A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity

by Douglas Boin

  By the fourth century, many bishops had also begun petitioning the government to hold their own separate legal proceedings in their basilicas. These “Christian courts” functioned on principles of Christian law and were guided by the reading and interpretation of scripture, not Roman case studies or Rome’s legal history. The Christian author Sozomen, who lived in Constantinople and wrote a history of the church in the middle of the fifth century CE (c.440 CE), gives us some of the details of this legal arrangement. It was the Emperor Constantine, he says, who “exempted the [Christian] clergy everywhere from taxation and permitted litigants to appeal to the decision of the bishops if they preferred them to the state rulers” (Sozomen, Church History 1.9, trans. by C. Hartranft in the NPNF series [1890]). By appealing to this Christian “episcopal audience” (episcopalis audientia, as it became known in Latin), plaintiffs agreed to let their church leaders, not the Roman government, settle their legal complaints.

  The establishment of this quasi‐parallel legal system, designed to implement “Christian law,” may seem disruptive to the proper functioning of Rome’s government. In many ways, it was. It also cast an unnecessary pall of suspicion on those Christians who, in the decades after Constantine, worked as committed magistrates and lawyers within the Roman legal system. Christian plaintiffs who chose to appeal to their bishop, not their local magistrate, were making a political statement that Rome’s law was not as important as Christian law. Perhaps because of the divisive effect this arrangement had on Rome’s civic community, Emperor Julian (r. 360–363) – the last descendent of Constantine’s family, a man who had been raised in a Christian household – overturned it. “It is … evident,” the emperor wrote in 362 CE from his mansion in Antioch, “that the populace … have been led into error by those who are called ‘clerics’.” The immediate result of Julian’s edict was that clerics were “no longer allowed to sit as judges” (Julian, Letter 41.437A, LCL trans. by W. Wright [1923]). It was a decision that later Christian emperors and their legal staffs would wrestle with during the fourth and fifth centuries. And over time, the rights of “episcopal audience” crept back into Roman society.

  Whatever the benefits of this deal and whatever else may have motivated Julian’s repeal, some long‐term context is also essential here. In brokering this arrangement, Christians had not been legal innovators. Nor had their desire to police their community within the confines of Christian law set them on a path that separated them irrevocably from Roman civic society (Key Debates 9.1: Who Were the “Pagans,” and What Is the Origin of This Word?). In fact, in establishing the right of “episcopal audience,” Christians had borrowed a page from the playbook of the empire’s Jewish communities. In the late Hellenistic and early Roman world of Asia Minor, one community of Jews had petitioned the authorities in Sardis, modern Turkey, to adjudicate their own disputes according to Jewish law. The Roman magistrate wrote back:

  Jewish citizens of ours have come to me and pointed out that from the earliest times they have had an association of their own in accordance with their native laws and a place of their own, in which they decide their affairs and controversies with one another; and upon their request that it be permitted them to do these things, I decided that they might be maintained, and permitted them so to do.

  (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 14.235, LCL trans. by R. Marcus [1943])

  The Jewish writer Josephus preserves other such documents, and although they date from the second and first centuries BCE, their relevance for Late Antiquity should not be overlooked. This legal history provided a precedent to many Christians who, knowing their movement had been an offshoot of the Jewish community, viewed their identity as different yet similar enough to ask for the same rights.

  Key Debates 9.1 Who Were the “Pagans,” and What Is the Origin of This Word?

  “Pagans” are people who come “from the crossroads of farmland and from rustic places on the outskirts of town” (Orosius, from the preface to Against the “Pagans”). So claimed a Spanish Christian, writing in Latin at the start of the fifth century CE. He believed that non‐Christians had deserved this label because many of them lived in the backwaters of the Roman Empire. The Latin word for describing the rustic outskirts of a major city is pagus; one who lives there is a paganus.

