CHAPTER 22 Judaea, the Palestinian Coast, the Galilee, Idumaea, and Samaria Yaron Z. Eliav Names, Geography, and Ethnicity The regions under discussion in this chapter by and large overlap with the territories of two modern countries: the State of Israel, which also extends south into the Negev Desert, and the Palestinian Authority. Both names, Israel and Palestine, are rooted in the ancient Near East, in traditions dating back hundreds of years before the arrival of the Greeks. Modern Israel associates its heritage with the stories in the Hebrew Bible about the alleged conquest and settlement of the land by the people of Israel, under their god’s guidance. The name Palestine stems from another nation mentioned in the Bible, the Philistines, known in other sources as the “sea people,” who occupied the southeastern shores of the eastern Mediterranean, occasionally referred to by the more modern name the Palestinian coast, during the late Bronze and Iron ages. The name, “Philistia” and as “Palestina,” persisted for centuries, resurfacing in sources throughout the Persian and then Hellenistic eras (e.g. Hdt. 3.5), before the Romans, in the days of the emperor Hadrian, adopted it as the official name of the province (see below). Judaea, originally the name of the leading Israelite tribe (Judah) and its territory, became the administrative name of the Persian province Yehud and later the Greek and the Roman Judaea. Similar developments occurred with the name Samaria. Beginning with the biblical Hebrew name of the city Shomron, it became Shamrin in Aramaic, which in the Persian period already referred to both a city and a province as well as one of the region’s emerging – although for a long while very diverse – ethnic groups (the Samaritans); it then became the Greek and Roman region Samaria. Idumaea was originally an Iron Age kingdom in Transjordan (known in the Bible as Edom), but by the Persian period the Idumaeans had moved to the territory south of Judaea, which became known as Idumaea. Finally, the Galilee also derives from a biblical Hebrew word, which originally meant “district” or “region,” but unlike the other terms it never became associated with a distinct ethnic group. Geographically, a line of connected midsize mountains (the tallest, Tel Asur, rises approximately 3300 feet above sea level) running from north to south stands at the heart of this area and serves as its topographical skeleton. Known as the Central Hill, this 65-mile stretch of A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East, First Edition. Edited by Ted Kaizer. © 2022 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2022 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 260 Yaron Z. Eliav elevated topography, widening at its broadest to only 15–20 miles, functions as the country’s watershed. Like so much else in the region, the name of this geographical unit is itself a matter of contention: some call it “the hills of Judaea and Samaria,” while others label it the “West Bank” (as it lies to the west of the Jordan River; this political appellation also includes the western side of the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea). Jerusalem sits at the top of these hills, pretty much at its center, with Samaria to its north, the nucleus of the region called Judaea to its south, and Idumaea at its southernmost edge. The slopes of the Central Hill gradually descend westward through an intermediary topographical area known by the Hebrew name Shephelah, into the flat and fertile seashore plains that run parallel to the hills along the Mediterranean. Known as the Palestinian coast, the seashore plains have hosted a string of commercially savvy and ethnically speckled port cities (Gaza, Ascalon, Jaffa/Ioppe, Dora, and from Herod’s days Caesarea Maritima, to name the most prominent). On the eastern side, the Central Hill falls more precipitously toward the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea. Adjacent to the Dead Sea, the southeast corner of the hills and the valley below them constitutes the so-called Judaean Desert (Figure 22.3), home to fleeing rebels and other renegades over the centuries as well as those who decided to depart from society, and the site that preserved the famous Dead Sea Scrolls (Chapter 6) and other documents (Chapter 11) in its dry and inaccessible caves (Figure 22.1). Wide-open, lower, and flat terrains embrace the Central Hill from north and south. To the north a string of low and flat terrain known today as the Jezreel and Beit-Shean valleys, and by ancient writers as simply the “Great Plain” (mega pedion; Tsafrir e.a. 1994: 182), separate the Central Hill from the mountains of the Galilee. In ancient times the plains allowed the main trading route that ran from Egypt along the Mediterranean coast, the via maris (“Way of the Sea” – an adaptation from the Vulgate to Isaiah 9:1 and Matthew 4:15), to branch northeast toward Damascus and eventually cross the Syrian Desert by way of Palmyra to Mesopotamia. To the south, the arid basins of the Arad and Beer-Sheba valleys separate the Central Hill from the Negev Figure 22.1 Qumran – caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. © T. Kaizer. Judaea, the Palestinian Coast, the Galilee, Idumaea, and Samaria 261 Desert. North of the Great Plain, the hills of Galilee ascend in a rather disorderly fashion, comprised of the Upper Galilee, high peaks in the north (the highest being Mount Meron, Jabal alJarmaq, just short of 4000 feet), and the Lower Galilee, with significantly lower east–west ranges, interspersed by parallel valleys in the south (this upper/lower geographical distinction appears already in Joseph. BJ 3.35; mShebi 9.2). The Galilee borders on the southern portions of the Phoenician coast on the west (Chapter 20), with the harbor city of Acre (Akko)/Ptolemais at its center, the Jordan Valley and the Sea of Galilee to its east and southeast respectively, and the even higher mountains of Lebanon and Hermon (Chapter 21) to its north and northeast. Throughout the six hundred years or so covered by this volume, several distinct ethnic groups resided in the area. The region never experienced uniformity, neither geographically nor ethnically, definitely not in the periods discussed here. Even in times when it constituted a single administrative unit, such as in the days