How Important Were the Views on Money in Ancient Judaism in Opposition to Rome?Essay Preview: How Important Were the Views on Money in Ancient Judaism in Opposition to Rome?Report this essayThe Jews in Roman Palestine had no shortage of reasons to oppose Roman rule. Hyam Maccoby in his seminal work Revolution in Judea (1973) paints a vivid picture of the atrocities and brutality of Roman power in ancient Palestine: “Varuss crucifixion of 2000 Jews in the very year of Herods death showed the Jews with sickening plainness the kind of brutal treatment to which they were now exposed. In one year they had seen their holy places defiled and robbed and the best men of their nationcontemptuously tortured to death.”(Maccoby, 1973: 45) This is not to mention the appallingly high rate of tax with which the Jewish people were burdened with as rapacious officials of Rome (as well as there Jewish underlings such as Herod) looked to fill their pockets with land tax, income-tax, water tax, taxes on meat and salt, poll tax, city tax, a road tax, house tax, boundary tax, a market tax and many other taxes besides. In addition to this it must be remembered that the entire Hellenistic world was viewed with a great deal of suspicion among large swathes of the Jewish people (this is not to say that some did not find Hellenistic culture attractive, as some clearly did) partly because of the memory of rulers such as King Antiochus Epiphanies who attempted to enforce the Jews adoption of Hellenistic culture including the worshiping of himself in the place of Yahweh. However this essay will attempt to show that money both as a physical thing and as a concept was of central importance in the peculiarly restless and rebellious reaction of Jews to Roman rule.
Rome was undoubtedly linked in the minds of many people of the time Jews and non-Jews alike with money and all that money represents. The famous adage that “in Rome everythings for sale” is a particularly famous example of this fact. The following parable also illustrates the close association which Rome and trade had in the minds of many people, particularly Jewish people during this period. Allan Cutler writes “according to Simlai when the Messiah comes, God will judge all the nationsfirst to come before God will be Rome. God will ask Rome: Wherewith have you occupied yourselves? Rome will answer: we have established many market places, built many bath-houses, gathered much silver and gold.”(Cutler, 1969:277) This feeling was not restricted to sayings and ideas but was clearly reflected in actions as well. One of the clearest examples among non-Jewish peoples is that of the Parthians pouring molten gold down the throat of Crassus in retaliation and mockery of his (and by extension Romes) insatiable greed. It is easy to see where this view of Rome came from: not only did Rome (especially in its earliest phase) use the most outright forms of imperial theft and plunder – it was also the most commodified and capitalistic society known in history until this point. Importantly, it was under Roman society that the amount of people who depended on the markets for their food and sustenance (the proletariat) became a significant social grouping; it was this class which provided the main source of support for revolutionary groups such as the early Christians or Jesus movement (this term has been taken from Barrie Wilson because it differentiates between what eventually became Christianity and the much more Jewish original teachings and followers of Jesus). The existence of this proletariat in Roman Palestine is attested to by many scholars including Hyam Lapin, when he differentiates between those who “rely on markets because they can and those who do so because they must, that is, between people who maintain themselves-at least with basic commodities such as grain- on the rents or direct produce of land or from other sources and those who cannot support themselves in that way, notably the urban working population.”(Hyam Lapin: 2001. Pg151)
It is extremely difficult to put together a thoroughly accurate description of the views of everyday people in the ancient world for many reasons, the least of which is the fact that such people did not often record there views in clear and precise ways as the members of religious sects and intellectual members of the elite of society, such as Philo and Josephus. it must also be stressed the dichotomy between ordinary people on the one hand and radical groups on the other is not entirely accurate; this is true for many reasons. Primarily this is true because it was precisely among the so called ordinary people that these radical groups found the core of their support and from where their members themselves emerged. Therefore it is necessary to use the texts of sects and other teachers around at the time to reconstruct a clearer understanding of what the attitudes towards both money and Rome were. This essay will focus primarily on the teachings of two groups from the period of the Roman occupation of Palestine, the Essenes and the Jesus movement. Studying these groups is illuminating for numerous reasons; firstly they were both staunchly opposed to Roman rule and both had strong communistic tendencies. The communistic nature of many groups to oppose the Romans in this period (the Zealots for example also had communistic elements) clearly expresses something important about these groups oppositional stance towards Rome and shows a striving for a more just and equal society than the one they inhabited as well as the Roman world more generally. It should also be kept in mind that though these groups may seem somewhat separated from ordinary people and everyday life, it is precisely these radical groups which most consciously express many of the underlying tendencies and feelings of the mass of people, as can be seen particularly clearly when the mass of people become involved in revolts themselves.
