruction. Though they were never without a
certain limited and compartmentalized prestige, and surely were taken very
seriously indeed in some circles, they had the practical difficulty of having to
compete with an immensely powerful and to many post-destruction Jews also
immensely attractive legal, political, and cultural establishment which was
21 The issue cannot be fully treated here. For the time being, the most accessible surveys of the
archaeology of Roman Palestine are Y Tsafrir, Eretz Israel from the Destruction of the Second
Temple to the Muslim Conquest, vol. 2: Archaeology and Art (Jerusalem, 1984), pp. 25-219; H.-
P Kuhnen, Paldstina in Griechisch-r6mischer Zeit (Munich, 1990) (Handbuch der Archaologie,
Vorderasien 2, bd. 2). Note also the city coins of Tiberias and Sepphoris, Y Meshorer, City Coins
of Eretz-lsrael and the Decapolis in the Roman Period (Jerusalem, 1985), and also 'Sepphoris and
Rome', Greek Numismatics and Archaeology: Essays in Honor of Margaret Thompson, eds. 0.
M0rkholm and N. Waggoner (Wetteren, 1979), pp. 159-71 (with due caution about his historical
analysis: see K. Harl, Civic Coins and Civic Politics in the Roman East, AD 180-275 (Berkeley and
Los Angeles, 1987), p. 24 n. 34); the inscriptions of Tiberias, collected by M. Schwabe, 'Letoldot
Tveryah: Mehqar Epigrafi', Sefer Yohanan Lewy, eds. M. Schwabe and J. Gutmann (Jerusalem,
1949), pp. 200-51; E. Meyers, 'Roman Sepphoris in Light of New Archaeological Evidence and
Recent Research', in Levine, Galilee, pp. 321-38.
214 JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES

ostensibly indifferent to the Rabbis, but whose norms were in fact opposed
to those of the rabbis and patriarchs.22

The Patriarchs and the Diaspora

It must first of all be said that evidence outside Rabbinic literature for pa-
triarchal authority or influence in Palestine is limited to some notices in the
works of the late fourth-century Church Fathers Epiphanius and Jerome, and
some Roman laws of precisely the same period (leaving aside for the moment
the famous notice in Origen, Epistula ad Africanum 20 (14)).23 Patriarchal
power, such as it was, left no material traces in Palestine at any period. As is
well known, the only epigraphical notice of the patriarchs, with the possible
exception of the controversial burial inscriptions in Beth Shearim catacomb
14, is on the mosaic floor of the synagogue of Hamat Tiberias, probably to be
dated to the middle of the fourth century, where one of the donors, Severus, is
called the threptos ton lamprotaton (=clarissimorum) patriarchon.24 No other
synagogue inscription, whether in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek, mentions pa-
triarchal patronage, or in any other way acknowledges even the patriarchs'
existence. The inscriptions seem very much to be artifacts of communities
which regarded themselves as entirely local organizations, not oriented out-
ward in any way except as components of the fictive community of Israel;
surely they did not see themselves as part of a hierarchy which culminated
in the patriarch.25 This contrasts sharply with the implications of the inscrip-
tions in Palestinian churches, almost every one of which shows that the village
church was a monument to the power of the Christian ecclesiastical hierarchy.
It seems as if hardly a church in the country failed to acknowledge somewhere
in its structure the authority of the bishop under whom the church was con-
structed or renovated.26
As for evidence from Rabbinic literature, there is no space to discuss it.
The Yerushalmi surely portrays the patriarch as a great man, a friend of em-
perors, courted by the leading Jews, and patron of the Rabbis. However, the
favours he does for his clients, the tax-breaks and jobs he secures, scarcely dis-
22 My account of the role of the rabbis resembles, and is indebted to, that proposed by M.
Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee, A.D. 132-212, Totowa: Rowman and Allanheld,
1983, but Goodman emphasizes the distinctive Jewishness of High Imperial Galilean culture, and
its relative imperviousness to the norms of Greco-Roman urban culture.
23 See on Origen most recently Jacobs, Die Institution des Jiidischen Patriarchen, pp. 248-51.
24 See B. Lifshitz, Donateurs et fondateurs dans les synagogues juives (Paris, 1967), #76; on
the Late Imperial clarissimate, see A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire (Baltimore, 1964),
vol. 1, pp. 525 30. The inscriptions of Beth Shearim, catacomb 14: M. Schwabe and B. Lifshitz,
Beth Shearim II: The Greek Inscriptions (New Brunswick, 1974), pp. 147-48. See Jacobs, Die
Institution des Jiidischen Patriarchen, pp. 234-48, for discussion of these inscriptions and those
discussed below.
25 This is intended as an indirect challenge to the view of Goodman, 'Roman State and Jewish
Patriarch', that the emperors regarded the patriarchs as comparable to bishops; at any rate, it
seems unlikely that if they did, many Jews shared their view.
26 There is no corpus of such inscriptions; the most convenient collections are M. Avi-Yonah,
Art in Ancient Palestine: Selected Studies (Jerusalem, 1981), pp. 283-382, supplemented by R.
and A. Ovadiah, Mosaic Pavements in Israel (Rome, 1987).
THE PATRIARCHS AND THE DIASPORA 215