of King Herod (37–4 BCE) or later when it became a province of the Roman Empire, it always contained a wide variety of ethnic groups, nations, languages, religions, and cultures. Because of the preservation of sources such as Josephus (Chapter 7) and the Apocrypha by medieval Christians, we know far more about the Jews than about the others. Originally a small and loosely organized amalgamation of tribes, families, and communities living on the Central Hill in the area called Judaea, they gradually coalesced into a defined nation – laos and ethnos in Greek (presented as such by the early first-century BCE text known as 1 Maccabees, see Chapter 6). Since the later Iron Age, with a half-century interruption in the sixth century, this group already operated its own local temple in the city of Jerusalem and worshipped the god of Israel, who, unlike the region’s many other deities, lacked any concrete figure. An elite class of priests, led by a High Priest, administered the rituals in the temple and grew prominent in wealth and authority. Hebrew was the ancestral language of the Jews, used for prayer as well as for learning and in the production of religious texts, whereas Aramaic functioned as the vernacular, accompanied soon after by Greek. Historical heritage, mainly the story of the Israelites as told by the Hebrew Bible, and an ancient set of laws that governed their lives bonded these people; but at the same time, political struggles, reinforced by wide disagreements on the interpretation of their way of life, kept them diversified and disjointed (Schürer 1973–87). The Samaritans occupied the northern portion of the Central Hill. Our information about them is very partial, especially regarding the Hellenistic and early Roman periods. Many of their known characteristics, from historical legacy to rituals to the identity of their god, resemble those found among the Jews, as does their language – Samaritan – and sacred texts. Indeed the two groups were closely tied, perhaps even indistinguishable, in the centuries leading to the Greek conquest of 332 BCE; later hostilities tended to blur these similarities, and they viewed one another as opposing nations (Crown 1989). But there were others who lived in the region of Samaria who did not fall into the Judaeo-like rubrics at all, and the process by which all these groups coalesced into the relatively homogenous Samaritan entity of the later Roman period remains obscure. Other populations in the region possess even less historical documentation. One such group is the Idumaeans, whose origin east of the Dead Sea goes back to the Iron Age (Kasher 1988: 1–11; cf. Bartlett 1999). Pushed by the emerging Nabataeans and other Arabs, these tribes settled in the Negev and the southern portions of the Central Hill, with the city of Hebron as religious center. The otherwise unknown historian Ptolemy (perhaps the famous grammarian by that name from Ascalon) characterized Idumaeans as partially Phoenicians and partially Syrians; apparently already in the ancient world their identity was murky, at least to outsiders (FGrH 199: F1). Similar clouds obscure our knowledge of the residents of the Galilee in the early periods. Certainly we may not project their later Jewishness, evident during the Roman period, to the early era of Hellenistic rule (pace Freyne 1980). Finally, the harbor cities on the seashore plains hosted the most diverse blend of ethnic groups and nationalities. Here, the Phoenicians, for centuries the political and commercial elite, rubbed shoulders with local, partially nomadic Arabs, Nabataeans, Syrians (i.e. Aramaic-speaking people from the north and northeast, as well as local descendants of the old Canaanites), Jews, Idumaeans, Samaritans, as well as Egyptian, Greek, and later Roman 262 Yaron Z. Eliav merchants, veterans, and settlers (see e.g. the testimony of Strabo, Geogr. 16.2.34). This rich mixture, quite evident in the material culture, the epigraphy, and numismatic evidence, proved both economically invigorating and culturally volatile (Andrade 2010). The best examples come from Hellenistic Dora and Roman Caesarea Maritima (Holum 1988; Stern 1994: 201–318). The Hellenistic Age (332–175 BCE) The Hellenistic era in the eastern regions of the Mediterranean opens with the conquests of Alexander and the Macedonian/Greek army in 332 BCE. After decisive victories over the Persians in Asia Minor late in the previous year, Alexander spent most of 332 campaigning on the Phoenician and Palestinian coasts – first, for seven months around the city of Tyre (Chapter 20), and later for another two months besieging, capturing, and then resettling the city of Gaza – before advancing later in the year toward Egypt. Concurrently, Parmenion, Alexander’s general and second in command, operated inland and brought the entire region under Greek sway (Curt. 4.1.4–5). Little information survives from these early days of Greek conquest, however it is known that many small settlements suffered severely (Stern 1968). A few oft-discussed Jewish sources vividly and dramatically portray a visit of Alexander to Jerusalem, where he met with the High Priest, honored the city’s temple, and conferred many religious rights and benefits to its people. Although not completely unreasonable, these accounts are probably legendary (Goldstein 1993). While we do not know for certain how the invading Greeks treated the Jews, we have more detailed information about the tension and conflict between the conquering Greeks and the local Samaritans, which culminated in the lynching of Andromachus, the governor of Syria, provoking harsh retaliation by Alexander, who destroyed the city of Samaria and ordered its reconstruction as a Macedonian military colony (Curt. 4.8.9–11; Euseb. Chron., year 1680 ad. ann. Abr. in the Armenian version). Prominent Samaritans fled with their families, taking valuables and legal documents to the caves of wadi Daliyeh, north of Jericho; their skeletons testify to the horrible death they met, probably suffocated by smoke (NEAEHL 1: 320–323). In the tumultuous years following the death of Alexander in 323 BCE, military activity increased across the region. Armies traversed the Palestinian coastal plains, staging attacks on Ptolemy’s Egyptian kingdom or marching north when Ptolemy I responded by trying to secure a buffer zone to protect