ABSTRACT
For a historian who approaches the social, cultural, and religious history of the Near Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire in the period between Constantine and Mahomet, it does not take long to become painfully aware of having had few predecessors, or of the reasons why this might be so. This chapter confines itself, as being a preliminary exploration of some aspects of ethnicity and communal identity in this area, to the period from Constantine's acquisition of the eastern provinces to the Council of Chalcedon of a.d. 451. The relevance of Latin is, of course, the simple fact that the areas concerned are taken as being defined by their having been provinces of the Roman Empire. It was thus perhaps most clearly at the (literal) borders of Jewish or Samaritan territory that there might arise sharp contrast, and conflicts between groups which might be (more or less) clearly differentiated, by ethnic identity, religion, and language.