tinguish him from such other great rabbinic figures as Rabbi Abbahu, Rabbi
Yohanan and Rabbi Joshua ben Levi.27 By the third and fourth centuries, the
patriarch surely was, and behaved like, a grandee in Jewish Palestine, but the
Yerushalmi rarely portrays him as intervening in the lives of Palestinian Jews
and in fact ascribes to him far less formal authority there than most scholars
have supposed.28
The evidentiary situation for the patriarchate in Palestine contrasts not
only with that of the Palestinian bishops, but also, though not quite so
sharply, with that in the diaspora, for here there is some evidence for patriar-
chal authority, and not just in the later fourth century, though it is once again
best for that period. From the later third century, in all probability, comes the
inscription from the synagogue of Tiberius Claudius Polycharmos in Stobi,
Macedonia (CIJ 694), in which it is stipulated that anyone who uses the struc-
tures built by Polycharmos in a way that violates his wishes or those of his
heirs is to pay a fine of 250,000 denarii 'to the patriarch'.29 Now there is no
way of knowing whether this is the patriarch or some other, perhaps local,
official, though of course no explicit evidence exists for local Jewish patri-
archs. Nor is the attempt by some scholars to connect this inscription with
the legal fiction of ketivah lanasi mentioned in M.Nedarim 5.2 convincing.30
Nor, to be sure, would there have been any way of enforcing payment of the
fine. Nevertheless, if this clause does refer to our patriarch, it implies at least
that mention of his title was expected to have some inhibiting effect, and that
therefore he enjoyed some long-distance prestige in Stobi in the later third
century CE.
The remaining epigraphical evidence for patriarchal prestige in the dias-
pora is all equally problematic. There is a Greek inscription from Argos (CIJ
719), in all likelihood Jewish, of uncertain date but certainly no earlier than
the third century,31 in which a certain Aurelius loses invokes 'the divine and
great powers of God, and the powers of the Law, and the honor of the patri-
archs and the honor of the ethnarchs and the honor of the wise (sophoi) and
the honor of the worship (latria) offered every day to God' to prevent any-
one from damaging his tomb. Who exactly the patriarchs and ethnarchs are
is unclear; one or the other of them at any rate may be the Palestinian patri-
archs, and if so, their juxtaposition to 'the wise' is suggestive. But once again,
'patriarchs' may refer to the biblical patriarchs and 'ethnarchs' to some local
officials. There is no way of knowing. Similarly ambiguous is a very similar
sort of inscription, in Latin, from Catania in Sicily, one of the very few Jewish
27 For a brief survey, see Strobel, 'Jiidisches Patriarchat', pp. 57-60, and 71-74.
28 I will return to this point elsewhere.
29 The dating is suggested by the size of the fine, which suggests inflationary currency. Cohen
('Pagan and Christian Evidence', p. 173) followed a suggestion of Bickerman that the figure in-
dicates a date late in the reign of Constantine, when 250,000 denarii were equivalent to a gold
solidus, but according to Jones, The Later Roman Empire 1, p. 440, the exchange rate then was
275,000 denari= 1 solidus.
30 See comments of B. Lifshitz, in his 'prolegomenon' in the Ktav reprint of the Corpus In-
scriptionum Judaicarum, New York 1975, pp. 76-77.
31 The nomen of the deceased, Aurelius, suggests a date after the universal grant of Roman
citizenship by Caracalla in 212, when all imperial subjects became Aurelii.
216 JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES

