Weren’t the legions in Judea all formed in Gaul? (Of course, that doesn’t mean the soldiers couldn’t have been from the City.)
Actually, got a few more questions… sorry…
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From what I gathered from readings, I assume most farmers at the time were tenant farmers, correct?
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How did the tenant farmer system work? Farmers obviously had to pay rent to the landlords first, right? But do they have to pay Tax on top of that too? Or was tax paid by landlords? From reference, it seemed that the farmers had to deal with Tax collector in person. But wouldn’t that be insane as tax rate at the time was like 20%?
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Who do you think owned Nazareth? Was it likely to be owned by one person? Or was individual land ownership prevalent?
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Absentee landlords that lived in the city came up a few time in my reading. But, don’t country estates exist at that time?
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Who could become elders? Land owner? Rabbi?
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Did inter-racial marriage exist between Jewish and Roman? I would assume it to be fairly rare due to Jewish tradition, correct?
Thank you all again!! 
I actually found this reference: Judaea that stated:
So, part of the legions in Judea might be local.
But Galilee was controlled by Antipas, so it might be different though.
But I am really not very sure at all…
You might want to check Phillip Harland’s article, “The Economy of First Century Palestine”, which can be found here:
http://www.philipharland.com/articlehandbook22.html
as well as the sources he references.
Right, but Ala I Sebastenorum was an auxilliary unit, not a legion. The legions stationed in the region seem to be:
III Galica
VI Ferrata
X Frentensis (the "Procurator’s Legion)
XII Fulminata
I guess you’re right. I confess that I haven’t read a whole lot about the Roman military system (just the basic outlines of the major wars and campaigns). I knew the legions in Palestine weren’t local, though.
Correct, although there were some who owned small, subsistence plots, most peasants worked on tenant farms.
Yes, they had to pay both rents and taxes and yes it was grossly exploitive. Peasants did not farm for profit but for bare subsistence. Virtually all they were ever left with was literally just enough grain to stay alive and sometimes not even that. It was a rapacious, brutal system and a lot of Jesus’ teachings and parables should be read with that in mind, The “rich-poor” dichotomy in Jesus’ teachings were spoken within a very specific cultural and social context of economic exploitation and virtual enslavement of the majority by a tiny, elite minority. It should also be noted that this was a fixed class system. There was no mobility between classes. If you were a peasant you had no opprtunity to work your way out of it.
Nobody would have “owned” the village, as such. It would have just been a loose settled community of peasants and farmers who worked the surrounding farms and artisans (like carpenters) who served the community. The farms around the village would have probably been mostly tenant farms (and the landowners often lived in the cities and never saw their own land), but some peasants might have owned small plots of their own.
This I can’t answer for sure. It’s my understanding that this would not have been standard but I can’t say with certainty that it never happened at all.
It would have been pretty much any of the oldest and most respected men in the community. That could include landwners or rabbis or anyone else who was deemed to have reached an appropriate age and had social standing in the village.
- Did inter-racial marriage exist between Jewish and Roman? I would assume it to be fairly rare due to Jewish tradition, correct?
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I think that in Palestine it would have been vanishingly rare. For Hellenized Jews outside of Palestine it might have been more common but I think even then, the Gentile would have been expected to convert to Judaism (unless the Jewish partner abandoned it).
Just a little clarification: Roman auxiliaries were non-Romans recruited for service in the Roman army. The Roman population could only provide so many men for the army, which was a volunteer army. Auxiliaries served as separate units. Usually, but not always, they came from the local population - but they could be from somewhere else. In a perfect world, they would be trained, equipped, and paid the same as a regular Roman legionary, except at the end of their service they would be rewarded with Roman citizenship. The Romans also used auxiliaries for special purposes, such as bow men or cavalry.
Besides the simple increase in numbers, the auxiliaries brought local language and custom skills to the governing of the empire. There could be drawbacks. I remember reading somewhere that Pilate brought images of the divine emperor with him to Jerusalem, this pissed everyone off and the Italian (Roman) regiment had to be called in to protect him - I guess the auxiliaries were offended as well.
Probably the most famous of all auxiliaries (well, an ex-auxiliary) was Spartacus.
Thank you, Captain Amazing and YPOD.
Sorry, I thought auxiliaries meant “supporting troops”. Didn’t realise they were totally different units. See, I got so much more to learn.
