After Hadrian’s Banishment: Jews in Christian Jerusalem

027

This article has been adapted by BAR editor Hershel Shanks from a lengthy scholarly study by Professors Yoram Tsafrir and Leah di Segni of Hebrew University in Liber Annuus, published by the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum.¹ This adaptation was made with the authors’ permission.

After the Romans destroyed the Temple and burned Jerusalem in 70 C.E., the city’s new inhabitants were soldiers of the Tenth Legion and their auxiliary units.^a It may be assumed that at least half of the legion’s 5,000 soldiers lived either in the camp within the city or on its outskirts. Many veterans probably continued to live in the city after being discharged, especially since at the end of the second century soldiers were permitted to marry and raise families. We learn about these legionnaires and auxiliaries and their contribution to the social and religious life of the city from the Latin inscriptions they left behind. And of course there were the camp followers who supported themselves by supplying services to the legion.

It is also assumed that some Jews continued to live in the ruins and outskirts of the city. But when the emperor Hadrian suppressed the Second Jewish Revolt (the so-called Bar-Kokhba Revolt—132–135 C.E.) and changed the name of the city, he banned Jews from living in what was now Aelia 028 Capitolina.^b (He also changed the name of the country from Iudaea to Palaestina.)

Since Jews were prohibited from living in Aelia Capitolina, the city was left to the Hellenized population of Palestine, who found there a suitable place in which to settle and earn a livelihood. The social and ethnic composition of the population of Aelia Capitolina was no doubt similar to other cities in 029 Palestine: gentiles of Greek or Syrian extraction.

The Latin inscriptions that have survived are mostly connected either with the military or with the administrative authorities. In addition, a number of Latin funerary epitaphs pertain to Roman citizens with no explicit association with the army or the administration, but still probably related to the elite of Roman high officers and their entourages with official duties. Greek inscriptions indicate that the language of communication was Greek.

Aelia Capitolina’s residents were overwhelmingly pagan. Zeus/Jupiter Capitolinus and Aphrodite/Venus were the leading deities. Asclepius/Aesculapius may have been worshiped near the Pool of Bethesda by people with health problems.^c An inscribed votive foot was found in the Pool, and one of the city coins features Hygeia, the goddess of health.

In addition, an inscription from a shrine of the patron god of Africa (Genius Africae) was found in the Armenian quarter, and one dedicated to Serapis was recovered at Zion Gate.

In time, two religious minorities lived in Jerusalem. The Jews maintained a small community once Hadrian’s prohibition against Jews entering the city was no longer enforced. This community may have been centered around a synagogue on Mount Zion. In 1949 Jacob Pinkerfeld excavated a building here whose earliest stage he identified as probably a 030 031 synagogue. It may have been the synagogue of this community. However, it is a contested identification. The structure is now the traditional site of the tomb of King David (which it most certainly is not).

Alongside the Jews was a small Christian community. According to Eusebius, this was at first a Judeo-Christian community, but immediately after the Bar-Kokhba Revolt the leadership of this community passed into the hands of gentile bishops. According to Christian tradition, the community centered around the Church of the Apostles on Mount Zion.

All this would change after 325 when the emperor Constantine proclaimed Christianity a lawful religion and his mother Helena visited the city in 326/7 and discovered the True Cross. Rome became a Christian empire. Jerusalem became a Christian city—and a cosmopolitan city par excellence. So it would remain until the Muslim conquest in 638 C.E. (except for the brief period in the early seventh century when the Persians from the east conquered and occupied the city).

Were there Jews in this Christian city? The answer is yes.

There is no doubt that Byzantine Jerusalem was an eminently Christian city. The literary sources and archaeological findings provide very little information that might suggest the integration of classical literature, philosophy or art into the city’s new Christian culture. There is perhaps one famous exception. The Orpheus mosaic, discovered in a chapel north of Damascus Gate, provides a unique piece of evidence showing the preservation and integration of classical traditions. Some scholars believe, however, that the Jerusalem Orpheus was intended to represent Christ.^d

The sermons of Cyril of Jerusalem to the catechumens in the mid-fourth century reveal the religious origins of the new converts to Christianity. His proofs of Christianity’s superiority are directed both at former pagans and Jews. He educates the pagans by comparing the redemptive Christian mystery with the meaningless pagan processions and sacrifices in their temples, which, he says, are nothing but worship of the devil. On the other hand, the frequent quotations from the Hebrew Bible and the examples drawn from figures and episodes of the Jewish past—for example, the ritual of the Passover sacrifice and the story of Pharaoh drowning in the Red Sea—are directed especially to Jewish converts, who could understand such matters and identify with them.