his newly acquired domain. Cities such as Gaza and Jaffa/Ioppe changed hands many times with dire consequences for the local population (see e.g. Diod. Sic. 19.59.1–2, 19.93.7). The more remote territories of Judaea and Samaria, which lacked the strategic significance of the seashore plains, were for the most part spared. Nevertheless, some reliable, if exaggerated, sources report that at least on one occasion Ptolemy I stormed the city of Jerusalem, compelling thousands to join his army and enslaving many more (Agatharchides apud Joseph. Ap. 1.210; the so-called Letter of Aristeas 12–14; App. Syr. 50.252). He carried out similar actions against the Samaritans (Joseph. AJ 12.7). A century later, the final act in the military conflicts between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids, the so-called Fourth and Fifth Syrian Wars (Chapter 2), also ravaged the region; first, in 217 BCE a series of battles and expeditions culminated in a Seleucid defeat in Raphia, on the southern edge of the Palestinian coast, but not before they seized a handful of cities and forts throughout the country (Polyb. 5.70, 5.71.11–12). The pendulum swung back two decades later with the decisive Seleucid victory near Panias, in the Upper Galilee, led by King Antiochus III. Needless to say, the furious fighting was disastrous to the local population; one official document of Antiochus III mentions that the city of Jerusalem was “destroyed by the hazards of war” (Joseph. AJ 12.138). Between these eruptions of violence and destruction, the region enjoyed long stretches of tranquility and prosperity. The archive of Zenon, a prominent agent in service of the Ptolemaic dioiketes (finance minister) Apollonius, who traveled on his master’s behalf throughout the region in the mid-third century, provides colorful snippets of information about the era’s administrative stability and economic progress. A large assortment of governmental officials, cooperating with local Judaea, the Palestinian Coast, the Galilee, Idumaea, and Samaria 263 magnates and assisted by military and informal police units, looked after the financial interests of the kingdom (although, viewed from the distance of time, the precise bureaucratic structure remains vague). These officials regulated shipments of agricultural products such as wheat, wine, and olive oil, as well as artifacts (e.g. rugs), fragrances, and slaves through the harbor cities of the Mediterranean; they oversaw tax collection in every village and hamlet; and they intervened in disputes between land owners and their tenants (Tcherikover 1937; Durand 1997). One well-documented example comes from the Jewish Tobiads, a powerful and wealthy family centered in the regions east of the Jordan with marital ties to the High Priest in Jerusalem (D.R. Schwartz 1998). The most significant developments during this era were cultural. The Hellenistic tide that swept the entire Levant in this period did not bypass the ethnic groups of our region. Dating to the final years of Ptolemaic rule or immediately thereafter, a funerary inscription from the necropolis of Marisa, an Idumaean city on the southeast corner of the Shephelah, captured the essence of this process. Written in Greek, it praises Apollophanes the son of Sesmios, “chief of the Sidonians in Marisa.” The Greek name of the son replaces the Semitic name of the father, whereas other names in the cemetery maintain their local identity, using the theophoric suffix of the Idumaean divinity “Kos.” Wall paintings in those tombs all employ the visual vocabulary of the Greeks: Ionic capitals, temple facades, and a host of exotic hunting scenes and animals that resemble comparable tombs in Alexandria (NEAEHL 3: 953–6). Similarly, cities and municipal centers in places far apart as Dora, the central Phoenician harbor of the northern Palestinian coast (Stern 1994: 201– 260; Stewart and Martin 2003), and Tel Keddesh, a Persian administrative outpost in the Upper Galilee that became Phoenician-Greek (Herbert and Berlin 2003), reshaped their physical outer look in Greek fashion. Archaeological findings in such sites reveal momentous changes – in language, personal names, city planning, architecture, art, and religion, to name the most prominent. Jewish and Samaritan societies in the early decades of the second century seems to have been no different. A century of Ptolemaic rule initiated a transformation that was to define the cultural landscape of the region until the Muslim conquest in the seventh century CE. This wave of Hellenism, as it came to be labeled in the nineteenth century, never completely obliterated indigenous cultures and their way of life – far from it. The Samaritans, in particular, seem to have bounced back from the ruthless mistreatment under Alexander. Archaeological evidence points to a population move from Samaria, which had become a Macedonian colony, to the city of Shechem some six miles to the southeast on the Central Hill, which exhibited a building and fortification boom around 300 BCE (NEAEHL 4:1353–4). Surely, they chose this destination because of its proximity to the ancient religious center on Mount Gerizim, which rises up to the south of the city and remains the Samaritans’ sacred precinct to this day (Magen 1993). The Jewish community too experienced consolidation and growth, although many of the details remain ambiguous. A bill of rights issued in the early second century BCE by Antiochus III recognizes this group as Jews (ioudaioi) and acknowledges their unique ancestral laws, temple, and leadership, including a council (gerousia), scribes of the temple, and priests (Joseph. AJ 12.138–144). Only in the coastal plains, heavily dominated by the ancient Phoenician cities now turned Greek poleis, did local cultural traits gradually fade away; the native population became overwhelmingly Greek, not by genealogy as much as by language, self-consciousness, and identity (Millar 1993: 267–270). But even here, some of the pre-Greek traits continued to exist, as evident in the local religious pantheon and the continued usage of Aramaic deep into the Roman period (Belayche 2001; Sartre 2001: 851–883). The Hasmonaean (Maccabaean) Period (175–63 BCE) Most of the second century BCE, and a good part of the first half of the next century, were dominated by the events that led to and emanated from