Judaean Embassies and Cases before Roman Emperors, AD 44–66

Abstract

In the two decades before the First Jewish war, litigants or diplomats from the province of Judaea had recourse to Roman emperors on a number of occasions. In some cases the matters at issue involved objections against actions of Roman prefects of Judaea. Evidence about the outcomes of the hearings and diplomatic encounters shows that the emperors Claudius and Nero usually gave decisions in favour of the Jewish side, especially when the Jewish party was the Jerusalem priesthood. It is argued that it was a consistent policy of these emperors to be fair and more than fair to the Jerusalem priests in these years—to the point of ruling against their own procurators on a number of occasions. It is suggested, in view of this, that when the case of Paul of Tarsus came before Caesar in the early sixties, the decision probably went in favour of Paul's accusers. Flavius Josephus through his books made Judaea the second best-attested Roman province in the first century ad, after Egypt.1 Debate on how to use his evidence continues2—and in Martin Goodman's view 'in some ways Josephus emerges as a hero from this examination', because his work 'was written and published from within an imperial court replete with the anti Jewish propaganda on which the Flavian dynasty based its claim to power'.3 Although Josephus resided in Rome after the First Jewish War and wrote his books there, his 'theme is alwey I wish to thank Prof. J. A. Crook for reading and commenting on a draft of this