inscriptions to be dated, to 383 CE (Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Western Eu-

rope 1. 145=CIJ 650). This one invokes 'the victories who rule (? a reference to
the genii of the emperors?), the honors of the patriarchs, the Law which God
gave the Jews'. The similarity of the invocations is too great to be coinciden-
tal. It is tempting to suggest that the inscriptions reproduce the language of
a prayer, perhaps, if these are in fact the Palestinian patriarchs, one not too
different from the medieval yequm purqan prayer still found in the Ashkenazic
prayer-book. But this, and the identity of the patriarchs invoked, must remain
speculative.
Finally, an inscription commemorating a fourteen year old girl who was a
member of the leading Jewish family of Venusia, in southern Italy, notes that
two apostuli and two rebbites spoke threnoi at her funeral (the word is in Greek
in the original of this Latin inscription-Noy, JIWE 1.86=CIJ 1.611). The in-
scription is remarkable because, as Noy observes, it provides the earliest epi-
graphical instance of the word 'rabbi' used as a substantive. The juxtaposition
of rabbis and apostoloi reminds us of the ethnarchs and sophoi juxtaposed at
Argos, as also of Epiphanius' belief that even in his day the patriarchs' coun-
cil consisted of or at least still contained rabbi-like people (Panarion 30.3.7-
12.10=Griechische Christliche Schriftsteller 25.338-48). 'Apostles' normally
refers to agents of the patriarch (see below) and a priori there is no reason
that it should not do so here. The problem is the dating of the inscription:
the preferred dating is early sixth century, a century after the cessation of
the patriarchate.32 Why this dating is preferred is unclear but seems to me to
have something to do with the 'barbarity' of the Latin, hardly an adequate
criterion. If it is a century earlier, then it demonstrates the prestige patriar-
chal agents may have enjoyed in some diaspora communities, as well as their
alliances with the leaders of those communities and their connection with
people called 'rabbis', who, the inscription implies, were also outsiders to the
community. If the later dating is correct, the inscription is perhaps still more
significant, but not our concern.
Less speculative is the note of Eusebius (early fourth century), in his com-
ment on Isaiah 18.1-2 and Acts 28.21-2 that 'even now it is customary for the
Jews to name those bringing [the context demands: to their diaspora com-
munities] encyclical letters from their rulers "apostles"'.33 Now there is no
explicit mention here of the patriarch, as Shaye Cohen observed, but it is im-
possible to see what else Eusebius could be refering to: rabbis went on fund-
raising and other sorts of trips to the diaspora on their own initiative, as we
know from many anecdotes throughout rabbinic literature, but they cannot
therefore be called messengers sent by the Jews' leaders.34 There is, further-
more, no mention here of patriarchal fund-raising or taxation, which emerges
32 It is true that Roman law explicitly prohibits diasporic fund-raising by the post-patriarchal
leaders of the Palestinian Jewish communities (Codex Theodosianus 16.8.29), whoever they may
have been, but as Noy observes (adloc.), it is unlikely that the Ostrogothic kings of Italy would
have paid much attention.
33
J. Ziegler, ed., Jesajakommentar (Berlin, 1975), p. 119.
34
See S. Cohen, 'Pagan and Christian Evidence', pp. 170-5; on rabbinic fund-raising, see
Goodblatt,The Monarchic Principle, p. 140.
THE PATRIARCHS AND THE DIASPORA 217
from the law-codes and Epiphanius as the chief activity of patriarchal rep-
resentatives in the diaspora, but that is because the context of the comment
demands mention of encyclical letters, not gift collection. In sum, there seems
little reason to reject the implications of Eusebius's comment (not in itself ac-
tually required by the exegesis of the scriptural passages), that in his day, at
the beginning of the fourth century, the patriarchs kept in contact with some
diaspora communities by means of agents called apostoloi, who were liable to
be bearing encyclical letters of unknown content.35
From a generation later comes the letter of Julian to the Jews, written, if
authentic, on the eve of his fatal Persian campaign (in 363). Here, in addi-
tion to cancelling the tax to thefiscus Iudaicus and the other disabilities his
Christian predecessors had allegedly imposed on the Jews, and promising to
conclude the reconstruction of Jewish Jerusalem upon his return from Persia,
the emperor says that he has 'exhorted my brother lulus (=Hillel), the most
reverend patriarch, to rescind that which is called among you the apostole,
and that no one is any longer to have the power to oppress the masses of your
people by such exactions'. As the context clearly indicates, the apostole is a tax
levied by the patriarch. It is not said that this exaction was limited to the dias-
pora, but the combined evidence of Eusebius, Epiphanius and the law codes,
and the absence of unambiguous evidence for the levying of a patriarchal tax
in Palestine, make it likely that this is so. Whether forged or authentic, by
the way, the letter does indicate that patriarchal fund-raising was by the mid-
fourth century viewed as taxation, and that at least some Jews resented it.36
The same is implied by a law issued by the western emperor Honorius in 399
(Codex Theodosianus 16.8.14=Linder 30), which forbids the archisynagogues
and apostoloi from collecting money on the patriarch's behalf. 'Let the masses
of the Jews know, therefore, that we have removed the exaction of this depre-
dation. And if any men should be sent out by that depopulator Iudaeorum to
collect this tax, let them be turned over to the judges ....'
Now it is important to remember that the emperors had good reasons of
their own to oppose a patriarchal tax, for it involved the diversion to Tiberias
of precious metals which might otherwise have found their way to Rome or
Constantinople. Furthermore, imperial constitutions and rescripts, excerpts
of which constitute the extant Roman law codes, were the work of profes-
sional sophists. Thus, Honorius' pose as liberator of the Jews is at least in
part rhetoric masking self-interest. Nevertheless, the letter of Julian, and cer-
tainly the law of Honorius, demonstrate that under normal circumstances,
the patriarchs in the second half of the fourth century taxed at least some
diaspora communities, and that some Jews are likely to have resented this.
The same general conclusion emerges from the famous story of the comes
Joseph in Epiphanius, Panarion 30. The tax, furthermore, was under most
circumstances tolerated by the emperors: Julian never had the opportunity to
35 Epiphanius, Panarion 30.11, thought the apostles' letters were authorizations of tax-
collection.
36 On Julian's letter, see M. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism 2.#486a,
and discussion of authenticity on pp. 506-10; see also A. Linder, Hayehudim Behuqei Haqesarut
Haromit, Jerusalem 1983, #13; Jacobs, Die Institution des Jiidischen Patriarchen, pp. 294-99.
218 JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES

