Louis H. Feldman, Princeton University Press; 1993
by James A. Bacon
Louis Feldman commences his book with a simple question: If the Jews were as widely hated in antiquity as many scholars have insisted, how did they win over so many sympathizers and proselytes? The answer, he suggests, is that they weren’t as despised as is commonly held. Rejecting what he terms the “lachrymose conception of Jewish history” as a narration of unending suffering,[1] Feldman maintains that the Jews in the ancient world were strong, self-confident and growing in numbers and influence.
At the time of the Babylonian exile in 586 B.C.E., Feldman says, the Jews numbered only 150,000 people huddled in a tiny homeland centered on Jerusalem. By the mid-1st century of the Common Era, they had grown to eight million in a diaspora stretching from the Euphrates to Rome – an extraordinary demographic feat not likely accomplished through natural increase alone. Despite sanguinary revolts in the 1st and 2nd centuries C.E. in Egypt and the Land of Israel, the Roman emperors extended strong protections to the Jews, forming, in effect, a vertical alliance with one of the most populous peoples of the empire. Although intellectuals such as Apion wrote vicious polemics against Judaism, other writers found much to admire in the religion. And, although the Jews inspired enmity in certain quarters, they won many adherents in others. Gentiles became God-fearers and converts in significant numbers.
Jew & Gentile in the Ancient World spans nearly 1,000 years, from Alexander the Great to the early Byzantine Empire, but it is useful nonetheless to students of the Historic Jesus and late Second Temple Judaism. Feldman emphasizes perspectives that are typically underplayed in scholarship of the era. First, despite the restiveness of the inhabitants of the Land of Israel, from a Mediterranean-wide perspective, the Jews were a favored people. Augustus Caesar had granted them significant corporate privileges – exemption from participation in imperial and municipal religions, exemption from serving in the military, the right to transmit specie to the Temple in Jerusalem, and the right to judge themselves by their own laws – which subsequent emperors honored with only brief and episodic interruption. Furthermore, as Feldman notes, Herod the Great and his progeny enjoyed tremendous clout in the imperial court. The Jews frequently prevailed against Greek petitioners and local Roman officials in their appeals to the legate in Syria and the emperor in Rome.
Secondly, Judaism in Second Temple era was a missionary religion. The success of the Jews in Rome prompted the authorities to expel them twice, although the Jews returned each time seemingly stronger than before. A Jewish merchant converted the monarchs of Adiabene, a kingdom in the marchlands between the Roman and Persian empires. And abundant evidence in the literary and epigraphic record indicates that the Jews drew to their synagogues numerous sympathizers and converts in cities throughout the Diaspora.
Of Feldman’s main conclusions, his insistence that Jews in antiquity aggressively sought converts in the Second Temple era is one of the more controversial. At least two scholars – Scot McKnight and Martin Goodman — had recently taken the position that Judaism was not a missionary religion. As Feldman frames the key issues, “Was Judaism in the Hellenistic-Roman period (from Alexander the Great to Bar Kochba [336 B.C.E.-135 C.E.] a missionary religion? And … if it was, how can we explain this fact when we neither know the names of any Jewish missionaries (other than a few who preached the Gospel) nor possess, as it seems, a single missionary tract?”
Although Jewish authors do not write overtly of converting gentiles, Feldman contends, a missionary orientation is implicit in many statements. Philo, in one of many examples he cites, declared in De Vita Moses that Jewish institutions had gained the attention of all, Greeks and barbarians alike, in the cities of Europe and Asia. Aristeas spoke of showing liberal charity to opponents of the Jews “so that in this manner we may lead them to change.”[2] Taking pride in the spread of Judaism, Josephus boasted that there was not a single city or nation to which it had not spread. Citing other examples in the Sybilline Oracles, 2nd Maccabees, the Wisdom of Solomon and the Testament of Joseph, Feldman demonstrates that some Jews felt an impulse to share the “light of the Law” with the gentiles.