Wow, thanks Diogenes the Cynic. You must have an encyclopedia hiding somewhere in your brain??
This is a good readable intro to Roman taxes. The empire collected taxes by a bid system which relied upon what was arguably the first multinational big corporations. Rome did not receive taxes from the provinces per se, but rather they allowed people to bid on the right to collect the taxes and they based their budget on that bid. The people who won the bids were called the Publicani.
It was high risk being a Publicani, because if you tell Caesar that you will raise 250,000 gold pieces from Area X, then you had damned well better come up with it because it’s going to the budget and if you don’t deliver then your estates and possibly your freedom and that of your family is forfeit. However, it was also high gain: Rome didn’t greatly care how much you really raised so long as you got them their 250,000 AND you didn’t tax so much it caused a rebellion. You would have Roman troops to help you collect.
This method was also called “tax farming”, and the way it worked was that Publicanus Biggus for an area would find underlings (“tax sharecroppers”, if you will) to help him raise his hypothetical 250k in gold pieces. This person may have a small village or a particular area of a town, etc., and he would pledge to Biggus “I’ll get you 10,000 gold pieces from this place”, and then he in turn might have others beneath him and so on and so on.
So, ultimately, Biggus has pledged to raise 250,000 gold pieces for Rome from his area. He in fact raises 400,000 gold pieces and, with the full knowledge and consent of Rome, pockets the surplus 150,000 (this isn’t corruption, it’s how it works). One of the guys who is under him who pledged to raise 10,000 pieces actually raised 15,000 pieces and pockets the 10,000, and a guy under him who promised to raise 500 pieces actually raised 700 pieces and passed 500 up. SO, by the time you get down to the actual level of the peasants paying taxes, they have paid far more in taxes than Rome will ever see.
This is essentially what Matthew the Apostle was, a low level tax collector. He wasn’t hated as we might have disdain for an overzealous IRS agent (who is ultimately just a salaried federal employee who doesn’t profit or perish whether you owe the U.S. $10 or $10,000) but as ou would hate somebody who, basically, has the right to rob you. When Jesus tells him to repay what he’s stolen 7 times, this gives an idea of what type of haul he was getting (which probably wasn’t 700%- the peasants would have risen in bloody revolt over that- but by the time he’d invested it, hoarded it, etc., he’d made a very good living).
PS- I only used gold coins as a matter of convenience above. The actual tax would more likely have been in chickens, grain, cloth, etc., since many areas of the empire rarely used actual metal currency in day to day operations. It was mainly an urban and long distance trade convenience.
Thank you Sampiro!
That’s pretty bad… aren’t we lucky to live in this day and age.
Sorry… Got more question about women’s right.
From what I read:
- Jewish women at the time had almost no rights due to Jewish law and custom: They are confined to husband’s home, cannot go out alone or talk to strangers. Have to be veiled when outside.
Was it really that bad?? How strictly was this followed?
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Polygamy seemed to be allowed at the time. But was it prevalent?
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Divorce was also allowed. But again, was it prevalent?
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Young girl supposedly learnt from their mother, but would this include reading and writing?
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I assume adultery would be punished by death? But how about rape? Would the victim be punished as well? How about unmarried pregnancy?
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Were the husbands allowed to beat wives? I distinctively remember reading something about they could if the cane was smaller than a certain size a long time ago………. Or I am thinking about the wrong religion?
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Roman women at the time seemed to enjoy more freedom. They are at least allowed to work as nurses, waitresses, etc. Is this correct? (But they are still like property of their husband though.)
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So what would Nazareth be like? Somewhere is between due to Roman influence? Or closer to Jewish tradition?
Thank you all again for your time.
It depended greatly on the family. Nobody would have told Herod the Great’s sister Salome [not to be confused with her descendant who danced for John the Baptist’s head] to shut up or for that matter her granddaughter Herodias, but others were meek and docile and deeply religious. Jesus certainly gained private access to various women so that wasn’t enforced.
It’s never been prevalent- it’s always been only a small minority of men who practiced it in countries because it requires being able to support several women and more children. I asked a question about it not too long ago and general consensus is that it was very rare but not unheard of (perhaps like gay couples today?) and was probably practiced more in Egypt (which had, by some accounts, more Jews than Israel at the time of Christ) than in Israel. Herod the Great had 10 wives, probably some of them at the same time [not all], but then he was king and super rich.