follow through on his exhortation of the patriarch, and Honorius' law was
subsequently rescinded. Other Roman laws expressly permit the patriarch to
collect taxes.37
We must be careful here. In many modern accounts, the imperial privilege
has been understood to mean that the emperors in some way authorized the
patriarchal tax. In reality they did no such thing; all they did was to permit
the patriarchs to keep what they collected-which was no small concession.
Never did they oblige the Jews to pay.
Why did at least significant segments of the Jewish population of the Ro-
man Empire outside Palestine submit to a patriarchal tax? Why do we never,
except for one dubious story in the Yerushalmi which may have nothing to do
with the patriarchal tax, hear of its exaction in Palestine?38 How did the patri-
archs convince the diaspora communities to pay the tax? It must first of all be
remembered that what the primarily fourth century sources call taxation had
probably started out in the third or second centuries as informal fundraising,
which was gradually institutionalized, not without opposition on the part of
some diasporic donors. It is in the same century that we hear of patriarchs ex-
erting more or less direct and active control over appointments of communal
officials in the diaspora (as opposed to the reactive influence they are said by
the Yerushalmi to have enjoyed in Palestine-e.g. YYebamot 12:6), and that
the law codes suppose that certain types of Jewish officials are under the di-
ci of the patriarch.39 That the taxation evolved from solicitation is not only
plausible per se, but is implied by the name the law codes use for the tax,
aurum coronarium. This term was generally applied to taxes collected from
such autonomous entities as cities and kingdoms, taxes which had started as
semi-voluntary gifts of gold crowns.40
What enabled this development? Why should the diasporic Jews have first
contributed and then submitted to taxation? And why should the patriarch
have been apparently more interested in soliciting money from them than
from the Palestinian Jews? The evidence is nonexistent, but some educated
guesswork may prove helpful. Without excluding the sentimental attraction
Palestinian institutions may have exerted on people whose grandparents had
often had to fight for the right to send money to the Jerusalem temple, we may
consider other factors, too, factors in fact not dissimilar to those which had
37 See Linder 32=Codex Theodosianus 16.8.15.
38 See YSanh 2:6, 20d=GenR 80:1, eds. Theodor-Albeck, pp. 950-53: the Jews cannot pay
the priestly gifts because 'the king' (in Y) or 'the nasi (in GenR) has taken all'. Even if GenR
is correct, the reference is not to a money tax, but an impost in kind-therefore not the apostole.
Strobel's suggestion(Juidisches Patriarchat', p. 66 n. 209) that the story refers to rent from the
patriarchal
39
estates (which would normally have been paid in kind) is attractive.
See Epiphanius, Panarion 30.11: the apostolos Joseph travels through Asia deposing
archisynagogues and 'azanitae'; Palladius, Life of Chrysostom (Patrologia Graeca vol. 47, p. 51):
the patriarch replaces the archisynagogue in Antioch annually. On these passages see Z. Rubin,
'Joseph the Comes and the Attempts to Convert Galilee to Christianity in the Fourth Century
CE', Cathedra 26 (1982), pp. 105-16 (in Hebrew); T. Rajak and D. Noy, 'Archisynagogoi: Office,
Title and Social Status in the Greco-Jewish Synagogue', Journal of Roman Studies 83 (1993), pp.
79-80. Notwitshstanding their strictures, Palladius' statement is partly confirmed by a letter of
Libanius: see below. For the laws, Codex Theodosianus 16.8.8=Linder 20; 16.8.13=Linder 27.
40 SeeE Millar,The Emperor in the Roman World (Ithaca, 1977), pp. 140-42.
THE PATRIARCHS AND THE DIASPORA 219
helped make the diaspora Jews of the first century so eager to give up their
hard-earned silver.
Let us first take up the question of the patriarchs' interest. It is reasonable
