temporarily introduced, or that the Judaean leadership was simply accommodating Roman rule, or that Judaeans threw off the traditional way of life in favor of a Roman one, but that these leaders and elites were Judaeans who embraced a hybrid Judaean-Roman culture that, in some cases, included pagan ritual.62 The existence of such hybridity can perhaps best be seen in a contemporaneous inscription in Ḳatsyōn, in the Golan, by a group of self-identified Judaeans (ioudaioi) who dedicated the monumental building that contained a stone eagle and an altar and a dedicatory inscription to the emperor Septimius Severus and his sons.63 These Judaeans, like many of their Galilean urban brethren, seem to have embraced Roman culture. Though there is no specific available evidence, it is likely that there was diversity here as well in the ways that different Judaeans in various locations throughout Syria Palaestina embraced Roman culture and mixed this embrace with adherence to traditional cultural and ritual practices.
In the case of the Samaritans, there likely existed a similar intermingling and perhaps diversity of views on how Samaritanism may have related to Judaeanness. In the Mishnah, Samaritans (kutim) are not Israelites, since they are a distinct category contrasted to the Israelite (ישראל), yet they are frequently treated as legally the same as the Israelite and are imagined to observe at least some of the same rituals.64 The category itself, in the Mishnah, seems to be hybrid; Samaritans are at once Israelite but not Israelite. To the extent that Samaritans are different, the Mishnah seems to imagine them mingling in a fundamental way with Judaeans who would have been interested in rabbinic legal rulings. A case story in Mishnah Giṭṭin 1:5 claims that there were Judaeans in Kefar ‘Otnay (Caparcotna/Legio) who had Samaritans sign on their divorce contract.65 These purported interactions may point to a genuine mixing and overlap that belie the strict divisions implied by the very categories used.66
Outside of the diversity among those who may have embraced Roman or Samaritan culture or embraced Jesus, there seems to have been diversity (and boundary blurring) as well within the polity that the rabbis, at least, firmly identified as Judaean. In the Mishnah as well as the Tosefta, the rabbis frequently admit that there are other (non-rabbinic) Judaeans who practice the traditional way of life differently from the way that the rabbis believe that it should be practiced. There are ‘ōvrēi ‘ăvēirāh (sinners) and ‘ammēi hā’ārets (the people of the land [a biblical term])—both of whom are Israelites yet do not practice as they should, in the rabbinic view.67 As Stuart Miller has demonstrated, rabbinic sources also speak of the people of a given city (termed the “people of” [bĕnēi or ’anshēi] a given place).68 The rabbis take these people as fully Israelite (Judaean) but distinct from themselves. They practice the traditional way of life but not quite as the rabbis imagine that it should be practiced. These “common” Judaeans from the city or from towns and rural areas form a distinct subgroup within society, one that may be the core of what Miller calls “complex common Judaism.”69 While it is impossible to get more than a rough picture about these other non-rabbinic Judaeans from what is largely rabbinic evidence, the rabbinic evidence shows that there were other, possibly diverse, non-rabbinic groups who formed the majority of Judaean society. I strongly suspect that these other Judaeans, too, overlapped in complex ways with the other subgroupings in society—those who may have embraced Roman or Samaritan culture or who may have been believers in Jesus.70
The rabbis who created the Mishnah were thus one small distinct group within the larger complex landscape of Judaean society in Roman Syria Palaestina, yet they claimed the right to determine how all Judaeans would practice, as I suggested above. The tension between their small place in society and the wide authority they claim for their rulings can be seen in an example in which they rule on a matter regarding the people of Tiberias:
מעשה שעשו אנשי טבירייה הביאו סילון של צונין לתוך אמה שלחמין
אמרו להן חכמ’ אם בשבת כחמין שהוחמו בשבת אסורים ברחיצה
ובשתייה ואם ביום טוב כחמין שהוחמו ביום טוב אסורין ברחיצה
ומותרין בשתייה
There was a case / It once happened that the people of Tiberias brought a pipe of cold water through a branch of the hot springs. The sages said to them: If on the Sabbath, these waters have the status of water heated on the Sabbath, they are forbidden for use in bathing or drinking; if on the festival day, they have the status of water heated on the festival day, they are forbidden for use in bathing but permitted for use in drinking. (Mishnah Shabbat 3:4)
In this story, when the rabbis inform the people of Tiberias that the water from their “pipe of cold water running through a branch of the hot springs” cannot be used on the Sabbath and can be used only for drinking on festivals, they take for granted that these “commoners” should be following rabbinic law. At the same time, the story suggests that the people of Tiberias have already created heated water in a manner that the rabbis see as permitted only in very limited circumstances, and they have done so without consulting any rabbis. As Moshe Simon-Shoshan points out, even after the fact, these people of Tiberias do not seem to have solicited the rabbis’ opinion.71 The rabbis inform the people about the correct law, but it is never clear whether the people follow the rabbinic ruling in the end. From the rabbinic perspective, this group of Tiberians seem to be members of the people of Israel whom they hope to bring under their orbit so that they will conform to what the rabbis believe is the correct way of practicing the traditional Judaean way of life.72
Presumably, however, these Tiberians—and, for that matter, each of the overlapping subgroups of Judaeans—had their own ritual authorities who determined how they would practice these and all traditional rituals. As Annette Reed writes with respect to Judaean believers in Jesus, “contrary to the tendency to treat the rabbis as the sole arbiters of halakha in late antique Judaism, some of [the late antique authors and communities who appear to have accepted Jesus as a special figure in salvation history] seem to have been no less preoccupied with matters such as dietary restrictions and ritual purification.”73 It is possible that these other Judaeans simply decided on their own what this practice should be, yet I find it far more likely that they turned to alternative authoritative arbiters of the tradition. Part of the reason for this conclusion is that a unique understanding of what was proper observance often defined difference between subgroups. For the rabbis of the Mishnah, for instance, differing observance defined the ‘am hā’ārets, the “sinners,” and perhaps the people of a given city. So, too, according to the Mishnah, a particular approach to the Temple and possibly to menstrual purity laws helped define the Samaritans.74 The Christian text Didascalia Apostolorum, likely contemporaneous with the Mishnah, provides similar evidence that even among Judaean believers in Jesus, a unique version of how rituals should be practiced was also defining of difference. Describing different groups of heretical Christians, the authors write: “Again others of them taught that a man should not eat flesh, and said that a man must not eat anything that has a soul in it. Others, however, said that one was bound to withhold from swine only, but might eat those things which the Law pronounces clean.”75 For each of these two groups of (Judaean) Jesus-believing “heretics,” a distinct view on proper biblically based ritual practice defines them against the other as well as against “proper” Christians (in the authors’ view).76 Each subgroup thus seems to have tied its identity to a particular view of correct practice and so must have had its own ritual authorities and experts to determine what this practice should be.
Who were these other ritual authorities? The people of cities and towns—common Judaeans—likely had their own leaders and, in the case of Sepphoris and Tiberias, perhaps even official leaders. Local leaders, even if they embraced Roman culture and ritual practice, may have claimed authority to determine how Judaean ritual or hybrid Judaean-Roman
