xi. 32, partly by the recently-established fact (see following note)

that the rule of the Nabataeans to the north-east of Damascus was still continuing under Trajan.--Those who start, on the other hand, from the view that, if Aretas ruled in Damascus, the city could not be Roman, have attempted in various ways to fix the chronology of that event in the life of Paul. They have thought of the complication between Aretas and the Roman government in the last years of Tiberius; but from the course which this took it is not probable that it brought about a permanent change in the state of possession of Aretas. Melchior de Vogué (_Mélanges d’arch. orientale_, app. p. 33) has pointed out that between Tiberius and Nero--more precisely, between the years 33 and 62 (Saulcy, _Num. de la terre sainte_, p. 36)--there are no imperial coins of Damascus, and has placed the rule of the Nabataeans there in this interval, on the assumption that the emperor Gaius showed his favour to the Arabian as to so many others of the vassal-princes, and invested him with Damascus. But such interruptions of coinage are of frequent occurrence, and require no such profound explanation. The attempt to find a chronological basis for the history of Paul’s life in the sway of the Nabataean king at Damascus, and generally to define the time of Paul’s abode in this city, must probably be abandoned. If we may so far trust the representation--in any case considerably shifted--of the event in Acts ix., Paul went to Damascus before his conversion, in order to continue there the persecution of the Christians in which Stephen had perished, and then, when on his conversion he took part on the contrary in Damascus for the Christians, the Jews there resolved to put him to death, in which case it must therefore be presupposed that the officials of Aretas, like Pilate, allowed free course to the persecution of heretics by the Jews. Moreover, it follows from the trustworthy statements of the Epistle to the Galatians, that the conversion took place at Damascus (for the ὑπέστρεψα shows this), and Paul went from thence to Arabia; further, that he came three years after his conversion for the first time, and seventeen years after it for the second time, to Jerusalem, in accordance with which the apocryphal accounts of the Book of Acts as to his Jerusalem-journeys are to be corrected (Zeller, _Apostelgesch._ p. 216). But we cannot determine exactly either the time of the death of Stephen, much less the time intervening between this and the flight of the converted Paul from Damascus, or the interval between his second journey to Jerusalem and the composition of the Galatian letter, or the year of that composition itself.

[148] The Nabataean inscription found recently near Dmêr, to the north-east of Damascus on the road to Palmyra (Sachau, _Zeitschr. der deutschen morgenl. Gesellschaft_, xxxviii. p. 535), dates from the month Ijjar of the year 410 according to the Roman (_i.e._ Seleucid) reckoning, and the 24th year of king Dabel, the last Nabataean one, and so from May A.D. 99, has shown that this district up to the annexation of this kingdom remained under the rule of the Nabataeans. We may add that the dominions here seem to have been, geographically, a tangled mosaic; thus the tetrarch of Galilee and the Nabataean king fought about the territory of Gamala on the lake of Gennesaret (Josephus, _Arch._ xviii. 51).

[149] Perhaps through Gabinius (Appian, _Syr._ 51).

[150] Strabo, xvi. 4, 21, p. 779. The coins of these kings, however, do not show the emperor’s head. But that in the Nabataean kingdom dates might run by the Roman imperial years is shown by the Nabataean inscription of Hebrân (Vogué, _Syrie Centrale_, _insc._ n. 1), dated from the seventh year of Claudius, and so from the year 47. Hebrân, a little to the north of Bostra, appears to have been reckoned also at a later time to Arabia (Lebas-Waddington, 2287); and Nabataean inscriptions of a public tenor are not met with outside of the Nabataean state; the few of the kind from Trachonitis are of a private nature.

[151] “Leuke Kome in the land of the Nabataeans,” says Strabo under Tiberius, xvi. 4, 23, p. 780, “is a great place of trade, whither and whence the caravan-traders (καμηλέμποροι) go safely and easily from and to Petra with so large numbers of men and camels that they differ in nothing from encampments.” The Egyptian merchant also, writing under Vespasian, in his description of the coasts of the Red Sea (c. 19), mentions “the port and the fortress (φρούριον) of Leuce Come, whence the route leads towards Petra to the king of the Nabataeans Malichas. It may be regarded as the emporium for the goods conveyed thither from Arabia in not very large vessels. Therefore there is sent thither (ἀποστέλλεται) a receiver of the import-dues of a fourth of the value, and for the sake of security a centurion (ἑκατοντάρχης) with men.” As one belonging to the Roman empire here mentions officials and soldiers, these can only be Roman; the centurion does not suit the army of the Nabataean king, and the form of tax is quite the Roman. The bringing a client-state within the sphere of imperial taxation occurs elsewhere, _e.g._ in the regions of the Alps. The road from Petra to Gaza is mentioned by Plin. _H. N._ vi. 28, 144.