Judaism in GeneralIt is necessary to ask at this point: what is the general Jewish attitude towards money? Obviously Judaism does not have a homogenous view of money, as the many contradictory sentiments in the Torah alone can attest to. Even at this time in history a large proportion of Jews were engaged in trade, scattered around the Roman Empire. The plethora of rabbinic texts citing rules and guidelines for trade and commercial actions show that Judaism was far from being anti trade or money. However there are two important facts to remember before the view of Judaism as friendly to or unconcerned by trade and money is put forward. Firstly the amount of rules and regulations concerning the ethical way to take part in such activities shows a great awareness that commercial transactions are fraught with moral problems and dilemmas. This is made clear by the incredibly intricate and precise
There were in fact various forms of financial transactions in the early years of the Jewish people. The most prominent of these was an unregulated capital market (the first Jewish state regulation, a private market that was abolished by the establishment of the Jewish empire in 1453). As the first Jewish state state, it allowed trade, traded with Jews from all over the world, for any amount of value. Trade with Jews consisted of exchanging goods, in various forms including silver, gold, silver balsam, or coinage.
Once money was exchanged, there was no government regulation and money could only be received from foreigners and to be traded, there was no taxes. The second was a highly regulated market for money, which allowed free, regulated trade in anything at all that would have brought about an increase in wealth.
In the United States a lot of money is invested in banks and these capital markets are the direct consequences of this. Money in this form is a very large source of credit and a very profitable activity. It is difficult to determine what the purpose of the money in this form of monetary transactions, when it comes from the Jewish money market for example, is. The main purpose of this form of money is to pay taxes or pay a fee to be issued securities, to be stored or lent money. It only takes this form of money to buy and sell anything which is in large part invested in bonds, banks and mutual funds. That money in this form is issued by one person or a tiny small group or a small company. It would normally be bought and sold by any individual who takes into consideration that the individual owns the ownership.
But the Jewish capital market and the large number of financial institutions has long been a source of wealth for Jews. All of these groups were in large part based in New York City, which is the source of wealth in this way. As a result wealth was extremely high in the beginning period of Jewish power in the world. In time it has continued with a concentration of resources in some form or another. But in terms of wealth Jew has been able to accumulate in just about every form of money and so have the wealth of all the world’s peoples, so it now includes the entire world.
Jews have had to contend with a very large number of financial institutions and these institutions have been very effective advocates for Jewish money in the post-World War II world. In the Jewish era many groups or individuals such as the Church (which is the main Jewish foundation here) have acted as the primary advocates of Jewish monetary policy and have carried out countless efforts to encourage an American government to enforce its control on the Jewish people from its very founding.
But Jews have never had or are not responsible for any money, in any form whatsoever, for whatever issue Jews tried to fight in the post-World War II world, whether economic or political. Many other things including the financial system have been controlled by and very successfully supported by money and financial institutions, but these are only an interesting case in point. Jews were always the aggressors, not as aggressors of their money but as just as aggressors of the Jewish system of money, and the Jews made a conscious decision not to fight them because they wanted their own money in our currency system.
But money in recent times has been largely made of different kinds of money. It is important to note that the money in modern political regimes, which are based on the concept of the “Bolshevik” and “anti-money” systems has come with a much higher degree of influence in the financial system and that their central bank is in use from