  Orosius’ beliefs, planted in the fifth century, certainly took root. In modern accounts of Christianity’s rise, it is city folk, we are often told, not country folk, who first flocked to the Christian church. The “pagans” were the stubborn hicks who refused to convert. There’s a comforting faith‐history here. This scenario conjures up an image of masses of cosmopolitan Romans “waking up” to the power of Christianity while the more ignorant, unsophisticated dragged their feet. But is Orosius’ comment fable or fact?

  In Latin, the word paganus did not always mean “rustic.” It could also mean “civilian.” In this meaning, common throughout the Roman Empire, paganus functioned as an antonym for “soldier,” miles. (Our word “militant” is related to milites, the plural form of the same word.) A “soldier” was someone who had enlisted in the Roman army; a “civilian” was someone who had not taken up that call of duty. As a result, some scholars believe that Jesus’ followers originally used the word paganus to refer to non‐Christians, those who had not yet enlisted in “the army of the Messiah [Christ].”

  Which explanation is correct? The answer may be neither. Both of these approached start from the same assumption: that Christians would have used the word “pagan” to describe outsiders. New research, on the other hand, has demonstrated that paganus, meaning “civilian,” was used by Christians to mock the behavior and beliefs of their own Christian peers.

  “Real Christians” saw themselves as “soldiers.” They were the uncompromising believers who were strong enough to wage a cultural war on God’s behalf. Other Christians, who may not have shared their radical social ideas, were targeted for “civilianism.” The use of the word in this way is documented as early as the middle of the fourth century CE, precisely the time when it became legal for Christians to move freely about Roman cities and to be open about their faith. The question of whether Christians should continue to adapt to Roman culture by attending circus races or going to the theater became a strong point of contention – for militant Christians who saw Roman culture in black and white.

  In this interpretation, the rise and spread of the word grew out of a heated conversation that took place among the empire’s Christian community. It was not the sign of a frustrated evangelization campaign to convert “non‐Christians.” Only later, in 409 CE, would “pagan” come to acquire the meaning it now has; in that year a Christian emperor redefined the word to mean “non‐Christian” by law (Theodosian Code 16.5.46). Orosius’ imaginative speculation about rustics who hadn’t yet converted to Christianity was written after this.

  9.3 The Jewish Community: Shared Values and Social Diversity

  The petitions preserved in Josephus, granting Jewish communities the right to “decide their affairs and controversies with one another,” did not create a divided, bipolar society, however. Notwithstanding the difficult periods of military aggression and revolt that had characterized Roman and Jewish interactions in Jerusalem, especially around 70 CE, Jews and Romans throughout the wider Mediterranean world had not lived segregated lives. In cities like Priene and Sardis in Roman Asia Minor, for example, Jews were some of the most highly visible, integrated members of the community. The material culture of these cities is crucial for telling their stories.

  Synagogues

  Both Priene and Sardis preserve the remains of Jewish meeting spaces, or synagogues, a term that was derived from the Greek word for “coming together.” Jews in antiquity did not always use this word to refer to their assembly spaces, however. In Hellenistic Egypt and on the island of Delos, Greek inscriptions and texts refer to Jewish worship spaces as a proseuchē (προσευχη), or “prayer hall.” Surprisingly, very few of these spaces have been identified arch
aeologically. In the Jewish homeland, buildings that can incontrovertibly be identified as synagogues are, although not unknown, certainly a rarity before 70 CE. The identification of one, at the mountain of Masada, was aided by the discovery of fragments of Hebrew Scripture that, by chance, were found within the meeting space. Only in the third century CE, at the earliest, do synagogues begin to emerge more clearly from the archaeological ruins of Mediterranean cities by and large.

  The synagogue at Priene is one of these spaces. It was built by a local Jewish community who adapted a Hellenistic house for their worship needs. Although the date of this renovation is still not clear, scholars have plausibly suggested that it took place in the late second or third century CE, at the earliest. The presence of the Jewish community in this house was confirmed by the discovery of a stone fragment with a menorah on it. In addition, during the renovation, a niche for the Torah had been added to the house’s east wall so that the community would recall the memory of the Temple during its gatherings. The fact that members of the Jewish community in Priene lived and worshipped in the middle of the city suggests many of its individuals were well known, maybe even recognizable participants in Priene’s city scene.