to suppose that most Palestinian Jews were peasants and most diaspora Jews
were artisans and merchants, though we do hear of some large landowners
and some peasants in the diaspora.41 This had important financial conse-
quences. Most taxes in the Roman Empire were land taxes, so the tax burden
on farmers was much heavier than that on merchants and artisans. The main
tax on the latter was, during the High Empire apparently some sort of head
tax, about which little is known. Starting the early fourth century this tax was
replaced by the chrysargyron, a money-tax which was collected in a lump sum
every five years. This tax was much resented, because it required the payer to
plan ahead, but was in fact a rather small burden.42 Merchants and artisans,
furthermore, depended entirely on the urban markets for their livelihood and
therefore, unlike peasants, had easy access to gold and silver. Thus, the pa-
triarchs concentrated their fundraising efforts in the diaspora for the simple
reason that the pickings were richer there: the Jews had on the whole more
surplus capital, and had it in the easily transmittable form of coin, whereas
the Palestinian Jews were more heavily taxed, and so more surplus-poor, and
more cash-poor. Any serious attempt by the patriarch to raise the tax burden
of the Palestinian Jews would have generated more resentment than income.
Why did the diaspora Jews pay? The Jews of the diaspora cities had al-
ways had the problem of reconciling their obligations as residents of pagan
cities with the requirements of Jewish law. Though emperors had often recog-
nized the Jews' right to live according to their own laws, and exempted them
from municipal obligations which were in conflict with Jewish law, local au-
thorities had frequently failed to respect the Jews' rights. Of course we know
most about the conflicts which resulted in the first centuries BCE and CE,
when Josephus and Philo have much to say about the matter, but there are
absolutely no grounds for supposing that these tensions disappeared in the
third, fourth and fifth centuries.43 They were systemic, the inescapable con-
41 There were of course Jewish peasants in Egypt: see Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum passim;
how typical for northern Syria were Libanius' Jewish tenant farmers (Stern, Greek and Latin
Authors on Jews and Judaism 2.#495a)? Note also in the same period the prosperous Jewish
landowner near Hippo in Africa discussed by St. Augustine (J. Divjak, ed., Sancti Aureli Au-
gustini Opera, sect. II pars VI, CSEL 88 (Vienna, 1981), #8, with comments of H. Castritius,
'The Jews in North Africa at the Time of Augustine of Hippo: Their Social and Legal Posi-
tion', Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress ofJewish Studies, B.l, Jerusalem 1986, pp. 31 37).
Jewish glassmakers in Constantinople and Emesa: J.-P. Sodini, 'L'artisanat urbain a l'epoque
paleochretiennne (ive-viie s.)', Ktema, 4 (1979), p. 94, and H. J. Magoulias, 'Trades and Crafts
in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries as Viewed in the Lives of the Saints', Byzantinoslavica 37
(1976), pp. 23-24; Asia Minor: J. Keil and A. Wilhelm, Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua III
(Manchester, 1931), #237, #262, #344, #448, #607-epitaphs of Jewish artisans and bureaucrats
from Korykos, Cilicia; for Jewish merchants in the late antique Adriatic area: L. Ruggini, 'Ebrei
e Orientali nell'Italia Settentrionale', Studia et documenta historiae et iuris 25 (1959), pp. 231-41.
42 See Jones, Later Roman Empire, vol. 1, p. 431; R. P. Duncan-Jones, Structure and Scale in the
Roman Economy (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 187-98; R. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton,
1993), pp. 153 54.
43 For a summary account, see E. Schurer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus
220 JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES

sequence of some Jews' interest in maintaining a corporate identity in the

Greco-Roman cities.
We know that in the first centuries BCE and CE, the Jews had depended
to some extent on the intercession of prominent intermediaries to ease these
tensions. Herod, perhaps following the lead of the later Hasmoneans, had cap-
italized on his regional prestige and his friendship with Augustus to intervene
on behalf of diaspora Jewish communities, and this role was inherited by the
later Herodian rulers.44 Herod's enhanced reputation in the diaspora presum-
ably played an important role in tightening relations between the diaspora
and Palestine, and contributed to the apparently explosive rise in pilgrimage
and in foreign donations which play such an important part in Josephus's
account of first century Judaea. The supposition that the patriarchs accumu-
lated prestige and influence in the diaspora by similar means, by offering their
services, or the services of their agents, as intermediaries between the commu-
nities and the city governments, the governors, and eventually the emperors,
would help explain their ability to raise funds. It would also provide a plau-
sible historical background to the fictional tales about Antoninus and Rabbi,
and to the peculiar and unevaluatable statement that the Bavli (BQ 83a) at-
tributes to Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, that in his father's house 500 boys
learned hokhmat Yevanit.45
For it is obvious that if the patriarch did act as intercessor for diaspora
communities, his clientele would necessarily have been affected. To play such
a role effectively, training in Greek rhetoric was required. Patriarchal agents,
the apostoloi, sent out into situations where they might have to address city
councils or Roman governors, would necessarily have been trained not pri-
marily in halakhah, but in rhetoric. This would have contributed to the pal-
pably widening gulf between patriarchs and Rabbis in the third century, and
perhaps also to the increasing closeness of the relations between the patri-
archs and the hellenized city elites of Palestine. In this connection it would be
a mistake to overlook the character of the correspondance between the great
Antiochene sophist of the middle and later fourth century, Libanius, and the
Palestinian patriarch, for, notwithstanding all the attention which has been
paid to the letter about the patriarch's son who was Libanius' student, the
correspondence consists primarily of exchanges of letters of recommendation
(the Libanius' letters are preserved, those of the patriarch alluded to in the
letters of Libanius).46
Letters of recommendation were in effect documents authorizing transfer
Christ,III. 1, rev. and ed. G. Vermes et al. (Edinburgh, 1986), pp. 107-37.
44
See S. Schwartz, Josephus and Judaean Politics, pp.110-14.
45
See S. Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York, 1950), p. 104.
46 For these letters see Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism 2.#496-503; #504
is of special interest because it probably indicates that the patriarch had the authority to ap-
point an archon of the Jews in Antioch, partly confirming a comment of Palladius in his Life
of Chrysostom. But the letter also indicates that the Jews had previously exercised the right to
remove the very same man from an earlier term of archonship, so the patriarch's authority was
neither uncontested, nor absolute. Jacobs, Die Institution desJuidischen Patriarchen, pp. 259-72,
argues that three of the letters are unlikely to have been addressed to the patriarch; this does not
affect my argument.
THE PATRIARCHS AND THE DIASPORA 221

