337-640: Late Antique Palestine
In the late antique period (sometimes called the Byzantine Period by scholars working in the Near East) Palestine enjoyed its greatest prosperity and most extensive urbanization until the twentieth century. Cultivated land reached even into the Negev desert, and monasteries proliferated in the Judaean desert. The population of Palestine west of the Jordan might have reached one million. Churches sprang up everywhere, and the Jews disregarded anti-Jewish legislation by renovating old synagogues or building anew. Ammianus Marcelinus, who surveyed the eastern provinces at the middle of the fourth century, noted the vast extent and agricultural richness of Palestine, with its five great cities: Caesarea, Eleutheropolis, Neapolis, Ascalon, and Gaza (14.8).
The conversion of Constantine set in motion events that restored Palestine as a major theater in the development of the Christian church, as it had not been since 70 CE. Before the fifth century very few Christians lived in Palestine. The non-Jewish regions of the coast, the south, and Aelia Capitolina had several Gentile Christian communities, and a few Minim (Jewish Christians) lived in such Galilean towns as Sepphoris and Capernaum. But beginning in the fourth century the government responded to Christian interest in the Holy Land by embarking on a massive program of patronage, especially church-building, that encouraged Christians to move to Palestine, Less successfully, imperial policy tried to encourage Jews to convert to Christianity by offering protection and rewards. As a result of Christian settlement in the vicinities of Nazareth and Capernaum (where a synagogue and a church lie almost across the street from each other) and Tabgha, Galilee lost its Jewish majority. Avi-Yonah counted eighteen Christian communities in the third century, thirty-six in the fourth, and ninety-six in the fifth. The sack of Rome in 410 caused a significant episode of migration to Palestine as a group of aristocratic ladies responded to the holy man Jerome's invitation to settle in Aelia Capitolina and Bethlehem. Numerous Christians came to Palestine not to settle but to visit holy sites on pilgrimage and to scour the land for relics to take home. On the other hand, the Jewish population saw a constant and precipitous drop that lasted for centuries. In the second century, after the Bar Cochba Revolt, some two hundred Jewish communities flourished in Palestine, but by the time of the Arab conquest in the late 630s we know of fewer than fifty. Except in the towns of Tiberias and Sepphoris and in the regions east of the Sea of Galilee, the Jews had become a minority.
The Christian and Jewish leadership had encouraged their followers to have nothing to do with each other, and practice seems to have corresponded with this policy. Most Christian-Jewish exchange took the form of a vigorous polemic. Now, after the conversion of Constantine, Christians found themselves in a position not merely to keep themselves separate from contamination by Judaism but actively to suppress it. The emperors codified the de facto separation of the two religions by forbidding intermarriage and conversion from Christianity to Judaism; Jewish converts to Christianity received protection from Jewish retribution. Increasingly the Jews lost civil status. Imperial legislation took a tone offensive to Judaism, labeling it a wild and nefarious sect. Until the sixth century the emperors regularly reaffirmed for the Jews the principle of free exercise of their religion but found it increasingly difficult to control violence against the persons and property of the Jews.
Despite the Hadrianic prohibition, Jews had in the third century acquired some access to Aelia Capitolina. Constantine confirmed Hadrian's decree, but now amended it so that the Jews could visit once a year, on the anniversary of the fall of Jerusalem to Titus, when they mourned at the western wall of the temple mount. The Christians welcomed this spectacle as confirmation of the victory of their religion. The picture shows the Old City of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives; the medieval Dome of the Rock (with the golden dome) lies on the site of the temple. The Western Wall lies within the inner angle of the city wall to the left.
By the middle of the fourth century, Jewish despair at rising persecution reached the point of revolt. While the leadership in Tiberias cautioned against resistance, the attacks on the eastern frontier by the Persians and the incompetence of the emperor in the east convinced many Jews in Galilee to respond to the call of the zealots. The revolt began in Sepphoris in 351 and spread to Tiberias and Lydda. Gallus's general Ursicinus responded quickly and destroyed these cities. The Jewish situation had not changed except that a permanent garrison occupied Galilee.