  The city of Sardis tells a similar story. It, too, preserves the archaeological remains of a synagogue in a building that was not originally designed for the Jewish community. There, the community assembled in one of the side halls within one of the city’s bath complexes. This bath complex, with Hellenistic‐style gymnasium, had been a beloved urban amenity since the second century CE (Figure 9.1). The fact that one portion of it was transformed into a synagogue speaks to the ease with which the local Jewish community moved among the wider populace and were accepted by them. (In this context, it is worth recalling, as a crucial aside, that not all Jews were willing participants in the shared culture of their Hellenistic and Roman worlds. In the second century BCE, during the period of Maccabean resistance to the Hellenistic rulers, many Jews advocated a rejection of these customs because they were seen as compromising their Jewish faith and identity. Attending the Hellenistic gymnasium was one of the most egregious behaviors that was stigmatized by the anonymous Jewish writer of the text known as 2 Maccabees, for example [2 Maccabees 4.9].)

  Figure 9.1 Jews had been living outside the Jewish homeland well before the Jewish diaspora – since at least the Hellenistic period – and the city of Sardis in Asia Minor was one site that had a long‐established Jewish community. This image shows a view of the synagogue at Sardis, which served local Jews during the fourth through sixth centuries CE. Urban context is crucial for understanding the life of Jews at Sardis in the Roman Empire. From this angle, you can see across the synagogue hall towards the lawn of a Roman bath complex and gymnasium. In antiquity, a wall would have separated these two spaces, but this photograph illustrates a key social‐historical detail. The Jewish community at Sardis had received permission to use and renovate a room in the city’s bath complex to create a worship space for their own community. The circumstances that led to this architectural project suggest that, for the members of this one minority faith living in Roman‐era Sardis, civic engagement and social integration were important values.

  Image © Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/President and Fellows of Harvard College.

  The text of 2 Maccabees, written in Greek, never became a part of Jewish Scripture, however. And six centuries later, the Jewish community at Sardis showed that it had little to fear about meeting in a room that was connected to such an important cultural and civic institution as the city’s local gymnasium and bath. Here, too, as at Priene, depictions of menarot (the Hebrew plural of menorah) adorned the space; and niches for the Torah guided individuals’ minds in the direction of their lost Temple. According to excavators, this building was transformed for Jewish use in the fourth century CE. A recent proposal suggests it was transformed during the sixth century CE. Whichever the precise date, the synagogue at Sardis was an enormous meeting hall, measuring almost 80 meters long, built in a room adjoining one of the city’s most fashionable spaces.

  The importance of Jewish place and time

  The extent to which Jewish communities used their local connections to build their worship spaces – by transforming a house in Priene or the bath complex in Sardis – should not suggest that these communities were compromising every and all aspect of their Jewish identity. The material culture from other synagogues shows us that all of these communities were intent on finding a creative balance that would help them express their own history and traditions at the same time that they built connections to their non‐Jewish neighbors and other residents. Many of them used a distinct sense of time to foster their own awareness of a Jewish identity.

  The Jewish calendar was and is a lunar calendar, based on the phases of the moon, but adapted to the solar year. (The solar year is the sequence of seasons which result from the path of the earth and the position of the sun; in this system, a year is divided into twelve months, and each month is divided into either 29 or 30 days.) In the Jewish calendar, the lunar units generally overlap with the solar seasons. Thus, the first month of the Jewish spring is Nisan, which coincides with March and April, while the winter month of Adir overlaps February and March.

