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theses

My project investigates Jewish attitudes towards Roman authority, particularly the emperors. The primary focus of my study is areas of continuity and change in Jewish expressions of their views on Roman leaders as Rome evolved from a distant Republic exerting diplomatic influence in the eastern Mediterranean during the second century BCE to the imperial overlord of Judaea in the first century CE. Throughout my study I examine the ways in which Jewish literature and material culture of the period voiced opinions on Roman leaders both through the assimilation of Rome’s leading figures into a Jewish world view as well as through the reception and reappropriation of Roman self-imaging. I examine works such as I Maccabees, and the historical texts of the Jewish authors Philo and Josephus. The building program of Herod the Great also provides rich material for my analysis because of the strong political statements made through the choice of Augustus as a dedicatee for many of the buildings. Further, Herod’s innovative building projects provided a focal point for other, non-elite Judaean Jews to express their opinions about the emperor by demonstrating their approval or disapproval of the buildings themselves. I also examine the coins of the Herodian Dynasty as expressions of these rulers’ relationship to Rome’s emperors. As part of my analysis of the literature and material culture I explore the ways in which Judaean Jews, who were first conquered by the Romans in 63 BCE, rationalized their conquest in cultural terms (theological and philosophical), and how their reception of the self-images of Rome and leading Romans manifested itself in the rationalization of conquest. I argue against the prevailing scholarly opinion that Jews universally rejected the imposition of Roman hegemony and suggest instead that the evidence shows that many Jews held a more nuanced opinion of Roman authority, viewing it as a divinely sanctioned reality that could be a benevolent or a maleficent force. My study has broad significance because it aims to deepen our understanding of the ways in which a specific conquered people in the ancient world perceived and gave expression to the general experience of being conquered, explaining their conquest in their own cultural terms as well as through the assimilation of the cultural terms of the conqueror.

ETD_7119

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Katheryn E. Whitcomb

doi:10.7282/T35Q4Z91

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.