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Nerva, the Fiscus Judaicus and Jewish Identity*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Martin Goodman
Martin Goodman
Affiliation:
Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies and St Cross College, Oxford
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Extract

In A.D. 96 Nerva courted popularity in Rome for his new regime by changing the way in which the special tax on Jews payable to the fiscus Judaicus was exacted. The reform was widely advertised by the issue of coins, under the auspices of the senate, with the proclamation ‘fisci Judaici calumnia sublata’. Precisely how Nerva removed the calumnia no source states, but it can be surmised. The tax did not cease to be collected, for its imposition was still in operation in the time of Origen and possibly down to the fourth century A.D. It is a reasonable hypothesis that Nerva's intention was to demonstrate publicly his opposition to the way in which his hated predecessor, Domitian, had levied the tax, and to procure release for those described by Suetonius (Dom. 12. 2) as particular victims of Domitian's tendency to exact the tax ‘acerbissime’. According to Suetonius, these unfortunates were those who either ‘inprofessi’ lived a ‘iudaicam vitam’ or ‘origine dissimulata’ refused to pay the tax: the people thus trapped by Domitian and, if the hypothesis is correct, exempted by Nerva were those who failed to admit openly to their Jewish practices and/or those who hid their origins (presumably as Jews). I shall argue in this paper that by removing such people from the list of those liable to the Jewish tax, Nerva may unwittingly have taken a significant step towards the treatment of Jews in late antiquity more as a religion than as a nation.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 79 , November 1989 , pp. 40 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Martin Goodman 1989. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 On the fiscus Judaicus in general, see Tcherikover, V. A. and Fuks, A., Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum I (1957). 80–2;Google Scholar II (1960), 111–16.

2 Mattingly, H. and Sydenham, E. A., The Roman Imperial Coinage II (1926), 227 (no. 58)Google Scholar, 228 (no. 82).

3 Origen, Ep. ad Africanum 20 (14) (ed. de Lange, Sources chrétiennes 302 (1983), 566); on the cessation of the tax, see Juster, J., Les Juifs dans l'empire romain II (1914), 286Google Scholar.

4 The ostraca from Edfu relevant to the Jewish tax are published in Tcherikover and Fuks, op. cit., II, 119–36 ( = CPJ 160–229).

5 CPJ 181; see the discussion in Tcherikover and Fuks, op. cit., II, 115.

6 See, e.g., Hecataeus of Abdera, ap. Diod. Sic. 40. 3 and Jos., c. Ap. I. 183–204; Agatharchides of Cnidus in Jos., c. Ap. I. 205–11; Cic., Pro Flacco 28. 66–9; De Prov. Cons. 5. 10; Varro, ap. Augustine, De Civ. Dei 4. 31; for other texts, see Stern, M., Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism I (1974)Google Scholar.

7 Philo, Virt. 212, and passim; Josephus reserves the term Ἰουδαῖος for Jewish history after the Babylonian exile, preferring Ἰσραηλίτης for the earlier period.

8 Smallwood, E. M., ‘Domitian's attitude towards the Jews and Judaism’, Classical Philology 51 (1956), 1–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 See Thompson, L. A., ‘Domitian and the Jewish tax’, Historia 31 (1982), 329–42Google Scholar.

10 On Tib. Iulius Alexander, see Burr, V. A., Tiberius Iulius Alexander (1955)Google Scholar. What happened to those with only one ethnically Jewish parent?

11 See R. Goldenberg, ‘The Jewish Sabbath in the Roman world up to the time of Constantine the Great’, ANRW II. 19. I (1979), 414–47.

12 Seneca, Epist. Moral. 108. 22.

13 Cf. Jos., BJ 7. 45; Acts 13. 26; 17. 4.

14 For circumcision as a custom also of the Colchi and Egyptians, see Diod. Sic. I. 28. 2–3. See in general Nolland, J., ‘Do Romans observe Jewish Customs?’, Vigiliae Christianae 33 (1979), 1–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 On the limits of rabbinic authority, see Goodman, M., State and Society in Roman Galilee, A.D. 132–212 (1983), 119–34.Google Scholar

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17 Discussion and references in Schürer, E., rev. Vermes, G., Millar, F. and Goodman, M., The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ III. I (1986), 169–76Google Scholar.

18 Kraabel, A. T., ‘The disappearance of the “God-Fearers”’, Numen 28 (1981), 113–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 The context of the description as a ‘half-Jew’ is polemical and the lineage qualifications for a king may have been more stringent in Jewish eyes than those for an ordinary citizen (cf. Deut. 17. 15), but Josephus included the slur in his history without comment or objection. Herod could have been attacked quite easily as a half-Jew in a different sense because his mother was a Nabataean Arab (Jos., BJ I. 181).

20 Jos., AJ 13. 257–8. See now Kasher, A., Jews, Idumaeans and Ancient Arabs (1988).Google Scholar

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22 See Goodman, op. cit., 222–3.

23 Reynolds, J. and Tannenbaum, R., Jews and God-fearers at Aphrodisias (Camb. Phil. Soc. Supp. XI) (1987)Google Scholar, with my review in JRS 78 (1988), 261–2.

24 Tosefta, Avoda Zara 8 (9): 4; cf. Novak, D., The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism (Toronto Studies in Theology XIV) (1983)Google Scholar.

25 See, as an extreme example, the texts cited by Georgi, D., The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians (1987), 96–101Google Scholar.

26 Cf. the arguments, not all of them equally strong, of Nolland, J., ‘Proselytism or politics in Horace, Satires 1, 4, 138–143?’, Vigiliae Christianae 33 (1979), 347–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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28 J. North, ‘Religious toleration in Republican Rome’, Proc. Cam. Phil. Soc. n.s. 25 (1979), 85–103.

29 Cf., e.g., Cod. Theod. 16. 7 (De apostatis), 16. 8 (De Judaeis, caelicolis et Samaritanis).