Text and Artifact in the Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity: Essays in Honour of Peter Richardson

21. ΟΙ ΠΟΤΕ ΙΟΥΔΑΙΟΙ: Epigraphic Evidence for Jewish Defectors

21 OinOTEIOTAAIOI: EPIGRAPHIC EVIDENCE FOR JEWISH DEFECTORS STEPHEN G. WILSON Under the broad rubric of this volume epigraphic evidence stands somewhere between text and artifact.Like text it iswritten, but it isnot part of a sustained literary work. Like other archaeological evidence it is local and quotidian but, unlike mute stones, it speaks—if in a cryptic and laconic language of its own. It is artifactual evidence, but artifactual evidence of a particular kind. In the past, the merits of literary and historical texts have been weighed against the epigraphic. The former, it has been suggested,provide the broad picture into which the minutiae of the latter can be woven; the latter provide the local detail essential forfilling out and correcting the former. Sometimes these have been presented as competitive claims, but their relationship is more productively seen as complementary. Epigraphic evidence has much to offer: it deals with the nitty­grittyof life and reflects the concerns of all levelsof society; it expressesviewsunfiltered by normative tradition; and it can usually be assigned a place and, with less certainty, a date. It is not necessarily unbiased—epitaphs and panegyrics on behalf ofpatrons and leadershave their own, often transparent, agendas—and it is usually written with an audience in mind, but it does offer a slice of life that we otherwise do not see. Literaryand historical texts, for all their biases, paint the broad picture without which much of the surviving epigraphic evidence, where it made sense at all, would leave us with a seriously limited view of ancient life. 1 For a generaldiscussionof the natureof epigraphic evidence see Trebilco (1991: 2­3) and Millar (1983). The latter notes that some long inscriptions are minor literary works in themselves, suggesting that the boundaries between epigraphic and literarysources should not be too clearly drawn. JEWISH DEFECTORS 355 It has been noted—to move closer to our topic—that epigraphic and archaeological evidence alone would leave us with almost no sense of the practices and beliefs that were central in the livesofJews in antiquity (Goodman 1994: 219). Epigraphic remains deal with limited areas of Jewish life and experience. Most common, for example, are epitaphs, followed by formal dedications and contracts. Only a few survive, and many of these are fragmentary and hard to read. They are usually laconic and sometimes use linguistic conventions peculiar to their genre. Relative to the overall population ofJews their numbers are infinitesimally small, a recent estimate suggesting that Jewish epitaphs represent wellbelow 0.001percent ofthe totalJewish population in the Roman period (vander Horst 1991: 79­80). Their geographic distribution, too, is uneven, since the bulk of our evidence comes from Africa (including Egypt) and Rome. All this, of course, is in addition to the vexed question of deciding which inscriptions are Jewish and which are not."v My aim is to consider a very small portion of this evidence clustered around the theme of defection. The first task is to see what is there and the second to see what kinds of problems it presents. In this way we can illustrate and test some of the more general comments made above. Before this, however, it is important that we set out—if only as laconically as the typical epigraph—some of the literary evidence for Jewish defectors. 1. Literary Evidence During the Maccabean uprising there were both forced (1 Mace 1:43, 50­53; 2:15) and willing defections (Josephus, Ant. 12.240, 364, 384­85). A century or so later Antiochus of Antioch publiclyrenounced Judaism (Josephus, War 7.50­51), and Tiberius Alexander, Philo's nephew, is often seen as a defector (cf. Josephus,Ant. 20.100). Philo speaks ofJews who rebel against, deride and denounce their heritage (Virt. 182; vCon/. 2.2;Post. Cain 35­40; Mut. Nona. 61), and warns against those whowould enticeJewsto participate in pagan worship (Spec. Leg. 1.314­18). Third Maccabees speaks of several hundred defectors, ostensibly in the third century BCE, but referring perhaps to events in the first 2 On defining Jewish inscriptions see most recently Kraemer (1991), van der Horst (1991: 16­18), Kant (1987: 682­89), and van Henten and de Vaate (1996), who base their study on a critique of some of the materialdesignated Jewish by Trebilco (1991). 356 TEXT ANDARTIFACT century too (2:31­33; 3:23; 7:10­15), and of one Dositheus who abandoned Judaism to serve in the imperial court and...