Given the vast scope of Jewish literature, the explicit evidence Feldman finds is surprisingly scant. But he finds much stronger proof from gentile writers, especially those who resented the Jews’ success. The satirist Horace referred to the missionary proclivity of the Jews who “shall force you to join our throng.” Seneca the philosopher observed bitterly of the Jews, “The vanquished have given their laws to the victors.” The historian Tacitus criticized the proselytes of Judaism who were taught “to despise the gods, to disown their country, and to regard their parents, children and brothers of little account.” And Juvenal lambasted those who sympathized with the Jews, revering the Sabbath, avoiding pork, undergoing circumcision and observing all their laws.[3] These were not isolated observations. The authorities twice expelled the Jews from Rome, in 139 B.C.E. for “attempting to transmit their sacred rites to the Romans,” and in 19 C.E. for “converting many of the natives to their ways.”[4]
Unlike Christians, who sought complete conversions, the Jews apparently accommodated a spectrum of associations. Sympathizers, or “God fearers,” worshiped the Jewish deity – perhaps as one among many gods — and adopted specific Jewish customs such as observance of the Sabbath or abstention from pork. Proselytes embraced the rites and laws of Judaism fully, going so far as to getting circumcised.
Many scholars suppose that Jewish proselytizing ceased after the destruction of the crushing defeats of the Jewish revolts in Egypt culminating with the Bar Kokhba Rebellion. Presumably, hatred of the Jews drove them into isolation. With Christianity ascendant, the Jews looked inward and kept to themselves.
But Feldman finds no evidence to support the notion of Jewish decline. To the contrary, repeated imperial decrees banning Jewish proselytizing and repeated denunciations by Christian authorities from 200 C.E. onward demonstrate the Jews continued to attract many admirers and converts. Indeed, the elimination of an autonomous Jewish state in the Land of Israel probably made it easier for gentiles to convert, Feldman suggests, for proselytes could adhere to Judaism without any conflict in loyalty to the Roman government.
On the whole, Feldman builds a convincing case. The cumulative weight of literary and archaeological evidence over the centuries appears overwhelming. Indeed, Feldman succeeds despite ignoring the most compelling body of evidence of all – the early Christian writings. Although he briefly acknowledges that Christian missionaries such as Peter, Paul and Barnabas were Jews, he treats Christianity as a movement opposed to Judaism. Yet, as most Christian and Jewish scholars alike have emphasized for some time now, Christianity originated as a Jewish messianic movement within the Land of Israel and spread first to the Jewish Diaspora. The missionary impulse apparently did not come from Jesus, who took his message of salvation only to Jews in Land of Israel, specifically excluding gentiles and Samaritans. If the urge to win converts did not start with Jesus, then, where then did it originate? Surely, missionary activity was something that many Jews already engaged in or, at least, found to be a natural extension of their beliefs. New Testament scholars have suggested that the early Christians associated conversion of the gentiles with the onset of the messianic era in fulfillment of scripture. Feldman might have benefited from asking whether asking whether Jewish missionary activity also displayed a messianic component.
Another significant flaw in Feldman’s book is his naive treatment of demographic data. A fundamental assumption in Jew & Gentile is that natural increase alone could not have accounted for the phenomenal increase in the Jewish population – from an estimated 150,000 to 8 million — over the Second Temple era. But, in fact, it could have. As Feldman acknowledges, Jewish law and custom promoted childbearing. Jewish women married at a young age and immediately began having children. Assuming fertility rates were comparable to those of Third World societies today, the natural rate of population increase could well have exceeded two percent. Growing at the rate of 2 percent annually over 600 years, 150,000 Jews would have become 21 billion Jews. Even after allowing for abundant slaughter and mayhem during the Maccabean revolt, the wars of the Hasmonaean kings and the civil wars preceding Herod the Great, and accounting for the periodic mass starvations due to famine, it’s not implausible to think that the Jews could have reached a population of 8 million without converting a single gentile.
Yet the fact remains that Jews did convert gentiles and win over many sympathizers, as Feldman amply demonstrates. Given the demographic realities and the success of the Jews in winning converts, an interesting question arises: Why were there only 8 million Jews by the end of the Second Temple era? The demographic devastation wrought by war, famine and pestilence must have been horrendous. But that’s an issue far removed from Feldman’s study.
Despite the drawbacks noted here, Feldman successfully challenges the “lachrymose” view of Jewish history in antiquity as a chronicle of never-ending suffering and persecution. Far from being pitiful and powerless in the Greco-Roman era, the Jews were one of the great races of the ancient world — not only in terms of cultural accomplishment but in their vast numbers. Over the centuries, the Roman rulers made accommodations to the power and influence of the Jews in their midst. For students of the New Testament, the spread of Christianity must be examined afresh in the context of a strong, confident, expanding and missionizing Judaism.
Oct. 5, 2000
[1] Jew & Gentile; xi
[2] Jew & Gentile, p. 294
[3] Jew & Gentile, ps. 299-300
[4] Jew & Gentile, p. 301-302