[152] Waddington, 2196; Ἀδριανοῦ τοῦ καὶ Σοαίδου Μαλέχου ἐθνάρχου στρατηγοῦ νομάδων τὸ μνημεῖον.

[153] Epiphanius, _Haeres._ li. p. 483, Dind., sets forth that the 25th December, the birthday of Christ, had already been festally observed after an analogous manner at Rome in the festival of the Saturnalia, at Alexandria in the festival (mentioned also in the decree of Canopus) of the Kikellia, and in other heathen worships. “This takes place in Alexandria at the so-called Virgin’s shrine (Κόριον) ... and if we ask people what this mystery means, they answer and say that to-day at this hour the Virgin has given birth to the Eternal (τὸν αἰῶνα). This takes place in like manner at Petra, the capital of Arabia, in the temple there, and in the Arabic language they sing the praise of the Virgin, whom they call in Arabic Chaamu, that is the maiden, and Him born of her Dusares, that is the Only-begotten of the Lord.” The name Chaamu is perhaps akin to the Aumu or Aumos of the Greek inscriptions of this region, who is compared with Ζεὺς ἀνίκητος Ἥλιος (Waddington, 2392-2395, 2441, 2445, 2456).

[154] This is said apart from the remarkable Arabo-Greek inscription (see below) found in Harrân, not far from Zorava, of the year A.D. 568, set up by the phylarch Asaraelos, son of Talemos (Waddington, 2464). This Christian is a precursor of Mohammed.

[155] Αὐσονίων μούσης ὑψινόου πρύτανις, Kaibel, _Epigr._ 440.

[156] According to the Arabian accounts the Benu Sâlih migrated from the region of Mecca (about A.D. 190, according to the conjectures of Caussin de Perceval, _Hist. des Arabes_, i. 212) to Syria, and settled there alongside of the Benu-Samaida, in whom Waddington finds anew the φυλὴ Σομαιθηνῶν of an inscription of Suwêda (n. 2308). The Ghassanids, who (according to Caussin, about 205) migrated from Batn-Marr likewise to Syria and to the same region, were compelled by the Salihites, at the suggestion of the Romans, to pay tribute, and paid it for a time, until they (according to the same, about the year 292) overcame the Salihites, and their leader Thalaba, son of Amos, was recognised by the Romans as phylarch. This narrative may contain correct elements; but our standard authority remains always the account of Procopius, _de bello Pers._ i. 17, reproduced in the text. The phylarchs of individual provinces of Arabia (_i.e._ the province Bostra; _Nov._ 102 c.) and of Palestine (_i.e._ province of Petra; Procop. _de bello Pers._ i. 19), are older, but doubtless not much. Had a sheikh-in-chief of this sort been recognised by the Romans in the times before Justinian, the Roman authors and the inscriptions would doubtless show traces of it; but there are no such traces from the period before Justinian.

[157] [This statement and several others of a kindred tenor in this chapter appear to rest on an unhesitating acceptance of views entertained by a recent school of Old Testament criticism, as to which it may at least be said: _Adhuc sub iudice lis est._--TR.]

[158] Whether the legal position of the Jews in Alexandria is warrantably traced back by Josephus (_contra Ap._ ii. 4) to Alexander is so far doubtful, as, to the best of our knowledge, not he, but the first Ptolemy, settled Jews in masses there (Josephus, _Arch._ xii. 1.; Appian, _Syr._ 50). The remarkable similarity of form assumed by the bodies of Jews in the different states of the Diadochi must, if it is not based on Alexander’s ordinances, be traced to rivalry and imitation in the founding of towns. The fact that Palestine was now Egyptian, now Syrian, doubtless exercised an essential influence in the case of these settlements.

[159] The community of Jews in Smyrna is mentioned in an inscription recently found there (Reinach, _Revue des études juives_, 1883, p. 161): Ῥουφεῖνα Ἰουδαί(α) ἀρχισυναγωγὸς κατεσκεύασεν τὸ ἐνσόριον τοῖς ἀπελευθέροις καὶ θρέμ(μ)ασιν μηδένος ἄλ(λ)ου ἐξουσίαν ἔχοντος θάψαι τινά· εἰ δέ τις τολμήσει, δώσει τῷ ἱερωτάτῳ ταμείῳ (δηναρίους) ͵αφ, καὶ τῷ ἔθνει τῶν Ἰουδαίων (δηναρίους) ͵α. Ταύτης τῆς ἐπιγραφῆς τὸ ἀντίγραφον ἀποκεῖται εἰς τὸ ἀρχεῖον. Simple _collegia_ are, in penal threats of this sort, not readily put on a level with the state or the community.