  The date of Jewish rituals, around which Jews gather to worship, is based on dates in this calendar. As a result, Passover always begins on the “15th of Nisan”; Hannukah on the “25th of Chislev”; and Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, on the “1st of Tishrei,” which overlaps with September or October. Because there are more days per year in the solar calendar, however, than in the lunar one and because Romans used the solar year to tell time, the precise date of these Jewish holidays was never fixed. Like Jewish holidays in America, for example, important ancient festivals associated with Hanukkah, Rosh Hashanah, and Passover could often give the appearance – at least to those outside the Jewish community – of always jumping around the calendar in an unstable, quixotic way.

  In antiquity, Jewish communities used material culture to support their distinct sense of time and place. In many synagogues, intricately laid mosaics, carved stone reliefs, or colorful paintings depicted ritual objects which alluded to these significant moments in the Jewish year, or which directed the community to the memory of the Temple.

  The menorah, the seven‐branched lamp stand, is the most well known of these objects. In the third century CE, it became one of the most popular depictions of a Jewish identity and was seen in synagogues, as at Priene and Sardis, but also in tombs and on ceramic lamps. Today’s menarot have nine branches which commemorate the miraculous burning of oil, for eight days straight, which took place after the Maccabean family had gained possession of the Second Temple in 164 BCE. In antiquity, a seven‐branched menorah had been a part of Jewish Temple rituals since Moses had been instructed to make it, on Yahweh’s command (Exodus 25.31–40). During the Second Temple period, this menorah was kept in Jerusalem. Its oil was lit on a daily basis as part of the Temple rituals. Jewish individuals who chose to depict the menorah were evoking a time long gone when their rituals took place in Jerusalem.

  In addition to menarot, Jews used other symbols to evoke their Jewish identity, many of which were rooted in their calendar. The lulav, ethrog, and shofar are three objects that also appear frequently in synagogues. These objects were not required for Temple worship in Jerusalem, but they each figured in Jewish rituals. The shofar, or ram’s horn, was blown every Rosh Hashanah to mark the Jewish New Year. It was also blown on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. Other objects were drawn from still other festivals. The ethrog, a type of citrus fruit, and the lulav, a date‐palm branch, were used in the festival of Sukkot (“Tabernacles,” or “Booths”) to mark the end of the year – commemorating the forty years of wandering which the Jewish community suffered after their exodus from Egypt. Those who celebrate it are instructed to take a palm branch, a willow, a citrus fruit, and myrtle branch (Leviticus 23.40), bind them together, and wave them durin
g the festival.

  It is not surprising to see that representation of objects like these became popular in the century after the destruction of the Second Temple. Throughout the year, they helped give Jewish communities a feel for their history that was distinct from the ordinary march of Roman time. And yet even here, the way each community chose to balance their Jewish and Roman commitments was complex and resisted easy categorization. A synagogue at Hammat Tiberias, in Israel, will help us see the diversity that existed within the empire’s Jewish communities.

  The synagogue, located near the Sea of Galilee, has a particularly striking mosaic floor (Figure 9.2). Constructed in the fourth century, the main hall of the building is a square room which was damaged in the fifth and was later rebuilt in the sixth. As a community space, it would last until the eighth century CE. An apse in the assembly space oriented the community toward Jerusalem, as in other synagogues. The depictions on the mosaic floor at Hammat Tiberias are anything but standard, though.

  Figure 9.2 The floor of a synagogue at Hammat Tiberias, near the Sea of Galilee (modern Israel), was laid with bright, lively mosaics. This photograph shows the design. At the top of the photograph are two menarot (singular, menorah) on either side of a building, a structure which is intended to symbolize the lost Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Beneath this panel is a scene of the sun god Helios – or possibly the Roman emperor – commanding a four‐horse chariot. In a circle are the twelve signs of the zodiac, each labeled in Hebrew, while in the corners are personifications of the four seasons. It’s easy to look at this image today and study it as one would a photograph, although it is worth remembering that, in antiquity, visitors would have walked across the face of this picture. As a whole, the mosaic shows us that Jewish communities in the fourth‐ through sixth‐century Roman Empire both maintained and developed their own traditions, in part, by relying on a ritual calendar that was distinct from their non‐Jewish neighbors.