Leadership

Misled by the harmonious portrait of Jewish society discussed above, modern scholars overrated the question of leadership after the destruction of the Second Temple. The view of Jews in that era as a homogeneous group with the rabbis at the helm compelled modern investigators to seek factors to account for this situation. This effort is superfluous. In the Second Temple period, especially during the final generations of that period (for which there is a broad spectrum of documentation), the Roman regime recognized the Temple in Jerusalem as the central institution of the Jewish minority throughout the Roman Empire. Thus they allowed the collection, both in Judaea and in the Diaspora, of the half-shekel, an annual tax which funded the daily and public sacrifices, as well as the day-to-day operations of the Temple (Schurer 1973-87: 2: 570-2). The natural corollary of this, which is also in keeping with a Jewish tradition that goes back to the beginning of the Second Temple period, is that the Temple’s premier official, the high priest, functioned as the formal leader of the Jewish public in Judaea. He also enjoyed great influence, even if less formal power, in the Diaspora (Goodblatt 1994: 6-56). After the Temple was destroyed, Roman authorities decided, unlike their practice in regard to temples demolished elsewhere, not to allow the renewal of the sanctuary in Jerusalem. As a result, the institution of the high priest lost its base of power and legitimacy. This does not mean, however, that the priesthood ceased to exist. A variety of sources testify to the persistence of the priestly status and its high social prestige up until the end of antiquity and beyond. The hope to rebuild the Temple continued to beat in the hearts of many generations of Jews (manifesting itself, for example, in the Bar Kokhba revolt), thus sustaining the role of the priests. On the other hand, we no longer hear of priests holding any official position, at least not in the three centuries discussed in this chapter (Irshai 2004).

By the same measure, there is no need to assume that an alternative leadership ofthe entire Jewish ‘‘nation’’ emerged immediately, whether by Roman fiat or spontaneously from within the populace. The Roman imperial system had always functioned, along the ancient Greek-Hellenistic model, as a two-headed system integrating local government, in the form of city councils and assemblies with municipal administrative powers as well as the right to enforce (to a certain extent) indigenous constitutions, and imperial rule, in the form of the provincial management headed by a governor and his entourage, with an army (most of the time) under his command (Ando, this volume; Lintott 1993). On occasion, the Romans bestowed power and authority on individual local figures, whether ‘‘as kings and friends of the Roman People’’ (what are sometimes misleadingly called client-kings) or as priests. This was the case in Judaea, when Julius Caesar recognized the high priesthood office of the Hasmonean Hyrcanus II. He also granted him the status of ethnarch of the Jews, and at the same time designated the local Jewish-Iudamaean Antipater a procurator of Judaea (Jos. AJ 14.143-91). By the same token, the Roman Senate acknowledged Herod’s loyalty and promoted him to the rank of king of the Jews (Jos. AJ 14.385); later, the Jewish patriarch (nasi) also held the title of ethnarch (see discussion below). The same set of recognitions resonates in the official status of the high priests during the final generations of the Second Temple.

It seems, however, that the centuries immediately following the destruction witnessed a different situation. In Palestine, the Roman governor managed the province’s business from his capital in Caesarea, while city councils along the coastal plain, the central hill region, Galilee, and Transjordan oversaw local affairs. When it comes to the multitudes living outside Palestine, since Jewish existence in antiquity should not be reconstructed as a monolithic, homogeneous entity (like the Jewish nation imagined in the romantic-nationalist historiography of the nineteenth and early twentieth century), we need not amalgamate all its constituents into a single coherent hierarchy. Jews were both scattered through and embedded in the multicultural and multiethnic landscape of the Roman world, in the cities of the Mediterranean basin. They were known as an ancient and honorable, if sometimes annoying, minority, united, like other religious groups and municipal associations, principally around their cultic institutions (synagogues) and communal life. The vast amount of epi-graphic material from all over the Roman Empire, sporadic and vague as it may be, offers occasional glimpses into the administrative textures of these local, self-contained communities. Honorary and burial inscriptions mention time and again the ‘‘father (and at times the mother?) of the community of the Jews,’’ ‘‘archon of the Jews,’’ ‘‘head of the synagogue (archisynagogus)’ as well as other Jewish dignitaries, many of whom also hold high offices in the municipal administration of their cities (conveniently and exhaustively collected in Horbury and Noy 1992; Noy 1993-5; Noy et al. 2004).

