ABSTRACT

This chapter explains the early Roman Dmowski period, from 63 BCE to 135 CE, from Pompey’s conquest to the Jewish revolts of the first and second centuries CE. The ensuing centuries of Roman rule saw many momentous changes in Jewish culture. By the second century BCE Jewish culture and Roman culture were on sharply divergent paths because, by then, the Romans were operating in the Hellenistic world from a position of much greater power than the Jews. In the course of absorbing the Mediterranean and the Near East into this empire, the Romans also came to control much of the world’s Jewish population, not just in Judea and Egypt but throughout North Africa, Asia Minor, Greece, and even Rome. The Zealots were a revolutionary group in the first century CE motivated by a similarly passionate and violent intensity to resist Roman rule.