[160] If the Alexandrian Jews subsequently maintained that they were legally on an equal footing with the Alexandrian Macedonians (Josephus, _contra Ap._ ii. 4; _Bell. Jud._ ii. 18, 7) this was a misrepresentation of the true state of the case. They were clients in the first instance of the Phyle of the Macedonians, probably the most eminent of all, and therefore named after Dionysos (Theophilus, _ad Autolycum_, ii. 7), and, because the Jewish quarter was a part of this Phyle, Josephus in his way makes themselves Macedonians. The legal position of the population of the Greek towns of this category is most clearly apparent from the account of Strabo (in Josephus, _Arch._ xiv. 7, 2) as to the four categories of that of Cyrene: city-burgesses, husbandmen (γεωργοί), strangers, and Jews. If we lay aside the _metoeci_, who have their legal home elsewhere, there remain as Cyrenaeans having rights in their home the burgesses of full rights, that is, the Hellenes and what were allowed to pass as such, and the two categories of those excluded from active burgess-rights--the Jews, who form a community of their own, and the subjects, the Libyans, without autonomy. This might easily be so shifted, that the two privileged categories should appear as having equal rights.

[161] Pseudo-Longinus, περὶ ὕψους, 9: “Far better than the war of the gods in Homer is the description of the gods in their perfection and genuine greatness and purity, like that of Poseidon (_Ilias_, xiii. 18 ff.). Just so writes the legislator of the Jews, no mean man (οὐχ ὁ τυχὼν ἀνήρ), after he has worthily apprehended and brought to expression the Divine power, at the very beginning of the Laws (_Genesis_, i. 3): ‘God said’--what? ‘Let there be light, and there was light; let the earth be, and the earth was.’”

[162] The Jew Philo sets down the treatment of the Jews in Italy to the account of Sejanus (_Leg._ 24; _in Flacc._ 1), that of the Jews in the East to the account of the emperor himself. But Josephus rather traces back what happened in Italy to a scandal in the capital, which had been occasioned by three Jewish pious swindlers and a lady of rank converted to Judaism; and Philo himself states that Tiberius, after the fall of Sejanus, allowed to the governors only certain modifications in the procedure against the Jews. The policy of the emperor and that of his ministers towards the Jews was essentially the same.

[163] Agrippa II., who enumerates the Jewish settlements abroad (in Philo, _Leg. ad Gaium_, 36), names no country westward of Greece, and among the strangers sojourning in Jerusalem, whom the Book of Acts, ii. 5 f., records, only Romans are named from the West.

[164] Antipater began his career as governor (στρατηγός) of Idumaea (Josephus, _Arch._ xiv. 1, 3), and is there called administrator of the Jewish kingdom (ὁ τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἐπιμελητής Joseph. _Arch._ xiv. 8, 1), that is, nearly first minister. More is not implied in the narrative of Josephus coloured with flattery towards Rome as towards Herod (_Arch._ xiv. 8, 5; _Bell. Jud._ i. 10, 3), that Caesar had left to Antipater the option of himself determining his position of power (δυναστεία), and, when the latter left the decision with him, had appointed him administrator (ἐπίτροπος) of Judaea. This is not, as Marquardt, _Staatsalth._ v. 1, 408, would have it, the (at that time not yet existing) Roman procuratorship of the imperial period, but an office formally conferred by the Jewish ethnarch, an ἐπιτροπή, like that mentioned by Josephus, _Bell. Jud._ ii. 18, 6. In the official documents of Caesar’s time the high priest and ethnarch Hyrcanus alone represents the Jews; Caesar gave to Antipater what could be granted to the subjects of a dependent state, Roman burgess-rights and personal immunity (Josephus, _Arch._ xiv. 8, 3; _Bell. Jud._ i. 9, 5), but he did not make him an official of Rome. That Herod, driven out of Judaea, obtained from the Romans a Roman officer’s post possibly in Samaria, is credible; but the designations στρατηγὸς τῆς Κοίλης Συρίας (Josephus, _Arch._ xiv. 9, 5, c. 11, 4), or στρατηγὸς Κοίλης Συρίας καὶ Σαμαρείας (_Bell. Jud._ i. 10, 8) are at least misleading, and with as much incorrectness the same author names Herod subsequently, for the reason that he is to serve as counsellor τοῖς ἐπιτροπεύουσι τῆς Συρίας (_Arch._ xv. 10, 3), even Συρίας ὅλης ἐπίτροπον (_Bell. Jud._ i. 20, 4), where Marquardt’s change, _Staatsalth._ v. i. 408, Κοίλης destroys the sense.