As early as the Second Temple period some informal (i. e. for the most part lacking official recognition) elements in Jewish society amassed status and power. The best known of these are the Pharisees, of which Josephus writes that their influence ‘‘is so great with the masses'' that the people adhere to their guidance over the commands of the king (AJ 13.288). Yet the direct link that modern scholars created between Second Temple Pharisees and post-70 sages does not stand up on close examination (e. g. S. Cohen 1984a: 36-43; 1999a). Excluding instances of their self-portrayal (which tend to be found in later texts), nowhere do we find that the Rabbinic sages held the official reins of leadership in the early generations after the destruction, although they might have enjoyed some sporadic communal influence in Palestine, especially in ‘‘religious’’ (i. e. not civil or criminal) matters and over their own disciples/followers (Goodman 1983: 93-111; S. Cohen 1992; Hezser 1997: 329-489).

At some point - the earliest well-founded sources date to the beginning ofthe third century - a new form of leadership emerged: the patriarch (Jacobs 1995). The origins

Figure 28.3 An Aramaic letter written on papyrus from the so called ‘‘Cave of the Letters’’ at the Judaean Desert (known as P. Tadin 57), communicating an order from Simeon, the famous leader of the 132 revolt against Rome, also known as Bar Kokhba, to his Lieutenant (one Yehuda the Son of Menasheh). It instructs to send him the four species required by Jewish law for the celebration of the holiday of Sukkot (note that the same four species appear in the top panel of the Ilamat Tiberieas synagogue, flanking the two sides of the Tiberias synagogue)

Of this institution, its nature, and the source of the patriarch’s authority remain unclear, and are the object of speculation by modern scholars. Some believe that the Romans created the position in order to fill the vacuum left in the local government of the Jews in Palestine after the destruction of the Temple (Goodblatt 1994: 218-31). Others argue that the patriarchate was created from below, from the Jewish public (Goodman 1992), or as others maintain, only from the Rabbinic circles, and was only afterwards accorded de facto recognition by the Romans (Schwartz 1990). Advocates ofall these views link the patriarchate intimately, at least at its beginning, to what is generally called ‘‘the Rabbinic movement.’’ But this hardly needs to be taken as unassailable fact. Presenting a strong and early bond between the patriarch and the sages served the latter’s agenda in the third and fourth centuries, as a self-conscious group seeking to strengthen their positions in society and increase their influence over Jewish life. Good relations with the patriarch, whose authority was of greater antiquity, scarcely hindered such aspirations. But the question of whether to believe this image, which derives from ostensibly historical traditions in Rabbinic literature about early patriarchs who came from among the sages, remains open at best. Simeon Bar Kosiba, the leader of the Bar Kokhba revolt, signed his letters, some of which have been uncovered in the Judaean desert, with the Hebrew title nasi, or patriarch (e. g. Yadin et al. 2002: 44, 45, 46, 54), and he certainly did not belong to the circle of the sages.

The later history of the patriarchate, between the fourth century and the elimination of the post by Christian emperors in the third decade of the fifth century, is easier to reconstruct. Roman law recognized the patriarchs’ power to collect special taxes, as well as to appoint and remove community leaders both in Palestine and the Diaspora (e. g., Linder 1987: 132-8, 186-9, 196-7, 204-11). A variety of sources, both hostile - such as the writings of Christians like Eusebius, Epiphanius, and Jerome - and more sympathetic and admiring ones - such as the letters of the well-known Syrian-Greek rhetorician Libanius of Antioch - testify to the growing eminence and wide sway of the patriarchs over the generations, and about the expansion of their political and economic networks. Jewish inscriptions from synagogues and cemeteries in Palestine and the Diaspora supplement the picture, demonstrating the

Appreciation and admiration that most, though not all Jews had for this institution (Jacobs 1995).