Jewish fortunes changed remarkably under the pagan emperor Julian (361-63), who fought the church by proclaiming religious liberty and restoring the ancient cults of the Roman empire. His program included the restoration of Jerusalem to the Jews and the rebuilding of the temple. Construction began in the spring of 363, but some sort of natural disaster interrupted the work. The assassination of Julian while on a campaign against Persia soon afterward ended this brief upswing in Jewish fortunes. Early in the fifth century the emperors degraded the patriarch's status and then permitted the office to lapse. The reorganization by which three new provinces replaced the former Palestine saw the imperial recognition of two Jewish synedria in Palaestina Prima and Secunda, at Caesarea and Tiberias, respectively (very few Jews lived in Tertia). Nevertheless, the authority of the rabbis of Tiberias ensured their continued leadership of Jews throughout Palestine and the Diaspora.
The religious controversies within the church and court between the Council of Chalcedon and the accession of Justinian (451-527) introduced a quiet period with respect to Jewish-Christian relations. But the accession of Justinian initiated the last great phase of imperial persecution of the Jews. The new emperor redefined heresy to include the Jews and excluded them from military and civilian offices. They had never served in the army, and by this time no longer appear in the imperial service, but now they could not serve even in local municipal government. The leadership of the last Jewish cities, Tiberias and Sepphoris, passed into Gentile hands. Justinian dealt a further blow to the Jews when the great compilation of Roman law, the Codex Iustinianus, omitted the ancient law declaring Judaism a religio licita and began to attack Jewish religious practices and to force baptism. The Jews increasingly put their hopes in the apocalypse, for the evils of the age self-evidently presaged the coming of the Messiah.
Meanwhile there appeared renewed resistance from the Samaritans, who had never received any of the privileges that the Romans afforded the Jews. Forbidden to circumcise their children since the second century, forced to sacrifice to the pagan gods during the Tetrarchy, suffering under the Christian empire even greater oppression than the Jews, the Samaritans revolted against Emperor Zeno in 484. The government put them down ruthlessly and built a church on their holy mountain, Mt Gerizim near Neapolis. Again in 529 they revolted after Justinian ordered the destruction of their synagogues. After they restored control, the Romans deported or forcibly baptized Samaritans and installed a garrison. In both great revolts the Samaritans set up--briefly--their own royal state in the Davidic and Roman style. After 529 Samaria remained quiet, although another revolt broke out briefly in Caesarea's Samaritan community in 556.
In addition to the religious unrest, the middle years of the sixth century saw considerable brigandage and raiding from nomads. An important edict of Justinian from about 539, Novel 139, mentions widespread difficulties facing the governor of Palestine. It goes on to order an upgrade of the governorship to proconsular rank and promotes the incumbent, Stephanus, to that rank The edict also increases Stephanus's authority over Second and Third Palestine and grants him limited military powers with which the dux may not interfere. Justinian also authorized the expenditure of an enormous sum to restore the churches damaged during the Samaritan uprising.
In 603 the last war between Rome and Persia began. The Persians gradually occupied the eastern parts of the empire and in 613 took Damascus. Then, with Jewish assistance, they occupied all Palestine. They took Aelia Capitolina in 614 and returned it to the Jews. But within a few years they restored it to the Christians, probably because the Persians preferred to deal with the majority Christian population. In 622 Emperor Heraclius turned the tide against Persia and in 629 recovered Palestine. But within a few years the Muslims, attacking from the south a population that had little love for the Roman Empire, easily conquered Palestine. After initial raids ordered by Muhammad and a delay following his death in 32, the invasion began in 634; Gaza fell first, and the attack continued northward until, after the Battle of the Yarmuk southeast of the Sea of Galilee (August 636), the Roman army withdrew from Palestine and Syria. Jerusalem held out until the spring of 638. Caesarea fell last, in 641 or 642, and with its conquest the Muslims ended seven centuries of Roman control in Palestine.
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