Byzantine Jerusalem was a thoroughly cosmopolitan city. People from lands near and far, even those beyond the realm of the Roman Empire, were often drawn to dwell in Jerusalem. Thousands of pilgrims lived in the city for lengthy periods of time and sometimes chose to end their lives there. Cyril of Scythopolis tells of the chief of an Arab tribe named Petrus Aspebetus who crossed the border from Persian territory and was converted by the saintly monk Euthymius in the first half of the fifth century. Petrus was eventually appointed bishop of the Arab community residing in tent-camps near Jerusalem.

Pilgrims from the west brought Latin to the Holy City. An anonymous pilgrim sketched on stone a ship with the Latin inscription DOMINE IVIMUS, “Lord, we have come.” The stone was subsequently incorporated into the foundations of the Constantinian Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It evidences the earliest known Latin-speaking pilgrim.^e

032

A number of pilgrims left us accounts of their travels to the Holy Land. As early as the first half of the fourth century, an anonymous pilgrim from Bordeaux, in western France, visited Jerusalem and left us a journal.^f He describes Jews coming annually to mourn upon “a pierced stone” (lapis pertusus) on the Temple Mount, ostensibly without hindrance.

Egeria, a nun who apparently came from Galicia in northwest Spain, visited various places in Palestine between 381 and 384 and spent part of those years in Jerusalem. She describes Jerusalem’s holy places and notes processions from the Holy Sepulchre to Mount Zion and to the Mount of Olives. Even a map was available for pilgrims.

The journal of the anonymous Pilgrim from Piacenza in the second half of the sixth century describes local traditions concerning holy sites and relics. In the synagogue in Nazareth, the pilgrim saw the book in which Jesus wrote and learned his alphabet. He also saw the wooden bench on which Jesus sat with other children. Only Christian visitors could lift and move this bench.² At dawn on the Feast of Epiphany, he witnessed a miracle along the Jordan River where Jesus was baptized. The waters of the river stood still: “At dawn … the priest goes down to the river. The moment he starts blessing the water the Jordan turns back on itself with a roar, and the water stays still till the baptism is finished.”³ The journal of the Piacenza Pilgrim also contains the earliest reference to the change in date of the celebration of Christmas in Jerusalem—from January 6 to December 25.

Two empresses were among the foremost Byzantine pilgrims to Jerusalem. Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine, visited Jerusalem in 326/7, and Eudocia, the wife of Emperor Theodosius II, 033 visited the city in 439. A few years later, Eudocia permanently settled there after separating from her husband.

Christianity will always remember Helena’s visit as a model act of piety because it is connected to the discovery of the tomb of Jesus and later on with the tradition of the discovery of the True Cross.^g

When Eudocia became a resident of Jerusalem, though cut off from the circles of the court after separating from the emperor, she still bore the title “Augusta” and possessed great wealth and influence. She contributed money and prestige, and founded many institutions in the city and its environs. She renewed the wall^h around Mount Zion 034 and the Siloam Pool. She also built St. Stephen’s Church and monastery, the remains of which can still be seen at the convent and basilica of St. Etienne north of Damascus Gate.

A rich source of information about Byzantine Jerusalem also comes from inscriptions. An especially interesting one is embedded in the wall of the Old City of Jerusalem next to Herod’s Gate. It mentions a certain John and Verina from Byzantium who established a gerokomion (old age home) for indigent women.

There was also a small Armenian community in Jerusalem early in the Byzantine period. The Armenians had their own bishop and continued to celebrate Christmas on the day of Epiphany, January 6 (according to the Julian calendar).⁴ Their resistance to the dominant Chalcedonian doctrine brought persecution on the Monophysite Armenians. Their bishop ordered them to keep their faith even at the cost of being forced to leave the Holy City. Some Armenians indeed left, but an Armenian community continued to exist in the city, as we know from inscriptions, including graffiti, tombstones and mosaics. A beautiful mosaic of birds, for example, adorned a funerary chapel for Armenians, as attested by its inscriptions. Cyril of Scythopolis tells us of a pilgrimage of 400 Armenians who visited Jerusalem in the early fifth century.