the revolt and rise to power of the Hasmonaean dynasty (the most detailed study of this period remains Schürer 1973–87). A rather obscure Judaean, priestly family, the Hasmonaeans (known later as the Maccabees, from 264 Yaron Z. Eliav makevet, a hammer in Hebrew, the nom de guerre of their first leader Judas) led a local, guerrilla-style revolt against the Seleucids in 168/7. Originating in Judaea, this revolt gradually developed into a full-fledged war aimed simultaneously at the governing Seleucids, the local Jewish authorities in Jerusalem, and neighboring cities and ethnic groups. The instability within the Seleucid kingdom, caused to a large extent by the rising power of the Romans in the West, allowed the Hasmonaeans to maneuver between competing factions in the royal house and to benefit from the Seleucids’ overall weakness. Other groups in the region acted in a similar manner, carving their own territories and detaching themselves from the disintegrating Seleucid kingdom. The Ituraeans, for example – nomadic mountain people, probably of Arab or Aramaean descent – extended their sway from the Anti-Lebanon regions deep into the Galilee (Maoz 2011; but cf. Myers 2010; see also Chapter 21). Similarly, at the turn of the century, a local tyrant, Zoilus, established himself as ruler of Straton’s Tower (the site of the later Caesarea Maritima) and Dora, but he was eventually deposed and handed over to the Hasmonaeans (Levine 1974: 62–63). No signs had presaged these revolutionary changes in 198 BCE, when the Seleucid king Antiochus III emerged victorious at the battle of Panias. The royal correspondence documented in an inscription found near modern Hefzibah, northwest of Beit-Shean/Scythopolis, reflected the governmental authority of the Seleucids and the relative stability of the region in the years following the Fifth Syrian War (Landau 1966). But strong undercurrents, most of which remain invisible to us, undoubtedly were stirring among the Jewish population of Judaea. Already during the Syrian Wars, alliances with the rival Hellenistic kingdoms cut through the higher echelons of Jewish society (Gera 1998: 3–35). Competition within the house of the High Priest in Jerusalem led to the departure of some of its most prominent members – one to establish a temple in Egypt, another to join the opposing community of the Samaritans – and eventually to bribery and political assassination (Brutti 2006: 121–155). In 175 BCE a major constitutional change occurred in Jerusalem when the local citizens decided to turn the city into a Greek polis, probably renaming it “Antioch in Jerusalem” (2 Macc 4:9). Later Hasmonaean propaganda condemned this event as treacherous, but at the time it sat well with the majority of the population who did not see it as contradicting their Jewish way of life (Hengel 1974: 255–314). Similar adaptations to Greek patterns of life and governance, the widely embraced cultural norm of the time, were common among the Samaritans as well, who, according to one surviving official document, “choose to live in accordance with Greek customs” (Joseph. AJ 12.264). In 152 BCE, as the Hasmonaean uprising was successfully reaching the end of its second decade, the Seleucid contender to the throne, Alexander Balas, in an attempt to co-opt them, appointed the Hasmonaean leader Jonathan as Jerusalem’s High Priest, a recognition later adopted by subsequent Seleucid monarchs. Just a half-century later, concurrent with the disintegration of the Seleucids, Hasmonaean rulers took the title of “kings,” issuing coins and extending their rule over extensive territories in Judaea and beyond. The high point of their reign came in the days of the Hasmonaean King Alexander Jannaeus (103–76 BCE). His father John Hyrcanus and his short-lived brother Aristobulus I had made small strides in Transjordan, capturing the city of Madaba, as well as more extensive conquests in Samaria, Idumaea, and Galilee. Jannaeus, despite early defeats by the Ptolemaic monarch Ptolemy IX (which prevented him from taking the northern harbor of Acre (Akko)/Ptolemais), and later at the hands of the Nabataeans, and in spite of mounting criticism from within his Jewish domain, expanded Hasmonaean dominance well beyond the initial territorial gains of his predecessors. He campaigned first in Transjordan, capturing Gadara and Amathus, and then in the southern coastal plains where he subdued Raphia, Anthedon, and finally, after a brutal, year-long siege, the city of Gaza, sometime between 100–96 BCE (Joseph. AJ 13.356–364). In the late 80s he returned to Transjordan, subjugating a handful of cities to the east and the north including Pella, Dion, Gerasa, Seleucia, Gaulana, and the fortress of Gamla (Joseph. AJ 393–394, BJ 1.104–105). Other major Greek cities in the region were handed over to the Hasmonaeans in various treaties or simply ceded to their rule; those included the centrally situated and commercially powerful Beit-Shean/ Judaea, the Palestinian Coast, the Galilee, Idumaea, and Samaria 265 Scythopolis and Philoteria both in the Jordan Valley, south of the Lake of Galilee, and Dora on the Mediterranean coast. By the end of Jannaeus’s rein, the Jewish Hasmonaean dynasty established itself as a powerful and independent state in the eastern Mediterranean. Save a few exceptions (such as the city of Ascalon on the southern coastal plains) they governed the entire region under discussion in this chapter and beyond, deep into territories east of the Jordan River. Their dominance constituted a world-shattering transformation in the Levant; from a small and rather insignificant territory enjoying religious autonomy, Judaea grew into a forceful mini-kingdom in the eastern Mediterranean. If the immediate reasons leading to the Hasmonaean uprising in Judaea remain unclear (Gera 1998: 223–230), the outcome resonated in every area of life as it reshuffled the ethnic boundaries and cultural textures of the region. Buoyed by their initial success and by the need to justify their expansionism, the Hasmonaeans espoused a militant nationalistic ideology (Mendels 1992, and more moderately Goodblatt 2006: 120–121, 157–159). Their official historiography – such as the book known as 1 Maccabees – employs language and imagery that links them with the ancient, illustrious kings of the Davidic dynasty. They inscribed their