ABSTRACT
The relationships between Rome and Israel in late antiquity, from the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70 to the Muslim conquest of the Land of Israel in the mid-seventh century, have attracted attention. Judaism and Christianity in late antiquity present histories that mirror one another. When Christianity began, Judaism was the dominant tradition in the Holy Land and framed its ideas within a political framework until the early fifth century. The entire earth outside of the Land of Israel in the Mishnah's law was held to suffer from contamination by corpses. If an Israelite artist were asked to paint a wall-portrait of the world beyond the Land, he would paint the entire wall white, the color of death. The outside world, in the imagination of the Mishnah's law, was the realm of death. Rome is part of the undifferentiated other, the outside world of death beyond.