[165] In the decree of Caesar in Josephus, _Arch._ xiv. 10, 5, 6, the reading which results from Epiphanius is the only possible one; according to this the land is freed from the tribute (imposed by Pompeius; Josephus, _Arch._ xiv. 4, 4) from the second year of the current lease onward, and it is further ordained that the town of Joppa, which at that time passed over from Roman into Jewish possession, should continue indeed to deliver the fourth part of field-fruits at Sidon to the Romans, but for that there should be granted to Hyrcanus, likewise at Sidon, as an equivalent annually 20,675 bushels of grain, besides which the people of Joppa paid also the tenth to Hyrcanus. The whole narrative otherwise shows that the Jewish state was thenceforth free from payment of tribute; the circumstance that Herod pays φόροι from the districts assigned to Cleopatra which he leases from her (_Arch._ xv. 4, 2, 4, c. 5, 3) only confirms the rule. If Appian, _B. C._ v. 75, adduces among the kings on whom Antonius laid tribute Herod for Idumaea and Samaria, Judaea is not absent here without good reason; and even for these accessory lands the tribute may have been remitted to him by Augustus. The detailed and trustworthy account as to the census enjoined by Quirinius shows with entire clearness that the land was hitherto free from Roman tribute.

[166] In the same decree it is said: καὶ ὅπως μηδεὶς μήτε ἄρχων μήτε στρατηγὸς ἢ πρεσβευτὴς ἐν τοῖς ὅροις τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἀνιστᾷ (“perhaps συνιστᾷ” Wilamowitz) συμμαχίαν καὶ στρατιώτας ἐξιῇ (so Wilamowitz, for ἐξείη) ἢ τὰ χρήματα τούτων εἰσπράττεσθαι ἢ εἰς παραχειμασίαν ἢ ἄλλῳ τινὶ ὀνόματι, ἀλλ’ εἶναι πανταχόθεν ἀνεπηρεάστους (comp. _Arch._ xiv. 10, 2: παραχειμασίαν δὲ καὶ χρήματα πράττεσθαι οὐ δοκιμάζω). This corresponds in the main to the formula of the charter, a little older, for Termessus (_C. I. L._ i. n. 204): _nei quis magistratu prove magistratu legatus ne[ive] quis alius meilites in oppidum Thermesum ... agrumve ... hiemandi caussa introducito ... nisei senatus nominatim utei Thermesum ... in hibernacula meilites deducantur decreverit_. The marching through is accordingly allowed. In the Privilegium for Judaea the levy seems, moreover, to have been prohibited.

[167] This title, which primarily denotes the collegiate tetrarchate, such as was usual among the Galatians, was then more generally employed for the rule of all together, nay, even for the rule of one, but always as in rank inferior to that of king. In this way, besides Galatia, it appears also in Syria, perhaps from the time of Pompeius, certainly from that of Augustus. The juxtaposition of an ethnarch and two tetrarchs, as it was arranged in the year 713 {41 B.C.} for Judaea, according to Josephus (_Arch._ xiv. 13, 1; _Bell. Jud._ i. 12, 5), is not again met with elsewhere; Pherores tetrarch of Peraea under his brother Herodes (_Bell. Jud._ i. 24, 5) is analogous.

[168] The statement of Josephus that Judaea was attached to the province of Syria and placed under its governor (_Arch._ xvii _fin._: τοῦ δὲ Ἀρχελάου χώρας ὑποτελοῦς προσνεμηθείσης τῇ Σύρων; xviii. 1, 1: εἰς τὴν Ἰουδαίων προσθήκην τῆς Συρίας γενομένην; c. 4, 6) appears to be incorrect; on the contrary, Judaea probably formed thenceforth a procuratorial province of itself. An exact distinction between the _de iure_ and _de facto_ interference of the Syrian governor may not be expected in the case of Josephus. The fact that he organised the new province and conducted the first census does not decide the question what arrangement was assigned to it. Where the Jews complain of their procurator to the governor of Syria and the latter interferes against him, the procurator is certainly dependent on the legate; but, when L. Vitellius did this (Josephus, _Arch._ xviii. 4, 2), his power extended in quite an extraordinary way over the province (Tacitus, _Ann._ vi. 32; _Staatsrecht_, ii. 822), and in the other case the words of Tacitus, _Ann._ xii. 54: _quia Claudius ius statuendi etiam de procuratoribus dederat_, show that the governor of Syria could not have pronounced such a judgment in virtue of his general jurisdiction. Both the _ius gladii_ of these procurators (Josephus, _Bell. Jud._ ii. 8, 1: μέχρι τοῦ κτείνειν λαβὼν παρὰ τοῦ Καίσαρος ἐξουσίαν, _Arch._