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  • From: "Liz Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: Paul the Persecutor
  • Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 11:10:22 -0400





> -----Original Message-----
> From: miser17 AT epix.net [mailto:miser17 AT epix.net]
> Sent: Thursday, April 08, 1999 5:11 PM
> To: Corpus-paul
> Subject: RE: Paul the Persecutor
>
>
> > From: "Liz Fried"
> > I don't understand what mechanism there would be for Paul to *arrest*
> > people. Did he travel alone, or with others? Were these police? Jewish
> > police or Roman? Was there a temple authority that could
> arrest people? Or
> > was the only legal authority Rome? Did the temple have
> police, or was it
> > just a Roman cohort? Did these temple police, if Jewish, have power in
> > Damascus??? Were there Jewish courts, or only Roman courts? Josephus
> > speaks of magicians and of people leading huge numbers of
> people as false
> > messiahs. But it isn't Jews these people come in conflict with,
> it is the
> > Romans. Josephus records a skirmish between Jews and Greeks in
> Caesaria.
> > Many died, because they waited for Roman police to come in, and
> they didn't
> > come. If there had been Jewish police, it seems they would have
> been called,
> > or been on duty. Does Josephus mention Jewish police? Does
> this police have
> > power outside the temple, if it exists at all?
>
> Gee. I ask a question. Don't get no answer ("why did Paul persecute?")
> but 158 separate questions in return.
It's an ethnic trait, what can I do about it?

>
> I have one fact and common sense to be my guides to these questions.
> Fact: there was a relatively small Roman garrison in Judea usually
> stationed away from Jerusalem, mainly in Ceasarea as I recall, which
> garrison would come to Jerusalem during pilgrimage feasts to help
> keep order. The point of the garrison was to react to anti-Roman
> activism and possibly to assist in collection of tribute if that
> collection was threatened.
>
> Evidence is that Jesus was found to
> have engaged in anti-Roman activism of some sort or another, there's
> zero evidence that his followers did so after his death. Whatever
> Paul was persecuting them for it was not for anything to do with
> breach of Roman law.
>
> Otherwise, here's the common sense, there was a police force to
> uphold the laws of Judea, a force overseen by Judean authority. Two
> things are common-sense impossible, first that there was no law-
> enforcement authority in Judea, second that Romans served as the
> enforcment authority for Judean laws.

I am beginning a study of the Persian period. As near as I can tell now, the
Persians enforced and gave Persian sanctions to local laws. They did this
with their own police and own courts. It was by order of Darius II which
commanded Jews in Elephantine to keep the Passover. Persians codified
Egyptian laws. It was Persian courts which adjudicated in Elephantine. In
Babylonia, the courts were headed by representatives of the king. In Asia
Minor oblates of a temple to Zeus were forbidden by order of Artaxerxes IV
to participate in local mystery cults. When Nehemiah tears out the hair of
officials who marry non-Jews he is acting as a representative of the Persian
king, he is the Persian governor of Judea. He is furthermore executing a
Persian sanction (pulling out hair) for the infraction of a local law.

I think this was probably the case in the Assyrian empire as well, and in
the Greek and in the Roman. I think this was how empires ruled. I don't
think there were local courts or a local police.

>
> I don't know the legal condition of Jews dwelling in Damascus. It is
> possible that they were indeed subject to Judean law rather than
> Roman law and possible that enforcement authority could come from
> Jerusalem to enforce Judean law in Damascus. There probably are
> people who know the legal condition of Jews in Damascus at the time
> who can say whether this 'possibility' was actually so or not.

You'd have to argue this for every area where there were Jews.
Jews ran into a great deal of trouble in Egypt, for example, by not
appearing in court on the sabbath. If there were separate laws for Jews,
this woudn't have been an issue.
>
> But in any event certainly there were Jewish courts and not only
> Roman courts and certainly there was enforced Jewish police power
> and not just Roman soldiers. The parameters of Jewish police power
> I don't know... but people weren't just "honor bound to be on good
> behavior" and that was that.
I think there were Roman courts and Roman police. Not Jewish.
Who were the centurians? weren't they police?

Liz
>
> Steve Davies
> College Misericordia
>
> ---


Lisbeth S. Fried
Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies
New York University
51 Washington Sq. S.
New York, NY 10012
lqf9256 AT is3.nyu.edu
lizfried AT umich.edu





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