Beyond Moses, Circumcision, and Pork: What Romans Knew about Jews and How That Knowledge Shaped Imperial Rule

Previous researchers of Jewish history in the Roman Empire have imperfectly employed Greco-Roman sources to describe Roman perceptions of Jews and Judaism by relying on a handful of Greek and Latin written and visual components without attempting to quantify or comprehensively explore this abundant material. Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, this dissertation analyzes the vast array of Greco-Roman written and visual sources about Jews and Judaism from the first century BCE to the end of the third century CE. While qualitative reviews of Greek and Latin texts help eliminate potential inconsistencies in the data, computational tools like text-mining analysis quantify the information into calculable results. The addition of visual source material into the framework helps further refine the quantified textual material. Reviews of this data reveal the general traits imperial leaders within the Roman Empire knew about the geography and history of Judaea, Jewish religious beliefs and cultural practices, and Jewish communities in general. Further reviews of the data note regional and, more importantly, temporal variations connecting them to changes both in imperial rule and Judaism. This process presents a more detailed and coherent conception of Roman knowledge of Jews and Judaism than scholars have previously recognized. In addition to highlighting imperial knowledge, this dissertation also demonstrates how Roman authorities drew on this information while ruling over Jewish communities. From this analysis, it is clear Roman imperial authorities formed a complex knowledge of ethnic and religious communities like Jews and applied this information to their rule over these populations