Читать книгу A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East - Группа авторов - Страница 71

A passage in Agrippa II’s speech aimed at preventing a Jewish revolt against Rome (BJ 2.346–401) points to the serious consequences of a rebellion for the Jews who were living in the Diaspora: there was no population across the world without a Jewish minority and these Jews would surely be massacred in case of a revolt (2.398–399; cf. BJ 7.43). Elsewhere Josephus quotes the geographer Strabo, stating that the inhabited world was filled with Jews (AJ 14.115; FGrH 91F 7). Josephus himself provides useful information about Diaspora communities. He fills, for example, some gaps in the largely unknown history of the Jews in Babylonia and confirms that part of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi did not return from the Babylonian captivity (see AJ 12.149; 15.39; 17.24–26; 18.310–379; 20.34–35; Neusner 1969; Oppenheimer 1983; Goodblatt 2012). He mentions as Jewish settlements in Babylonia the cities of Seleucia on the Tigris, Ctesiphon, close to Seleucia (AJ 18.372–378), Nehardea (18.310–313, 379), Nisibis (18.379) as well as Charax Spasini between the mouths of the Euphrates and Tigris (20.34). Nehardea on the Euphrates became a major Jewish center in the rabbinic period. Josephus also informs us that Hyrcanus II, former high priest and ethnarch (c. 76–40 BCE), was living in exile in Babylon after his capture by the Parthians in 40 BCE (AJ 15.12; see also below). Although Hyrcanus had become unfit for the High Priesthood after his mutilation by Antigonus (AJ 15.17), Josephus’s information implies that the Jews east of the Jordan treated him as if he were a king and high priest. He must have acted as the leader of the Jewish community in Babylonia and was well received at the Parthian court as a person of royal descent who could act as a trait d’union between the community and the Parthian administration. Later on Herod the Great strengthened the connection with the Babylonian Jews by founding a military colony with a group of them in Batanea (AJ 17.23–29). Josephus further tells us that Jews, one of them a merchant named Ananias who operated in the area of Charax Spasini, brought about the conversion of the royal family of Adiabene to Judaism (AJ 20.34–35). Josephus’s most elaborate section about Jews in Babylonia concerns the brothers Asinaeus and Anilaeus, who benefited from the weakness of the Parthian king and succeeded in establishing a semi-independent Jewish robber-state for some years (AJ 18.310–373), with “the parting of the rivers” as its center (AJ 18.315, probably referring to Pumbedita, c. 40 kilometers upstream on the Euphrates; Goodblatt 2012: 271). Josephus points out that one of the brothers fell for a Parthian beauty and that the marriage with this woman not only led to violations of the Jewish customs but also was the beginning of the brothers’ downfall (18.340–343).

Josephus mentions Syria as the region with the highest number of Jewish inhabitants and within Syria the Jews in the capital Antioch as the largest Jewish community (BJ 7.43). He offers us glimpses of the history of the latter. King Seleucus I is said to have founded this community and bestowed citizenship upon the Jews as a reward for their military services (AJ 12.119; cf. BJ 7.43–44; Apion 2.39). Josephus adds that Jews in other cities in Asia and Lower Syria founded by Seleucus were also granted local citizenship, which he specifies as having equal rights as the Macedonians and the Greeks in these cities were having (AJ 12.119; BJ 7.44). Several scholars have argued that Josephus overstates the privileges of the Syrian Jews and conclude that they plausibly only concern certain rights that applied to their own minority community (Tcherikover 1959: 328–329; Smallwood 1976: 226; Barclay 1996: 244–245; Pucci Ben Zeev 1998). Josephus indicates that the Jewish community in Antioch had its own leader, who bore the title archōn (BJ 7.46). A story about a Jewish apostate, who caused great suffering for the Jewish community during the revolt against Rome, shows that the life of the Jews in Antioch was sometimes not a bed of roses. This man, named Antiochus, was the son of one of the Jewish magistrates called archōn. He stirred up the non-Jewish Antiochenes and accused his fellow Jews, including his own father, of a plan to set the city on fire. He caused some of them to be burned in the theater and forced others to renounce Judaism and sacrifice according to the customs of the Greeks. With the help of Roman soldiers he also forced the Jews to work on the Sabbath (BJ 7.46–53). After a fire did happen in the city, ignited by non-Jews who had hoped to get rid of their debts through the destruction of the archive, Antiochus’s earlier accusation caused the Antiochenes to be infuriated and to throw themselves upon the Jews. Only with great difficulty was the Roman legate Gnaeus Collega able to restore peace and quiet (BJ 7.54–58). Josephus also notes that notwithstanding the triumph over the Jews in 70 CE Titus did not comply with the request by the non-Jewish inhabitants of Antioch to cancel the engraved-in-bronze privileges of the local Jews and expel them (BJ 7.100–111).