Herod the Great was also married to two of his nieces as were several of his sons (Herodias, mentioned in the bible, was married to her uncle Philip before she left him for her uncle Antipas, and her daughter Sallie Mae [see above], who was the object of Antipas’s lust in the NT, was in addition to his stepdaughter his niece and his grandniece, and then she married one of his brother’s. Uncle/niece, first cousin marriage and other things we would call incest were probably far more common than polygamy.
Some Jews still practice polygamy and uncle-niece marriage incidentally; they are the ones who lived in Islamic countries, and when they brought their multiple wives to Israel (where most of the Jews considered it as “barbaric” a custom as we would) it was met with some raised eyebrows and “let’s talk” moments.
The most famous again were probably those in the Herodian family. It was very common in Rome, and the fact that Jesus forbids remarriage while the ex-spouse lives in every Gospel would indicate that it was probably becoming a problem [perhaps due to Roman influence] in Israel (and how odd you don’t see more conservative “queers can’t marry” Christian politicoes trying to ban divorce/remarriage when Jesus felt strongly about it, neh?)
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Picking up where Sampiro left off…
No. And that would go for most of the men as well. An estimated 95-98% of the Palestinian state was illiterate during the time of Jesus.
Rape was basically treated as a property crime. If the woman was married or engaged, the rapist could be killed for raping someone else’s property. Amazingly, Deuteronomy stipulates that if a woman is raped in the city (as opposed to the open country) she has to be executed too because she could have cried out. Even more amazingly, Deuteronomy also states that if a man rapes a woman who is not married or engaged, that the victim has to marry the rapist. (Deut. 22:22-29)
Are you thinking of Maimonides?
A woman who refuses to perform any kind of work that she is obligated to do, may be compelled to perform it, even by scourging her with a rod.” (Isshut 21:10).
I don’t know how common spousal abue would have been in 1st Century palestine but I’m pretty sure there were no explicit laws against it. How socially acceptable it was is another issue, though, and I really don’t know anything about that part. My guess is that it would have been seen as a man’s private business with his property but that’s not to say that people would not have looked down on men who seemed to be too cruel or abusive.
Roman women had far more freedom than Jewish women. They could own property, get divorced, etc. Married women were still subordinate to their spouses but single women (and a lot of married women) could acquire a great deal of autonomy.
Intensely Jewish.
Well, neither of those are very amazing. The first deals with the question of “How do you know it’s rape?” If the woman is in the city and doesn’t call for help, then, the logic goes, it’s not rape, it’s adultery. Because if a woman was really being forced to have sex against her will, of course she’d call for help. In the countryside, if nobody hears the woman cry for help, that doesn’t mean much, because who knows if anyone is around, but in the city, somebody should be close enough to hear it. So, the only reason not to cry out is if she doesn’t want people to know. So if somebody’s caught having sex with a woman, you assume it’s voluntary, therefore adultery (because the woman is some one else’s wife).
As for the second, it’s not that the victim has to marry the rapist…it’s that the rapist has to marry the victim, if the victim and her father demand it. And having married her, he’s not allowed to divorce her. It’s a matter of fairness…having raped her, he’s made sure that nobody else would ever marry her, because who’s going to marry a woman who’s not a virgin? (Ok, somebody might marry a widow or something, but that’s a special case) So, if he doesn’t marry her, she’s probably going to wind up unmarried and in her father’s house for the rest of her life.
The logic in both cases is still ludicrous and misogynistic beyond belief.
A lot less pressure to follow christian doctrine.
And lots of ankle-strap sandals.
Thanks Sampiro, Diogenes the Cynic, Captain Amazing for your continuous support.
Wow, I read the Deuteronomy 22:22-29… I have to say it’s quite insane… I can think of a few hundred way to exploit it. 
But what happens to the rape victim if the rapist is not caught though?
And if the victim is not married and become pregnant, would the child become a mamzerim?
I don’t think this reflect that badly on Jewish people at all.
If you consider other cultures at the time. I know a few would have killed the victim out right no matter what.
Well, the society, along with its contemporaries, was pretty mysogynistic by today’s standards. But they’re not ludicrous. The first closes a loophole, because without it, every married woman caught commiting adultery would have just said, “It’s not my fault. He raped me.”
The marriage thing also makes sense. The girl is now “damaged goods”, so nobody’s going to want to marry her, so unless she marries the guy who raped her, she’s going to stay unmarried. So, how is making him marry her if she wants ludicrous?