coins with the paleo-Hebrew alphabet, by their time mostly out of use (although it had been used on the previous Judaean coinage of the late Persian and Ptolemaic eras and continued to be used by the Samaritans), and other symbols meant to invoke not only the temple in Jerusalem and its glorious past, but also to establish them as legitimate kings in the contemporary Hellenistic style (Meshorer 1982: I, 46–97). The Hasmonaeans’ ambitious military campaigns and policy of annexation destroyed neighboring religious centers such as the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim, and imposed the Jewish religion, often by force, upon the indigenous populations to the south and north: the Idumaeans, the Ituraean dwellers of Galilee, and with less success the Samaritans (Joseph. AJ 13.254–258, 318–319, BJ 1.63–65; but cf. S. Schwartz 1991). Some segments of Jewish society objected to the revolutionary changes introduced by the Hasmonaeans and even went so far as to rebel against them in collaboration with their Seleucid enemies (e.g. Joseph. AJ 13.376; Eshel 2008: 117–131). Another group who opposed these changes was a priestly sect known as the Essenes, who migrated from Jerusalem to the Judaean Desert, to a site known today as Qumran (Figure 22.1), and established a semi-monastic community, denouncing the sacrilege of the Hasmonaeans and awaiting their fall. Since the 1940s, Bedouins and archaeologists have unearthed the writings of these Essenes – the Dead Sea Scrolls – in the caves around Qumran (Schiffman 1994; with references to the scholarly debate surrounding the nature of Qumran and its inhabitants). The Early Roman/Herodian Era (63 BCE–70 CE) In 63 BCE, Pompey Magnus, chief commander of Roman armies in the East, arrived at the city of Damascus. The heirs of the Hasmonaean king Alexander Jannaeus – brothers Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II – had been struggling for power since the death of their mother, Queen Salome Alexandra, four years earlier. Sibling rivalry had long degenerated into a civil war, first drawing the neighboring Nabataeans to intervene, and then offering the Romans a ripe opportunity to intercede, arbitrate, and take control. Rome swiftly ended the eighty years or so of Hasmonaean dominance and self-rule (the details are documented by Josephus in book 14 of Jewish Antiquities, with a shorter version in BJ 1.117–272). Pompey stormed the capital, Jerusalem, and arrested the energetic and thus dangerous Aristobulus II, eventually bringing him in chains to Rome (he would later be freed by Julius Caesar and allowed to return to the region, only to be assassinated by poison before being able to carry out these plans). Pompey installed his brother Hyrcanus II as a puppet ruler over the Jews, stripping away his monarchic titles, cutting off most of the territorial gains of the last few Hasmonaean rulers, and bestowing much power with Antipater, who eventually became the region’s de facto 266 Yaron Z. Eliav governor (more on Antipater below). Pompey also reinstated the autonomy of the poleis on the Mediterranean seashore and their counterparts in Transjordan, as well as a handful of cities inland – in Idumaea and Samaria – and annexed them to the newly established province of Syria. A few years later, Gabinius, Pompey’s legate, appointed proconsul governor of the Syrian province, initiated an administrative reorganization of the territories left in Judaea, breaking them into five districts (synedria), which further undermined Hyrcanus’s authority. The latter’s debilitated status was somewhat restored in the early 40s, during the reign of Caesar, who granted him the title ethnarchēs, but all in all these were the twilight years of the Hasmonaeans. The final blow came in 37 BCE. After a short invasion and occupation by the Parthians, Herod, armed with the support and recognition of the Roman Senate, defeated the last Hasmonaean ruler, Antigonus, and seized full control of the region. In the wake of the Hasmonaean conquest of their homeland, Idumaea, Herod’s grandfather and father, both named Antipater – wealthy Idumaean nobles according to the more reliable sources (Joseph. BJ 1.123) – had served as prominent officials in the administration of successive Hasmonaean rulers: first Alexander Jannaeus, then his wife Salome Alexandra, then his son Hyrcanus II. But with the arrival of the Romans, the second Antipater and his sons, Herod and Phasael, threw in their lot with these rising rulers of the Levant. Their efficiency, absolute loyalty, and ruthlessness gained the Herodians, as they came to be known (Kokkinos 1998), the favor of the region’s new masters. The instability and frequent change of power in Rome after Caesar’s assassination in 44 BCE provided them with ample opportunities to exhibit their unceasing devotion to whoever held the reigns: Caesar, Cassius, Mark Antony, and finally, Octavian turned Augustus. In return, these Roman leaders showered the Herodians with benefits and increased their political stature and power. In 40 BCE, the Senate in Rome appointed Herod as king, granting him the territory of the deposed Hasmonaeans. Herod’s reign as a client king of the Romans (40–4 BCE) represents the most successful and prosperous stretch by any local ruler in the Hellenistic and Roman periods (Schalit 1969; Richardson 1999; Günther 2005; see Chapter 31). Time and again, the emperor Augustus enlarged Herod’s kingdom, restoring to Judaea the territorial conquests of the Hasmonaeans, which had been taken away by Pompey, and further adding to them. At its largest, Herod’s Judaea encompassed all the lands between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, from Idumaea and Gaza in the south to the northern tip of Galilee (the only exception was the section of coastal plains from the city of Dora to the north, which remained part of the province of Syria). It also included extensive regions east of the Jordan River: Peraea, the Decapolis, Trachonitis, and Gaulanitis, not to mention other detached territories in southern Syria that were put under the king’s control. As a client king, empowered by and subordinate to the Romans, Herod, unlike his Hasmonaean predecessors, was unable to pursue independent international and military agendas. Instead, he channeled his efforts to administration and benefaction, the latter reaching far beyond the confines of his kingdom. Internally, he instituted a highly efficient and prosperous rule throughout his large kingdom, enforced by an iron and bloody fist. His murderous ruthlessness extended to his family, and Augustus remarked once that it is better to be Herod’s pig than his son (Macrob. 