Josephus’s references to non-Jewish nations in the Near East add up to a long list, which includes the peoples that were neighbors of the Israelites (e.g. Ammanites, Amoraites, Gabalites, Midianites, and Moabites; see the Appendix to this chapter). He mentions the Parthians (see Chapters 2 and 27) more than 130 times, especially in War 1 and Antiquities 14. Josephus confirms that the Parthians were the most powerful enemy of the Romans, who sometimes even dared to take action within the Roman sphere of influence. He describes how the Parthians interfered in the power struggle between the Hasmoneans and Herod the Great after they managed to capture Syria in 40 BCE (Cassius Dio 48.24; Buchheim 1960: 11, 74–79; Schürer I 1973–87: 278–279). The Parthians supported the Hasmonean Antigonus, who opposed Herod’s appointment by the Senate. They managed to get hold of Jerusalem and delivered the city to Antigonus. They took Herod’s brother Phasael and Hyrcanus II prisoner and transferred the latter to Babylon (BJ 1.269, 273; AJ 14.330–369).

Josephus is the most extensive external source about the Nabataeans (Hackl et al. 2003), the nation of nomadic merchants living in a territory running from the Southern Hauran (east of the Decapolis) to the mountainous region of the Northern Hedjaz (east of the Red Sea) as well as in the Northern Negev Desert and the Sinai Desert (Chapter 23). The famous city of Petra in the fertile plains of Moab was its capital. Josephus recalls that the Nabataeans descend from Ishmael, whose 12 sons dwelt in the territory extending from the Euphrates to the Erythrean Sea, which was called Nabatene (AJ 1.220–221). He sometimes calls them Nabataioi (“Nabataeans,” e.g. BJ 1.178; AJ 12.335), but mostly uses the name Arabes (“Arabs”) when he refers to the Nabataeans (Millar 1993a), perhaps because this name original meant “nomads” (cf. Chapter 34). Josephus does not offer a coherent history of the Nabataeans, but he mentions them frequently as a neighboring nation of the Jews in connection with actions by the Maccabean and Herodian Jewish leaders, especially in book 1 of The Jewish War and books 12–18 of The Jewish Antiquities. The Nabataean royal family was intertwined with the Herodians through the marriage of Herod’s father Antipater with Cypros/Cypris, who probably was a Nabataean princess, although Josephus does not say so explicitly (BJ 1.181; AJ 14.121–122; cf. also the Nabataean Syllaeus’s attempt to marry Herod’s sister Salome, BJ 1.566; AJ 16.220–225; 17.10; the daughter of the Nabataean king Aretas IV was married to Herod Antipas, AJ 18.109; Kokkinos 1998: 95, 183–184, 229–232, 268). During internal Jewish power conflicts prominent Jews sometimes fled to the Nabataeans or attempted to do that (e.g. Herod in 40 BCE, BJ 1.266–267, 274–279; AJ 14.361–362, 370–376), which once again suggests that the ruling families of both nations were connected. Nevertheless, the Nabataeans were also competitors of the Jews: they sometimes decided to support Jewish rulers in their conflicts, but more than once they fought them if they thought they could benefit from that. Herod the Great fought several battles against the Nabataeans after they refused to refund him (BJ 1.364–371, 380–385; AJ 15.106–160; 16.271–299). A passage from Herod the Great’s commander speech before a decisive battle against the Nabataeans offers a negative characterization of them, which is given in by their – in Herod’s view as presented by Josephus – treacherous behavior before the battle: “for I suppose you [i.e. Herod’s soldiers] know of the lawlessness of the Arabs [i.e. the Nabataeans], and how treacherously they deal with everyone else, as is the custom of a barbarous people that also lacks any notion of God. Of course, the main reason that they were hostile to us was greed and jealousy; they were waiting to make a sudden attack in our confused state” (AJ 15.130). The Nabataeans had murdered Herod’s envoys, but interestingly, Herod explains their misdeeds (besides treachery and unreliability, 15.110, 130, 132, 134, 140, also lawlessness, 15.130, 136, 140, 156, and greed, 15.134) by arguing that they were a barbarous nation that lacked any notion of God. The knowledge of God is apparently the principle difference between the Jews and the Nabataeans, and Herod implies that the Jews have the support of the God of Israel and the Nabataeans do not (AJ 15.144–146). This brings us ultimately back to Josephus’s basic message that the God of the Jews determines what happens in human history.