Between expulsion and privilege. Practices of exclusion/inclusion of Jews in the urban society of Ancient Rome
Supervisor: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Thomas Blank
From the later 3rd century BC, the metropolis of Rome was involved in intensive exchange with large areas of the ancient Mediterranean. Strategies for labelling foreignness in the area of religion can be traced back to around the same time. The res publica and ist representatives applied a wide range of potential reactions to the perception that religious groups within its realm acted in ways that (or consisted of people who) were marked as foreign on either their own accord or/and in the perception of outsiders: groups and their activities could be more or less ignored, integrated into the system of Roman state cult, or expelled from Roman soil. The field of religion thus reflects not only the successively deepening interweaving of urban Roman culture with the regions of the Imperium Romanum, but also the complex discourse on the cultural differentiation of metropolitan society.
Jewish communities and religious practitioners occupy a special position in this discourse. Their presence in Rome can be traced soon after the establishment of diplomatic relations between Rome and the Maccabean Empire in the middle of the 2nd century BC. Jewish communities at Rome found themselves in the role of strangers not only because of the assumed ethnic origin of their members, but also because of their exclusive religious identity which, unlike other religious groups, largely prevented them from integrating into the religion of the res publica. How Jewish communities in Rome would develop, identity and be perceived by outsiders would be partly defined against the background of the turbulent relations between Rome and Judea (up to the Bar Kochba revolt in 132-135 AD) as well as internal developments in Judaism (e.g. messianic movements from the middle of the 1st century AD in Jewish-Christian communities).
Conflicts between the res publica and Roman practitioners of Jewish religion regularly arose when authorities became aware of any direct effects of Jewish activities on civic life in Rome; in particular, the proselytisation of Roman citizens or their relatives could have such effects. The ‚separate‘ status of Jewish groups in Rome is a particularly good example of the interaction between political history, social discourse on foreignness and the public regulation of the civic sphere. The dissertation project will examine the internal and external positioning of Jewish communities (2nd Century BCE to 2nd century CE) as ‚separate groups‘ in Rome on the basis of literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence. Practices of marking ‚separateness‘ from the civic sphere, but also of simultaneous integration (e.g. through the granting of exclusive privileges, but also through participation in public life) will be analysed with regard to their authorial intentions as well as their internal and external effects.