of patronage; when Libanius recommended someone to the patriarch he was

asking the patriarch to accept the party-a philos of Libanius, generally by
virtue of being his student-into his philia. Libanius also writes to the patri-
arch about men whom the patriarch had recommended to him, among them
one likely to have been an apostolos, and others who were students of rhetoric.
Clearly then, this correspondence testifies to a network of philia connecting
the patriarch and the sophist, with fairly large numbers of people, many of
them apparently Libanius' students, passing back and forth through the net.
Thus, the prestige and influence the patriarch accumulated in the diaspora
not only made him phenomenally rich, but also changed the character of his
clientele, contributing to his growing tendency to patronize men with rhetor-
ical rather than Jewish legal training. (Individuals, I should add parentheti-
cally, may have had both, but both types of training were sufficiently rigorous
that it is a priori unlikely that rabbi/sophists were numerous). But if the apos-
toloi were mainly not rabbis, then patriarchal influence in the diaspora was
not tantamount to rabbinic influence there. Then what effect did patriarchal
influence have on the life of the diaspora Jewish communities?
This question is very difficult to answer. First of all, the patriarchs were
probably not influential everywhere. Though by the 390s the emperors rec-
ognized the patriarch as standing at the pinnacle of an empire-wide Jewish
clerical pyramid, as having formal authority over the primates of Jewish com-
munities everywhere, who in turn had recognized jurisdiction over Jewish re-
ligious law, reality was not so neat.47 We have already seen that the rescission
of the patriarch's right to collect money in the western half of the empire may
have been at least in part the result of Jewish agitation. It is unclear what
recourse an apostolos would have had if confronted by a recalcitrant commu-
nity; surely in any case the governors and emperors are unlikely to have been
uniformly helpful. So there were presumably diaspora Jewish communities
which experienced no significant intervention by the patriarch.
For the rest, though, patriarchal prestige may have been an integrating fac-
tor. Just as Herod's activities drew diaspora Jews closer to Palestine and the
Jerusalem temple, so too patriarchal activities may have reminded the dias-
pora communities they were not alone. They may have served also to tie the
communal leaders to the patriarch and his entourage by bonds of personal
dependency. And despite the non-rabbinic character of the apostoloi, they
may have served as vectors of rabbinic influence. For the patriarchs never
lost their rabbinic clientele, and the council of the patriarch contained rab-
binic figures even in the fourth century, if we may believe Epiphanius (see
above). We should remember the juxtaposition of ethnarchs and sophoi in
the inscription from Argos, of patriarchs and the Torah at Catania, and of
apostuli and rebbites at Venosa. For some diaspora Jews, the patriarchs may
never have stopped being the embodiment of Torah, whatever the editors of
the Yerushalmi may have thought.

47 See Codex Theodosianus 16.8.8=Linder 20; 16.8.13=Linder 27; 2.1.10=Linder 28.

222 JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES

Conclusions
In sum, I am proposing a dynamic model of patriarchal history. The patri-
archs reached the peak of their patronal authority and institutional power in
the late fourth century by having spent the preceding two centuries advancing
on all fronts. The diaspora played a crucial role in this process. Through the
patriarchs' (suggested) willingness to act as intermediaries for the diaspora
communities, the patriarchs acquired wealth, the personal clientele of lead-
ing diasporic Jews, and exposure to the Roman ruling class. These factors in
turn enhanced the patriarchs' prestige among Palestinian Jews, transformed
the patriarch into a major figure in Syrian politics-someone to whom even
provincial governors sought introductions-and affected the character of his
clientele; he now had to expand it beyond rabbinic circles to include the cul-
turally Greek sons of the city elites. The gradual financial decline of these
same elites in the later third and fourth centuries may have enhanced their
dependency on the patriarchs.48
Patriarchal influence, in turn, seems to have been in some ways more palpa-
ble in the diaspora than among Palestinian Jews-so at any rate the sources
suggest. Anyway, it surely acted as an integrative force, binding together the
diaspora communities and Palestine more closely than they had ever been
bound before, even if the law-codes' image of the patriarch as the arch-bishop
of an organized, hierarchical, Jewish 'church' is exaggerated. This process
may have helped set the stage for the rabbinization of the Mediterranean and
European diaspora, which marked the end of Jewish antiquity and the begin-
ning of the Middle Ages.

48 The standard account of the decline of the curial classes is Jones, Later Roman Empire 1, pp.
737-57; see also M. Whittow, 'Ruling the Late Roman and Early Byzantine City: A Continuous
History', Past and Present 129 (1990), pp. 3-29.