2:4:11). As his main avenue of expression, Herod embarked on a building spree unmatched in the history of the region (Richardson 1999: 174–215; Netzer 2006); he erected the port city of Caesarea Maritima practically from scratch (Figure 22.2), endowing it with a manmade harbor that became a center of eastern Mediterranean commerce; he enlarged and reinvigorated the city of Samaria, renaming it Sebaste, and launched a generation-long renovation project in Jerusalem that dramatically altered its appearance with palaces, towers, a mighty fortress (the Antonia), and huge temple compound, surpassing any similar structures between Athens and Palmyra (Eliav 2005: 24–27). Roads, aqueducts, forts, palaces, and theaters embellished these projects and nourished a thriving local economy. With Herod’s death in 4 BCE his vast Judaean kingdom disintegrated. During the following century, administration of the region fluctuated: for a while, Herod’s descendants ruled all or Judaea, the Palestinian Coast, the Galilee, Idumaea, and Samaria Figure 22.2 267 Herod’s harbor at Caesarea Maritima. © D.A. MacLennan. parts of the area. At first, Augustus somewhat reluctantly accepted Herod’s will, splitting the territory between the king’s three sons (Richardson 1999: 21–29). Archelaos received the core of the kingdom on the Central Hill, the regions of Judaea, Samaria, and Idumaea, as well as the adjacent Mediterranean coast, save Gaza; his brother Antipas obtained Galilee and the Perea in Transjordan; and their younger half-brother Philip picked up the remains in the northeast, the city of Panias and its territory on the edge of Galilee, just to the south of Mount Hermon, and other areas in southern Syria, mostly beyond the geographical scope of the current chapter. But the emperor also denied all three their father’s title as king, instead endowing them with the lower ranks of ethnarch (Archelaos) and tetrarch (Antipas and Philip). After about a decade of misgovernment and mounting complaints from Jews and Samaritans alike, Augustus deposed Archelaos altogether in 6 CE, banishing him to Gaul, and incorporated his lands into Rome’s provincial administration (Joseph. AJ 17.342–344, BJ 2.111–113; Dio Cass. 55.27.6). A Roman official from the equestrian rank now governed what had been Archelaos’s territories as a praefectus (and later as procurator), taking his seat in the magnificent Herodian palace (the praetorium) in Caesarea Maritima (Acts 23:35). However, the precise administrative relationship of this newly established unit with the province of Syria and the nature of its subordination to the senatorialrank legate there remain obscure and intensely debated among scholars (e.g. compare Millar 1993: 43–48, with Cotton 1999; Eck 2008). Herod’s sons continued to rule the northern regions for decades to come. In 41 CE Herod’s sizable kingdom was briefly resurrected under his grandson, Agrippa I (D.R. Schwartz 1990). A childhood friend of the emperor Caligula, Agrippa regained the title of king as he inherited first the tetrarchy of Philip in 37 CE, then several years later added that of Antipas, and finally, under the succeeding emperor Claudius, received the territories of Judaea once ruled by Archelaos. But his untimely death in 44 CE brought all of the lands of Herod into direct provincial rule by Rome’s governors. Once again in the 50s, Agrippa’s son, Agrippa II, received the northern tetrarchy of Philip together with large parts of Galilee, as well as others in Transjordan and Syria. Those stayed under his control until his death in the 90s. 268 Yaron Z. Eliav Herod’s harsh but efficient governing style had sustained a relatively peaceful and prosperous reign, an extraordinary achievement given the complex geographical layout of the kingdom and its diverse and at times hostile ethnic communities. After his death, and even more so after the days of Agrippa I, volatile undercurrents, many of which had been developing gradually over a century and more, erupted, sending waves of violence and unrest throughout the region (Smith 1999). Chief among those were the tense relations between Jews and non-Jews, especially in the large mixed cities, both on the coastal plains (Caesarea, Dora, and Jamnia were major centers of tension) and inland (Beit-Shean/Scythopolis), as well as along the geo-ethnic dividing lines, particularly in Samaria (Andrade 2010). Increasing hostility toward the Roman government among large segments of Jewish society, although less so among the affluent elite, compounded the tense situation. Jewish society itself struggled with growing economic and political rifts between its various segments (Gabba 1999: esp. 106–118). Messianism emerged: an eschatological world view centered on a divine figure, the Messiah, anticipating the collapse of global powers, namely the Romans, and expecting the rise of a new kingdom of God. This movement grew ever more popular among the Jews (Horsley and Hanson 1985), and Jesus of Nazareth was just one of the messianic figures active in Jewish society at the time. Like him, most of these would-be messiahs were feared and detested by the Jewish elites, who had much to lose from the instability, and they were eventually crushed and executed by the Romans. Turbulence and unrest, punctuated by periods of violence and disorder and accentuated by inefficient, often corrupt provincial management, led eventually to what became known as the Great Revolt (66–73 CE; Price 1992). All ethnic groups in the region took part in the conflict, frequently by slaughtering each other. But mostly the Jews fought a futile war against the Roman Empire. Successful at first, they established a governing council, minted coins, and began fortifying the region in preparation for Roman response. The emperor Nero sent Vespasian at the head of three Roman legions to suppress the insurrection. The army landed in the northern harbor city of Acre/Ptolemais, systematically taking down rebel strongholds, first in the Galilee and Gaulanitis, and then edging toward Judaea. In