On “The Jews under Roman Rule” by E. Mary Smallwood *****

The first portion of this book is in large part a summary of Josephus's works, a tendency that can't be helped, given that Josephus is our main source of information regarding this very subject. Smallwood, however, makes the events come to life, abbreviating where Josephus fails to and expanding where more information is now available.

Then, of course, Josephus as a source comes to an end soon after the First Jewish War. The work from here, by necessity, becomes more sketchy, as Smallwood has much less in the way of source material from which to draw. That said, she does admirably, with what little primary data we have. What I liked was that she does exactly as denoted in her title—she looks not just at the Jews in Palestine but at the Jews throughout the empire, usually in alternating chapters. As such, there was much more here on the Alexandrian uprising of 115-117 than I'd read anywhere else—and Smallwood, in addition, sets it within the context of Jewish uprisings occurring elsewhere in the empire at the same time. We get similar detail regarding the Bar Cochba revolt in 135.

After these revolts, information becomes even more dificult to come by. Smallwood does as she can, looking at archeological sources, at what we can glean from the silence of other sources, and at what little can be gleaned from the Mishna. As Smallwood sees it, after the Jewish revolts, culminating in 135, the Jewish people largely came to see their Messianic hopes as being wholly supernatural, giving up on the idea of rising up themselves. What troubles did occur were usually in the context of Roman civil war, the taking of one side or another in the conflict for rulership of the empire. And while the empire did impose some anti-Jewish measures, they were usually temporary. Even the banning of Jews from Jerusalem appears to have been only partly enforced, in time. Troubles would arise, however, more so as the empire moved toward nominal Christianity.