And of course, as noted, there were a few Jews. Perhaps the most vivid evidence is the report of the destructive earthquake of May 19, 363. The background is this: The emperor known as Julian the Apostate gave the Jews permission to rebuild their Temple.ⁱ After they had started work on rebuilding the Temple, according to both pagan and Christian reports, a fire and perhaps an earthquake destroyed them and their preparatory efforts.

There is no material evidence of this attempt to rebuild the Temple, except perhaps a Hebrew graffito on the western wall of the Temple Mount near the southwest corner. The graffito is a partial quotation of Isaiah 66:14: “You shall see and your heart shall rejoice.” In the preceding verse, the Lord tells his children, “You shall find comfort in Jerusalem.” Israeli archaeologist Benjamin Mazar, 035 who excavated this area of the Temple Mount wall, attributed the graffito to a Jewish visitor joyfully witnessing the promised redemption coming true through the rebuilding of the Temple. This is possible, but the date of the graffito is contested.

Another indication of Jews in Byzantine Jerusalem is a report that in about 440 C.E. the Empress Eudocia granted a petition to permit Jews to pray on the ruins of the Temple.

There is also archaeological evidence of Jewish pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the form of polygonal glass bottles (ampullae) sold to pilgrims as souvenirs; perhaps they contained water from Jerusalem.^j Some of them are decorated with menorot, seven-branched candelabra. Of course, many more of these ampullae bear Christian decorations like crosses and the Holy Sepulchre. But the fact that some contain Jewish decoration indicates that the number of Jewish pilgrims was large enough to make it economically worthwhile to manufacture special bottles for them.

More recently, Hebrew University archaeologist Eilat Mazar, excavating near the southern wall of the Temple Mount, recovered a hoard of 36 gold coins—dating from the fourth to seventh centuries—along with gold and silver jewelry. The star of this hoard is a gold medallion featuring a menorah flanked by a shofar—ram’s horn—and a Torah scroll. Other items buried with the medallion 036 include two pendants, a gold coil, a silver clasp and another smaller gold medallion. All are believed to be Torah scroll ornamentations—external decorations meant to honor and protect the Torah scroll. If this identification is correct, these ornamentations are the earliest ever to have been discovered in an archaeological excavation. Found nearby were 36 gold coins, a pair of gold earrings, a gold-plated hexagonal prism and a silver ingot. Archaeologists believe that the gold hoard was hidden in 614 during the brief Persian conquest of Jerusalem.

Finally, a Hebrew inscription expressing hope for the rebuilding of the Temple, and containing a list of Jewish names, probably of pilgrims, was discovered in a room in the Muslim Makhkama (courthouse), near the northwest corner of the Temple Mount. It has been tentatively dated to the sixth century or later, based on the form of the letters. It reads, “God the Lord of Hosts, may you build this House [Temple] in the lifetime of Ya‘akov son of Josef, and [in the lifetime] of Theophylactus, Sisinia and Anastasia. Amen and amen, sela.”

Of course, Jews were only a small contingent in Byzantine Jerusalem. Byzantine Jerusalem was, above all, Christian. While it was overwhelmingly Christian, however, its residents and pilgrims came from far and wide—from Spain in the west to Persia in the east, from Britain and Scythia (Ucraina) in the north to Auxum (Ethiopia) in the south. In addition, there appears to have been a small contingent of Jews.

This article has been adapted by BAR editor Hershel Shanks from a lengthy scholarly study by Professors Yoram Tsafrir and Leah di Segni of Hebrew University in Liber Annuus, published by the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum.1 This adaptation was made with the authors’ permission. After the Romans destroyed the Temple and burned Jerusalem in 70 C.E., the city’s new inhabitants were soldiers of the Tenth Legion and their auxiliary units.a It may be assumed that at least half of the legion’s 5,000 soldiers lived either in the camp within the city or on its outskirts. Many veterans probably continued to […]