the midst of the fighting, Vespasian left to claim the imperial throne in Rome (vacant in the wake of Nero’s death and the unsuccessful struggles that ensued in the “year of the four emperors”), leaving the military campaign to his son Titus, who completed the fighting, captured and destroyed the Jewish capital of Jerusalem, and burned its illustrious temple to the ground. The High and Late Empire (70–284 CE) Defeat brought devastating consequences for the Jewish population of the region: high death tolls, tens of thousands sold as slaves, and numerous properties either confiscated or obliterated altogether (Figure 22.3). Some punitive measures, such as the taxation known as the fiscus Judaicus, extended far beyond the confines of Judaea and its immediate surroundings (Joseph. BJ 7.218). Graver still, Jerusalem’s temple, the institution that stood at the heart of Jewish experience, had been destroyed; with that destruction, the High Priest, the temple’s managing official, together with the entire sacrificial cultic system he presided over, ceased to exist. Neither the institution nor its cultic practices would ever return, beginning a long process that radically transformed the religious profile of the Jewish nation and played a key role in the rise of Christianity (Eliav 2006). The Flavian emperors – Vespasian followed consecutively by his two sons, Titus and Domitian – broadcasted their victory in the Great Revolt and the sack of the Jewish temple with coins, gladiatorial celebrations, and triumphal processions, as well as a series of commemorative structures in Rome (Millar 2005a). Further afield, they also bestowed the title and benefits of a colony on Caesarea Maritima (e.g. CIIP 2.2095) and erected a new city, Flavia Neapolis, near the Samaritan hub of Shechem (Millar 1993: 368–369). To tighten Rome’s administrative and military grip, Judaea, the Palestinian Coast, the Galilee, Idumaea, and Samaria 269 Figure 22.3 View over Roman siege works surrounding the rock of Masada on the eastern edge of the Judaean Desert, the last stronghold of the Jewish rebels in AD 73/4. © T. Kaizer. they upgraded Judaea to a praetorian province headed by a senatorial rank legate who also oversaw the tenth legion, which was now stationed permanently on the site of the destroyed city of Jerusalem. In addition, around 120 CE, the sixth legion (Ferrata) arrived, pitching its camp in the northern part of the country, near the town of Caparcotnei, in the Great Plain. Consequently, and perhaps even prior to the arrival of the sixth legion, the provincial governor rose to the consular rank (Cotton 1999a: 79–80). Vespasian also settled eight hundred veterans in Emmaus, on the road leading to Jerusalem from the west (Joseph. BJ 7.217). Legionary civil works added roads and aqueducts, which surely enhanced military control as well as economic recovery. None of these measures proved sufficient to subdue the rebellious energy of the Jewish population. Papyri archives from around the Dead Sea portray the two generations following the Great Revolt as peaceful and serene, a time in which Jews and non-Jews, including Roman soldiers, casually interact, conduct business transactions, and live a normal life (Cotton 1999b; see also Chapter 11). One cannot forget, however, where these documents were found – in the bundles of refugees who fled to the caves of the Judaean Desert yet again, in the wake of a second Jewish revolt, this one in 132 CE, that engulfed the region once more. This revolt was led by Simeon (son) of Kosiba, who bore the messianic appellation of Bar Kokhba, “Son of the Star” in Aramaic, thus giving the uprising its name for centuries to come. The rebels were well prepared, victorious at first, and determined to take back Jerusalem and rebuild its temple. Coins, as well as letters found in the Judaean Desert, some from Simeon’s own hand, show that for nearly four years they succeeded in establishing their own government and ruled extensive territories on the Central Hill and Shephelah all the way east to the Dead Sea. Then, in what seems like a reprise of the Great Revolt, the Roman army crushed it all (Schäfer 1981, 2003). The outcome, even if the numbers given by the historian Cassius Dio are somewhat inflated (Dio Cass. 69.14), was far more disastrous than that of the first revolt. In the wake of the 270 Yaron Z. Eliav insurgency, the Romans initiated a program designed to erase the region’s Jewish character; they renamed the province Syria Palaestina (Schürer 1973–87: 514 n.1; Smallwood 1976: 463–464), a name that would stick for centuries beyond their rule, and brought to completion the establishment of a new colony, Aelia Capitolina, adjacent to the ruins of old Jerusalem (Eliav 2003; Weksler-Bdolah 2019). The following 150 years in the history of Roman Palestine, from the Bar Kokhba Revolt to the Tetrarchy, stand in stark contrast to the violent century that preceded. Surely, the turbulence spreading throughout the empire did not pass over this region, especially when the commotion centered in the eastern provinces. Such was the case in 175 CE, when the legate of Syria, Avidius Cassius, challenged the emperor Marcus Aurelius, and even more so when, two decades later, another legate of Syria, Pescennius Niger, competed with Septimius Severus for the Purple. In both instances, sources allude to some involvement of residents from Palestine in the conflicts, including Jews and Samaritans (Smallwood 1976: 482–485). But these were a far cry from the major Jewish revolts of the past or the Samaritan uprisings that still lay ahead in the Byzantine future. From the second half of the second century, the region settled into the routines of a peripheral yet peaceful province. Emperors passed through from time to time and occasionally even stayed in the area: Marcus Aurelius in 175 (Amm. Marc. 22.5.5); Septimius Severus and his two sons toward the end of the century (Dio Cass. 75.13.1); Caracalla probably once again as an emperor, when he traveled, seemingly by land, from Antioch to Alexandria in 215 (Hdn. 4.8.6); and finally Diocletian, who resided in the Galilean city of Tiberias for some time in 286 (Smallwood 1976: 536–537). Along with the two legions – the tenth and the sixth – which held camp in the area for most of the second and third centuries, the stability and management of the province relied, as elsewhere in the empire, on its network of cities. Numismatic evidence sheds light on the rise and fall of various urban centers, the establishment of new ones and the eradication of old (Meshorer 1985). Particularly active in this regard, the Severian emperors created two new municipalities; the former villages of Lydda, on the inner, eastern side of the coastal plains, and Beth Govrin, in the southern Shephelah, received both city status, extensive territories, abundant funding for the erection of sumptuously designed urban structures, as well as new names: Diospolis and Eleutheropolis respectively (Tsafrir e.a. 1994: 118, 171). They joined approximately seventeen existing cities to form the administrative and commercial core of the region for centuries to come, deep into late antiquity. A combination of epigraphy, archaeology, and careful examination of literary sources, mainly of the Jewish corpus known as rabbinic literature, tells us much about the demographic profile and the daily routines of these cities. Caesarea Maritima, for example, seems to have resembled a typical Near Eastern urban hub. Its inscriptions bear witness to the city’s cosmopolitan society; locals with Greek and Semitic names intermingled with the Latin of Roman army veterans who decided to settle there, and they all rubbed shoulders with Jews, Samaritans, Christians, Egyptians, Syrians, and Phoenicians. Archaeological and literary sources also bring to life the urban layout, laden with imperial governmental buildings, entertainment and leisure establishments (such as the hippodrome and the public baths), religious institutions (temples to a variety of deities, Christian and Jewish communities with their various structures), shops and markets (CIIP 2; Levine 1975; Holum 1988). Beyond regional nuances, there is no reason to believe that other cities in the area were much different. Significant developments occurred during this period among the nascent Christian population of the region. In the second century, the presence of prominent Christian thinkers and writers such as Julius Africanus and Justin Martyr, both natives of Syria Palaestina – born and raised in Aelia Capitolina (probably) and Flavia Neapolis, respectively – show us that Christian communities, although thinly documented, sprung up and grew in the area, just as they did in other places throughout the Mediterranean. In the 230s, Origen, probably the most prominent Christian scholar of his day, was forced to leave his native Alexandria. He settled in Caesarea Maritima, where he established a Christian academy and library (Heine 2010). Imprisoned and tortured Judaea, the Palestinian Coast, the Galilee, Idumaea, and Samaria 271 during the persecutions initiated by the emperor Decius in 250, he died soon after, but his legacy, though highly controversial, lived long after; Caesarea becoming a prominent center of ecclesiastical learning. Major changes were taking shape in Jewish society as well. Compelled by the bleak realities in the wake of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, Judaism gradually transformed into a way of life no longer centered on Jerusalem’s temple and its ritual, sacrificial worship (Eliav 2006). Gradually, the synagogue replaced the Jerusalem temple as the central institution for the practice of Jewish religion (Levine 2000). Geographically, the center of Jewish life in the region shifted north during this period, from its old core on the Central Hill of Judaea to the Galilee. The Galilean cities of Sepphoris, known from the time of Hadrian as Diocaesaria, and Tiberias emerged as administrative and cultural hubs for Jews, despite their Greco-Roman constitution and character (Goodman 1983: 128–134). That growth came even as large Jewish communities continued to reside in the cities of the seashore plains, such as Caesarea (Levine 1975), Jaffa/Ioppe, and Lydda (J. Schwartz 1991), as well as in the large villages of the southern Central Hill (documented at the end of the third century in Eusebius’s Onomasticon). The third century also witnessed the early fruits of the scholarly and legal enterprises of Jewish intellectuals across the region, who in future centuries would come to be known as rabbis (Lapin 2012). A Jewish institution of selfgovernance, known as the Patriarchate, also emerges in this period, although its origin and development remain ambiguous and highly contested by scholars (Goodblatt 1994: 131–231). Despite modern attributions of distinctiveness and division, not to say hostility, between Jews and Christians, in those early centuries boundary lines separating these communities in Roman Palestine remained blurred and life experiences endlessly intertwined (e.g. Becker and YoshikoReed 2003). Acknowledgments My thanks to the late Prof. David Goodblatt and Dr. Leah Di Segni who gave this chapter a thorough reading, saving me from some inaccuracies and mistakes. FURTHER READING For the Hellenistic and early Roman history of the regions discussed in this chapter, the most comprehensive study remains Schürer 1973–87, a nineteenth-century magnum opus that was rewritten and updated by leading British scholars in the second half of the twentieth century. For the high and late empire, Smallwood 1976 is the standard supplement. Needless to say, however thorough these studies were for their time, much has changed in our knowledge about and perspective of ancient times in the two generations since these publications. Our data has grown exponentially, and much of it is now summarized and published; see for example CIIP for epigraphical material, or NEAEHL for the extensive archaeological excavations conducted in the region in the last 40 years. Vast documentary papyri were also published in the DJD series. In the wake of this influx of information, more current studies aim to re-evaluate our understanding of the period in question and shed new light on some of its institutions. Social, cultural, and religious developments are cast in new fashion, and central historical events also receive new treatments. Among those new studies one can count Goodman 2008, 2018; S. Schwartz, 2014; Belayche 2001; Lapin 2012; Eliav 2006; Eshel 2008. The CHJ, vols. 3 and 4 provide good summaries of some of the new trends that have developed in the study of the regions under question here.